5
St John’s
In the City
Presbyterian Church WELLINGTON
THE
M E S S E N G E R
MARCH 2006
THE MESSENGER is published quarterly by
corner of Willis and Dixon Streets
WELLINGTON
P.O. Box 27 148
Phone: (04) 385 1546
Fax: (04) 385 0040
Editor:
WYN BEASLEY
Production:
Barbara Newdick
THE MESSENGER welcomes contributions, but can offer no
guarantee of publication. Contributions should be forwarded to the Church Office at the numbers above, or by e-mail to:
Views expressed in THE MESSENGER do not necessarily
reflect those of St John’s in the City.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 4
NEWS
Births, Deaths, Baptisms, Confirmations, Marriages 5
Mission Reflection 6
Rob Ewan (for the Mission Promotion Group)
VIEWS
THEME: Giving
An Easter ethic 8
Helen Martin
The Killing of the Christ 10
Wyn Beasley
A ‘Wandering Presbyterian’ finds a home [Part 1] 13
Bob Burch
Whither Science? 17
Robin Ferrier
The Resurrection: a Perspective from Down Under 21
Graham Redding
INTRODUCTION
This issue of the Messenger includes a small brochure on planned giving, which is referred to in the text of Rob Ewan’s presentation at a recent Sunday service; and the essays printed in this issue pick up this same GIVING theme in varied ways.
Helen Martin contrasts the gathering of knowledge with the giving of love, in what these contrasting attitudes have to contribute to our growth as Christians; my own essay looks at the meaning of Jesus’ willingness to give His life for our salvation.
Bob Burch (in the first instalment of his account of his own religious odyssey) describes his ancestor Alexander Yule, who gave so much to the early years of the Presbyterian church in a young country. Robin Ferrier draws to our attention the gifts that science offers to our awareness of God’s creation, and the Church’s past reluctance to avail itself of these gifts.
And Graham Redding, writing of the paradox of an autumnal Easter, gives us new insights into the proclamation, on Easter Day, of the Good News that ‘Christ is risen’.
But, because Easter is late this year and falls almost midway between this issue and the next, it is necessary for the June Messenger to provide, as far as appropriate, a continuation of the theme. This next issue will, as I perceive it, be able to complement the remainder of Bob’s narrative with an account by John Hunt of the help and joy that St John’s has been able to give to our friends in Kaikoura, over more than a century of partnership in God’s service. And, having written this time of Jesus’ death, I feel an obligation to tackle the subject of His Resurrection which can be seen as the essential outcome of the Crucifixion – because without it we are stranded, as it were, in the despair of that Saturday which was the eve of Easter.
.
WYN BEASLEY
BIRTHS, DEATHS, BAPTISMS, CONFIRMATIONS AND MARRIAGES
BIRTHS
Congratulations to Dave and Vicky Wood on the birth of Samuel
BAPTISMS & CONFIRMATIONS
Sarah Walker 27 November 2005
Caitlin Ava Leogreen 29 January 2006
Matthew Potts, Colin Dumbletin, Richard Renfrew
12 February 2006
MARRIAGES
Hyun-Jin and Zoon-Woo Lee 10 December 2005
Holly Atkinson and Ross Keane 14 January 2006
Kim Healy and Vaughan Baker 28 January 2006
Olivia Jansson and Kyran Robinson 10 February 2006
DEATHS
Our condolences to the friends and families of
Janet Marjory Pack d. 31 August 2005, aet. 89
Barbara Elizabeth Wallace d. 23 November 2005
Betty Dorothy Harris d. 2 December 2005, aet. 82
MISSION REFLECTION
[This statement was read on behalf of the
Mission Promotion Group, on Sunday 19 February 2006]
If on leaving here this morning, someone on the street stopped you and asked, ‘What do you do in there?’ – what would you say?
Now, I’m not trying to be cute – but it makes you think, doesn’t it? Yes, we come here on Sundays to worship God, but is that all we do at St John’s? And is that what you would say to describe what we do at St John’s?
For some of us it might be easy, for others of us it might be a challenge – even just choosing words that a stranger might understand, to start with. Now I want to try and put this into context. There is a great deal we do here – and not just the Sunday service!
You might not have thought about all we do as ‘Mission’, but that’s the context that I encourage you to think about and relate to, in what we do at St John’s-in-the-City. ‘Mission’: the whole is made up from many parts. Sunday worship is just one.
From left: Paul Ramsay, Rob Anderson, Ted Cizadlo, Rob Ewan.
This group has accepted the challenge of ensuring that our ‘Mission’ has the resources to remain effective, and is moving forward. You have a vital part in this challenge too. Each one of us has a part in furthering the Mission by encouraging and supporting those at the rock face of our activities.
Each one of us has a part in nurturing our Mission, and that can be done through generous planned financial giving or through time and talents and a combination of all these. A very famous American Church consultant, Kennon Callahan, put it this way:
The stronger the congregation’s Mission
The stronger the giving.
The stronger the congegation’s giving
The stronger the Mission.
Sitting in the choir each Sunday, I look at the Good Samaritan window, and I am continually challenged about what the word picture Jesus painted really means. Think of the Good Samaritan – go the extra mile. I saw this lovely quote recently – ‘There’s no traffic on the extra mile.’
As you leave church today, you will be given something that outlines how you can contribute, if you choose, to ensure our Mission moves forward. [The same ‘something’ is included with this copy of the Messenger.] Furthermore, each month for the rest of 2006, there will be a focus on a particular part of our Mission.
As Graham put it so aptly a couple of weeks ago, ‘We serve a vision that is greater than secularism is able to provide on its own.’ We should celebrate and give thanks for the blessing of a growing, committed, caring and lively community of faith.
So is someone asks you, ‘What do you do in that place?’ you will be able to say – How long have you got?
ROB EWAN
[for the Mission promotion Group:
Rob Anderson, Ted Cizadlo, Rob Ewan, Paul Ramsay]
AN EASTER ETHIC
We understand the Easter event as being about salvation: our wholeness and the wholeness of creation. But does the Passion of Christ affect our moral decision-making? Does Easter have anything to do with ethics? For the Apostle Paul the passion of Christ affects everything, including our moral judgment and decision-making processes.1
The church at Corinth needed help with their moral judgments because their community was being torn apart by those whose views differed. For some, freedom of conscience was one of the greatest of Christ’s gifts. Others were not so sure. In 1 Corinthians, ch. 8, Paul begins to address a dilemma which concerned whether or not to eat food that had been offered to idols. Some said and did one thing; some said and did the opposite. Both groups acted in accordance with their conscience, and in doing so, caused division.2
While far removed from their particular problem, we are not removed from ethical dilemmas which have far-reaching consequences. We have only to think of the consequences of the recent publication of certain cartoons to recognise that this is true for society in general, as well as true for the church community in particular.
Knowledge must always be an essential component in our decision-making process, but the Apostle Paul’s question is: which knowledge has priority? For an Easter ethic, the dominant knowledge is the knowledge of Christ, and committed faithful love for others will motivate how we make use of other knowledge. Operating from an Easter ethic we will use our knowledge to ‘do to others what we would have them do to us’. We will put others’ interests before our own.3
If you or I were members of the Church in Corinth it is likely that we would ‘know’ that to eat food offered to idols was
1 1 Corinthians 1: 4-5.
2 To understand this dilemma and the complete response to it, see 1 Corinthians chs 8, 9 and 10.
3 1 Corinthians 1:10 – 3:22; Philippians 2: 1-11.
a morally acceptable action. We might reason that an idol is nothing and that there is only one true God. However, not everyone would agree and it would help if the Apostle Paul adjudicated so as to restore the community to unity. His response, however, is not as we might have hoped:
Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: We know that ‘all of us possess knowledge’. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge. But anyone who loves God is known by Him. Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘no idol in the world really exists’ and that ‘there is no God but one’. [1 Cor 8: 1-4]
How irritating! We know that we are right. We have done the research and collected the facts. Theologically, the resolution to the dilemma is obvious. Not only that, but we know that Paul knows that we are in the right. If he lent our views the credence of his own authority, the others would be persuaded. The disunity could easily be fixed trough the simple application of the truth.
So it could, if by ‘truth’ we mean more than facts and information.4
Ethical dilemmas and community disunity are never resolved through the collection and acceptance of information alone. Logic devoid of other values is not wisdom.5 Through his own life experience the apostle Paul knew the temptation to try to win. He knew the temptation of arrogance. He had felt the thrill of his own superiority and knew how empty it is of the love of God.6
While knowledge is an essential part of resolving ethical dilemmas, ultimately it is not human knowledge that will unite, but God’s love. If we claim to have knowledge, but do not know
4 John 8: 31-38; 14: 1-7.
5 1 Corinthians 2: 1-16.
6 Acts 9: 1-19; 22: 6-16; 26: 12-18. Note that the book in which Paul tells his own story [Galatians 1:11 – 2:2] is the same book in which he writes that the fruit of the Spirit is ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. [5:22, 23]
Christ crucified and so do not know God’s grace for ourselves as for everyone, then we do not have the knowledge that is necessary for unity.7 On the other hand, when our egos are given over to loving God and being known by God, we will know what it is to be judged by God and accepted by God. With this knowledge our hearts will be grace-filled and we will be more able to contribute to unity even when the opinions of others are based on ill-informed and even immature conceptions of the matter at hand.8
The knowledge of Christ crucified is the beginning of an Easter ethic.9 The outworking of such an ethic is evident in a community led and empowered by the Spirit as we are all helped to live in accordance with our baptism, buried with Christ and raised to new ness of life.10
HELEN MARTIN
7 1 Corinthians 8: 2-3; John 17: 20-25.
8 1 Corinthians 8: 7-13.
9 1 Corinthians 2: 1-5.
10 Galatians 5: 24-26.
______
THE KILLING OF THE CHRIST
… was crucified, dead and buried.
The Apostles’ Creed.
Easter is a distressing time, a disturbing time, a challenging time. Our Christian belief, which teaches us that Jesus was both God and Man, now demands of us the acceptance that, when Jesus was put to death, God died too. And our response is to ask, ‘Why?’
In his preface to Androcles and the Lion, George Bernard Shaw mused on the subject (Shaw’s plays were a vehicle for the philosophical musings in which, not uncommonly, he tried to explain away his religious instinct):
Why on earth did not Jesus defend himself, and make the people rescue him from the High Priest?... Whether you believe with the evangelists that Christ could have rescued himself by a miracle, or, as a modern Secularist, point out that he could have defended himself effectually, the fact remains that according to all the narratives, he did not do so. He had to die like a god… It proves the absolute sincerity of Jesus’s declaration that he was a god.
Chesterton, with the superior insight of his Christian faith, stated it [in The Everlasting Man] more clearly:
When Jesus was brought before the judgment-seat of Pontius Pilate, he did not vanish. It was the crisis and the goal: it was the hour and the power of darkness. It was the supremely supernatural act, of all his miraculous life, that he did not vanish.
What Chesterton recognised was that for Jesus to have failed to see it through to the culmination of a brutal quasi-judicial farce would have solved (or resolved) nothing. The conflict has to be resolved in this way – that men either accept Christ, or crucify him. To the extent that men still do not accept Christ, they crucify Him: and themselves in the process.
So we cannot dismiss Him as a mere compulsive martyr. ‘When in all centuries,’ wrote Karl Barth the theologian, ‘was heard, again and again, “Ave crux unica spe mea” [Hail to my only hope the Cross] we have to be clear that the point is not the glorification and emphasis of the martyr death of a religious Founder.’