Pastoral Letter 2
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
As a follow up to my earlier Pastoral letter email sent on Wednesday, I write this second letter, again in sadness, as we will not be able to meet tomorrow to have our regular Sunday Service to worship our God and have fellowship together. Since June 2011, when I commenced my placement here at St. Andrew’s, we have worshiped together as a loving and caring family of God. Though in the recent years we have organised combined services with Lane Cove Uniting, Zone churches, combined with other congregations, but we have worshiped regularly every Sunday and shared Holy Communion the first week of each month. Now, at this very critical time, we have decided, after seriously considering, praying and taking into consideration the strong recommendation of the Uniting Church Synod and Presbytery advices, to suspend all our service and activities until further notice.
In these prevailing tough and most unpredicted times as we face the terrible pandemic and the quick spread of the Corona virus – Covid-19, when we don’t know what tomorrow holds, our only hope is God, our heavenly Father who loves, the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who comes to us with His grace and the Holy Spirit that gives us power to resist evil and all challenges of life.
I suggest you look at this email and accept it as an alternative to our church service, where we sing, pray, read the scripture and reflect on it to get the message. Also, I am attaching this Sunday’s Order of Service, and ask you that on Sunday morning at 9:30 am to follow the order, by reading the script, the prayers, Responsive Reading, Bible Readings and sing the hymns and think about all those who are worshiping with you at the same time.
You can do this! Please read the summary of the message that you will find below, meditate on it further and see what more God’s says to you. Also, I urge you to put your offering in a dated envelope, set it aside and when the time comes to recommence and reconvene for our services in the church sanctuary and worship together, please bring the envelope/envelopes with you as a sign of your gratitude and thanks to God for keeping you safe and giving you the chance to come and join again with the loving and caring congregation, your brothers and sisters in Christ to worship and celebrate. This will be one of the best ways to express our faith in God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who was, is and will be with us always as He has promised. The promises of our God assure us that all things will work for the good during time.
I will be writing to you every week with a similar message and urge you to do the same, until such time when we will be able to meet again on our church premises.
For sure we will miss for a while the company of our sisters and brothers in Christ, the fellowship and the singing and the music of Mark and the choir. But God is good and great; and perhaps He wants to tell us something, mainly not to take things for granted.
I am attaching this link, which is the pastoral message of our Synod Moderator, Rev. Simon Hansford. I urge you to open and read it, if you have the internet facility. Every encouraging word will comfort us and feels us with hope and gratitude.
Please keep communicating with me for anything you need. I am more than happy to assist you, besides praying for you. If need be, I am happy to come and see you face to face but respecting the current restrictions of communication. In the meantime, please communicate with each other with phone calls and keep informed everyone, with any new developments that happens with you, your family and any of the congregation member that you know is having any problems.
At this stage, please pray for Betty Chapman as she is not well.
Keep praying, praying and praying and leave everything in the hands of our great God, who is our refuge and strength.
Message Summary
“The Shepherd of the Shepherd Boy!”
As we are at the verge of lock down in Australia, with cancellations of sporting events, public gatherings, celebrations being rescheduled, holiday plans disrupted, flights being cancelled and even churches closing their doors, we have to stop, look around and ask these or similar questions:
“What is at the heart of these unprecedented drastic measures that have been taken?”
“What is it that we are trying to stop?”
“What is it that we are afraid might happen to us?”
“What is it that has so many people worrying about and leading them to desperate measures?”
“Is this the work of the enemy, ‘Satan’?”.
Or as some conservatives would say: “This is God’s work, because of the widespread evil in the world”.
And others would say: “This is the act of people and governments, releasing virus in the air to work for their benefit by providing a cure with a very high price and do anything for their benefit”.
There are things we thought last week that nothing was going to stop us from doing them, but all of a sudden, we won’t be doing because of the prevailing pandemic situation, by the quick spread of the virus. When we look to the people around us in the world, for sure that must appear to God like sheep scattered on a hill trying figure out which direction to run from the danger. With the spread of information and disinformation on social media, some of us are terrified like sheep, and sometimes that fear would kill us.
We are invited according to our Christian conviction and faith to believe that Jesus died on the cross, and He rose from the dead, because He knew that we were condemned to die, because of our wrong doing and the evil in our hearts. He knew that we would be afraid of death, because in the inside we know that we have done wrong, and we are going to give an account for what we have done.
Today, more and more people are being troubled because they are forced to face with, “I could get this coronavirus and not even know it.” They convince themselves that they will be among the small percentage of people who will be affected and die. They can take all kinds of precautions, but still they have little control over what happens.
How should believers respond to any crisis in which the fear of death is out there?
It begins with knowing, our hope is always to be rooted in God. Our most well-known Psalm in the Bible, which is one of the Lectionary Readings for this Sunday, is where we begin.
Psalm 23 tells us. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
First, we should know and accept that God is saying that we are His sheep and the sheep of His pasture. God knew and knows about this pandemic long ago. God knew and knows about every threat we face in our lives. This is not the first virus or plague to enter the world. Maybe it is time for us to think that God wants to use the church, to show the world who He is by how we react to the life-threatening diseases such this.
In the current situation we should remember that the Lord is truly our shepherd. Though we have our own fears, but as believers we should turn to the roots of our Christian faith and know that God is in control, because He is the Shepherd, the Good Shepherd, the Shepherd of the Shepherd boy; David’s, yours and mine.
But the real question that we should ask today is this:
“Do we believe Jesus when Jesus tells us that he is the Good Shepherd?”
As the sheep of the Good Shepherd, we should be ready to believe that Jesus is always going to surround us with good things that will make us comfortable in life. He’s going to lead us on the way, even when we face dangers, plagues and terror and He will make us to lie down in green pastures where there is plenty of food for us to eat, as well as “toilet paper” and our basic needs, and be happy, instead of panic. This does not mean that we should be careless. On the contrary, we should be more than careful. We should be in the mind set of doing things in the right way; and that’s what He expects from us.
Second, He will take us to where the water is still, quiet, calm and peaceful so that we can drink, as the sheep feel comfortable to drink from and it’s not rushing down the stream and as we drink it will not splash back in our faces. Yes, we enjoy the still and quiet waters.
During our long trip on the train to Broken Hill and back, I had enough time to read and finish the book “The Good Shepherd: A Thousand-Year Journey From Psalm 23 to the New Testament” by the brilliant scholar and professor Kenneth Baily (my teacher back during my training years in the Near East School of Theology in Beirut). By thee way, the Zone ministers have planned to use this book for our next Zone Study Series in August and September, if God wills.
In this book, which is rich with biblical feast of ethical, theological and artistic delights according to Bailey, the author outlines the Religion of the Good Shepherd, where he talks about the kindness, the courage, the grace, the love and the beauty of the Good Shepherd. In this Psalm David describes his own spiritual journey and what the Lord does for him by providing all his needs, protects, cares and finds and brings to safety, when he is lost.
Third, Our Lord does not just lead us to still and quiet waters, but He walks with us when we are passing through the valley of the shadow of death or walking through the darkest valley. Thankfully we are not at that point yet, but so many people are, in many countries in the different parts of the world, where the pandemic is a real threat and caused hundreds and thousands of deaths.
The psalmist goes on to write, “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” It’s good to be careful and look after our hygiene by using hand sanitizer, but that’s not where our deliverance is. Our deliverance is in the fact that God is with us. The psalmist also adds that God’s rod and staff, comes in many different forms, and they comfort him.
How does God expects to use us in response to the worry and fear that has spread through our nation and the world?
Will we show a confidence in Him during the challenging and terrifying times?
Will we more hopeful and bring all our cares and the cares of the people around us to Him in faith?
Will we think that the Corona Virus is a great enemy, but God is greater?
David concludes with the words: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”.
We should be able to celebrate what God has done and will do for us, even with the pandemic around us.
Let us be sure that God is with us; He is our shield, our hope and our refuge.
Let us believe in this truth and live one day at a time, leaving all our care on Him, who gives, protects and sustains our lives.
He is our Lord. He is our Shepherd. And He is the Good Shepherd.
Amen.