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

Hope, Patience and Justice

Isaiah 35.1-10; Magnificat; James 5.7-10

The letter of James, which we read just now, says:

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. 

This morning I want to speak a little about what it might mean to be patient as we wait for the coming of the Lord.  For quite clearly, the Lord has not yet come. Not in his fulness, not to transform the world and human community into the image of God’s lovingkindness. For if the Lord had already come in that way, we would not need to pray our prayers of intercession. We would not need to sing the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, as we do this morning and at evening prayer.  The despots would already have been removed from their thrones and the poor raised up. The rich would already have been sent away empty, and the hungry filled with good things. The swords would already have been beaten into ploughshares, and we would be at peace.

That this is not the case means, quite simply, that the messiah has not yet come. On that, and many other things, Jews and Christians are agreed.  So, what are we to do in the meantime?  What are we to do as we wait for the crops of justice to grow, as both Isaiah and James imagine? What are we to do whilst we wait for our hope to be realised?

Well, according to St James, there are two things we can do.  

The first, he says, is to stop grumbling against one another: to stop judging one another.  For, that is one of our finer skills as Christian people. Do we not look across the desk or the table or stare into our screens that those we disapprove of, and do we not ruminate upon the ways in which those people are unworthy, somehow, of love or affection? For all the problems in the world come from other people, do they not? Surely Jean-Paul Sartre was right when he said that ‘hell is other people’!  If only they were not around, we could fix things! If only they were not around, the world could be put to rights! We imagine, do we not, that when Christ returns it is they who will get their comeuppance, whilst we, the truly good and righteous people, will be received into the divine halls? Or perhaps it is only me who thinks that way. Perhaps it is only me who needs to hear the divine command ‘judge not, lest you be judged’.  But more of that later.

The second thing James says that we can do whilst waiting for Christ is to suffer patiently like the prophets. Which is something of an oxymoron. At least it appears to be. For the prophets, on my reading, were rarely patient. Indeed, one might more accurately describe them as paradigm examples of the impatient! They were impatient about the abuse of power, they were impatient about hypocritical religious types, they were impatient for the liberation of the poor and the raising up of the marginalised. And they expressed their impatience and frustration loudly, and in the places where they were most likely to cop a beating for their trouble. So, what’s patient about that?  A fair question, I reckon!

The kind of patience we are called to exercise as Christians is not, in fact, a ‘quietist’ kind of patience, patience understood as a meek and mild acceptance of all the wrongs in the world, as if there is nothing we can do to change things.  For, if the harvest of justice is to arrive, we are called to be farmers and horticulturalists, that is, people who not only wait for the seed to grow, but also work hard to prepare the soil, and plan meticulously to ensure that the most optimal growing conditions are in place. I have never met a husband of the land – least of all amongst mob – who sits back and does nothing when there are hungry mouths to feed.  For us, the care and nurture of the land remains a daily responsibility. For, to our way of looking at things, if we do not tend the land with loving care then we should not be surprised or angry if the land fails to be fruitful.  If the land is to be fruitful, it should be tended. Carefully, and with unhurried patience. 

So it is with the friends of God and the prophets of this current age.  If justice is to arrive, we must work at it patiently. If Christ is to arrive, then we must sow the seeds of justice with sobriety and regular, even ritual, attention.  Which is precisely what Christ did when he came around the first time. He went amongst the villages of Galilee giving sight to the blind, mobility to the lame, hearing to the deaf and belonging to the poor and excluded. All of which can be understood as a sowing of seed, a preparing of the ground. Because not all were healed, not all found themselves welcomed back into community. Not all were raised to life.  What was done was a sign and a promise of what is yet to come: justice and healing for all.  But now it is our turn. It is the special calling of the church to become these signs anew, in our community and in our politics.  It is we who are called to tend the land and sow the seed.  It is for God to make the seed grow and bring the harvest to fulfillment. But we each have our part in preparing the way.

That’s all well and good. But still I am troubled by a question, a question that hides between the two instructions James has left us, a question that hovers between the injunctions to ‘stop judging’ and ‘suffer patiently like the prophets’.  And it’s this: how can we name what has gone wrong, and work towards a more just alternative, if we are never allowed to judge other human beings? Is it not human beings who commit the crimes? Is it not human beings who make the policies that result in persecution, harm, and even death for vulnerable populations? Is it not human beings who exploit the earth and render it uninhabitable in so many places?  How, then, can we be prophets who cry out for justice if we can never judge our fellows for their crimes?

You will perhaps understand how I might struggle with this question as a trawloolway man, an Aboriginal person, a member of that people against whom much wrong has been done, and continues to be done.

Well, the way I see it (and I’m happy to be corrected) is that we are called to ‘hate sins, but to love humankind’ as St Augustine put it in one of his letters. We can work against what people do to harm the earth and each other, in other words, but this does not require us to condemn the people who do it to hellfire and damnation. The scandal of the the gospel is that no-one is beyond the love and mercy of God. All are loved, even if what they do is evil. And that goes as much for Hitler, and Pol Pot, as it does for the thousands of good churchmen who massacred our people. We must work as hard as we can to discern how evil is present, and to limit the effects of that evil in our hearts and in our world. But we simply do not have the authority to pass final judgement on any human being, least of all ourselves.  That is something for God alone. So we should leave those matters to God. We are not called to respond to hate with hate, but to love our neighbours as Christ has loved us.

So, allow me to summarise what James encourages us to do whilst we wait for Christ to arrive. Don’t judge or condemn anyone, lest you yourself are condemned. And work for justice with the patience, and love, and consistency of the prophets. If we do these things, we will have done our part. The rest is for God, and for the Christ who will come to recast the cosmos in the image and likeness of divine love.

Garry Deverell

3rd Sunday of Advent, 2022

St Paul's Cathedral, Naarm/Melbourne

On mourning, the Crown, and Anglican coloniality

Since the 8th of September, when Queen Elizabeth II of Britain died, our local Australian media have been covering the fact, and its aftermath in church and state, on a 24/7, 7 days per week basis. The coverage has been total, a veritable tsunami of reporting on the minutiae of royal goings-on, along with opinion pieces in their thousands on the Crown, its legacy, its rituals, and its future.  The ABC, our national broadcaster, has even required its presenters to don black, as a sign of sorrow.

If it was never clear before, it is clear now: we are a colony.  Our head of state is the sovereign of Great Britain. Our politicians, along with our judicial and military officers, have to swear their allegiance to that sovereign. The legislation generated by our parliaments requires royal assent. When the Queen died, our Prime Minister suspended parliament and declared a national day of mourning, to be observed on Thursday the 22nd of September. He, the Governor General, the Leader of the Opposition, and a carefully selected group of prominent Australians, will attend the Queen's funeral in London.  We are a colony.

Most people I know personally, regardless of ethnicity and origin, seem able to distinguish between a certain sympathy for the royal family and the British people in their grief and loss, and the Crown as an institution and arch-symbol of empire.  This distinction enables them to generate real feeling for those who mourn, without, at the same time, losing the capacity for critical assessment when it comes to the brutal legacy of the Crown both at home and in the colonies.

I'm aware of many others, however, who will abide no critique at all, who see every word of critical analysis as an attack on the person of Queen Elizabeth herself.  Much of this sensitivity comes, in my observation, out of a belief that her late Majesty was a person of exemplary moral integrity who (unlike some members of her extended family) could do no wrong. This moral integrity is then able to, through some syllogism of the imagination which I struggle to comprehend, cover the institution of the Crown as well. Elizabeth was good. The Crown was Elizabeth. Therefore the Crown is good. Something like that.

Several commentators* point out that the imputed 'goodness' and homely 'ordinariness' of the Queen is not something that can be easily and independently established. For the almost hagiographic image we have of the Queen is most likley that which the Crown, and the Crown alone, has sought to project.  The Queen's image, in other words, has been carefully constructed by the Crown over decades with the willing complicity of Her Majesty's Government and the world's most influential media. In fact, very few people know the Queen as a person in much depth at all. And those people are most unlikely, given the positon of the Crown at the apex of power in Britain, to succesfully offer a counternarrative.

The 'goodness' of the Queen as a person, insofar as that can be independently established, contrasts rather starkly, however, with the institution of the Crown, which is clearly and incontestably one of the most evil and exploitative institutions to have ever walked this earth. Even if one were inclined to separate the Crown from the actions of the British government during the colonial period - during which millions of Indigenous peoples had our lives, lands and cultures stolen from us at the point of a gun - there can be no doubt that the Crown has benefited enormously from such exploitations. Forbes estimates the Queen's personal wealth at something like $500 million US and the total assets of the Crown at roughly $28 billion US. Amongst the many assets personally belonging to the Queen (and now to King Charles) are artefacts - jewellrey, for example - stolen from the colonies. Significantly, the Crown pays no land, capital gains or inheritance tax. And it receives substantial salaries for the principle royals from the government of the day.

The distinction (if there is one) between the person who was Queen Elizabeth and the Crown as the principal symbol and beneficiary of an empire that raped and pillaged its way across the globe, also seems largely lost on Anglicans, even Australian Anglicans. Of course, I can understand members of the Church of England doing so.  For they are bedfellows, with the Crown, in the Establishment. Their bishops sit in the House of Lords and their monarch is the 'Supreme Governor' of the Church of England, who must assent to the appointment of any new bishop. This means, amongst other things, that the Church is required to preside at many of the key ceremonies of State. Weddings, funerals, coronations and the like. It also means that the Church is culturally attached to the Crown. Its official liturgy encourages prayers for the sovereign to be said at least weekly. And the royal anthem, 'God save the King', a victory song of empire, is regularly sung in ceremonies presided over by the Church.

But I've been suprised at how much of this liturgical royalism also pertains to Australia, and to the Anglican Church of Australia. Apparently many Anglican cathedrals are quite happy to accede to the expectations of state, and especially of Governors and Governor-Generals, when it comes to the celebration of the Crown. St Paul's Anglican cathedral in Melbourne, for example, recently held a service of 'Solemn Choral Evensong to give thanks for the life of Her Majesty Elizabeth II' which was attended by the Premier and the Governor of Victoria, along with many civil servants. Bishops and cathedral deans from elsewhere in Victoria also participated in the service. The usual service of evening prayer was modified, in this instance, to include the following:

• a lowering of the Aboriginal flag, at the entrance to the cathedral, to half-mast along with the flag of the Commonwealth of Australia;
• a modification of the usual acknowlegment of country to exclude any reference to Aboriginal sovereignty or the illegitimacy of colonial annexation of Kulin land. The usual affirmation to work for a 'more just settlement for Indigenous people' was also removed.
• the singing of two colonial victory songs at the conclusion of the service: the national anthem of Australia (which declares and celebrates the doctrine of terra nulius) and the 'royal anthem' (which celebrates the sovereignty of the crown in the territories of empire, and the victory of the sovereign over his/her enemies).

As an Aboriginal member of the cathedral congregation, these modifications shook me considerably. For the cathedral administration made it clear, in this instance, that a relationship with the state and its expectations was of more importance that a relationship with us and our aspirations towards justice.  In conversation with the dean afterward, it also became clear that he regretted that this was so, and was open to a conversation about doing things rather differently the next time around. And yet. The status quo became starkly and alarmingly clear.

Of course, I have no objection to Christian people praying for the royal family and the British people in their grief.  I'm just astonished that a church which makes no mention of the British Crown in its constitution would want to celebrate that Crown in ways that so unfeelingly rub British coloniality in the faces of those of us who have suffered most at its hand.  Particularly, I might say, in a service of evening prayer in which the revolutionary words of the Magnificat (as recorded in the Book of Common Prayer) are regularly sung:

He hath put down the mighty from their seat:
and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things:
and the rich he hath sent empty away.

I'm aware, also, that the St Paul's service was by no means the worst example of such ongoing obesience. There are many others, services in congregations the land over, that went (and will go) much, much further in their royal fervour. One example is a 'Requiem Eucharist for Her Late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II' held on Sunday morning, Sept 11, at St John's Church in Malvern, Victoria. In addition to the inclusion of the royal anthem, this service also displaced the ordinary for the day from A Prayer Book for Australia and included an intercession for 'our Sovereign Lord, the King'. There was no acknowlegment of country whatsoever.

These recent liturgical outbreaks of colonialism in fact reflect a deeper and more difficult problem in the Anglican Church: it's almost complete disregard for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and our attempts to be part of the church - not as honorary whites, but as ourselves.  Despite guarded acknowledgments of the Church's willing partnership in the genocidal actions of the Crown in days gone by, the Church struggles to do anything meaningful when it comes to designing a more inclusive and just future. 

Yes, the Church now has NATSIAC, a national council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. But this body is massively underfunded and has no constitutional or practical power to do anything else than meet.  Individual dioceses, and the General Synod itself, can completely ignore what it says, and regularly do.  Most of the members of NATSIAC are also appointed by diocesan bishops rather than elected by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.  And the numbers are heavily weighted toward the north of the continent, where so many of our people still live out of a 'mission mentality' when it comes to relationships with the Church. These factors mean that NATSIAC remains a fundamentally conservative body when compared with the more progressive work of Indigenous organisations outside the church.

And, yes, we have a National Aboriginal bishop and upwards of twenty deacons and priests around the colony. But most of those priests and deacons work in mainstream white or multicultural congregations, because there are few mechanisms in the Anglican Church for supporting us to work in communities with higher proportions of Indigenous people, or even to work on special projects seeking to progress the fortunes of our people in the Church.  Those who work in remote communities, for example, are rarely paid. They depend upon aged or disability pensions to put food on the table.  The National Aboriginal bishop, himself, is funded for two days per week. Two days to offer care and encouragement to Aboriginal leaders across the entire continent. Two days!  And, despite the NATSIAC canon making provision for one, there has not been a National Torres Strait Islander bishop in many, many years. Apparently the money is simply not there, which is church-speak for 'not a priority'.

So we are a do-nothing church when is comes to improving the lives and meaningful participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.  If the Church really cared for us, it would gather the resources to do at least some of the following:

• pay our clergy a just stipend to care for our own Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, wherever they might be
• mandate the presence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices in every council or board of every Anglican organisation or diocese in the colony
• fully fund both a National Aboriginal bishop and a National Torres Strait Islander bishop
• fully fund NATSIAC (with staff and a secretariat) as a hub for ministry and leadership development for our people
• mandate the teaching of Indigenous theologies in our clergy-training institutions
• mandate the teaching of Indigenous knowledges in our schools
• fund the development, authorization, and dissemination of liturgical resources which reflect a First Peoples perpective and experience
• hand properties gifted to the church by the Crown back to local Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander custodians.

Just for starters. In the Province of Victoria, Aboriginal clergy put such things on the table back in 2018. Neither diocesan councils, nor the Provincial council, have yet troubled to respond.

'How could such ministries be funded?', I hear you ask?  By asking congregations, church organisations and dioceses to 'pay the rent' on stolen land by contributing 3.5% of their annual budgets to recognised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ministries. And by contributing 10% of all property sales to recognised Indigenous ministries. 

We could do this, if we wanted to. If we really and truly believed in justice rather than in the continuing sovereignty of the Crown over those it raped and plundered.

Garry Worete Deverell

* For example: Edward Owens, The Family Firm: Monarchy, Mass Media, and the British Public 1932-53 (London: University of London Press, 2019); Christopher Hitchens, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish, Diamond Jubilee Edition (London: Vintage Books, 2012); and Tina Brown, The Palace Papers: inside the House of Windsor - the Truth and the Turmoil (Melbourne: Penguin, 2022).

When it comes to defending the flourishing of country, and of human life, I am no pacifist

The war in Ukraine is, of course, just one of the conflicts raging in the world right now. For the moment, the conflicts in Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia, northern Iraq and many other places, no longer enjoy sustained attention from international media organisations. The extent to which the following comments about the war in Ukraine might pertain, also, to these many other conflicts, I will leave to the reader to decide. I am no expert on the geo-politics of any of these places.

I begin by pointing out that, in this world at least, we are dealing not with the ultimate and the perfect but with the penultimate and the imperfect. So whilst a more robust form of pacifism might suffice in the face of lesser forms of violence - refusing to fight in a morally ambiguous war in another part of the world, for example - pacifism of this kind does not seem sufficient when one's own land, livelihood and the lives of one's loved ones are under threat.  In the face of such clear and present danger, I believe the Christian has not merely a right, but actually a duty and responsibility, to mount some kind of defence.

My reasoning goes something like this. All life is sacred because it is brought into existence by the action of the creator. Inherent in the gift of life is a right and responsibility to maintain the conditions by which that life - within reasonable limits - can flourish and become what it was created to be.  Insofar as that is possible without, simultaneously, seriously curtailing the flourishing of other forms of life, we might speak in this context of a 'responsibility' to live and flourish. That word 'responsibility' suggests that a life is lived before the one who gives it. That 'one', I would posit  - as both a Christian and trawloolway man -  is the creator, the one who gives us life in all its myriad forms. We are responsible to our creator. We live our lives in a way which responds appropriately to what is given.

Now, it is clear that human beings have a responsibility to take life for the sake of our sustenance and our thriving. We may take from what is given in creation - its flora and its fauna - in order to sustain our lives. But there are limits to what we may take.  We may not, for example, hunt particular animals to the point where their own capacity to thrive and flourish is severely diminished. Neither may we do so with plant life. For if we do so, we risk compromising the entire biosphere's responsibility and capacity to flourish before, and to the glory of, our creator.

The same principle applies when it comes to human life, but perhaps in an even more robust form. Both the Jewish and Christian traditions put severe limits upon the taking of human life. 'Thou shalt not kill', whilst not an absolute command which applies in any and all circumstances, nevertheless inscribes a serious duty to do everything possible to avoid the taking of human life.

What this means, I think, when it comes to the theatre of war between human nations, is simply this: that one should avoid policies and practices that are likely to lead to war. One should never be the aggressor or the provocateur. One should never be the one who creates the conditions - whether these be political, cultural, economic or environmental -  in which war becomes the most likely outcome. We should do everything we can to avoid starting wars. For wars destroy life - not only human life, but also animal and plant life - on a scale which makes the likelihood of recovery exponentially difficult.

There are circumstances, however, in which war becomes inevitable. Having done all that is rationally and morally possible to avoid conflict with an aggressor, sometimes one simply has to take up arms in order to defend one's right and responsibility to live and to flourish before the creator is a way that is commensurate with the equatible distribution of that right and responsibility across the whole biosphere.

An example, from the recent history of my own people, is the way we took up weapons to defend our country and our way of life from the British invasion, which took place in ever more disruptive and devastating waves from 1802 until the present.  In the face of that invasion - which proceeded on the assumption that Aboriginal people enjoyed no right or responsibility to life and its flourishing - we had no choice. Before our creator-ancestors, and because of their injunction to care for country and for each other, we had to fight.

Now, the fact that we lost those wars and continue to sue for a more just settlement for our people and our country, means that the nation named 'Australia' by the invader is no longer the biospheric wonderland it once was. Thousands of specifies are now extinct as a result of the destruction of habitat. The ecosystem on which all of life depends is now either dead or dying in much of the continent. And the right and responsibility of Aboriginal peoples to life and flourishing - precisely as we care for country - remains of little consequence to our religious, commercial or political leaders.

But we had to fight. To preserve the way of life to which our creator-ancestors had called us. To prevent the destruction of that way of life by a people who had little regard for the call and injunction of the creator. We lost, obviously. But we had to fight.

To the extent that the war in Ukraine mirrors what we have experienced ourselves, I would argue that the people of the Ukraine also have to fight. Before God, they must fight. For the sake of the way and form of human flourishing which God has given, they must fight. For the sake of resisting an evil and destructive ideology, they must fight. And we who believe in the sacredness of all forms of life, precisely as they are given in creation, must offer whatever forms of solidarity we can.

Garry Deverell

With thanks to Dr Jonathan Foye, who provoked me to give this some thought.

What Churches Can Do to Address their Colonial Legacy

My Indigenous colleagues and I are often asked what (settler) churches can do to 'support and help' Indigenous people or 'walk alongside them' towards justice.

I usually respond with a list of options designed to get settlers thinking about the colonial assumptions in their questions.  I bring it all back to land and country, and the fact that churches now possess what does not belong to them: our land. This fact is, in our view, the baseline or ground floor for any consideration of various modes of action by the churches.  Here are some of the options then, as I see them.

1. Do nothing and keep the status quo. I call this the 'Anglican' option.

2. Talk loudly about justice for Indigenous people, hang Aboriginal art on the walls, rename your buildings with Indigenous names and do walking tours on country. I call this the 'Blak-cladding' option. 

3. Require each church Property Trust to allocate 10% of its annual earnings from either rent or appreciation of values to church programs designed, led and implemented by Indigneous people. I call this the 'Benevolent Charity' option.

4. Require each church Property Trust to allocate 50% of all rents, value appreciations and sales proceeds to Indigenous designed, led and implemented church programs and/or local Aboriginal Controlled Organisations on an annual basis. I call this the 'Love Your Neighbour as Yourself' option.

5. Require each church Property Trust to transfer all lands, properties and other assets currently held in trust over to Aboriginal Controlled Organisations, including 20% to church programs designed, led and implemented by Indigenous people. Within five years. I call this the 'Returning Some of What You Stole' option.

6. Require each church Property Trust to transfer all lands, properties and other assets currently held in trust over to Aboriginal Controlled Organisations within 5 years, and commit each congregation to handing over 20% of its ongoing annual budget to church programs designed, led and implemented by Indigenous people. I call this the 'Not Quite Zachaeus, But We're Getting There' option.

Most churches find these options very challenging because, apart from the 'Anglican' and 'Blak-cladding' options, none of these actions are really in the ecclesial mind when the question is asked. Instead, what most churches have in mind is something like a continuing concerned paternalism and the hope that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will simply forgive, forget, and accept the crumbs of charity that come our way with obsequious thankfulness.

It remains the case that what most Indigenous people want, most of all, is our land back.  If we are able to care for country, then country will care for us. But not if we cannot get access. And access is currently impossible for the vast majority of us.

Garry Deverell

Scott Morrison and speaking publicly about, and from, faith

This week the news cycle has been all aflutter about the Prime Minister speaking publicly about his faith. Some commentators have concentrated on the content of what he said and made a variety of judgments about that. Many more have expressed dismay that a Prime Minister would talk publicly about his faith in a secular country. Afterall, faith is a private matter and should be kept entirely out of the public realm of policy and the governing of the nation. Or so the argument goes.

I will not be commenting, today, on the content of what Mr Morrison said. Others far more competent that I have made some very important observations about that. Rather, I should like to contest the notion (again) that a government figure should keep their faith and their politics entirely separate.

First, there is nothing in the legal apparatus of this nation that requires a person in office to remain silent about matters of faith. The jurisprudential principle about the separation of church and state simply prohibits any particular religious group being given a structural place in government. It prohibits, in other words, the establishment of a state church which, as a church, is able to review government policy from within the parliament. The principle does not prohibit individual members of parliament, even of government, speaking about and from their faith on matters of public policy and discussion.

A second point is theological, rather than jurisprudential, in nature. The Christian is called not to separate but to integrate their faith and their public presence, work or office. For every Christian is responsible to make sure that the ethical values at the heart of Christ’s kingdom are made incarnate is how we live and work, in all that we do and say. That's the meaning of this line in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Your will be done on earth as in heaven.’

Now, of course, we should never bully or bash our way into making others believe, or live their lives, as we do. For such bullying and bashing would be a repudiation of Christ’s call to love. But we are called to bear witness, in word and deed, that we belong to Christ and really believe that the human community would flourish more beautifully and fruitfully if it paid heed to Christ’s teaching. That call is ours whether we are clergy or laity, politician or cleaner, teacher or accountant. For the citizenship of heaven requires us also to work and to agitate for justice, peace and compassionate governance here in the world of flesh and blood and community.

All of which is to say that whilst I don't agree with Scott Morrison on much at all, I applaud his willingness to integrate faith and work. In that, if on nothing else, he is being genuinely and authentically Christian.

Garry Deverell

April 24, 2021

Reconciliation: personal reflections

This article first appeared in Gesher: the official journal of The Council of Christians and Jews (Victoria) 4/5 (2014): pp.16-19.

 The word ‘reconciliation’ bears witness to a contested space within Indigenous Australia. For many, if not most, reconciliation is precisely what is needed in the face of the historic injustices visited upon Aboriginal peoples by the invading colonists who came to these lands from 1788 onward. Reconciliation describes a process by which colonists acknowledge, in detail, their wrongdoing and then seek forgiveness for these misdeeds from Australia’s First Peoples. Importantly, for the proponents of reconciliation, absolution would not be automatic. It would be conditional upon Australia’s colonising peoples making concrete and measurable efforts to undo previous evils or, in the many instances where such undoing is impossible, to offer a just and proportional compensation for wrongdoing in ways that meet the approval of First Peoples.

However, some Indigenous Australians are not at all happy with the language of reconciliation. They rightly point out that reconciliation is a Jewish and Christian idea, an idea that arrived with the colonists and cannot, therefore, be regarded as neutral or benign. For some Aboriginal commentators, the language of reconciliation is part of the colonising apparatus that keeps First Peoples ‘down’, and it does so by forcing Aboriginal people to think about their future within an alien framework that is not really their own, a framework that puts not their own, but colonists’, interests at the centre. And what is the colonist’s prevailing interest, according to this account? It is the need to find absolution, a salving of conscience, a healing of the gaping wound that has been rent in the colonial sense of self through its multitudinous breakings of the Jewish and Christian law: ‘do not kill’, do not steal’, ‘do not covet’, ‘do not bear false witness’. To this way of thinking, the colonial motivation for justice with regard to First Peoples terminates not when Aborigines are satisfied that justice has been done, but when the ‘whitefella’ sense of guilt is expiated. And that, quite simply, is not good enough.

In the brief paragraphs that follow, I should like to outline the way in which I, personally, have reconciled myself to the language of reconciliation. In doing so, I want my readers to know that I am a Trawoolway man from northern Truwunna (Tasmania) and that I was inducted by my parents and their community into the Baptist tradition of Christianity from a very young age. Since my childhood I have been keenly aware of a struggle, both within and without, between the British heritage of my Baptist beginnings and the Trawoolway instinct for cultural survival against almost overwhelming odds. The nature of that struggle has often changed over the years. There have been times when I felt that my Christian heritage was indeed the enemy of all in me that is genuinely Trawoolway, most often when the churchly institutions of Christianity steadfastly refused to recognise:

a) that I or my people are genuinely indigenous to this land: that we belong to this country, and the country belongs to us;

b) that I or my people are being, or have been, grievously mistreated or harmed through the ongoing violence of colonisation;

c) that churchly institutions participate, and have participated, in that mistreatment and harm;

d) that those same institutions therefore have a responsibility to make some kind of amends for the evils that have been visited upon my people.

Unfortunately, in my view, churchly institutions have made little progress on any of these fronts across my lifetime. Yes, fine words have been uttered in a very general way, especially by the Uniting Church to which I now belong. But I still experience the church as fundamentally racist at the level of day-to-day, concrete relationships. It is in the wake of that experience of racism that I most often consider resigning both my ordination and my membership in any form of denominational church.

At the same time, I have very often experienced the nascent Christianity into which I was inducted – represented, here, by its most fundamental language and imagination in Scripture and apostolic tradition – as the greatest ally I have in seeking to survive as Trawoolway in colonial Australia. (I reject the narratives of ‘post-colonialism’ outright, because the process of colonisation clearly continues apace, even as it becomes more circumspect and reflexive). Consider, for example, the Pauline notion that God chooses the ‘nothings’ of this world – literally those who do not exist as far as the dominant powers are concerned – to be God’s people and to ‘shame’ those who consider themselves wise and strong (1 Cor 1.26-31). As a person who has been repeatedly told throughout my life that I don’t exist (‘you are not Aboriginal, there are no Aboriginal Tasmanians left’) or that I don’t matter (‘you are Aboriginal, but that means that you are a drunk, a welfare cheat, a waste of space and resources who has nothing meaningful to contribute’) I find this notion deeply encouraging. Consider, also, Paul’s revolutionary teaching about the identity of God. God, we are told in Scripture, was ‘in Christ, reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Cor 5.19). Yes, ‘in Christ’, a man despised, rejected, condemned to torture and crucifixion by the imperial powers of his world. In Christ, so the story goes, the creator of the universe exchanges his great power and position for that of a slave (Phil 2.6, 7), that God might come close enough to offer help and salvation to all who are slaves, that God might lift them from their servitude to the colonising laws of sin and alienation and make them, instead, free children of God (Rom 8.15-17). Again, as one who has experienced the enslaving power of colonists, I am encouraged by this message about a God who is not identified with such power but comes, instead, alongside the colonised offering help, support and ultimately the gift of liberation. In my darkest moments, when I find myself agreeing with my oppressors that I am nothing, no one, of no value to anyone or anything, this message can be the only thing between me and oblivion. In this sense, the message of God’s love that is at the heart of the Christian evangel is often the only thing that is able to rescue my Trawoolway self from the overwhelming racist power of church and society alike.

So how have I reconciled myself to the language of reconciliation, a language that the colonists brought with them from over the seas? By first recognising, frankly, that there can be no return to an existence or mode of indigeneity that is somehow free of colonial influence, that dreams of any such return are (somewhat paradoxically) generated by colonialism itself. And, then, by recognising the genuine power of the Christian gospel of reconciliation to make a positive difference to Indigenous people and not simply to our oppressors. And, finally, by recognising that the language of reconciliation in no way absolves colonists from shouldering the lion’s share of responsibility when it comes to creating a just settlement for the First Peoples they have wronged. Indeed, as I will argue below, the language of reconciliation actually creates that responsibility. Allow me to expand on each of these claims in turn.

I recently attended a conference in Melbourne that billed itself as a discussion of the notion of sovereignty from ‘postcolonial’ and ‘theological’ perspectives. The only Australian Indigenous speakers at the conference were a Warlpiri elder and his son, both of whom are also committed Baptists. Following their presentation, which drew liberally from the language of reconciliation, they were berated with questions about why, as Indigenous people, they felt the need to draw upon the ‘language of the colonisers’ at all. Did they not see that the language of reconciliation was little more than an opiate given to Aboriginal people by the missionaries as something of a consolation prize for the stealing of their lands and cultures? Why did they not draw, instead, on purely Indigenous stories and traditions in order to maintain their noble identities as Warlpiri people over and against the oppressive language of the coloniser? I found it extremely difficult to listen to these questions and take them seriously because, from my perspective, such questions serve only to inscribe the mentality and methods of colonialism all over again. 

First, it is simply not possible to talk about a purely ‘indigenous’ language and tradition in contemporary Australia. The fact of contact between Indigenes and colonists over more than two hundred years has created new, more or less hybrid, narrative frameworks for the interpretation of Indigenous traditions. That is what contact does: it creates new traditions out of older traditions. And the traditions live on precisely because they are adaptable; they are able to respond creatively to new data, new voices, new narratives and meaning structures. Every living Indigenous culture in this country has adapted in this way. And every interpretation of older traditions – preserved, for example, in colonist’s journals and academic papers – are themselves examples and performances of these hybrid narratives of contact between Indigenes and colonists. All insistence about working from ‘purely’ Indigenous traditions – unpolluted by Western or Christian influences - is therefore not only naive but also deeply disrespectful of Indigenous people. It fails to recognise that it is precisely our ability to adapt and respond to colonial perspectives, to absorb them creatively into our own, that has made the difference between our surviving and not surviving.

Talk of cultural or racial ‘purity’ is also, rather nakedly in my view, a reinscription of that ‘noble savage’/Garden of Eden fantasy so beloved of Romantics and Nazis alike. The perseverance of the fantasy into so-called ‘post-colonial’ times demonstrates just how powerfully the colonist needs to maintain the fiction that a ‘pure’ form of indigeneity is still possible. This fantasy has two basic functions. It first soothes colonial guilt by assuring the troubled conscience that the damage is not irreparable, the ‘pure’ has not, in fact, been irredeemably lost. At the same time, the fantasy also works to legitimate that familiar colonial strategy of dismissing or ‘disappearing’ – sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively (the effect is equally devastating in either case!) – all forms of the so-called ‘half-caste’ or ‘half-breed’. Half-castes (so-called) – whether constructed in cultural or biological terms – are deeply threatening to colonists because they imply a ‘muddying of the waters’ with regard to purist notions of identity, culture and vocation. Their presence, if acknowledged at all, signals the emergence of an alarming hybridity that deeply disturbs the ‘us and them’ dualism of the colonial psyche. It is a curious fact of colonial history around the world that colonists – usually from Europe – hate only one kind of people more than the ‘blacks’. And that is the ‘coloureds’. It is my observation that Second Peoples in Australia remain confused - routinely and predictably confused – by Aborigines like myself who do not fit their purist notions about what an Aborigine is. Second Peoples – whether their ancestry be European or Asian or whatever – are routinely confronted and offended by the fact that the vast majority of Indigenous people have fair skin and are clearly adept at living urban and suburban lives along with everyone else. In my personal experience, colonial masters are particularly offended by red-headed Aborigines who clearly know more about their traditions than they do themselves and are able to offer an alternative reading of the significance of those traditions from another place or viewpoint.

That brings me to my next point of reconciliation with the language of reconciliation: the genuine power of this narrative to make a positive difference, not only to oppressors, but also to Indigenous people. Against the critics of reconciliation who claim that the project is primarily about expiating ‘white guilt’ I want to say that reconciliation is actually about the truth, most of all - the telling of truth and the common ownership of that truth - by both First and Second peoples alike. The truth is this: that there can be no reconciliation, no coming together of First and Second Peoples to build a more just future, without a common ownership of the undeniable truth of what has happened in this country.

For many years – from the 1850s right up until the 1990s – the public imagination of this country was dominated by a great silence about the stealing of Aboriginal land, the long war between invaders and native warriors, the systematic attempts to destroy whole cultures and nations and the forced separation of Aboriginal children from their families. School children were taught that the land was largely ‘empty’ when white ‘settlers’ arrived and that the few natives who already lived here soon died out because of their stupidity and their failure to cultivate the land. Students were also taught that Australia was unique amongst European colonies because it had never known a war that was fought on its own soil. 

These narratives were taught to Indigines and colonists alike. But throughout this period First Peoples held on to their own histories, their own memories, their own versions of what had happened. Eventually our memories and tellings came to the attention of revisionist historians such as Manning Clarke, and later Lyndall Ryan and Henry Reynolds. In their hands, the truth began to get out. It began to contest the false versions of history so beloved of those whose wealth and power had been founded on lies. As this truth is slowly owned by Second Peoples, as the injustices visited upon Indigenous peoples and the fact of our survival slowly become part of a common national narrative, a more genuine launching-place for a reconciled future comes into focus. For reconciliation begins, as the Johannine gospel says, with a confession of the truth (1 John 1.8). Without the recognition of that truth, there can be no freedom (John 8.32). For freedom, in this understanding, is ultimately about liberation from falsehood and lies – lies about oneself, about others, and about the identity of the divine. Whoever lives in falsehood is a slave to falsehood. But whomever is set free from falsehood by the arrival of the truth will be free to choose a new destiny (John 8.34-38).

Perhaps it is now clear why I feel compelled to argue that the language of reconciliation in no way absolves colonists from shouldering the lion’s share of responsibility when it comes to creating a just settlement for the First People’s they have wronged. Indeed, as I have already intimated, the language of reconciliation actually creates that responsibility. For wrongdoing, in the language of reconciliation, creates a responsibility in the guilty party to provide satisfaction or recompense to the party that has been wronged. 

How did Jacob reconcile himself to Esau, the brother whom he had wronged by swindling him out of his inheritance? First he confessed to God that he was, in truth, unworthy of the good fortune that had come his way (Gen 32.10). Then he sent a very valuable ‘gift’ on ahead of him – a great flock of goats, sheep, camels, cattle and donkeys – along with a message that these were for Esau (Gen 32.13-21). When the two brothers finally meet Esau greets Jacob with words of forgiveness and grace, to be sure, but the story is structured in such a way as to highlight Jacob’s responsibility to offer – at least to offer! – some kind of compensation for what has clearly been stolen. A saying of Jesus in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount reinforces the point. If one attends the temple to be reconciled to God, one should not pretend that such reconciliation is going to be in any way real or effective if there is a matter outstanding between oneself and another. If you have wronged someone, Jesus counsels, you must first do whatever it takes to be reconciled with that person before you can pretend to seek the forgiveness of God (Matt 5.23, 24). 

So, while the language of reconciliation clearly invokes the possibility of forgiveness as a way through to a lasting peace, the granting of forgiveness is very often conditional: conditional upon a recognition in the guilty parties that they have indeed done wrong, and that those parties therefore have a responsibility to make recompense for what has been stolen or destroyed.[1]
  Let me conclude with a challenge for the Jewish and Christian leaders who will read this article. Can any of you say, out of the truth that whispers deep in your hearts, that you have truly taken responsibility for the wrongs your synagogues, churches and congregations have visited upon the First Peoples of this land? Have you acknowledged your part in stealing land, removing children, and destroying culture? Have you acknowledged, and do you take responsibility for, the ongoing effects of these injustices in the form of disproportionately high levels of Indigenous poverty, incarceration and mental illness? Furthermore, have you made apology to the people so affected – not in that general rhetorical way so beloved of politicians and CEOs – but face-to-face, neighbour-to-neighbour? Finally, have you demonstrated to the people you have wronged that you are serious about seeking recompense and justice for them, so that they may have a chance to create a better future? Have you asked them what form that recompense should take, genuinely asked them? For the history of do-gooders in this country unfortunately suggests that such asking – and the careful listening for a guiding response that is part of any genuine partnership – rarely happens on the ground. Instead, it is the colonists who decide what form the compensation should take, and when, and how. Your response to these questions will make all the difference to whether reconciliation really has a chance in Australia, or whether it does not. My prayer, as always, is that the veil of ignorance might be torn from all our eyes (2 Cor 4.4). Only then will reconciliation have a chance.

[1] Elsewhere I have explored in detail the relationship between what has been called the ‘conditional’ and ‘unconditional’ dimensions of covenant-making in the Jewish and Christian traditions. I am aware that unconditional forgiveness very often creates the possibility for a just response in the wrongdoer. My intent in this essay is not to exclude that possibility outright, but simply to argue that whatever the motivation toward just compensation, recompense is always part of the settlement phenomenologically. See Garry J. Deverell, The Bond of Freedom: vows, sacraments and the formation of the Christian self (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster Press, 2008) pp. 124-127.

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.

Living the dream of justice

Texts: Isaiah 5.1-7; Psalm 80.1-2, 8-19; Hebrews 11.29-12.2; Luke 12.49-56

Today's reading from the prophet Isaiah presents us with the image of God's people as a vineyard of the Lord's planting.  The site of the vineyard is chosen very carefully, on the side of a hill where the grapes will get maximum sunlight.  The soil is carefully turned over and all of the rocks removed.  A watchtower is placed in the midst of the vineyard to ward off any who might be tempted to steal the grapes.  A large wine vat is constructed, in expectation of a bumper crop of choice fruit.  And the vines are tended carefully and lovingly.  But the Lord is disappointed.  The grapes produced are not up to scratch; they are like wild grapes, the kind which grow without discipline and are entirely unsuitable for the making of fine wine.  Despite all God's tender and careful efforts, God's people were unable to become what God had hoped for.

And what were God's hopes, precisely?  What fruit did God look for in these chosen people? The answer is plainly and unambiguously stated by the prophet in verse 7 of chapter 5:  'the Lord expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry of distress'.  What God expects from Israel may be summed up in these two words: justice and righteousness.  And this is what God expects and hopes for in us as well.  We are not exempt by virtue of our distance from the events of Israel's destruction, in the context of which this sermon was first preached.  No, God's hope and dream for his people remains the same:  that we may be a holy nation, characterized by the qualities of justice and righteousness.   In Hebrew, of course, these terms are equivalent.  I have heard some preachers say that 'righteousness' refers to personal morality - things like what we do with our sexuality - while 'justice' refers to the public morality of political life.  But that is to misunderstand the Hebrew mind entirely.  For the Hebrew people there was no such thing as private, personal, morality.  Everything a person did or thought, no matter how private, was understood to have its public and political ramifications.  I think the Hebrew analysis of ethical life is still the best one.  Why?  Because it recognises, as modernist or neo-liberal analyses do not, that every life on this planet is connected to every other life in an intricate web of connection.  So that even the smallest of actions in one part of the web has significant effects and consequences in other parts.  Let me give you a relevant modern example to illustrate.

A child's sneakers wear out, and so her father goes into a local shoe shop to buy some new ones.  He scouts around for some shoes which will provide both value for money and a degree of quality.  Eventually he decides to buy a pair of Nike shoes.  They are made of strong leather, but their price is comparable to that of less satisfactory brands.  Now, modern neo-liberal ethics would say that this man has made a private choice based upon private values, these being a desire for quality balanced against the need to preserve the family budget.  And, according to neo-liberal ethics, that is that.  But a Hebrew ethicist, like the prophet Isaiah would disagree.  He would point out that there is a bigger world to be taken into account when one purchases shoes.

You see, these Nike shoes were produced by a 16 year old girl in a factory in Fiji.  For each pair of shoes she produces, she is paid the equivalent of 50c Australian.  She is the only person in her family who has a job, because the traditional family land has been taken over by a multinational sugar company.  Without its land, the family can no longer produce its own food, and there are not enough factory jobs to go around.  So this young girl must work very long hours hunched over a sewing machine in order to earn enough money to keep the wolf from her family's door.  As a result, she is suffering spinal problems.  When she is unable to work, she will not be compensated for injuries sustained on the job.  She will be sacked.  Consider this:  the pair of shoes she produces is sold in Australia for, say, $100.  She is paid 50c.  Where does the rest of the money go?  The shoes only cost $5 to make, and another $5 to sell on the Australian market.  The rest goes to Nike and their retailers in profits.  The shoes are being made by a child in Fiji because it is cheaper to run a sweat-shop of slaves in Fiji than it is to produce the shoes in an Australian factory under Australian law. 

A Hebrew analysis would be inclined to conclude that buying shoes is far from simple, if one is prepared to consider the ethical consequences of that action.  Indeed, it may well advise that buying such shoes is wrong, on the grounds that it perpetuates an unjust and systematic abuse of our responsibility for other people.  Buying these shoes supports the unscrupulous business of a company which profits from a form of child slavery.  You may be interested to know, by the way, that the prominent international Aid agency, Oxfam, is currently campaigning against Nike on precisely these grounds.  And so is a Uniting Church agency known as Fair Wear.  I can tell you more about all that later, if you wish.

When Isaiah condemns the leaders of Israel for their lack of social responsibility, this is precisely the kind of thing he has in mind.  Throughout the book which bears their name, the Isaianic prophets continually point out that Israel has ignored its covenantal obligations towards all who are poor in the land, all whose lands and livelihoods have been whittled away by unscrupulous people who happen to be more powerful and more greedy.  The prophets condemn all who benefit or profit from such exploitation, and promise that God will judge them for their sins. 

Now these prophets were not thanked for their message.  They were not swathed in garlands and announced to the halls of power as Israel's saviours.  No, many of them were persecuted, tortured or even killed for their troubles.  They were the kinds of saints we hear about in the later part of our reading from Hebrews.  They were saints who suffered terribly for being faithful to their vision.  They imagined a world in which all could share equally in the bounty of the land, a world in which people shared with one another without concern for the health of their private profit margins, a world where people gave up fighting with one another and took to more productive tasks like tilling the land and promoting peace.  Why did the prophets hang on to these visions, even when they were laughed at or persecuted?  Why did they persevere in their preaching, even when the whole world thought they were mad?  Because they had faith.  They believed that it was God who longed for this world, and they were prepared to stake their lives on it, no matter what the consequences.

They are a great challenge to us, these prophets and saints and martyrs.  When I reflect on my own life, I become aware of how soppy and sentimental my privatized kind of Christianity actually is.  I mean, what effect does God's vision of a new world have on the way you live your life?  How does the faith effect the decisions you make about buying food or clothes or shoes?  How does it effect the way you make your career choices, or how you will spend your time?  How will it effect the way you vote in the coming elections?  Do you ever see a conflict between the common wisdom and your faith?  Remember that Jesus talked about bringing not peace but a sword, that families will be turned against each other.  Here he was talking about the way in which the vision of justice disrupts the false peace of the everyday, and calls into question the common consensus about what's important in life.  The gospel of peace and justice for all is a dangerous gospel.  It threatens the powerful.  It threatens the rich.  It threatens the common wisdom.  And when people feel threatened, they look for someone to sacrifice.  One of those sacrificed was Jesus.  He threatened the powerful with his vision of a kingdom for the poor.  And he paid the price.

Allow me to conclude with this. The writer to the Hebrews encourages us to cast off the sin that so easily entangles, and run with perseverance the race before us.  We need to persevere because the race is long and hard.  It is relatively easy to be a pewsitter in church.  It is easy to go along with the crowd.  Anyone can do these things.  But it's very difficult to be a genuine follower of Jesus.  I, for one, find the way very difficult indeed.  But I take the advice of the Hebrew epistle.  I keep my eyes on Jesus, who, enraptured by the power of his vision, endured the cross and its shame and finally attained to the fulfilment of his vision through resurrection from the dead.  He is the one who articulates the vision of justice for me.  And he's the one I look to when things get tough.  If Jesus could stick to his principles, so can I.  I earnestly pray that you can too - for the sake of God, and for his vision of a world reborn to justice . . .  and to peace.

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

Birth Pangs

1 Samuel 1.4-20; Psalm 16; Hebrews 10.11-25; Mark 13.1-8

This morning as we gather to worship, Israel and Palestine are again firing missiles at each other.  So far 40 Palestinians have been killed, including children and a pregnant woman. Three Israelis have lost their lives also.  Overnight several of the buildings that house the Palestinian government have been destroyed and Israel appears to be readying itself for a ground invasion.  The Arab League has called for an end to hostilities, as has the West.  But neither government is so far showing any intention to do so.

The gospel text for today, tragically enough, also speaks about the destruction of a seat of government by a foreign invader.  Jesus and his disciples are in Jerusalem where they have been visiting the temple built by Herod.  It is a massive building, dominating the city’s skyline as well as its social, religious and political life. Being a ‘temple’, it is the centre of Israel’s religious cult, the place where the sacrifices are carried out day after day, year after year, to atone for the sins of the people.  It is the centre of Judea’s religious teaching also, the theological school where scholars read the Law and the Prophets and interpreted its meaning for the community at large.  Importantly for us, this morning, the temple is also the seat of government, the headquarters for the Sanhedrin, the ruling Jewish council which no king of governor could afford to ignore.  From here the temple bureaucracy, the civil service if you will, sought to apply the political, social and administrative policies of the Council in such a way that stability was maintained in the midst of a potentially explosive international situation.  For Judea, like Galilee, is at this time an occupied land, a colony of the Roman Empire.  It is a powder keg waiting to go off.

The prophecy we read here from Jesus’ lips, that the temple would be destroyed, not one stone remaining upon another, should therefore be read as nothing other than the most dangerous talk imaginable.  In the religious and political context that was early first-century Jerusalem, such talk could be easily taken as evidence of both blasphemy and sedition.  Blasphemy, because in a society in which the will of the ruling Council and the will of God were understood as pretty much the same thing, prophecies against the temple could be interpreted as prophecies against God.  Sedition, because the Sanhedrin ultimately served its Roman overlords even as it sought to preserve some measure of national and cultural independence in doing so.  Words against the temple could therefore be interpreted by the Romans as words against themselves, an act of treason from a would-be usurper of political power. 

Subsequent events in Mark’s story bear this out. Within a few days, Jesus is brought for trial before both the Sanhedrin and the Romans, and his prophecy about the destruction of temple plays a prominent part in both hearings. He is condemned as a blasphemer by the Council and a traitor by the Romans.  He is tortured and crucified and, well you know the rest of the story.  Given the largely bad outcomes for both Jesus and his disciples, one is prompted to ask why Jesus chose to say what he said, and in the hearing of the public? Why did he not, at least, keep his views to himself and save himself and his friends a lot of grief?

Mark’s answer is this: that Jesus was indeed a prophet from God, and as a prophet from God he was called and constrained to speak the truth about the ruling powers no matter the consequences.  As a prophet, he had no choice.  This is what prophets do.  From Mark’s point of view, Jesus ‘blasphemy’ is not speech against God, but speech for God.  For the Sanhedrin and gone too far in its appeasement of the Romans.  Sure, it has managed to preserve the sacrificial cult of the temple, but in doing so it had rendered the more weighty matters of Jewish faith null and void, matters of ethics, of justice, and the love of one’s neighbour.  This gap between the Torah studied in the temple precincts and what was actually happening on the ground for the vast majority of the Jewish people was, for Mark, the presenting reason for Jesus’ condemnation of the Jewish authorities.   Similarly, from Mark’s point of view, Jesus ‘sedition’ is entirely justified.  For Mark and his community, there could only be one ‘Lord,’ one Emperor, and that was God.  Jesus, as God’s son and mouthpiece, therefore has a legitimate authority to condemn what the Romans did to the Jews, and to do so in the name of a ‘justice’ that the Romans knew nothing about, a justice based in vulnerable, covenant love rather than in naked power.

That Mark is the pastor of a community that has in fact lived through the destruction of the temple, and the whole of Jerusalem with it, is not insignificant.  He knows that the prophecy of Jesus has come true, that the temple is no more and that his own community is now a refugee community, running as fast as it can from the vengeance of the Romans.  In this place, the place of a refugee community that has lost both its temple and its prophet, Mark writes what he writes.  And in his writing we can find some wisdom even for ourselves, as we endure a time filled with wars and earthquakes and rumours of wars.

What Mark has Jesus say of times like this is that they are ‘birth-pangs’.  Birth pangs.  Some might read what is happening in the middle-east as the end of world, full-stop.  And I am very sure that for many who are sitting in the middle of it all, that is how it must seem.  Think of the Palestinians huddled in their houses in Gaza, the most densely populated strip of earth in the world, being bombarded from above.  It can’t be very pleasant to have members of your family killed as they venture out to find food or to visit a neighbour.  In such circumstances, when the power to the north – a new Roman empire to all intents and purposes – seems to want to destroy your entire country, the end of the world must surely feel as though it is indeed at hand!

What Mark says, however, out of the experience of Jesus and of his own refugee community, is that the end of the world is not the end of the world.  The pains associated with wars and earthquakes – surely a metaphor for the shaking of our many certainties – are temporary pains that, like the pangs of childbirth, while severe and almost unendurable as they come upon us – do eventually pass and give way to something like peace and even joy.  I remember well the birth of my own children.  In the process of labour I watched on helplessly as my wife’s body was shaken by the most extraordinary waves of pain I had ever witnessed and, for the birth of our first child, these paroxysms went on for 16 hours or so.  I found it hard to comprehend how any human being could possibly endure more.  But when my daughter was finally born, all those hours of painful upheaval seemed to disappear into forgetfulness.  As the child was placed in my wife’s arms, all I could see was joy. 

The story of Hannah and Samuel is instructive in this sense.  Here we have a woman for whom life holds little joy because she is barren and cannot give birth to a son.  Even though her husband loves her regardless – which would have been quite a rare thing in patriarchal world of the ancient ear-East – she must endure the mocking of her fertile sister-wife and the disapproval of her family and friends.  For in that world, a barren woman was seen as a complete failure, a failure at her basic function in life, to provide heirs for the family and for the tribe, to guarantee its survival and its prosperity by doing so.  Because she cannot, Hannah is deeply depressed and, for her, it seems that the world is indeed at an end.

What she does about this, we are told, is not to rush off to IVF as we moderns do, but to visit the Lord’s shrine in Shiloh and pray for God’s mercy. She prays for a son and when she is indeed granted her wish, promises to give him into the Lord’s service for the rest of his life.  When Samuel is born, Hannah is filled with joy and sings a song about the love of God for all who are lowly and downtrodden, which becomes the basis, in time, for the revolutionary literature we know as the Magnificat, the Song of Mary at the birth of Jesus.  The point of this story, and the literature of revolution it spawns, is simply this: that in the economy and plan of God, even the end of the world is not the end of the world.  The end of the world, in which we lose homes and children and livelihoods, in which we may lose even our sanity and our very lives, is the onset of birth-pangs.  Such birth-pangs herald a new birth, the birth of a new world, a world no longer ruled by greed and oppression and poverty, where the strong destroy the weak for fun, but by the love who is God.

This is the faith of Christians and the source of our hope even when things look very bad indeed.  Our hope is in the one who was raised even from death by the power of this love who is God.  Our faith is built upon this firm foundation so that even when we grieve, we do not grieve as others grieve who have no hope. We grieve as people who feel the pain of our many losses, but who believe in a new birth, a new world, where what has been lost will be returned to us a hundredfold. Such is the grace of the one who has been raised.  I have a friend who lives in Bethlehem, Daoud.  He is a Palestinian Christian and a pastor to his persecuted community. The small Christian community in that part of the world is persecuted by the Israeli’s because it is Palestinian, and persecuted by many of its fellow Palestinians because it is not Muslim.  Daoud and Jihan Nassar do not have to imagine their way into Mark’s gospel and the horrors of a city destroyed like most Westerners do.  It is not a great feat of imagination to place themselves in the shoes of a persecuted community seeking refuge from violence.  Daoud and Johan live this experience every day of their lives. And yet when that community gathers each Sunday to listen to the world of God and share the eucharist, Daoud encourages the people to see their sufferings not as the end of the world, but as the birth-pangs of a new world that is yet to be born.

In this light, the writer to the Hebrews encourages Christians everywhere to never give up the habit of meeting together for encouragement and mutual support.  For each of us live in the time of the not-yet. The events of last night in Palestine and Israel make this very clear.  We are not yet at peace, we do not yet love one another, and we do not yet welcome each other as God has welcomed us.  In the time of the not-yet, we are encouraged to meet together as we meet together today, and to encourage one another with these stories of faith, the stories which are able to reframe the meaning of our most painful experiences as birth-pangs, the birth-pangs of the coming kingdom.

This homily was preached at St Columba's, Balwyn, on the morning of Nov 18, 2012.