Thoughts for July 2010

Dear Friends,

I can recall the excitement of receiving a letter by post when I was a child.  It was even more exciting on my birthday when all the cards tumbled through the letterbox.  Nowadays I don’t have the same sense of excitement when the post arrives - it is usually a bill!

Will you use your imaginations now for me, please?

You rush to the door when the postman/woman leaves some letters.  You find one is addressed to you marked ‘Personal’, and it comes from Jesus!  You tear it open and devour the contents.  You discover that Jesus knows all about you, what your needs are, what your problems are.  You read it through several times.  Then you try to follow the instructions Jesus gives you in the letter, so that you can receive what he has promised you.

Well, I am sorry, but it is not likely to happen like that these days.  But soon after Jesus rose from the dead, there were seven congregations, each of which received a letter from the risen Christ.  You will find these letters in the last Book of the Bible, the Revelation to John.  If you read them carefully, and find out the differences between their situation then and our situation today, you can work out what Jesus would say if he addressed a letter to our congregation at St John’s today.  Surely, that is nearly as good as a letter to you personally - isn’t it?

Somebody called John penned the letters on Jesus’ behalf, - it was a common name so we cannot be quite sure which John this was.  However, we do know that John was a missionary working in a small area of what is now called Turkey.  John had visited each congregation, and then he was arrested, and deported to the island of Patmos to dig stones in the quarries as a punishment for being a Christian.  There he had a vision, and the Risen Christ told him what to write to each of the seven churches.

Two of these letters were to the churches in Sardis and Philadelphia, and can be found in the third chapter of Revelation.  Complacency seems to have infected the Christian church in Sardis, and Jesus said that they were living in the past.  Now, Philadelphia, which means ‘brotherly love’, was a new town founded only 200 years previously, and the risen Christ wrote that they had an ‘open door’ of opportunity.  Situated where they were, they could spread the Christian faith to the barbarian tribes around them.  The Christians of Philadelphia were also complacent, and in spite of the open door, they were failing to spread brotherly love.  However, Jesus did not rebuke them - he encouraged them to hold on to what they had, to the faith they had received and the teaching that the missionaries had given them: ‘hold fast to what you have, so that no one may seize your crown. If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God’.

Today we call someone a pillar of the church when they attend worship regularly every Sunday unless it is absolutely impossible.  They are the salt of the earth; the people who quietly get on and do all the jobs that need doing while others are only talking.  While others are complacently dwelling in the past, they are looking to the future.  The pillars hold up the spiritual fabric of the community, and they keep on going despite all discouragements.

When I read the letters to the seven churches, I am aware how relevant they are to our situations today in churches throughout the land.  They continually inspire me and remind me that Sunday worship is what gives me the spiritual strength for the coming week.  That time spent together on a Sunday morning is so important; it is an opportunity to pray and listen to God so that we do not suffer complacency at St John’s.  May we all strive to be ’pillars of the church’ and bear witness to the brotherly love that Jesus teaches us.

Yours in Christ,

Kathy