Pastoral Letter 100
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Greetings to you all in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
I write this my 100th Pastoral Letter with some relief and thanks as I am on my way of full recovery from COVID. After two difficult weeks I am glad to let you know that last week I tested Negative and day by day I am getting better and better. I hope and I do pray that by the first Sunday of February I will be ready to resume work. A special thanks to the Church Elders and the Council who accepted my request of two weeks sick leave and two weeks of annual leave. Thank you all for your concern, prayers and the notes you have send during this period, they mean a lot to me and Dee.
Dee and I have decided to take a short road trip this weekend and today we will hit the road and plan to be back on Monday evening. We think this will be a good time to relax and unwind.
Thanks to our neighbouring churches who shared their service with us the last two Sundays. I am glad to let you know that our friend Bob Minton has accepted to prepare this and next Sunday’s Service. Thank you, Bob, for always being ready to help us when we are in need.
Please join the others on Sunday morning, light a candle and follow the Order of Service and sing along the hymns. We will keep you posted in regards when we will be able to open our church doors for services and to resume our weekly programs. During the week the Church Elders and the Council will make a decision in this regard, and we will let you know by next week.
In the meantime, be well and safe, continue to pray, remembering those who need care, support and love and let us know if any member of the congregation that you know of is not feeling well or has symptoms.
Here are some prayer points for this week:
- Pray for those who are suffering with Omicron, the new variant of COVID.
- Pray for Tonga; our brothers and siters in Christ who are suffering in the aftermath of the volcanic eruption and Tsunami.
- Pray for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling and the stressed.
- Pray for all those who are suffering under hardship and poverty.
- Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.
- Pray and give thanks with all you have and remember that everything is given by God with His grace.
- Pray for each other.
Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Best Regards,
Krikor
“TODAY”
Luke 4: 14-21
Let us pray!
O Lord, we pray, speak in the calming of our minds and in the longings of our heart. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
The first recorded word in a sermon by Jesus is the word “Today.” It was in His home synagogue at Nazareth that he gave His message for the first time.
Jesus closed the sacred Scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down, and all the eyes in the synagogue were fixed upon him. He began to speak to them: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”
There would be many more words to follow in the months ahead: fecund words that would both unsettle and enthral people for two millennia. But Jesus’ first word was simply “Today”
Luke presents these words as Christ’s mission statement. He believed that they were being fulfilled in His lifetime. These words define what Jesus was on about. This was “his thing” because it was “God’s thing.”
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has ordained me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to announce release for prisoners, sight for the blind, liberty for the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of God’s acceptance. Luke 4: 18
Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”
TODAY
Never confuse Jesus with those overzealous iconoclasts: those who are so filled with their own self-importance that they scorn the past. Jesus was not an angry young man on an ego trip. Never! That was not His thing.
Jesus treasured the past. He honoured the teaching that has been passed down by Jews through many generations. He fed his soul from the sacred scrolls of Scripture. During his temptations in the harsh Judean wilderness, He rebutted Satan with quotations from the Scriptures. On His return from the desert to Nazareth, He quotes from the prophet Isaiah in His first sermon. It forms his manifesto. He cherished His Biblical heritage.
But He was called to be neither an historian nor a museum curator. He looked to the present and the future. What the prophets had hoped for, Jesus believed was available today. The new age of the Kingdom of God was already breaking in upon them. The opportunity was now.
The challenge of Jesus was (and is) for today.
Now is the hour of grace. Now is the moment of opportunity. Now we choose between darkness and light. And that moment of opportunity was inextricably tied to how we treat one another. Our attitudes, relationships, deeds. Especially how we treat the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed; those whom this proud world regards as unimportant or even disposable. Caring for people today is “his thing.”
In his “Today” sermon Jesus rams home His intent by insisting that God’s mission included despised foreigners. He reminds them that when Elijah was in need, God met that need through the hands of a Phoenician widow of Sidon. And the Syrian soldier, General Naaman, found healing from Elisha ahead of many Jewish lepers. “Today” includes those who are either ignored, despised, abused or hated. God’s grace recognised no barrier of race or social class or religion. Inclusive love is God’s thing.
Significantly, it is this attitude to “Gentiles”, those despised outsiders, that appears to have changed the mood of the Nazareth congregation from admiration for the gracious words that Jesus poke, to one of open hostility and violence.
DOING HIS THING?
What about us today?
Today are we with Jesus or against him? Are we for His manifesto or against it? Do we live as if all races and classes are equally important to God, or as if some are some are of lesser value? Do we carry on this “Jesus thing” which is also “God’s thing”?
Don’t wait for the kingdom of God to come in the future. With Jesus it is here today. Right now. Among us, for us, and excluding none. All the vulnerable, or marginalised, or the rejected or neglected people of our community, and in overseas countries, are those for whom Jesus came to include.
In our attitudes each one of us may reveal the truth: whether, or not, we have embraced the real Jesus or created some sugary substitute that can live easily with our prejudices, both social and party-political. Dare we look honestly at ourselves? How often are we willing to suffer the discomfort of giving our personal attitudes an honest and thorough audit?
Let’s try a brief audit:
– Are Moslem men, women and children of Arabian lands or SE Asia, of lesser value than Australians, New Zealanders, Europeans or Americans?
– Should aborigines be treated as a less worthy group who deserve the bad health and the sad poverty-trap in which many languish?
– Do asylum seekers, especially the ‘boat people’, including their little children, warrant being shut away behind barbed wire in remote places of Australia while their claim to legitimacy is being processed?
– Are prostitutes, the drug addicts and street kids, best left to ‘stew in their own juice’ rather than the State spending money on their rehabilitation?
– Should those who are infected with Aids be disdained as self-destructive fools who are earning the wages of their own sins?
– Are nice, well-educated, middle-class people more acceptable to our church than would be the rough-edged, hoi polloi?
– In summary: are we, in our attitudes, values, and activities, being ruled by pride, fear and selfishness rather than the love of Jesus? Are we genuine practitioners of the Jesus thing?
AUSTRALIA DAY
This Sunday brings us near to Australia Day, on Jan 26. It is appropriate to ponder the difference that some people have made, and can still make, in this nation, when they do the Jesus thing. Are we active in that programme which Jesus launched?
The opportunities are many.
The poor?
Plenty of these both in and outside Australia; and many other agencies of compassion that could do with our vigorous support.
The prisoners?
Maybe voluntary organisations like Amnesty International and OARS are on the right track.
The blind?
This leads us into the whole field of healing: physical, both mental and physical and spiritual.
The oppressed?
There is no shortage of oppressed people in our land, including some native Australians, and those (mainly migrant) groups toiling in menial and low paid jobs
Preaching the year of God’s favour?
Grace!
Evangelism by deed a word.
Making God’s love much more than a “four letter word”
From Karumba to Kalgoorlie,
Maroochydore to Mandurah,
and from Whyalla to Wollongong.
Good news!
The Spirit of God is upon us, to be what Jesus would have us be.
The Spirit is not given so that we may entertain each other with odd behaviour;
it is not given so that we may wallow in, or idolise, our own feelings;
it isn’t given that we might indulge in a religious ego trip;
it is not given that our particular church might have the cosiest fellowship,
or the prettiest liturgy,
or the liveliest worship.
It is given that we might love the world as Jesus loved:
to reach out to the fringe dwellers,
to affirm and build up the timid,
to stand with the poor and oppressed,
to care for awkward or unattractive characters,
to be aware of and compassionate towards weak and addicted ones,
to forgive those who hurt us and so liberate them (and ourselves) from the bondage
of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to announce good news to the poor”
Please God, may it be so!
THE ONLY LIFE IS TODAY
The only time in which we can live is right now. Today.
Yesterday cannot be regained.
Tomorrow cannot be visited.
This day is what matters to Christ Jesus.
Now is the hour when the “Jesus thing” stands before us as unlimited opportunity.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has ordained me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to announce release for prisoners, sight for the blind, liberty for the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of God’s acceptance. Luke 4: 18
Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”
AMEN
Bob Minton