ST andrew's church chennai new year's day 2012
sermon by rev murdoch mackenzie
First of all may I wish you all a Happy New Year. ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.’ This was the theme for the 150th anniversary of this church in 1971 and it seemed to me to be appropriate for New Year’s Day. But when I looked at the text more closely I found that it begins with an instruction to remember your leaders. So that is what I propose to do this morning.
Let us pray: ‘Living God, your Word is the seed and our lives are the soil in which the seed of your Word is planted. So we pray that in receiving your Word this morning we may go out into your world and bear much fruit. Amen.’
Hebrews: 13:7-8 ‘Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God; consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.’
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.
As we cross the threshold of a new year perhaps trying to put the past behind us and making our New Year resolutions we do well to remember that we live not only in time but in eternity. God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year. O God our help in ages past. Our hope for years to come. And above all let us remember that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever. He was there in the beginning with God before the world began. He is here this morning in the midst of our worship and in the midst of our lives. And he will be there to welcome us home when we die and beyond all of that when the first heaven and the first earth have passed away and there is no more sea and we hear the voice of him who sits upon the throne saying: ‘Behold I make all things new.’ Jesus says: ‘Heaven and earth may pass away but my word will never pass away.’
You may remember in the Second World War the Bible Society building in Warsaw in Poland was bombed and only one wall remained standing. On that wall were written the words of Luke 21:33 which also appear in Matthew and Mark: ‘Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away.’ In the middle of the rubble of war, what a message was left standing on that wall by the hand of Almighty God.
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever. Coming here this morning is a very moving experience for Anne and myself and we bring you greetings from the Church of Scotland and from the various other churches in Scotland with whom we work. We bring you special greetings from Noreen Manson who now sends out the Kirkspire every month to people in the UK; from Joe Goodridge and Devanesi who wrote to us just before we left and from Peter Millar who came to the airport to see us off and who has sent money for ASHA and for the Dorothy Millar Scholarship Fund. For them and for us part of us remains and always will remain here in India and especially here in St Andrew’s Church. And I am very grateful to Pastor Peter Francis and to the members of the Kirk Session for inviting me to have the privilege of preaching once again from this pulpit.
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews says: ‘Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God.’ But the real leader of any church preaches not himself, or herself, but Jesus Christ and him crucified.’ Leslie Weatherhead, who ministered at Egmore Wesley and at the Methodist church in George Town, used to tell the story of a public schoolboy who decided to enter the ministry. He was asked when he had come to that decision. He said that he had come to it after hearing a sermon in his school chapel. He was asked the name of the preacher. His answer was that he had no memory of the preacher’s name; all he knew was that that preacher had shown him Jesus. One definition of a saint is of a person in whom Christ lives again. People are not so much convinced by what we say as by what we are. William Barclay said: ‘The message of Christ is not so much an argument in words but a demonstration in living.’ And so our text says: ‘Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God.’
And that word tells us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever. As far as this church is concerned, if we think of yesterday, we can go back to 1813 when the first Kirk Session was formed. Back to Rev Dr John Allen standing here when there was nothing but a swamp. As Usha George and Mony Abraham reminded us at the 175th Anniversary, Dr Allen watched the foundations being dug for these pillars – 30 feet wells being sunk. At the laying of the first stone on 6th April 1818 he prayed the words of Psalm 127:1 ‘Except thou O God dost build the house, the builders will labour in vain.’ He saw in the space of three years this great building take shape. He saw the great bell installed in the spire – the Kirkspire. But he never heard it ring. Because the first time it rang, it was tolling for his funeral. The building over which he had prayed, and which he had watched grow so lovingly was one which he planted for the future. Dr Allen prayed these words: ‘Our authorities may plant, and we thy servants may water, but to thee O God, we look for the blessing, and to give the increase!’ He sowed but others reaped and he knew that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.
In 1835 a school was started by Rev Matthew Bowie in the old Church Hall which eventually grew into the Madras Christian College and Madras Christian College High School. By 1877 under Dr Miller’s influence undergraduate classes began and functioned at Parry’s corner till 1937 when it moved to Tambaram on a 400 acre campus. Till 1959 St Andrew’s remained a chaplaincy church of the Church of Scotland but by that time the spire was disintegrating and there were only 20 families left in the congregation. Then it was that Roy Manson was appointed as a missionary and not a chaplain and when he and Noreen left 8 years later the spire had been restored and there were 80, mainly Indian families, in the church. As I mentioned at his funeral in Edinburgh on Maundy Thursday in 2009 Roy was always very proud of the fact that he had actually climbed the outside ladder to the very top of the spire and placed his hand on the onion! I wonder if any of us here this morning have done that? Roy was followed by Joe Goodridge and on 25th February 1971 we celebrated the 150th Anniversary and the theme on the front cover of the brochure was ‘Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever’. The celebration involved a restoration fund to raise Rs75,000 for the repair of other parts of the building including the dome. Rev. E. O. Shaw was the preacher and he suggested that the practice of carrying in the Bible before worship might be reinstated. Bishop Newbigin sent a Message in which he said, and here I quote: ‘The congregation of St Andrew’s Church is now one of the wealthiest and strongest congregations in the city. I hope that you will take an ever growing part in the mission of the church towards the people of Madras, in the preaching of the gospel to those who have not heard it, in the service of the slums and the hospitals, and in supporting the rest of the work of the church throughout the hundreds of scattered villages in our diocese.’
As Joe Goodridge was leaving, having helped to build up the number of families to 120, the bishop asked me, that if the Kirk Session agreed, would I move to the Kirk. Knowing that for the previous five years I had been working amidst fire and flood in Vyasarpady and in gospel work with industrial workers he said: ‘Will you go and help the people of St Andrew’s to become involved with you in the kind of work which you have been doing?’ It was not so much a question as a mandate. Thus on 6th February 1972 I preached my first sermon here on the text from Isaiah chapter 61 and verse 3 which we read this morning: ‘to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit, that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that he may be glorified.’ Mrs Clubwala Jhadav was in the congregation. She said immediately that if we were going to start a Day Care Centre she would donate a slide and swings and roundabout in memory of her late husband. Stephen Michael conducted a socio-economic survey among the local hut-dwellers to identify their felt and unfelt needs and so the Day Care Centre was begun with Mrs Faith White and 20 children. In May 1973 Harold Riber was killed in the terrible air crash and so we decided to rename the centre as the Riber Memorial Day Care Centre. We did all of this as an act of faith in the belief that ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever’.
The ongoing work with the Madras Association of the Deaf steadily increased. At the same time the hospital visiting which Mr and Mrs Karkada had begun was progressing in the TB Hospital, the Eye Hospital and in the Mental Hospital. Mr Mathai and others gave out thousands of Gospel tracts especially at the railway stations. The youth fellowship was in full swing and Handel Manuel started a separate Youth Choir. The Friendship Club was begun. The Kirk cemetery was completely renovated and a travelling House Church was held in houses all over the city with people packing in to learn about Church History beginning in the New Testament and after several years going right on into the second and third centuries. We had baptism in the tank in the church garden. On Independence Eve in 1972 we celebrated the Silver Jubilee of the Nation with a service of worship attended by many people from various walks of life in Madras, planted 25 bottle palms down the drive, and listened to the voices of the prophet Isaiah on the one hand and of Gandhiji and Pandit Nehru on the other: ‘that we may wipe away every tear from every eye’ and heard that ‘ the future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer, the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity’ and as we have done in our Gospel reading this morning we listened to the voice of Jesus saying: ‘Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’
We were encouraged on that Independence Day not to go through the motions of religion making religious noises, not even to go through the motions of nationalism making Indian noises but rather to do the work of Jesus Christ, which is the work of God. Not to look for ease or resting but for incessant striving that we may share our bread with the hungry and housing with the homeless poor. This is the work of Jesus Christ who is the same yesterday, today and for ever.
Thus on 26th November 1972 we had the St Andrew’s Day service and a text from Isaiah 51 and verse 1. ‘Look to the rock from which you were hewn and the quarry from which you were dug.’ So we looked to St Andrew, the first home missionary, introducing his brother Peter to the Lord Jesus Christ, and the first foreign missionary introducing some Greeks, some Gentiles to Jesus at which point Jesus said; ‘The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified.’ And we asked ourselves whether we who take the name of Andrew ever introduced anyone to Jesus Christ? We had just completed the statistics form for the Diocesan Council and the one great gap in this church was evangelism. Earlier that very week, on the Thursday, which happened to be American Thanksgiving Day, I had spent the whole day in the villages on behalf of the diocese – in Redhills, Ponneri and Pulicat. The villages I visited were formerly in the care of the Church of Scotland Mission and I had been sent by the Diocese to see in what way we could kindle a flame where the embers of faith were burning low. Thus I ended the sermon with these words: ‘It may be that we who bear the name of St Andrew, not to mention the name of Jesus Christ, should go out to those villages with good news, the good news that they have not been forgotten, the good news that Jesus is Christ, that Jesus is King. He reigns and he is concerned about the gap between the rich and the poor. Go out from this great edifice in Egmore and introduce people to Jesus Christ. That’s what Andrew spent his life doing. That’s also what Peter did. For Andrew it ended on a diagonal cross in Achaia. For Peter – a cross in Rome upside down. ‘What about you?’
That was the challenge to each of us including me. Mr Edwin Devadasan heard this and asked if we in the Kirk could work in some of these villages. We looked for the poorest and found Pralayampakkam, Kammalamadam and Polasiammankulam comprising 173 families, the majority being extremely poor, 65 percent of whom were completely illiterate, with no protected water supply or preventive medicine, and 80% of the families had an annual income of less than 1500 rupees. Kammalamadam was the only Christian village, the people there having been converted in 1912 through the work of the Church of Scotland Mission. There we helped restore the church and supported the work of the pastor who was based in Ponneri. A health clinic was held each Saturday in which Dr Kirkpatrick, of blessed memory, was soon to take the lead, adult literacy, socio-economic projects, cottage industries, well-digging, improved agricultural techniques and brick-making were developed. So began an Integrated Rural Development Project, what we still call The Village Project. It was the Lord’s doing and it was wondrous in our eyes. It was all done with that same faith which enabled Dr John Allen to build this building, a faith which knew that unless the Lord builds the house the labourers labour in vain and unless the Lord keeps the city or the village the watchman waketh in vain. The faith that knows at its very core that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.
Then came Reverends Peter Millar, David Singh, Leonard Samuel, R.M. Dravyum, T. Devaputhiran, Prince Chellappa and our own Peter Francis. For each of them the words of our text ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever’ underpinned their faith and their work. Of course Ministers come and go but the people, the congregation, in some sense goes on for ever. So we have rejoiced over these many years at the vibrancy of the Women’s Fellowship, Sunday School and Youth Fellowship, at the excellence of the music and the choir and we often watch and listen to the DVDs of Ancient of Days and Lead Kindly Light. We have also rejoiced at the Vacation Bible Schools, the Camps and Retreats, Bible studies, healing services, prayer cell meetings, house church, district meetings, monthly fasting and prayer, 23 people confirmed on 2nd October whose photo ith the Pastor appeared in a recent Kirkspire, the hospital visiting programme, the Asha Project and Day Care Centre, the leprosy work at Balramapuram in Villivakkam, the Centre for Continuing Education,the Friendship Club, the Evangelism Project inspired by Doss Asirvatham in Swamidasapuram and then carried on in Thirupalaivanam and so many other villages, particularly in Kosapur where in June 1988 Reverend David Singh and evangelist Daniel Soundararajan prayed and on March 26 1989 Reverend Leonard Baskar Samuel dedicated St Andrew’s Tamil Church, likewise the church at Thirupalaivanam and now our expectations at Avariwakkam, not to mention the Kirkspire entering its 39th year, in which we read each month about all these things. All of this is the Lord’s doing and it is wondrous in our eyes. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. And on Monday mornings each week we remember all of this in our prayers in Scotland.
But what of tomorrow? Today is New Year’s Day. The world is changing fast. In 1804 the population reached 1 billion. 2 billion in 1927. 1959 3 billion. The Kirkspire tells us that on 31st October 2011 it reached 7 billion. By 2025 it will be 8 billion, 2050 9 billion and by the end of this century 10 billion. I used to preach about all of this and write about it in the Kirkspire but I often wondered if people really believed me. When we left what was then Madras in 1978 there were 3 million people in the city. Today in Chennai there are 4.68 million within the area administered by the municipal corporation and an extended metropolitan population of nine million. My final sermon in 1978 had the title ‘Be Indian. Buy Indian’. A lot has happened since then. India is shining but not for everyone. With a population of 1 billion 140 million people over 30 per cent of our fellow citizens still live in dire poverty. In a discussion last week a young lady told me that it was 80 per cent.
On December 18th 2011 the Times News Network reported a subsidy in exemptions to the rich in India in 2010-2011 of Rs 4.60 lakh crore while the subsidy to the poor is now down to Rs 1.44 lakh crore for 2011-2012. The same kind of thing is happening in the United Kingdom and it is a scandal. So as we break the bread and share it this morning let us never forget that Jesus Christ lived in relative poverty and that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever. Born in a stable, laid in a manger, a refugee in Egypt, throughout his life the Son of man had nowhere to lay his head except at the end, on a Cross. Salvation is not simply about soul salvation. It’s about whole salvation. In the words of the hymn: ‘Born in the night, Mary's child, A long way from your home: Coming in need, Mary's child, Born in a borrowed room. Hope of the world, Mary's child, You're coming soon to reign: King of the earth, Mary's child, Walk in our streets again.’ Amen. Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus!
Let us pray: ‘Living God, your Word is the seed and our lives are the soil in which the seed of your Word is planted. So we pray that in receiving your Word this morning we may go out into your world and bear much fruit. Amen.’
Hebrews: 13:7-8 ‘Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God; consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.’
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.
As we cross the threshold of a new year perhaps trying to put the past behind us and making our New Year resolutions we do well to remember that we live not only in time but in eternity. God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year. O God our help in ages past. Our hope for years to come. And above all let us remember that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever. He was there in the beginning with God before the world began. He is here this morning in the midst of our worship and in the midst of our lives. And he will be there to welcome us home when we die and beyond all of that when the first heaven and the first earth have passed away and there is no more sea and we hear the voice of him who sits upon the throne saying: ‘Behold I make all things new.’ Jesus says: ‘Heaven and earth may pass away but my word will never pass away.’
You may remember in the Second World War the Bible Society building in Warsaw in Poland was bombed and only one wall remained standing. On that wall were written the words of Luke 21:33 which also appear in Matthew and Mark: ‘Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away.’ In the middle of the rubble of war, what a message was left standing on that wall by the hand of Almighty God.
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever. Coming here this morning is a very moving experience for Anne and myself and we bring you greetings from the Church of Scotland and from the various other churches in Scotland with whom we work. We bring you special greetings from Noreen Manson who now sends out the Kirkspire every month to people in the UK; from Joe Goodridge and Devanesi who wrote to us just before we left and from Peter Millar who came to the airport to see us off and who has sent money for ASHA and for the Dorothy Millar Scholarship Fund. For them and for us part of us remains and always will remain here in India and especially here in St Andrew’s Church. And I am very grateful to Pastor Peter Francis and to the members of the Kirk Session for inviting me to have the privilege of preaching once again from this pulpit.
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews says: ‘Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God.’ But the real leader of any church preaches not himself, or herself, but Jesus Christ and him crucified.’ Leslie Weatherhead, who ministered at Egmore Wesley and at the Methodist church in George Town, used to tell the story of a public schoolboy who decided to enter the ministry. He was asked when he had come to that decision. He said that he had come to it after hearing a sermon in his school chapel. He was asked the name of the preacher. His answer was that he had no memory of the preacher’s name; all he knew was that that preacher had shown him Jesus. One definition of a saint is of a person in whom Christ lives again. People are not so much convinced by what we say as by what we are. William Barclay said: ‘The message of Christ is not so much an argument in words but a demonstration in living.’ And so our text says: ‘Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God.’
And that word tells us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever. As far as this church is concerned, if we think of yesterday, we can go back to 1813 when the first Kirk Session was formed. Back to Rev Dr John Allen standing here when there was nothing but a swamp. As Usha George and Mony Abraham reminded us at the 175th Anniversary, Dr Allen watched the foundations being dug for these pillars – 30 feet wells being sunk. At the laying of the first stone on 6th April 1818 he prayed the words of Psalm 127:1 ‘Except thou O God dost build the house, the builders will labour in vain.’ He saw in the space of three years this great building take shape. He saw the great bell installed in the spire – the Kirkspire. But he never heard it ring. Because the first time it rang, it was tolling for his funeral. The building over which he had prayed, and which he had watched grow so lovingly was one which he planted for the future. Dr Allen prayed these words: ‘Our authorities may plant, and we thy servants may water, but to thee O God, we look for the blessing, and to give the increase!’ He sowed but others reaped and he knew that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.
In 1835 a school was started by Rev Matthew Bowie in the old Church Hall which eventually grew into the Madras Christian College and Madras Christian College High School. By 1877 under Dr Miller’s influence undergraduate classes began and functioned at Parry’s corner till 1937 when it moved to Tambaram on a 400 acre campus. Till 1959 St Andrew’s remained a chaplaincy church of the Church of Scotland but by that time the spire was disintegrating and there were only 20 families left in the congregation. Then it was that Roy Manson was appointed as a missionary and not a chaplain and when he and Noreen left 8 years later the spire had been restored and there were 80, mainly Indian families, in the church. As I mentioned at his funeral in Edinburgh on Maundy Thursday in 2009 Roy was always very proud of the fact that he had actually climbed the outside ladder to the very top of the spire and placed his hand on the onion! I wonder if any of us here this morning have done that? Roy was followed by Joe Goodridge and on 25th February 1971 we celebrated the 150th Anniversary and the theme on the front cover of the brochure was ‘Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever’. The celebration involved a restoration fund to raise Rs75,000 for the repair of other parts of the building including the dome. Rev. E. O. Shaw was the preacher and he suggested that the practice of carrying in the Bible before worship might be reinstated. Bishop Newbigin sent a Message in which he said, and here I quote: ‘The congregation of St Andrew’s Church is now one of the wealthiest and strongest congregations in the city. I hope that you will take an ever growing part in the mission of the church towards the people of Madras, in the preaching of the gospel to those who have not heard it, in the service of the slums and the hospitals, and in supporting the rest of the work of the church throughout the hundreds of scattered villages in our diocese.’
As Joe Goodridge was leaving, having helped to build up the number of families to 120, the bishop asked me, that if the Kirk Session agreed, would I move to the Kirk. Knowing that for the previous five years I had been working amidst fire and flood in Vyasarpady and in gospel work with industrial workers he said: ‘Will you go and help the people of St Andrew’s to become involved with you in the kind of work which you have been doing?’ It was not so much a question as a mandate. Thus on 6th February 1972 I preached my first sermon here on the text from Isaiah chapter 61 and verse 3 which we read this morning: ‘to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit, that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that he may be glorified.’ Mrs Clubwala Jhadav was in the congregation. She said immediately that if we were going to start a Day Care Centre she would donate a slide and swings and roundabout in memory of her late husband. Stephen Michael conducted a socio-economic survey among the local hut-dwellers to identify their felt and unfelt needs and so the Day Care Centre was begun with Mrs Faith White and 20 children. In May 1973 Harold Riber was killed in the terrible air crash and so we decided to rename the centre as the Riber Memorial Day Care Centre. We did all of this as an act of faith in the belief that ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever’.
The ongoing work with the Madras Association of the Deaf steadily increased. At the same time the hospital visiting which Mr and Mrs Karkada had begun was progressing in the TB Hospital, the Eye Hospital and in the Mental Hospital. Mr Mathai and others gave out thousands of Gospel tracts especially at the railway stations. The youth fellowship was in full swing and Handel Manuel started a separate Youth Choir. The Friendship Club was begun. The Kirk cemetery was completely renovated and a travelling House Church was held in houses all over the city with people packing in to learn about Church History beginning in the New Testament and after several years going right on into the second and third centuries. We had baptism in the tank in the church garden. On Independence Eve in 1972 we celebrated the Silver Jubilee of the Nation with a service of worship attended by many people from various walks of life in Madras, planted 25 bottle palms down the drive, and listened to the voices of the prophet Isaiah on the one hand and of Gandhiji and Pandit Nehru on the other: ‘that we may wipe away every tear from every eye’ and heard that ‘ the future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer, the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity’ and as we have done in our Gospel reading this morning we listened to the voice of Jesus saying: ‘Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’
We were encouraged on that Independence Day not to go through the motions of religion making religious noises, not even to go through the motions of nationalism making Indian noises but rather to do the work of Jesus Christ, which is the work of God. Not to look for ease or resting but for incessant striving that we may share our bread with the hungry and housing with the homeless poor. This is the work of Jesus Christ who is the same yesterday, today and for ever.
Thus on 26th November 1972 we had the St Andrew’s Day service and a text from Isaiah 51 and verse 1. ‘Look to the rock from which you were hewn and the quarry from which you were dug.’ So we looked to St Andrew, the first home missionary, introducing his brother Peter to the Lord Jesus Christ, and the first foreign missionary introducing some Greeks, some Gentiles to Jesus at which point Jesus said; ‘The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified.’ And we asked ourselves whether we who take the name of Andrew ever introduced anyone to Jesus Christ? We had just completed the statistics form for the Diocesan Council and the one great gap in this church was evangelism. Earlier that very week, on the Thursday, which happened to be American Thanksgiving Day, I had spent the whole day in the villages on behalf of the diocese – in Redhills, Ponneri and Pulicat. The villages I visited were formerly in the care of the Church of Scotland Mission and I had been sent by the Diocese to see in what way we could kindle a flame where the embers of faith were burning low. Thus I ended the sermon with these words: ‘It may be that we who bear the name of St Andrew, not to mention the name of Jesus Christ, should go out to those villages with good news, the good news that they have not been forgotten, the good news that Jesus is Christ, that Jesus is King. He reigns and he is concerned about the gap between the rich and the poor. Go out from this great edifice in Egmore and introduce people to Jesus Christ. That’s what Andrew spent his life doing. That’s also what Peter did. For Andrew it ended on a diagonal cross in Achaia. For Peter – a cross in Rome upside down. ‘What about you?’
That was the challenge to each of us including me. Mr Edwin Devadasan heard this and asked if we in the Kirk could work in some of these villages. We looked for the poorest and found Pralayampakkam, Kammalamadam and Polasiammankulam comprising 173 families, the majority being extremely poor, 65 percent of whom were completely illiterate, with no protected water supply or preventive medicine, and 80% of the families had an annual income of less than 1500 rupees. Kammalamadam was the only Christian village, the people there having been converted in 1912 through the work of the Church of Scotland Mission. There we helped restore the church and supported the work of the pastor who was based in Ponneri. A health clinic was held each Saturday in which Dr Kirkpatrick, of blessed memory, was soon to take the lead, adult literacy, socio-economic projects, cottage industries, well-digging, improved agricultural techniques and brick-making were developed. So began an Integrated Rural Development Project, what we still call The Village Project. It was the Lord’s doing and it was wondrous in our eyes. It was all done with that same faith which enabled Dr John Allen to build this building, a faith which knew that unless the Lord builds the house the labourers labour in vain and unless the Lord keeps the city or the village the watchman waketh in vain. The faith that knows at its very core that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever.
Then came Reverends Peter Millar, David Singh, Leonard Samuel, R.M. Dravyum, T. Devaputhiran, Prince Chellappa and our own Peter Francis. For each of them the words of our text ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever’ underpinned their faith and their work. Of course Ministers come and go but the people, the congregation, in some sense goes on for ever. So we have rejoiced over these many years at the vibrancy of the Women’s Fellowship, Sunday School and Youth Fellowship, at the excellence of the music and the choir and we often watch and listen to the DVDs of Ancient of Days and Lead Kindly Light. We have also rejoiced at the Vacation Bible Schools, the Camps and Retreats, Bible studies, healing services, prayer cell meetings, house church, district meetings, monthly fasting and prayer, 23 people confirmed on 2nd October whose photo ith the Pastor appeared in a recent Kirkspire, the hospital visiting programme, the Asha Project and Day Care Centre, the leprosy work at Balramapuram in Villivakkam, the Centre for Continuing Education,the Friendship Club, the Evangelism Project inspired by Doss Asirvatham in Swamidasapuram and then carried on in Thirupalaivanam and so many other villages, particularly in Kosapur where in June 1988 Reverend David Singh and evangelist Daniel Soundararajan prayed and on March 26 1989 Reverend Leonard Baskar Samuel dedicated St Andrew’s Tamil Church, likewise the church at Thirupalaivanam and now our expectations at Avariwakkam, not to mention the Kirkspire entering its 39th year, in which we read each month about all these things. All of this is the Lord’s doing and it is wondrous in our eyes. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. And on Monday mornings each week we remember all of this in our prayers in Scotland.
But what of tomorrow? Today is New Year’s Day. The world is changing fast. In 1804 the population reached 1 billion. 2 billion in 1927. 1959 3 billion. The Kirkspire tells us that on 31st October 2011 it reached 7 billion. By 2025 it will be 8 billion, 2050 9 billion and by the end of this century 10 billion. I used to preach about all of this and write about it in the Kirkspire but I often wondered if people really believed me. When we left what was then Madras in 1978 there were 3 million people in the city. Today in Chennai there are 4.68 million within the area administered by the municipal corporation and an extended metropolitan population of nine million. My final sermon in 1978 had the title ‘Be Indian. Buy Indian’. A lot has happened since then. India is shining but not for everyone. With a population of 1 billion 140 million people over 30 per cent of our fellow citizens still live in dire poverty. In a discussion last week a young lady told me that it was 80 per cent.
On December 18th 2011 the Times News Network reported a subsidy in exemptions to the rich in India in 2010-2011 of Rs 4.60 lakh crore while the subsidy to the poor is now down to Rs 1.44 lakh crore for 2011-2012. The same kind of thing is happening in the United Kingdom and it is a scandal. So as we break the bread and share it this morning let us never forget that Jesus Christ lived in relative poverty and that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever. Born in a stable, laid in a manger, a refugee in Egypt, throughout his life the Son of man had nowhere to lay his head except at the end, on a Cross. Salvation is not simply about soul salvation. It’s about whole salvation. In the words of the hymn: ‘Born in the night, Mary's child, A long way from your home: Coming in need, Mary's child, Born in a borrowed room. Hope of the world, Mary's child, You're coming soon to reign: King of the earth, Mary's child, Walk in our streets again.’ Amen. Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus!
