Bread for Indigenous Lands and Peoples: an Aboriginal interpretation of the story of the Syrophoenician woman

Texts: Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Psalm 125; James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:24-37

Amongst the most common metaphors in the Scriptures for the loving action of the divine is the distribution of staple foods to the poor and the broken.  Proverbs 22.9 says, for example, that the generous are blessed because they give their bread to the poor. Bread was a staple food in the ancient far-West, just as it is a staple in many other places today. For Aboriginal peoples from Melbourne and coastal Victoria that staple was not bread, but the murrnong or daisy yam. Its cultivation depends on a loose soil structure that is easily permeable by air and water. When colonists arrived in these lands they brought with them millions of cattle and sheep whose grazing compacted the soil and drove our native food-crops to the brink of extinction. Consequently, Aboriginal people have gone from comfortably being able to sustain our families in health and well-being over many millennia, to now being amongst the most poorly nourished people on the continent. Because colonists stole our lands and all but destroyed the ways in which we traditionally fed ourselves, most of us now live as beggars in a brave new world of industrial farming and globalized food distribution networks. I doubt that the captains of such industries have even read these verses from Proverbs,

Do not rob the poor,
or crush the afflicted at the gate;
for the Lord pleads their cause
and despoils of life those who despoil them.

Jesus, we are told, was someone who bucked the trend. Instead of stealing the people’s food, as the Romans did through their cruel land management systems, Jesus shared bread with everyone whom that system crushed. In the gospel according to Mark, even before we arrive at the text we are reading today, there are feeding stories. Most prominent amongst them is the ‘feeding of the five thousand’ (6.30-43) where Jesus feeds a hungry crowd of Jews by miraculously multiplying the meagre offering of just five loaves and two fish. By giving them staple food to eat, he also returns to them their dignity as God’s beloved people. The 12 baskets of food left over at the end of the feast signify the 12 tribes of Israel, God’s chosen people. The number 12 here functions as a confirmation that God is honouring the covenant God has with them from of old. It is as if Mark is saying, ‘the Romans may have stolen and exploited your land, but you are still beloved of God. God will feed you, even if this colonised and exploited land cannot’.

We arrive, then, with Jesus and his disciples, at the city of Tyre on the Phoenician central coast of the Roman province of Syria. This is unambiguously Gentile, that is, ‘non-Jewish’ territory. But you need to know that it was once a territory of Israel, a territory taken by conquest from the indigenous Canaanite tribes by Joshua. Here Jesus is petitioned by a local woman whose daughter, we are told, has a demon. Now I want you to know that ‘demons’ likely refer, in the gospel of Mark, not to disembodied spirits of evil as we would imagine them in western culture, but to a disruption of wellness caused by Roman imperial occupation. This is made clear in the story of the healing of the demoniac who lives amongst the tombs at Gerasa (Mark 5.1-20). When Jesus inquires after the name of the demon who afflicts the man, it replies ‘we are legion’, in the plural. ‘Legion’, of course, is the name of a highly trained and heavily armed company of Roman infantry, usually numbering five to six thousand men. They were used as both shock-troops who took territory from others, but also an occupation force to keep conquered people under control. In the ancient far-West, they were everywhere, and their word was law. So, the demon afflicting the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter is most likely one of the many forms of unwellness—both physical and psychological—that can afflict a colonised people.

The woman and her daughter are doubly colonised. First by Israel, under Joshua, and now by the Roman Empire. They are poor, their way of life has been repressed, they are hungry and desperate, and they want things to change. That is why the woman is willing to break all manner of cultural and religious taboos to petition Jesus for what she needs. She falls at his feet, a sign both of desperation and of respect, asking that Jesus heal her daughter. Note that there is no buttering up of Jesus in this version of the story. In Matthew’s version, she calls him the ‘Son of David’, a name for the messiah. But here she simply calls him ‘Sir’. ‘Sir, can you heal my daughter please?’

Note that, at first, Jesus appears deeply offended at the very idea. ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ The children who should be fed first are, of course, the children of Israel, the children whom Jesus apparently believes to be the only worthy recipients of God’s love and care.  ‘Dogs’ was a racist name that Jews at the time, especially Jews from the upper echelons of society, used to describe non-Jews. So, lest anyone in this church think that Jesus would not be capable of being both sexist and racist, allow me to translate what he says here into the Australian vernacular. ‘You won’t be getting anything from me, bitch. God’s love is not for the likes of you.’ Shocking, isn’t it.

Thankfully the woman, who is apparently used to such treatment, is not put off. She retorts, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ Or, if you will allow me to translate into an Australian vernacular once more, ‘even us bitches eat the food that falls from our betters’ tables.’  As I watch this scene unfold in my mind, I imagine Jesus pausing and drawing breath at this point. I imagine him thinking. And feeling. I imagine him considering carefully what the Syrophoenician woman has said, and why. For Jesus then responds.

And what Jesus says shows that, unlike many of us who enjoy a modicum of respect or power in our societies, he is teachable. He is open to learning new things, even theological things, from women and from people whom he regards as of lesser status and importance than himself. Jesus says, ‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ Which, if I may again translate once more, says ‘You’re right. God’s love is not only for the children of Israel. It is for you and your daughter, too. Go back home and find your daughter well.’ I hope you’ve caught the significance of what is happening here. The Jewish rabbi, Jesus, has been tutored in theology by an indigenous woman from the conquered and colonised lands of Phoenicia. And he has accepted her teaching so completely that he is willing to so widen his understanding of God’s love that now even the ‘dogs’ of the worlds are worthy of compassion. So, Jesus is here changed, both in mind and in heart.

For those of you who are worried about the son of God needing to be taught in this manner, ask yourself why the evangelist who recorded this story might have done so. Is he not leaving an example here for those of us, especially us men, who believe we are entitled to belittle others? Is not Mark teaching such men to be humble, and to listen for the instruction of the divine in the mouths of those we so regularly ignore or perhaps abuse? Is not Mark also encouraging the colonists of the world to stop their colonising, their stealing away of the lives of indigenous people, and instead return some of their stolen bounty to our hungry mouths and hurting hearts? In this all of us who enjoy both respect and power are encouraged to follow Jesus, a man who was willing to humble himself and change his behaviour when he is shown to be wrong.

The Syrophoenician woman is an example as well. An example of every colonised woman who cannot get what she needs for herself and her children. A woman who is willing, out of sheer desperation, to break all kinds of social rules in order to obtain the staple foods that are necessary for life. Don’t let the bastards keep you down, says St Mark. Ask, and keep on asking, ask in your religious community and ask in your society, ask for the love and the care which ought to be yours. For you, too—as much as anyone else—are worthy of the love and compassion of God.

Let me conclude this brief reflection by suggesting that this suffering woman’s pleading may also be read as the pleading of the land itself, our suffering, colonised land, the land that we Aboriginal people call ‘country’. As I have noted on many other occasions, every genocide is accompanied by an ecocide. Whenever a people are subjugated, their annexed land is devastated as well.  We are witnessing this, right now, in Gaza. But we have witnessed it here in Australia as well, for we are now reaping what was sown by colonists as they compacted the soil and gave the land over to sheep and cattle. Native ecosystems have all but collapsed in many parts of the continent. The soil has become salt, the rivers and the forests are deeply unwell, and a hundred native species have already become extinct.  The land cries out in pain and longing as it suffers its own form of crucifixion, its own form of colonial subjugation and abuse.

This would not be the first time that a women’s voice stood in for the lament of a colonised land in Scripture. Native American scholar Jace Weaver points to daughters of Zelo-phehad, in Numbers chapter 27, as a case in point.* There the soon to be conquered land of the Canaanites is being allocated to the tribes of Israel. But just as the process is nearing its conclusion, five women step forward, women who name themselves Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. They claim an inheritance in the land through their father, a member of the people of Israel, who is now deceased. Later on in the story, when the conquest is all but over and Joshua is going through the allocation once more, those same women step forward to claim their inheritance (Joshua 17.1-6). This time we learn that the names of the women are also the names of five Canaanite towns in the coastal region of Hepher, which is also, very significantly, the name of their grandfather, clearly identified as a Canaanite.  The daughters, in other words, are also the land. The land making its claim for inclusion in the covenant between God and God’s people, even and especially when God’s people are inclined to forget or deny its claim.

So let us learn from the advocacy of these women of Canaan, and the advocacy of the woman of Syrophoenicia. Let us hear in them the claim of both indigenous lands and indigenous peoples for a right and equal portion in the bread that is given us all as a sign of God’s covenant of love. And let us with Jesus, the representative of God in our stories, learn that it is right and proper to both recognise this claim and to do something real and practical about it. 

Garry Worete Deverell

Sept 9, 2024

St Paul’s Cathedral, Naarm/Melbourne

* Jace Weaver, ‘Premodern Ironies: First Nations and Chosen Peoples’ in Mark Vessey, Sharon V. Betcher, Robert A. Daum, Harry O. Maier (eds), The Calling of the Nations: Exegesis, Ethnography, and Empire in a Biblical-Historic Present (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), pp. 300-301.

Death and Bleeding: Gaza and Israel in Mark’s gospel

Texts: Lamentations 3.22-33; Psalm 130; Mark 5.21-43

You will all be aware of the conflict that is happening in the middle west (or middle east) at present. How could you not? You will be aware that on October 7, beginning at around 6.30am in the morning, Hamas attacked Israel by firing up to 5000 armed rockets across the border. This bombardment was followed by a series of incursions into Israeli society, which resulted in 1200 deaths and the taking of 251 hostages.

The Israel military responded immediately by bombing multiple sites in Gaza. To date, more bombs have been dropped on Gaza since Oct 7 than were dropped on the cities of Europe during the Second World War.  87 percent of infrastructure has been destroyed to date, including hospital, schools and universities. The Israeli military also began a ground assault on Oct 7 which continues to this day. As of June 22, according to the UN, there have been 36,000 Palestinian deaths as a result of these actions, including 103 journalists and 10,000 children. In addition, 224 humanitarian aid workers have been killed.  10,000 people remain unaccounted for, so the death toll is likely to escalate dramatically. On the Israeli side, total casualties stand at around 1,478.

You will be aware, also, that the Israel military campaign includes a blockade of humanitarian aid. Most Gazans are starving to death as they flee the bombs.  The UN’s special raconteur on the conflict, Francesca Albanese, has repeatedly called the strategy of Israel during the conflict as attempted genocide, since a civilian population is being collectively punished for the actions of a few.  

The stories we just read from the gospel of Mark, about the death of a young girl and the haemorrhaging of an older woman, are not unrelated to what we are witnessing in Gaza and Israel.

Scholars say that Mark’s gospel is a theological response to a cataclysm that occurred in Judea in 70 CE. In that year, the Roman Empire, which had occupied Israel and Galilee for 150 years already, finally tired of the many small acts of armed Jewish resistance to the occupation, sending in an overwhelming force to capture and destroy the apparatus of the Jewish state by completely destroying Jerusalem and its temple. The Jewish community was immediately transformed from an occupied but settled community into a refugee community. The population fled, and continued to flee, for the next two hundred years.

Mark’s community, we believe, was amongst those that fled. This fledgling community of Jewish Christians made its way, probably, to Galilee in the north where is found safe harbour. At least for a time. There it told its stories of Jesus as a way of finding the help and comfort of God in a really difficult time when hope seemed scarce.

We should therefore read the stories of Jarius’ dead daughter and the haemorrhaging woman not historically or even psychologically, but theologically.  Reading this way, we would note that Jarius’ dead daughter was 12 years old and that the haemorrhaging woman had been bleeding for 12 years. The number 12 has a specific theological meaning in the text of Mark. It stands for the 12 tribes of the people of Israel. Mark is telling us that the dead child and the haemorrhaging woman represent the suffering, bleeding and dead women of Israel. Those who, in so many ways, bore the brunt of Roman cruelty during the apocalypse visited upon them by Rome.

That Mark uses a dead girl and a bleeding woman to represent the suffering Jewish nation is significant. First century mediterranean social mores would have been offended at the fact. Woman in general, and bleeding or dead children in particular, were marginal to anything that was important. Important to men, that is. For men took to themselves all the major decision-making. When Mark chooses to discuss these women, however, he sees them for what they are: the scapegoats who carry in their bodies all the wounds that evil men inflict. Including Mark’s own version of that evil: forgetting or erasing their names! A reminder that even when we seek to do good, we often find ourselves participating in precisely the evil we are seeking to content.

That Jesus cares for this girl and this woman and is willing to cross rigid social boundaries in order to give them both life and healing, says a lot about the theology of Mark’s community. Jesus is, for them, the very representative of God. One sent by God to assist and help a suffering refugee community as it deals with the genocidal actions of Rome. One sent by God as a sign that God cares enough to reach out and help those who hurt the most: women and girls.

These stories can therefore help us to think theologically about what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. Here the suffering Christian and Jewish communities may represent not only the modern Jewish victims of Hamas, but also and especially the suffering Palestinian people, who have lived under the yoke of Israel and its Western allies since the ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe) that began in 1948. Especially their children and their women who, as is always the case in war, bear the brunt of the damage.  Like Mark’s community of old, we are encouraged to look for the people who represent the goodness and love of God, who walk amongst the ruins and offer a word of care and of healing. Those who, like Christ, can whisper a rumour of hope for the resurrection of peace amidst the catastrophe. Those who have the capacity to raise us from the depths.

In all of this, even woman and girls have agency, according to Mark. Both are called ‘daughters’ by Jesus, which affirms and underlies their dignity in the eyes of God. The woman who bleeds is commended for the strength of her faith, which is her scandalous courage to touch a male Rabbi she should never have touched. Here is the agency that all the people of God are called to. Have faith, take up your courage, reach out and demand the care and attention that is rightfully yours. 

I pray for the people of Palestine and of Israel who mourn this day. I pray for their dead. I look for the day when, like the woman in Imad Abu Shtayyah’s painting, they may rise from the ruins and return to their homes.

Garry Worete Deverell

June 30, 2024,

South Sydney Uniting Church

Voice of Country, Voice of the Divine

Texts: Isaiah 55.10-13; Mark 9.2-8

Last night I made an airport run to pick up Lil. The plane was running late, as usual, so I parked in the official waiting area which is adjacent to a large field of grasslands. No doubt, before too long, the grasslands will be lost to parking or some other kind of built encroachment. But, for the moment, the grass survives. And so do the wallabies that depend on its being there.  Last night a mob of about six or seven of them chose to graze right in front of me, occasionally raising their heads when there was a loud noise or a flash of lights, but otherwise entirely engrossed in getting some nutrition on board. The mob remained there peacefully until a carload of humans decided that snapping some photos was the thing to do, at which point the wallabies bounded away.

There's a little parable in this, for those who have the ears to hear. The divine is like these wallabies grazing on the edge of town. They are unique and beautiful in form and movement. They move together as one, each individual tuned in to the extended senses of the mob as a whole organism. They are one in purpose. They take what they need from country, but no more. They live together in peace, looking out for each other. They have no interest in fighting other species. When danger arrives, they move on. They look for another place of safety. Most interesting of all, to my mind, is the fact that wallabies have no loud voice or call of their own. Their vocal cords are barely there, so they communicate by making soft clicking noises, or by gesture or posture, or by pounding the ground with their feet. So wallabies are truly creatures of the margins. They live on the edge of town. They communicate with still, small, voices. They move on when they sense danger.  There is surely something of the divine in this marginality. For have we not exiled the divine voice to the margins of our human concerns, to the darkness at the edge of our towns?

To my mind, the piece that is missing in the shouty debate about the Voice to Parliament is the relatively still, quiet, voice of country: of the lands and waterways which, in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dreaming stories, are fecund with the wisdom of the ancestral beings who gave life to us all. We hear these ancestral voices in birdsong and the breezes though the trees, in the rush and trickle of water, and in the clicking of wallabies as they talk to each other. Their voices speak to us of Anaditj,* the 'way things are', and our right and proper place in this way. They show us, if we will trouble to learn their language, how to live sustainably in country as kin or family, rather than annexing, using and exploiting country as though it were our slave. The voices of the ancestors show us how to take from country what we need, but no more. They reveal to us the dangers of making ourselves kings over country rather than citizens of her commonwealth.  

It is intriguing to me, as a trawloolway man, that the wisdom of the Christian Scriptures so often aligns with the wisdom of country. Consider, for example, the last part of Isaiah 55, where the word of God is compared to the rain and snow that water the earth and make it fruitful. The joyful return of the exiled Judahites to their own land is compared to the restoration of a ravaged and neglected countryside to its former glory. The trees are said to 'clap their hands' and the mountains and the hills to 'burst into song' when country is restored. There is divinity in country, you see. When country is alive and well, when we as human beings are singing with its songlines rather than against them, the presence of the divine is easily discerned and celebrated. But when we ignore the voice of country, when we can barely remember its ways, country languishes and then we languish. And the still, small, voice of the divine is exiled to edge of town.

When the divine voice calls out, atop a mountain in St. Mark's Judea, saying that Jesus is the beloved of God and that we ought to listen to him, Aboriginal readers hear a call to listen to country. The usual historical-critical reading of the story is that Jesus, having preached and healed his way around Galilee, here consults the law and the prophets to figure out what he ought to do next.  The law and the prophets, here represented by Moses and Elijah, tell him to turn his face toward Jerusalem, and to do so in the confidence that his death at the hands of evil men will nevertheless reveal a persisting divinity, a fundamental perseverance for life, that even death cannot overcome. Thus, the transfiguration is understood to be St Mark's version of the resurrection. A momentary shining forth of the promise of things to come.  Which is all well and good, if you think this story is primarily about human beings.

But this trawloolway reader thinks there is something else going on here. For the story takes place in the mountains, which are usually alive with ancestral presence. And there Jesus meets with the 'old people', ancestor-creators, who share with him their knowledge of the ways things are, of the dreaming, of things that were, and are, and are yet to be. And Peter recognises that they are divine beings, and that Jesus is a divine being, for he proposes to make a tabernacle for each of them, that symbol of divine dwelling from the history of the Exodus. And the voice that addresses the disciples, at the apotheosis of this strange encounter, comes not from a person at all, but from a cloud. It is the voice of country, of the other-than-human world, who identifies Jesus as it's voice, it's kin, it's wisdom made flesh.

So, as the referendum on a voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people approaches, let us indeed listen to Jesus. For, in his parables, he speaks for and from country, he speaks of country as the place where the will and way of the divine can be discerned. Whether his metaphors are taken from the birds of the air, or the fig tree, or the making of pearls, Jesus assumes that country is our teacher. And when he speaks of himself as the seed that must die to live and be all the more fruitful, he identifies himself with country (Jn 12.24).  That is why, in the theo-poetics of native peoples, Christ and country stand in for one another, represent one another, speak for one another.

That is why I say to you now: to listen to Jesus is to listen to country. To listen to country is to listen to the oldest and the wisest of our First Nations elders. To listen to the oldest and wisest of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders is to give country a voice. And that, I would submit, is the most important thing to realise about the coming referendum. For, in the colony of Australia, we lead the world in destroying our environment and endangering the future of our furred and scaled and feathered kin. It is time we stopped. It is time we listened. It is time we wised up.

Garry Worete Deverell

* 'Anaditj' is a concept in  Adnyamathanha language, brought to my attention by Auntie Denise Champion in her book of the same name.

First preached at a gathering of SCM Melbourne,

at St Stephen's Church, Richmond,

on Sept 3, 2023

The Law, the Prophets and Justice for First Peoples

Texts: Isaiah 58.1-12; Matthew 5.13-20

In the gospel reading we heard from just now, Matthew has Jesus say: 

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.  For I tell you, unless your justice exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

So what is this ‘law’ that Jesus does not intend to abolish, and who are these ‘prophets’ whose oracles Jesus intends to fulfill? 

The law is the law of Moses, the law given to Israel after they have fled slavery in Egypt. You know, the ten words or commandments. You can read about them in Exodus chapter 20.  Amongst the laws are these:

You shall have no gods before Yahweh.

You shall not worship idols.

Keep the sabbath.

You shall not murder.

You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

You shall not covet what belongs to your neighbour.

‘Do not think, for one moment,’ says the Matthean Jesus, ‘that I have come to do away with this law.  I have not.  This law will stand until the age has reached its conclusion. Keep this law, and you will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Break this law, and you will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven’.

The law stands, then. It has not be swept away by some cheap and unnuanced understanding of ‘grace’ or ‘forgiveness’, as some seem to believe. It stands. And you and I, who believe in the teaching of Jesus, are called to keep it.

The prophets, whose oracles Jesus came to fulfill, bear witness to the importance of the law. It was on the basis of this law that Isaiah, for example, passed judgment on the nobles and landowners of Israel in the 8th century BCE. 

Isaiah criticises the wealthy for abandoning the law of God in three respects. First, they steal from their own workers, those who labour in their farms and vineyards. They cheat their workers of their just wages. Second, they tell lies about one another and plan violent assaults upon one another in the hope of securing the wealth that belongs to their neighbours. Third, they are content to allow the hungry in their communities to remain hungry. They will not share their plenty with those who are poor through no fault of their own. They will not take such folk into their homes and tend their wounds. They remain aloof and uncaring. Thus, in these three respects, the wealthy are chided by the prophet for their lack of neighbourly care. For a neighbour who cares will not steal. A neighbour who cares will not lie and plan violence against othersr. A neighbour who cares, will not hoard what they have and fail to share it with those who have nothing.

Now, in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is like a new Moses, a new Isaiah. He is Moses comes from Egypt to give the law again. He is Isaiah come to warn the wealthy Jewish collaborators with Empire – the Roman empire – that their greed and indifference will result only in their ruin.

‘Why’, he says, ‘can you not be like salt, which gives a meal its tang, and makes it attractive?’ ‘Why,’ he says, ‘can you not be like a light on a hill, paragons of justice that inspire others to be good, and to love, and to take mind of one’s neighbours?’

These are exactly the questions that face us as a church and a nation.

Australia is a nation that has become powerful by coveting, stealing,  murdering and slaving. Coveting Aboriginal lands, murdering those who sought to defend it, stealing that land and carrying its children off into slavery and domestic servitude.

Our church worked hand in glove with the colonial authorities. We participated in the stealing, the murdering and the slaving. Indeed, we actually ran the institutions that did a lot of the damage.

That, my friends, is why Aboriginal Australia is in such distress, even now. It is why we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. It is why our kids take their own lives at rates unrivalled by any other people group. It is why we regularly die in the custody of justice officials but no one has ever – ever! – been held accountable for such deaths. It is why we still have so little ownership or control of our own lives or the land that was given us by God. It is why we most of us remain sick and poor.

All because church and state broke every single one of those commandments that Jesus came to teach and to fulfill. All because the church failed in the duty to be a neighbour.

Now, for thirty years, I have seen the church pray for Aboriginal people. I have seen the church say sorry to Aboriginal people. I’ve even seen the church set up Aboriginal councils, ‘Voices’, if you will, to advise Synods and bishop’s councils on what to do about the Aboriginal ‘problem’. What I have not seen in those 30 years, however, is a church that will do anything much at all about justice, about the fulfilling of the law and the prophets after the way of Jesus. I have not seen a church hand back the land it stole. I have not seen a church compensate the families of those whose children it took away and sold into slavery or domestic servitude. I have never seen a church do positive things to reverse the trends: set Aboriginal employment benchmarks, or give to Aboriginal leaders real power in the church to do things differently, in ways that make sense to us, in ways that will foster pride and the healing.  I have not seen the church do any of these neighbourly things.  I have not seen a church that can even begin to understand what costly love might require.

I have only seen a church of thoughts and prayers, of words and glossy brochures.

In this way the tragedy of the church in this place, in this country, is related to the tragedy of my people. By failing to be the church – to love the neighbour rather than murder, rape and steal from the neighbour – the church guarantees that its neighbour will suffer rather than thrive.  The church carries the guilt of its original sin, and so fails to thrive. To be salty, to be a light for the nations.

But the good news is this: the story of our church and nations is not yet complete, it is not yet over.  I am here with you today to remind you of your power to change the story.  Allow me to quote from Isaiah once more: 

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.

As we prepare to enter the fast known as Lent, there is before us yet another opportunity for the church to turn around, to forsake its evils, and to walk the way of Christ. To embrace a far more thoroughgoing fast. To finally do some measure of justice, so that the oppressed can begin their long walk to freedom.  For in the freedom of Aboriginal peoples is your freedom. In the liberation of those whom you have long oppressed is your own liberation. 

So, write to your churchly leaders, if you have a care. Implore them to do justice on your behalf. Write to your national leaders, implore them to take care for the First People of this land. Implore them all to make treaty with us, to enact a more just settlement that is able to heal the wounds that rend us all.  If you do this, your light will finally rise and the gloom that afflicts us all will be replaced by the brightness of noon.

I stand amongst you as one who does not like to say these things because doing so places me in a vulnerable position. But, as a disciple of Christ who knows nothing but Christ and him crucified, it sometimes falls to me to say what needs to be said. So I encourage you, I implore you, I beg you: choose to walk with Jesus as he commends to us the way of the law and the prophets. In this way lies justice for First Peoples, and ultimately healing for us all.

Garry Deverell

St Paul’s Cathedral, Naarm/Melbourne

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, 2023

Fellow Heirs Through the Gospel

 Text: Matthew 2.1-12; Ephesians 3:1-12

We live in a world in which it is difficult to regard people of a different ethnicity than our own as human beings worthy of our love and care. We live in a world, in other words, that is racist to its very core.  Two personal stories will suffice to illustrate that contention.  A few years ago I spent a day riding the trains and buses of Los Angeles in California, and in doing so learned two things about that city that I hadn’t known before.  The first is that the population of Los Angeles is mostly Hispanic.  That was surprising to me, because most of the LA-based TV shows and movies I’ve seen are full of Anglo-Saxons, with an occasional smattering of African-Americans.  The second thing I learned about Los Angeles is that it fosters a segregated society.  The white minority seems to confine itself to living in the hills or by the sea, and to the suited professions for work, and to cars as a mode of transport.  I think that in the whole time I spent riding the trains and buses, I saw two Anglo faces, and they were tourists from New York.  I came away with the distinct impression that despite the enormously multicultural profile of contemporary American life, the enormous prosperity of the United States is still controlled by and for one particular ethnic enclave: white Europeans.

A second story.  At lunch a few years ago with a group of intelligent, sophisticated, Uniting Church ministers, the talk turned towards the role of Aboriginal people in our church.  Suddenly the talk became less intelligent and less sophisticated.  These people, whom I knew and respected, suddenly started to caricature, stereotype, and make fun of Aboriginal people in a way that seemed to contradict everything else they believed in.  Now, most of you know already that I am a blackfella with a white face, a native of lutruwita/Tasmania from long before the Dutch or the English arrived.  So the apparent fun of this turn in the conversation was far from fun for me.  Indeed, I felt deeply wounded by what was said.  So wounded that I was stunned into a tumultuous silence so confusing that I found myself unable to say anything to them about either how I was feeling or about the substance of what they were doing.  Now, you also know that I am rarely short of things to say, especially if I catch a whiff of injustice somewhere. So this was a really strange and bewildering experience for me.  It had been a very long time since I had felt that fearful, that powerless, and that small. But that is what racist taunts do to a person.  They makes you feel as though you are not a human being.  They bring home to you the tragic fact that there are people in the world who believe that you are unworthy of the respect they would normally extend to other human beings—simply because you belong, in some way, to an ethnic group that is other than their own.

So now I want to ask the ethical question “Why is racism wrong?”  The usual way of answering the question, in contemporary Australia, is that racism is wrong because human beings are equally deserving of respect and care, whatever their ethnicity.  Which I agree with.  But what if one were to then ask “but why are human beings equally deserving of respect and care”?  Now that is a question that Australians find much more difficult to answer, I suspect (not that we ask ourselves the question very much at all).  I know this because we Australians seem to so easily put our prohibition of racism aside, when it suits us—which says to me that deep down we don’t really know why racism is so very wrong.  Why did the Cronulla rioters chant racist slogans and beat each other up?  Why did the Aussie cricket fans at the Melbourne and Sydney tests make racist remarks towards the South African bowler Makhaya Ntini?  Why did the Australian people vote 'no', overwhelmingly, in the referedum on an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to parliament?  Because, deep down, many Australians do not believe that the ethical injunction against racism is absolute.  We believe, rather, that the prohibition can be put aside when it suits us, when something more important comes along, like wanting to defeat or belittle a person or a group or a team that we perceive, for one reason or another, to be a threat.

Let me suggest to you, tonight, that there is, in point of fact, a reason why racism is wrong, why it is always wrong, and why the prohibition against racism should never be put aside for any reason whatsoever.  The reason is revealed to us in the event of the Epiphany, when Christ appeared in the world to show us that God loves and cares for everyone, without distinction, no matter what their ethnicity.  For that is the message Matthew wants to communicate in the story of the visit of the Magi to the Christ-child in Bethlehem.  He writes to a predominantly Jewish audience in one of the most multicultural areas of the Roman Empire—the province of Galilee.  Most Jews had traditionally believed that God had chosen them, exclusively, to be the recipients of his love and care, and there were apparently vestiges of  precisely this kind of theological racism in Matthew’s community.  In reading the gospel carefully, it becomes clear that Matthew’s predominantly Jewish constituency found it very difficult to accept that others—non Jews, Romans, Greeks, Cretans, Arabs—might also be welcomed by God into the divine covenant of love, peace and justice.

What Matthew says to his community, by way of a response, it this:  ‘Who were the first to recognise the significance of the Jesus’ birth?  Who were they, who were first called by God through the rising of the star, to come and worship him?  Who were they who were first called to be God’s evangelists and prophets, those who tell the good news that Messiah is born?  Are they Jews?  Are they members of the ‘chosen people’?  Actually no.  They are Easterlings, foreigners, infidels.  What they understood, and you must learn to grasp yourselves, is that the Christ born in Bethlehem is a light not only for Israel and for the Jews, but for everyone.  What he offers us, by his teaching, his way of life, and finally by his death and resurrection, is a light to guide the feet of all people into the loving embrace of God’.

What Matthew says to his community was, of course, foreshadowed by the writer to the Ephesians.  The mystery revealed in the gospel, he says, is simply this: that Christ has come to make all people, regardless of their history or ethnicity,  fellow-heirs with the Jews, of all that God has promised.  Crucially, he adds one more thing, however.  The church, he says, is the means by which this mystery of Christ’s universal love is made known in the world, and especially to those who are most powerful, the rulers and authorities who control things.  That means that we, the church, are called not only to preach the universal love of God and to oppose racism, but also to embody this gospel in our own communal life.  Which the church, to its shame, has not always done.  The church has become disturbingly silent in the face of racist oppression in both this nation and other nations. Our leaders prevaricate, for example, on the genocide that is occuring in Gaza.

And so I conclude my brief reflection with this.  Racism is wrong for one reason, and one reason only:  that in Christ we have learned that the divine loves and cares for all people without distinction.  Such pan-ethnic love is absolute, because it is of the very nature of God, whom the 1st letter of St. John names Love itself.  Therefore the prohibition against racism can never, under any circumstance or for any reason, be legitimately put aside.  Let us praise the God whom has made it so by the sending of his Son into the world.  And let us pray that racism shall wither way, both in our wider culture and society, but also within the dark seeding-places of our own hearts.

Garry Deverell

Adapted from a homily first published in Cross Purposes: a forum for theological dialogue 11 (2008): 3-5.

The Works of the Father

Texts:  Acts 7.55-60; Psalm 31.1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2.2-10; John 14.1-14

On the album ‘Everyone is Here’ by the New Zealand singer/songwriters, Tim and Neil Finn, there is a song that opens with this line:

We’re all God’s children
And God is a woman
But we still don’t know who the Father is.

It’s a terrific song, because it refuses to see the usual new-age theology as, in any way, an adequate basis for peace among nations.  If we’re all God’s children, and God is that feminist ideal who is supposed to be into cooperation and listening (instead of competition and fighting), then how is it that the world stands, yet again, on the brink of several human-made disasters?  ‘If this is God, and we are God’s children,’ ask the brothers Finn, ‘shouldn’t we be getting along famously?’  How is it that the children of a justice-loving God stand by and watch as 200 000 people are massacred in the Sudan?  How is it that the children of a mercy-loving God seem content to let millions of children die of AIDS and malnutrition in Africa and Asia?  How is it that the children of a fairness-loving God can be so greedy and possessive towards the labour and resources of other people?  The answer the Finns hint at is not so much an answer, but a question:  perhaps all this happens because we still don’t understand who God is as Father?  It is the question that I should like to address this morning.

There has been an understandable nervousness about the Fatherhood of God in recent theology, and on two grounds.  Some theologians have been nervous about God’s Fatherhood because of the experience they had with their own Fathers.  These theologians, like a great many people in the community at large, experienced their Fathers as, as best, distant bread-winners who had little time for emotional intimacy with their children and, at worst, stern or troubled abusers of their children.  If Fathers are like that, these theologians argued, then Fatherhood is no longer an appropriate metaphor for God.  For God is more like a Mother:  intimate, caring, protective.  Another group of theologians, some who had experienced the fascist-styled ‘fatherhood’ of Mussolini and Hitler, worried that the Fatherhood of God encouraged people to remain stuck in an infantile state, never maturing to a point where they could assume moral responsibility for themselves.  These theologians spent considerable time wondering why the citizens and soldiers of war-time Germany and Italy accepted all that they did from their national ‘Fathers’.  Their answer was this:  that many of us would rather not grow up; we would rather believe that someone else, a strong father-figure for example, is always right and knows, unfailingly, what is best for us.  By believing that, they argued, we stay in a perpetual state of infancy.  We never grow up.  In the wake of Hitler and Mussolini, these theologians concluded, it is no longer useful to refer to God as Father.  Fathers like these do not let their children grow up into ethical and moral agency, the result of which is Auschwitz and the SS.

Now, much of what these theologians say is absolutely true in terms of its analysis of culture and human psychology.  Who can doubt that if your father has been emotionally distant, that you are likely to believe that God the Father is a distant and unapproachable figure as well?  Who can doubt that if you were abused by your father in some way, that you are likely to have enormous difficulty trusting God as Father?  Furthermore, who can doubt Freud when he says that for many of us, God the Father is nothing more than a dictator, a despot, who protects us from growing up to take moral responsibility for our actions?  Certainly not me.  All this is true.

But here is my objection, and the objection of a great many others as it turns out:  that this nervous theology about God the Father has been too much interested in human sin, and not enough interested in the redeeming God of Jesus Christ.  In other words, theologians who are nervous about the Fatherhood of God too often allow their experience of human sin to overwhelm the experience of God as a loving redeemer that belongs to the primary witnesses of faith in the New Testament.  For if we actually turn to the New Testament, for a moment, we discover this:  that God the Father is neither a despot, nor a distant bread-winner, nor is he an abuser of his children.  God the Father, we are told, is like his Son, Jesus:  a friend, a lover, a companion in difficult times.

Consider the following words of Jesus from John’s Gospel:

I am the way, the truth and the life, no-one comes to the Father except through me.  If you know me, you will know my Father also . . .  Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father . . .  I am in the Father and the Father is in me.  The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works . . .  Very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.

Here we learn a number of increasingly scarce lessons about God as Father.  First, and most importantly, the Christian God is seen and known not through the lens of personal psychology or philosophical speculation, but through a patient examination of the life and teaching of Jesus.  God the Father, we are told, is at work in the world through the agency of his Son.  Whatever we seen the Son doing, whatever we hear the Son saying, that is what the Father is doing and saying as well.  Over the years I’ve heard many people say:  ‘I can’t relate to God the Father; he is too mysterious and distant.  Jesus I can handle, though.  Jesus is more concrete and real.’  Well, to all who think like that, here’s the good news.  The Son, Jesus, is like his Father.  The Father is everything that you see in the Son.  He is love in all its simplicity and complexity: intimate, passionate, striving, forgiving.

A second lesson follows on from this.  God the Father is not away somewhere else doing his work.  His work is in our midst, here, in amongst all the chaos and confusion of our lives as they are really lived.  It is important to remember what Jesus’ favourite name for God is ‘Abba, daddy.’  In Aramaic, the term denotes an emotional intimacy, an experience and trust in the emotional engagement of the Father in all that the child is struggling with.  What we learn from Jesus is this:  that God the Father is our Father precisely in his willingness to be around, to be available to us, to care.  That is what fatherhood means, for the gospel:  being there, being available, passionately engaged in the struggles of relationship.  Not in a way that is despotic or manipulative.  On the contrary, as Jesus says in this same discourse, we are no longer God’s slaves, but his friends—people who are invited to take responsibility for our own side of the relationship, to respond to all that God is doing as adults and moral agents.

A final lesson is this.  Because God the Father is close by us in Jesus, living his life and purpose out in the midst of our own lives and purposes, the call of God is very clear and cannot be easily ignored.  God’s will for the world is no longer a mystery, hidden in secrecy.  The secret is well and truly out.  What the Father calls us to be and do is exactly what Jesus was called to be and do:  to speak the word of his Father and do his works, to be God’s representatives in the world—not because we have to, not because we are infants, but because we trust God, and want to join with Christ in transforming the world about us.  So, if you want to know what God is doing in the world, take a look at Jesus.  And if you want to join God in that work, if you want to change the world, become an imitator of Jesus.  As Jesus imitates his Father, so we are called to imitate Christ.  If we do, then the world will change,  it will become more like God, the Father of Jesus Christ, and less like the distant, corrupt or despotic fathers our nervous theologians are so worried about.

So, given that the modern church is perpetually wondering what to do with itself, what does all this theology mean?  Simply this:  that we will never know what to do with ourselves and our church unless all of us, and not just the clergy and a few others, give ourselves over to a profound and ongoing meditation upon the life and teaching of Jesus as we have it in Scripture.  Every revolution begins with its manifesto, and the manifesto of Christians is the New Testament.  I encourage you to read it, to study it, and to trust it.  For in trusting the New Testament, you trust Christ.  And in trusting Christ, you trust God, God who is our Father as well as our Mother, God who wants the world to be transformed in love.

In the name of God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—as in the beginning, so now and forever, world without end.  Amen.

This sermon was first preached on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, 2005, at St Luke's Uniting Church in Mount Waverley.

Palm Sunday

Palm (or Passion) Sunday is the first day in what is known as ‘Holy Week’, the most important week of the annual Christian calendar. Through an intricately woven series of rituals and services, Holy Week recalls the final week of Jesus’ life from his entry into Jerusalem through his arrest, torture, crucifixion and burial. Holy Week is the introduction and theological precursor of ‘Pascha’, or the season of Easter. Taken together, they proclaim that the risen Lord of the cosmos is also the Crucified One who shares in the experience of injustice and evil of all who are genuinely poor, marginalised or forgotten.

The liturgy of Palm Sunday unfolds in two movements, the Liturgy of the Palms and the Liturgy of the Passion. The Liturgy of the Palms tells the story of Christ’s arrival in Jerusalem on a donkey, and the adulation of the people as they welcomed him as a messiah, the ‘Son of David’. The ritual gets its title from the account of St. Luke, who recalls that when Jesus arrived in the city the people spread palm leaves and also their garments before him as a sign of their respect and worship. The Liturgy of the Passion introduces the major themes of the week to come: the betrayal of the messiah through a kiss; his abandonment by friends and supporters; his agony as even God, his Father, appears to turn his face away; his torture, crucifixion and burial as some kind of sacrifice of atonement for those who do evil to both God and their neighbours. This story is told through a series of readings and songs, often accompanied by the extinguishing of candles arranged on a large cross placed in the very centre of the place of worship.

The combination of these two liturgical movements invites worshippers into a contemplation of the ways in which every one of us seeks to kill the good in ourselves and one another, burying the invitation to justice and peace under the stultifying soil of our inhumanity, even as we praise and honour such principles with our lips. Read in that way, Palm Sunday represents an invitation to all people, whether they are Christian or not, to self-examination. Are we really a people of justice and peace, or do we actually pursue lifestyles that undermine the coming of these realities into our world? Do we support the good, the noble, the beautiful and the true with both our lips and our lives, or do we actually put such aspirations aside when the way becomes difficult, dark or unpopular? Palm Sunday is also an opportunity to reflect on the forgiveness and grace at the centre of all things, a power which is able to put aside even the very worst that human beings can do to one another and create the possibility of a new world, a world where justice and peace can find a permanent home.

It is not surprising therefore that there is a well-established tradition of public marches and rallies for peace and justice on Palm Sunday. Here we hope and pray for a deep congruence between our participation in the liturgical life of the church and a ‘taking to the streets’ to advocate for justice and compassion towards all who are poor or marginalised.

Prophets Awake!

Texts: Jeremiah 1.4-10; Psalm 71.1-6; Hebrews 12.18-29; Luke 13.10-17.

In 1988 I was privileged to meet a remarkable woman.  Her name is Rose Ruiz Durendez, and she is a Filipino from the island province of Mindinao.  I had opportunity to speak with Rose because she was one of the speakers at a conference on Phillip Island, and I'd somehow scored the job of driving her there from Melbourne.  She told me about life in the Philippines under the political leadership of 'the people's president', Corazon Aquino.  Though Aquino had been swept to power on a wave of 'people power' and of democratic protest at the martial rule of President Marcos, Rose reported that very little had changed in the Philippines since the changeover.  While Western governments were congratulating each other on yet another victory for 'democracy', the people of the Philippines were still being repressed by a fundamentally corrupt and cruel regime.  Most of the region's arable land was stilled owned by a few aristocratic families, of which the Aquino family was one.  Most of the people were still desperately poor, and their labour was still being exploited to boost the profits of unscrupulous multinational companies.  The Filipino army was still waging a war against any who questioned government policy.  And privately hired 'death squads' still roamed the countryside, killing and raping anyone who tried to organise the people to resist the rich oligarchies, the multinationals or the government.

Rose is a Christian teacher and theologian from the United Church of Christ.  Her husband is a Christian also, a lawyer specializing in the defence of human rights.  As we drove down the Princes Highway, I learned that Rose's husband was in prison for speaking out against the human rights abuses of Aquino's army.  I learned that Rose herself was accustomed to receiving daily threats on her life.  I learned of her friends and colleagues who had been arrested and tortured.  Or captured, raped and murdered by death squads in the dead of night.  All because of their Christian belief that the poor were beloved of God, and deserved a better deal.  In listening to Rose Ruiz Durendes, in witnessing her tears and her passion, I became aware that I was in the presence of one of God's holy prophets.  She had been given a word from the Lord, and she was willing to speak that word even though doing so put her very life in danger.

Jeremiah, too, was one of God's holy prophets.  He was consecrated for the task before his birth - so says our text for today.  Now Jeremiah knew very well what a prophet was called to do:  to stand before rulers and authorities and kings and call their self-serving policies into question; to critique the ethical practices of Hebrew society in the light of the covenant made with them by God; to call its priests and rulers to account for their treatment of the widow, the orphan and the refugee.  Not surprisingly, Jeremiah was not too keen on the job when the Lord called him.  He'd seen what Hebrew kings and landowners had done to other prophets.  Besides, he was set for a comfortable career amongst the prestigious priestly classes of Jerusalem.  Why would he want to exchange certainty and security for uncertainty and danger?  In the end, it seems, Jeremiah had very little choice.  He loved Yahweh, his God, and Yahweh had asked him to be a prophet.  His excuses about being too young for the job were never really going to cut it with God.  That was never the real issue.  In his heart of hearts, he was just afraid.  Afraid of what God's enemies might do to him.  Afraid of losing his life.  Afraid of being ignored.  But God knows his fear and gives him this assurance:  'Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you'.

What is it that changes an ordinary person into a Jeremiah?  How is that deep down fear of losing one's life overcome?  That's a question I've been asking myself for years.  How does a school teacher become a prophet who is willing to lay her life on the line?  How does the average pew-sitter become a disciple?  Well, I suspect the answer has something to do with little word which signifies a big revolution:  and that word is compassion. Compassion is what Jesus has plenty of when he cures a crippled woman on the Sabbath.  Imagine this woman's life.  For 18 years she has been bent and misshapen.  We are not told why, except that it was a 'spirit'.  'Spirit' or 'demon' is first-century shorthand for some kind of oppression.  Perhaps she was a woman under the heavy yoke of a cruel husband, or a slave-master.  Perhaps she had been forced to work with broom or needle until her spine would no longer straighten?  Whatever the cause, it seems that Jesus was sufficiently moved by the misery of her condition to put himself in danger.

For Jesus indeed had everything to lose in healing this woman.  He was a promising and innovative young rabbi.  That's why he'd got the gig in the Synagogue.  If he'd stuck to his guns there could have been a very rewarding career ahead.  Social prestige, comfortable living, moral security.  But no, when Jesus saw this woman all of that was put away for good.  So moved was he, that Jesus broke the rabbi code of ethics in order to heal her.  He interrupted his sermon mid-way through.  He touched a woman who was clearly ill, which made him ritually unclean.  He healed her on the Sabbath day, which was a big no-no at the time.  Jesus, it seems, allowed his com/passion (literally, 'suffering-with') to take the reigns.  Fear, no doubt was strongly present at that moment:  the fear of being censured by the Synagogue authorities; the fear of losing his future.  But compassion took the reigns.  For Jesus, it seems, loving someone is far more important that keeping yourself nice.  That's what makes the difference.  A prophet is an ordinary person who has been moved by love to give themselves away.  To take up their cross and follow the way of the crucified one.  To love, and not count the cost.  To love prophetically.

You and I are called to love like this as well!  The prophetic vocation is not just for the Jeremiah's and the Jesus's and the Rose's of this world.  It's for all of us.  To be a prophet, to follow after the way of Jesus, is fundamentally about giving yourself away for the sake of love.  It's about loving another so much that nothing else, not even one's own life, really matters anymore.  There is a story from Auchwitz about a young woman who was chosen one day for the gas chambers.  As her name was read out, she broke down before the whole company of assembled prisoners, sobbing and shrieking with fear.  But a young nun, a Russian woman named Elizabeth Pilenko, stepped forward to comfort her.  'Don't be afraid', she said, 'I'll take your place'.  Stories like that shake me to the very core.  They pull apart the fabric of my mediocrity and remind me that I belong to God, not to myself.  And God has called me to love.

What will you do with this call of God?  Will you clamber into your cocoon of fears and pray that the urge will pass?  I'm afraid that will never do.  For God has said that only those willing to lose their lives for the sake of the gospel will save it.  In the end, the cocoon of fear becomes a tomb from which there is no escape.  The one who clings to their fears is eventually strangled by them.  But I promise you this:  the one who makes the brave journey out from themselves into love, the one who is willing to suffer for another's liberation, will discover a kingdom that cannot be shaken.  And there you will meet a God who has, himself, loved - even unto death; a crucified God, who bears in his body the unspeakable crimes of humanity.  A God scarred . . .  by love.

This homily was first preached at Devonport Uniting Church in September 1998.

The Making of a Prophet

Texts:  1 Samuel 2. 18-20, 26; Colossians 3. 12-17; Luke 2. 41-52

Today’s lectionary readings encourage us to reflect on the process by which God raises a prophetic voice in the world.  In reading the stories about Jesus early life in Luke, we find that Luke knows very little about the concrete historical circumstances in which the infant Jesus became a boy and then a man.  That is why New Testament historians call this period ‘the hidden years’.  Instead of writing a history of Jesus’ boyhood, we find that Luke presents a deeply theological reflection upon the way in which the bearer of God’s message is made or formed.  With a deft hand, he explores the environment and influences which create a prophet – one who can both hear God’s voice and become a vessel by which that voice becomes audible for a particular place and time in the world.  And we find that Luke is profoundly influenced in this endeavour by the portrait of another great prophet: Samuel, the first prophet of Israel’s nationhood.

Luke’s account of Jesus birth and boyhood is closely modeled on that of Samuel.  Like Samuel, Jesus is conceived by the direct intervention of God.  Like Samuel, Jesus is specifically set aside from the beginning for a life of divine service.  The song of Mary in chapter 2 of Luke, which celebrates the coming of a liberator for God’s people, is closely modeled upon the song of Samuel’s mother, Hannah, in chapter 2 of 1 Samuel.   And today’s story of Jesus in the temple also follows many of the leads which Luke found in the story of Samuel.  As with Samuel’s parents, Mary and Joseph visit the temple each year for the Passover festival.  As with Samuel, Jesus seeks out the instruction of those who know God’s law, in the precincts of the temple.  As with Samuel, the young Jesus is described as one who increased in wisdom and stature, and in divine and human favour.

What is Luke trying to tell us about Jesus, by entwining his life so tightly with that of Samuel?  Well, to put things very simply, Luke wants us to know that Jesus will be a great prophet in Israel, just like Samuel.  And he wants to show us how great prophets are made.  I’d like now to spend a little time exploring that theme. 

According to Luke, great prophets are both born and made.  On the one hand, it is clear that both Samuel and Jesus are destined before their birth for particular purposes known only to God.  But exalted destinies and plans do not a prophet make.  They must also be trained, placed in environments where they will learn how to fulfill that destiny.  Skills need to be acquired, skills for interpreting both the wide world and human nature. Passions need to be discovered and nurtured.  Ethical and spiritual disciplines need to be practiced and perfected.  But most of all, that native spiritual sensibility, that gene for listening to God, needs to be exercised and honed to a high degree of sensitivity.  A prophet with a destiny but no discipline is no prophet at all.

Luke emphasizes that both Samuel and Jesus were training in the religious lore of Israel.  He places both in the temple at crucial stages in their adolescent development, listening there to the wisdom of the elders and exploring the ways of God with obvious dexterity and depth.  By learning the stories of the faith, they found out who they were, and what their destiny was to be.  By attending to the teaching of their elders, they learned a particular way of seeing the world, a way which cut through the nonsense with which most people fill their lives, seeing instead into the very heart of things, where God dwells.  To my mind, the one thing that distinguishes prophets and mystics from everyone else, even the most devoted of religious practitioners, is their capacity to see and to hear what very few others can see and hear.  Luke tells us that Jesus could pick up an ordinary mustard seed and see there a profound lesson about the designs of God for the small and unassuming.  So it goes with the prophet.  He or she has a native spiritual intelligence, but that gift needs to be nurtured and honed within the discipline of a religious tradition, and within a community of dedicated religious teachers, before it can ever come to fruition.

Now here’s what I reckon all this means for us this morning.  There are people talking these days about the demise of Christianity, the demise of the church, the demise of all things to do with God.  And there is no doubt in my mind that our culture is becoming increasingly secular, increasingly unconscious about the things of God.  But that does not mean that we are all headed for a godless future, where the gains of Christian civilization are lost forever, and our kids are condemned to ever-deepening crises about the meaning of their lives.  For I believe that God always raises up prophets – still small voices in the wilderness, spiritual intelligences who continue to listen for God, and continue to speak the very words of God for a hungry and thirsty generation.  When Samuel came along, we are told that Israel was in disarray, that the nation was like a sheep without a shepherd.  When Jesus came along, the Jewish people were occupied by a foreign power, and were bewildered and confused about matters of spirituality and ethics.  In both cases, God sent a prophet, a person with special passions, to lift the vision of the people towards God once more.

And God continues to send prophets.  In the fourth century, when Christianity was becoming the official state religion of the Roman Empire, God sent St Anthony and St Pachomius to call his people back to the simple gospel of poverty, prayer, and dependence on God.  In the fourteenth century, when the church had become rich and powerful, God sent St Francis and St Dominic, to remind us that Christ was a poor traveler who healed and taught the simple lessons of the gospel.  In the twentieth century, God sent Mother Theresa and Dorothy Day to challenge the dominance of economics as a theory which legitimizes the permanent impoverishment of whole classes of people.  And Martin Luther King, and Bishops Romero and Belo, who stood with their suffering people against the might of evil armies of murderers.  And Thomas Merton, who lived and wrote in solitude, to remind a busy world that noise and rush and accumulation are killing us all.

And so here we are on the brink of a new century and a new millennium.  Even now, somewhere in the world, God is choosing, and training, and nurturing prophets, people who will remind us of the most significant fact of our world, a fact most of us so easily forget.  The fact of God.  And the prophet might be from your small town.  It might even be you.

This sermon was delivered at the Longford Uniting Church, Tasmania, on the first Sunday after Christmas in 1999.