Pastor's Page
This "Pastor's Page" is the brief message delivered by Pastor Gene at the grand millennium worship which brought five congregations together at the APEX for a two hour celebration of hymns and songs from the past and future millennia.
MILLENNIUM MESSAGE
The Rev. Gene R. Preston
In the first century life for most of the world's estimated 300 million people was unimaginably mean, dirty, unhealthy and short. A thousand years later at the last millennium the same general description was also true of the world's population which in the first thousand years had hardly grown because life continued unimaginably mean, dirty, unhealthy and short.
But by this millennium we've come a long way, baby!
For today's six billion persons the life span has doubled for men and women; the mortality rate among infants has improved 400%; the per capita wealth has increased at least a thousand fold since the last millennia.
We still are concerned about dirt but not the street slosh and domestic sewage which besmirched all our ancestors. The dirt which bothers us now we produce from our industrialized life styles through air, water and land pollution.
Most of the world's former health plagues, which kept half of infants dying as fast as the other half of their siblings could survive, have been conquered to be replaced with illnesses which are more mental and emotional in cause.
For the world's one third poor, life is still mean, dirty, unhealthy and shorter than it need be, but it is not unimaginably so for them. Even the poor have access to radio, television, phones and have a predisposition toward hope which the poor of all earlier eras could never have.
And for that half of the world which aspires to middle class status or higher, which certainly includes all of us here, life is substantially healthier, wealthier, easier, nicer and longer.
We are privileged in another, most special way. To have lived in two centuries is a fine thing. To be alive in two millennia is a much, much rarer experience. Saint Paul did not manage that; nor Genghis Khan, nor Mohandas Gandhi, nor Mother Teresa. But it appears that all of us present will.
The threshold of every millennium puts in sharper focus issues about human destiny. What's next for us? Will we humans do better or worse in the new millenium? As the clock turns, apocalyptic thinking has risen only, predictably, to soon fall as no end of history and no final judgement confront us tomorrow.
At every new year, but especially this one, many among us look back on persons dear to us who died in the dying century; to successes and defeats experienced in the passing century; on personalities important to us but now receding into a gone millennium. There's something about passing to a new millennium which puts a definite stamp of "closed and finished" upon our remembered experiences.
The new millennium also occasions future thoughts. What is your sense of your destiny as you cross over to a new millennium?
Our hopes are shaped by our faith. The Christian faith affirms that we live always in relationship with a caring and purposeful God; our faith declares that God has a plan for the betterment of all his children, a plan in our tradition called the Kingdom of God. Our faith further declares that God has most fully shown himself and his purpose for us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, whom we call the Christ. And this Jesus is - in his life's work, in his voluntary death, and in his resurrection - our real and ultimate hope.
Our hope in Christ is grounded in a personal relationship with God through Christ and in our collective commitment to assist God and the Living Christ, or Holy Spirit, in realizing the Kingdom of God on earth in the next millennia. These two Christian hopes of personal salvation and collective justice come together in the sacrament of holy communion which we now celebrate.
The Jesus of our faith has promised us that he is always with those who want to be with him. He is with two or three, or two or three hundred as we are this millennium eve, or with two or three billion as we pray will be the case in the next century. He has promised to be with us particularly when we gather in his name to celebrate the sharing of the Lord's Supper which he began. He is with us through the guidance of his Holy Spirit, which changes this shared ritual into a foretaste of the Kingdom of God on earth and the Kingdom of Heaven which awaits us.
When we go to his table we know the one constant across the millennia, Jesus Christ, is with us today, yesterday and tomorrow, to lift the meanness of life for all and to increase the holiness of life among us.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Glorious New Millennium, and Blessed communion to us all and to the age which awaits us.
Pastor Gene Preston
The Rev. Gene R.Preston
10/F Kai Kwong Commercial Building 332-334 Lockhart Road Wanchai, Hong Kong Tel : 2551 6161 Fax: 2892 2466E-mail : churpstr@netvigator.com
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