I've just come home from a stimulating and learned public lecture offered at Pilgrim Theological College by a wonderful young historian, Meredith Lake. Meredith writes and thinks about the possibilities for reading the bible 'against the grain' of its racist deployment in 'Australian' society. She draws upon her historical research to offer precedents for doing so from both colonists and Indigenous people. I'm grateful that Meredith is doing this work, since the vast majority of white scholars and theologians within the churchly academy steadfastly refuse to engage that history, even to this day. The conversation Meredith's work provokes is an important one for the colony to have.
That being said, I want to share with you something of my experience of being present at this lecture and the conversation that followed. I do so primary to make make sense of my own feelings. But there may be something of value here for others to reflect on as well.
I came away with a very strong impression that I had somehow stumbled upon a conversation that was not really mine to participate in. It was a conversation for, and between, colonists. It was a generous conversation, to be sure. The participants included more recent arrivals to these shores. But it was not a conversation designed to include our mob, except in an abstract, 'othered', sense.
It was clear from the beginning that I wasn't really supposed to be there, at least not as a trawloolway man. The language of the 'acknowlegement of country' assumed that the attendance of an Indigenous person was normally only a remote possibility. 'We acknowledge any Indigenous people who may be with us this evening'. Now, the person who said this knew I was there and, in fact, I was directly in her line of sight. But she could not bring herself to address or name me personally. I was othered. I was abstracted. I was signed as someone without personhood or agency in that particular room.
And the lecture itself - notwithstanding its undoubted importance for the intra-colonial conversation - did not really speak to or with Indigenous people. Whilst Meredith gave a brief account of the apparently bible-inspired actions of Billibellary, William Barak and Simon Wonga at Correnderk mission (where some of my own family lived as well), and the theological work of (unamed) Aboriginal persons at Wybalenna (where some of my family were imprisoned) their living words were not cited. Nor did Meredith quote any Indigenous scholars, living or dead. So we heard about mob. But we did not hear from mob. Which is what colonists do when they are talking to other colonists.
So this was an occasion for colonists to discuss their crimes with each other and consider how to deal with their guilt and find appropriate precedents for more positive action. An important conversation, there can be no doubt.
Still, I cannot help but dream of a day when churchly colonists might be able to transcend their self-referential illocution and speak with us, rather than about us. Not just as a one-off nod to the other and the exotic, but regularly, and continually, as if we were human beings equally capable of intelligent agency in the imagining of a shared future which will work for us all.
Even as I write that I hear the voice of Chelsea Watego in my ear saying something like 'Stop kidding yourself Garry. It'll never happen. Consider this another day in the colony and be done with such unrealistic and naive hopes.' Oh that I could, Chelsea, oh that I could! Unfortunately I'm afflicted with some of the same biblical dreams and nightmares as many of my fellow Christians. And I can't get them out of my head. I don't think I could repent and turn back, even if I tried. So, for the moment at least, I continue in longing. And I hope, against hope, that my yearning is conditioned and put into play not only by the oracles of holy writ, but also by country and by the ancestors who whisper to us from her gnarled and fragile forms.
Garry Deverell
Postscript
Since writing this little response, I've received conciliatory notes from Dr Lake, and from Associate Professor Melanchthon, who did the acknowledgement of country. Our correspondence included apologies as well as an acknowlegement that colonial attitudes and assumptions insert themselves into almost everything we do, even when be believe we are being vigilant against them. I am grateful to them both for their willingness to reflect and apologise, but also for their forebearance in the face of my determination to say out loud what most mob merely suffer in silence.
Genesis 15.1-12, 17-21; Psalm 27; Philippians 3.17-4.1; Luke
13.31-35
Enemies. We all have them. And, if we
don’t have any real enemies, we make them up. Or else we paint them in more
dramatic terms than is strictly necessary. Observe, for example, what is
happening in Ukraine at present. One of the key reasons Putin has publicly offered
for invading Ukraine is that Ukraine’s national leadership has been taken over
by fascists, even ‘Nazis’, who are oppressing the people. Now, from the point
of view of the Ukrainians themselves, this seems entirely false. But from the
point of view of Putin, who has in mind the restoration of a past, mythical,
Orthodox, Russian empire, the Ukrainian leadership are indeed the evil bastards
who are keeping their people from participating in this glorious restoration.
We need to be careful
whom we call an enemy. Perhaps we should not call anyone an enemy, even if they
explicitly choose that path, and that designation, for themselves. ‘Love your
enemy,’ said Jesus in his famous sermon, ‘do good to those who hate you, bless
those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you.’ (Luke 6.27, 28).This is really tough teaching. If your
neighbour is your enemy, what then? If you are the Ukrainian whose house is
being raided by the Russian army, what should you do?If you are an Aboriginal woman who has been
raped by a British soldier, and your children killed before your eyes, how
should you respond?
Let’s mine our lectionary
readings for some wisdom.
The Genesis story talks
about the deal or treaty YWH makes with Abram to preserve his legacy against
every threat, real or imagined. If Abram is prepared to trust his future, and
the future of his descendants to YWH, then YWH will make them prosper ‘as the stars
in the heaven’ and the land on which he stands, stretching from Egypt to the
Euphrates, will belong to them. Now, if you read this passage in its context,
there are probably both good and bad reasons for Abram to feel anxious about
himself and his clan’s future. Since arriving in that place, he’d become rich
and inclined to feel that others wanted to take what he had. The story of his
wife Sarai being given to Pharoah as a concubine is a horrific tale about the
lengths that patriarchal culture will go to fight its own paranoia about losing
wealth and influence. On the other hand, Abram also got caught up in a regional
conflict between various Canaanite city-states in which his nephew Lot was genuinely
taken into captivity.
With this background in
mind, perhaps we must conclude that the treaty between Abraham and YWH comes
about partly at God’s initiative and partly because of Abram’s male,
patriarchal paranoia about the preservation of his legacy – legacy here
understood as wealth and prestige for one’s descendents – against the indigenous
tribes of Caanan. An earlier version of the covenant (in chapter 12 of Genesis)
promises something rather different: that Abram’s descendants will become a blessing
to all nations. Not their conquerors, but a source of their blessing. Perhaps
that is what the covenant is supposed to be about, really. But this later,
Genesis 15, version seems more concerned with the ways in which the indigenous
nations, the people already there in the land to be taken by Abram’s seed, should
be seen as enemies, and therefore a threat to Abram’s patriarchal ambitions. This
is an ambiguity that has been played out in that region from the time of Abram
right through to the current conflicts between Arab and Jew in
Israel/Palestine. And, of course, there are tragic echoes of all that in what
has happened here in the colony of ‘Australia’ as well.
The psalmist describes
his fear of an enemy that has surrounded him on every side, and his appeal to
the Lord for refuge and help. Most every suburban Christian I know usually reads
this psalm as if they, themselves, are the psalmist and someone else – whatever
or whomever we are afraid of, probably – is the enemy.But what if that isn’t the case? Have you
ever tried to read a psalm, or any other biblical passage, as if you weren’t
the hero in the story but the enemy? Have you every considered the ways in
which you might be the enemy? An enemy of the earth and of its flora and
fauna, for example, or an enemy of the indentured classes of labour who make
our clothes? Or an enemy of Indigenous people, because you stole our lands and
benefit from our dispossession and hardship? How would that make a difference
to your reading of sacred scripture?
The writer to the
Philippians is incredibly circumspect in the way that he talks about enemies.
He says that the enemy is not so much opposed to particular people, or even to
Christ, but rather to the ‘cross of Christ’. Here the enemy is constructed not
as someone who wants to steal your possessions or kill you. The enemy is
someone who is allergic to suffering in the cause of righteousness or justice.
Indeed, this enemy’s ‘god is their stomach’, an ancient way of speaking about
the sin of gluttony or personal acquisitiveness. The sin of accumulating all
things to yourself at the expense of many others, the sin of narcissism, we
might even say. There is a sense, here, in which the writer wants, actually, to
critique the acquisitive nature of the covenant we read about in Genesis
15. Here, it is Abram who could be understood as the enemy, for he seems concerned
only about his legacy, the land he steals from others, and the prosperity of
his own family and clan.The writer to
the Philippians prefers a citizenship that is not so attached to such things,
but participates in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of a commonwealth
that is ‘in heaven’, that is, in a place and a time that has yet to arrive. In
that ‘heaven’ which – I hope you will agree, is a figure for some more hopeful
and just future – Christ will transform the humiliated bodies of all who have
suffered injustice and degradation and marginalisation, into the form of his
own glorious body. In other words, all that is wrong and unfair will be put
right. All that is broken will be restored. This is good news for all who
suffer, or who are broken and marginalised. But you have to take a leap of
faith.
Finally, in Luke’s
gospel, it is instructive to learn something about how to regard the enemy from
Christ, whose enemy is Herod, the puppet-king of the Roman occupation, who is
obviously so afraid of Christ’s teaching that he has put out a ‘hit’ on him.
Christ’s response to this news is quite extraordinary. Rather than go into
hiding, rather than gathering a militia to protect himself, what Christ does is
offer a lament over Jerusalem, a city divided against itself, a city that will
at once listen to a prophet’s preaching and honour a prophet’s office, but also,
in time, kill that prophet for speaking inconvenient or uncomfortable
words.Jesus himself, as indicated in
the final verses of this passage, will himself be welcomed by the Jerusalemites
as a prophet and even a messiah, but a week later be killed by those same
Jerusalemites. Here the enemy is within. Not the other, someone from another
group or tribe, ethnicity or religion. The enemy is your friend, your comrade,
your congregation, your synagogue, your church, your ethnic group. Those
closest to you and about whom you care the most. In the face of enemies such as
these, Christ teaches us simply to lament, which is an ancient way of naming
the evil and injustice of which we are capable, and then simply living, with
tears, in the truth of it.Here there is
no hint of revenge or strategizing towards getting the upper-hand. There is a
simple acceptance of the awful truth of the situation and a deep-down trust
that if anyone can make this better, it is certainly not ourselves. It is God
alone.
That’s kind’ve how I see
the situation here in the colony known as ‘Australia’ as well. I long ago
abandoned all hope that we, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations,
could ever dig ourselves out of the hole we find ourselves in. We are too busy imitating
the coloniser by fighting with each other to present a united front. Although
the Uluru Statement from the Heart piques my interest. A deeply compromised and
conservative document, it yet represents the closest we have yet come to speaking
to our colonisers with one voice.
Certainly, there is
little political will towards justice from the coloniser, at least insofar as
the political class can be said to represent the will of the people.
Colonisers, and particularly the mining, forestry and agricultural companies
that continue to enjoy extraordinary levels of subsidised support from the taxpayer,
benefit enormously from our dispossession and marginalisation. And they
continue to destroy, wound, and maim country in order to make their squillions.
In my estimation, we have little to look forward to from these sectors but an
endless charitable paternalism, breadcrumbs from the imperial table.
What can the person of
faith do, then, except to be as honest and as truthful as one can be, to name
what is actually the case in the presence of the colonising powers, to lament that
it is so, and place oneself and one’s people in God’s merciful hands? In this
there is a hope, against all evidence to the contrary, that our bodies of
humiliation will one day be transformed into bodies of glory. How that might
come to be remains, for me at least, a profound mystery. But without the leap
of faith which Christian called ‘resurrection faith’ there is nothing to look
forward to at all. The last enemy, after all, is death.And its sting is fierce. Unless . . .unless God is for us, and not against us.
Notes roughly approximating a homily delivered at Koonung Heights Uniting Church on the 2nd Sunday of Lent, 2022. The live homily can be found here.
Today’s texts can be read as something of a manifesto for the following of Christ, written not in the doctrinal formulas that will characterise later centuries, but in resonant images and metaphors taken from the non-human world.
Isaiah, for example, writes to the Hebrew survivors of the exile in Babylon, promising them that the word of the Lord will be for them like rain or snow that waters the earth and makes it fruitful. Just as there is joy when seed is plentiful and the baker is able to make bread in abundance, so the word of the Lord will bring joy and peace to the exiles. On the other side of all the devastation they have endured, the returning exiles will be like strong trees, Cyprus and myrtle, a sign that God’s favour is with them.
The psalmist also speaks about joy, about the making of glad music as a response to the good and faithful work of God in his or her community. The psalmist rejoices in the strength she or he has received from the Lord, again invoking the image of a large and fruitful tree, this time a palm or a cedar, which reminds the poet of the steadfast support of God and the joy it inspires.
Even the resurrection discourse from Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians can be read as a riff or midrash on the world of trees and their fruitfulness. The language of sleeping and then rising was common parlance in the ancient near east for the moment when a seed that has lain dormant in the earth crack open and put out a shoot, rising miraculously out of the earth to reach towards the heavens and life. What was dead, is now alive.
There are few poets who have explore this connection between trees and resurrection more wonderfully well than Rainer Maria Rilke, who writes:
I find you, Lord, in all Things and in all my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life; as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.
The wondrous game that power plays with Things is to move in such submission through the world: groping in roots and growing thick in trunks and in treetops like a rising from the dead.
Wonderful stuff, hey, and far more joyful in its expression than the Nicene Creed! So, if we take Rilke and St Paul and the Psalmist and Isaiah all together, what are they saying? What is their advice, their message for believers, their manifesto? Just this, I think: God is steadfast and faithful; God has your back. So, rejoice and be glad! Put your roots deep in God and reach for the heavens with the life that God so richly shares. Good advice for the baptised, I would say. Good advice for anyone!
Rilke’s paradoxical inference that the power of God moves with a certain ‘submission’ through the world gives us occasion, though, to turn to our gospel reading, which has a decidedly different mood.
Luke is concerned with those in his community whose joyful discipleship has turned sour and become just that little bit self-serving and even hypocritical. So, if, like me, you’ve ever been guilty of proclaiming certain ideals, but not living up to them in real life, wake up! This bit is for you!
Luke first expresses concern that some of the younger, less experienced, disciples in his congregation are getting a bit uppity with regard to their older, more experienced, teachers. Note that he is not talking about differences in age here, necessarily, but rather about experience or inexperience with living the faith. The problem here is that an inexperienced believer, who is full of enthusiasm and what my Baptist forebears called ‘the joy of the Lord’, can quickly come to the conclusion that they see all things and know all things and that their more cautious and discerning pastors are just that bit too lax when it comes to courage, faith or holiness. That was me, in my teens and twenties. A puffed-up, blustery, self-serving version of a Christian who couldn’t even see that it was so because I had a log in my eye, a log created through that fatal combination of genuine smarts and very low self-esteem that seems to afflict a great many of our young people.
Immature Christians are, very often, like Luke’s builder, who heard something of Christ’s words but screened out the bits that didn’t suit her, the bits that seemed obscure or difficult. This builder raises a splendid house near a river but is in too much of a hurry to adequately prepare the foundations. When the river rises, unsurprisingly, the house is swept away. The immature Christian can spout the words but has neglected that crucial foundation of humility and loving action that makes it real. As a young Christian, I could have learned a lot from those around me, those who had lived the faith ‘through many dangers, toils and snares,’ as the hymn puts it. But I was in too much of a hurry. Especially to judge my elders by standards that I wasn’t able to live up to myself.
Now I want to shift focus, somewhat, and propose that it is not only inexperienced disciples that can be quick to judge. It is also countries and nations.
We have all been shocked, his week, by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Putin apparently believes that Ukraine is part of an ancient Russian empire and part of the God-given domain of the Russian Orthodox Church. He has also spoken publicly about his desire to purge the Ukrainian government of what he calls its ‘evil’, 'Nazi' tendencies. Such language, and such action, shocks us. And we imagine that we are better than he is, better than the Russians, more civilized. Even more Christian.
But let me remind you of some inconvenient truths. Many of the British who invaded this country in the first half of the 19th century cited the wickedness of Aboriginal leaders and the 'God-given' or 'promised' character of this land as sufficient reason for what they did. The first Anglican bishop appointed to the colony, WG Broughton, was prominent amongst those who justified the mass killings of our people, the removal of survivors to internment camps, and the annexation of our lands, in precisely these terms.
How, then, can the beneficiaries of that invasion and that annexation condemn the Russians for what they are doing? The nation subsequently named ‘Australia’, was founded on exactly the same imperialist theology, and exactly the same imperialist actions. So, we can condemn Russia, certainly, but not without hypocrisy.
What does it mean to be spiritually mature about these things, whether that maturity is sought as an individual or as a nation? I put it to you that the mature person, the mature nation, is not one which believes that they are righteous, good or just, and can therefore judge their neighbours from an unassailably great height. The mature person, the mature nation, is one who knows themselves to be a sinner – mired in unrighteousness, evil, injustice – and therefore of equal standing with everyone else before the God who knows and judges us all. The mature person or nation, the mature Christian, is one who knows that not one of us has a snowball’s chance in hell apart from the mercy show us in Christ, and that all we are called to do in this world is to live in the truth, and to treat our fellow sinners with mercy.
For the other message we hear in the metaphors about trees which grow toward the heavens, with joy and peace in their woody hearts, is that it is God who causes them to grow and gives them the resources they need to do so. They do not grow on their own, from their own ingenuity or wealth or moral rectitude, as it were. Human beings are like trees. We grow because of God’s favour. We thrive because we are loved and forgiven and loved again. So let us not condemn the Russians any more than God does. Let the power we are given move through the world by the way not of an imperial-styled mission, but of a cross-shaped ‘submission’. Let us speak the truth in love: not least about our own shortcomings! And, in prayer and action, both, let us cast ourselves and our world, entirely, upon the love and mercy of God.
Garry Deverell
8th Sunday after Epiphany, St Paul's Cathedral, Naarm/Melbourne
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.
Today the PM lectured Indigenous people on how we should respond to Rudd's 14 year old apology to the stolen generations. According to the PM it was hard to say 'sorry' but it is harder to say 'I forgive you'. Still, that is what Indigenous people ought to do, according to the PM. Forgive.
I'm not sure where the PM learned his Christian doctrine, but I feel he has failed to grasp the heart of the matter. First, forgiveness is something that can only be given freely and in spite of all reasonable expectation. It cannot be commanded or coerced from traumatised and wronged victims. A coerced act of forgiveness is not forgiveness. It is a contractual exchange in which one party surrenders the truth in order to buy favour from a far more powerful patron. Nothing gracious about that.
A second observation is that the PM's doctrine of forgiveness seems to have skipped a fairly crucial step, a step we Anglicans call 'repentance and amendment of life' on the part of those who perpetuate the wrongs and therefore create victims. Repentance cannot be reduced to saying sorry. Repentance requires doing whatever it is possible to do to unweave the injustice committed, to give back what was stolen, to bind up the wounds, to restore what was broken. Now, obviously, not all can be restored. Not all can be healed. Not all can be repaired. Not in this lifetime, anyway. But repentance requires that everything that can be done, is done. Without this desire and this real, concrete, action, sorry is just a word. A word that fails to become incarnate, to take flesh, to inhabit the real world.
The PM lacks compassion, that has been clear for a long time. But his theology, as a Christian who owns his faith in public, also requires considerable rennovation. To that end, I call on his government to honour the Uluru Statement from the Heart and establish a treaty commission to negotiate a path of true repentance with my people. If that path is finally fruitful, who knows? Forgiveness and reconciliation may indeed become possible. But, as things currently stand, we are a very long way from any such thing.
Job 23.1-9, 16-17; Psalm 22.1-15; Hebrews 4.12-16; Mark 10.17-31
The Book of Job has been called the most perplexing book in the bible, and with good reason. It is the story of a prosperous man who is righteous before Yahweh even to the point where God boasts about him before a gathering of the heavenly powers. We learn, in chapter 1, that an ‘Accuser’ approaches Yahweh to ask if Job would really be quite so virtuous if he lost God’s obvious favour and protection. I quote: ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has and he will curse you to your face’ (1.9-11). Yahweh’s response is to grant the Accuser power to destroy the man’s possessions, his health, and even his family. At first, Job righteously refuses to question God’s purposes in any of this. But very soon, as the injustice of it all seeps into his being, Job’s resolve falters. In all the words that flow from Job’s lips thereafter, in all the lament and heartache, the careful reader will discern that Job is searching for one thing, and one thing only: the opportunity to wrest from God a convincing explanation or reason for his suffering. But that reason, as much as God himself, eludes Job to the very end.
And that is where we find Job in the lection for today. Searching for an elusive God. ‘Oh that I knew where to find him,’ says Job. ‘I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me . . . There an upright person could reason with God, and I would be acquitted forever by my judge.’ Note that the primary cause of Job’s distress at this point is not so much his suffering in itself, but rather the incomprehensibility of that suffering, the lack of an understandable story or framework in which his pain might be placed, and therefore begin to make sense. Note also Job’s deeply held belief and expectation that God should provide such a framework, that God ought to guarantee and assure the meaningfulness of Job’s apparently innocent suffering. It is crucial that we understand this point. The naked suffering of Job, his loss and his shame, are terrible enough. But what distresses the man even more is the fact that the God he desires, a God who gives meaning to suffering, refuses to present himself. I quote again: ‘If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.’
This distress of Job is repeated and finds its echo in the lament of Psalm 22: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.’ Like Job, the Psalmist is suffering, this time at the hands of evil men. Yet, as with Job, his greatest pain is not physical, but existential. Why doesn’t the God of Israel, the God who saved Israel from slavery in Egypt, now save this servant of his, a servant God has always looked out for, even from birth? Here, again, we discover that the suffering body also initiates a suffering of the mind and soul, a veritable crisis in human meaning as such. And God, who is supposed to guarantee the ultimate meaningfulness of things, again presents as one strangely absent or indifferent.
Now, this is all too familiar, is it not? Most of us, I know, have faced exactly these questions. Some of us are perhaps facing them right now. If God is a God of love, why does God leave us on our own at times of pain and suffering? If God is a God of justice, why do the apparently innocent suffer, even the most vulnerable, who are unable to protect themselves? Any way one might look at them, such questions are revealed as desperate enquiries into the ultimate coherence or meaning of our human lives. And we ask them of God, because we expect and believe that God is one who, in the final analysis, is able to undergird and support the meaning-structures we work with. In that context, what I am about to say to you will probably sound like bad news, very bad news. But it isn’t really, and I hope to show how that might be so in a just a moment. For now, allow me to state what I have to say nakedly, as it were: According to the Gospel of Jesus, God does not guarantee the meaningfulness of our lives. Let me repeat that, in case you missed it. According to the gospel of Jesus, God does not guarantee the meaningfulness of our lives.
What is meaning anyway? Or, to put things a little differently, how is meaning made? Meaning, I suggest, is that sense one has of there being a fundamental coherence between what is happening with oneself and what is happening with the rest of reality. It is the capacity for seeing that one’s life is recognisably part of a more expansive schema, story or history which itself presents as ultimately meaningful. If the story as a whole makes sense, and I can find my own role or place within it, then my own life can make sense as well. Christianity is often said to be a kind of super-story in which all of us have a meaningful role. Because each human being is loved by a God who is big enough, and powerful enough, to guarantee that the story will have a happy conclusion, then every single life engaged by that story is also guaranteed with regards to its own meaningfulness, even if there are tragic or perplexing moments to be negotiated as the plot marches towards its ultimate conclusion.
Now, while I agree that a sense of narrative coherence is ordinarily crucial to both our sense of meaning and to our mental health, I must confess to being troubled by the theology so often invoked to support such a stance. Namely, that God is the guarantee of human meaning. For this is a theology which the bible itself cannot support. We have seen, already, how both Job and the Psalmist desired such a God, a God who would eventually present himself as the foundation upon which their suffering would become meaningful, the ultimate guarantee that their suffering would contribute towards some higher or nobler end. But we have also seen how neither text is able to deliver what its protangonists longed for. In the Psalm, while God indeed shows up at the end as a saviour and liberator, it is certainly not explained how that God meaningfully coheres with the absent and silent God of earlier experience. In Job, even though the opening chapters set the reader up to expect that God will eventually explain to Job that his suffering was a test of character, no such explanation takes place. When God arrives on the scene, it is certainly not to explain, but rather to question Job’s desire for a God who explains.
Further evidence for the point I am making is plentiful in the gospels, although it usually takes a more positive form. This is where the apparently bad news begins to look like good news. Take today’s gospel, for example, where Jesus proclaims that while, from a human point of view, it is indeed impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, such a thing is not impossible for God. Those who read this passage for ammunition against the rich (I am, myself, one who is constantly looking for such ammunition) are of course missing the point entirely. The young man who turns away because he cannot give what he has to the poor and follow Jesus is not condemned by the evangelist, but rather held before us as an example of that person whom God may choose to save against all rhyme or reason of human justice. Do you see the connecting theme, here, with Job and the Psalm? In all three cases, human beings have a view of how things should work in the world. They have a system of ethics which says that there are bad people who should suffer, and there are innocent people who should not suffer. And in each case, God or his representative is called upon to guarantee that the ethical system, so established, will accomplish what it was designed to do: to punish the guilty and make them suffer; and to vindicate the righteous cause of the innocent against their foes. In each case, God is called upon because God is believed to be the author and origin of the story in which these human beings live, and move, and have their being.
I put it to you, however, that each of these stories shows us only that God is not the author or origin, and certainly not the guarantor of any of our stories, whether they be personal beliefs, legal conventions, or even our most deeply believed religious myths. Because they are not God’s stories, but ours. And that, I think, makes the apparently bad news sound rather better, as the gospel reading clearly shows us! Because none of us have a handle on God, because none of us can call on God to guarantee our own agendas in the world, God is free to treat people differently than we ourselves would. Very differently. God is free, for example, to treat those we would call ‘sinners’ like saints. God is free to welcome those whom we would call ‘shameful’ or ‘ugly’ into the company of the honourable or beautiful. God is free to make many who are running last in the rat-race, first, and many who are running first, last. Doesn’t that fit our experience of God? Isn’t it true that God often says ‘no’ to us when we are sure it should be ‘yes,’ and says ‘yes’ to us when we are sure it should be ‘no’? The good news of the gospel is that God’s ways are not our ways, that God does not do for us according to what we either deserve or expect. In this perspective, the story of Job takes on a new spin. One can then see that Job’s prosperity was a gift in the first place, and when it is returned to him twofold, at the end of his story, this was not because he had virtuously passed a test of character. His second round of prosperity is like the first. Undeserved. A gift, pure and simple. Without reason or foundation.
There is a single word that sums up all this beautifully divine unreasonableness, and it is a suitably beautiful word: Grace! Grace is the opposite of karma, that most ancient and persistent of human laws which proclaims that we get what we deserve. We do not get what we deserve, and thank Christ we don’t! Grace, as Bono from U2 says, grace ‘travels outside of karma’. Grace finds beauty and goodness where we see only ugliness and evil. Grace grants redemption where no redemption seems possible. Grace, as Eberhard Jüngel has written, is the bountiful surplus of possibility over inevitability. Some of you will recall that classic scene in the first Matrix movie where Smith, the agent of the Matrix, has Neo Anderson, the messianic figure, in a headlock. A train approaches, and Smith intends to throw Neo onto the tracks to finish him off. ‘You hear that, Mr. Anderson?’ asks Smith, ‘That is the sound of inevitability’. At the last moment, Neo throws himself clear, though it seems impossible that he should do so, and it is Smith who is collected by the train. There is a parable in this for any who have the eyes to see! The Matrix is our myths, those stories which tell us how things work, what is necessary and inevitable, and how we shall all get what is coming to us. But the good news is this: that the Son of Man has come to shatter all of that, to proclaim the unreasonable freedom of God to save those whom the world would condemn, and to make all that seems impossible to us, very, very possible indeed.
Earlier this week a friend shared with a me a report that is to be considered at the Synod of the Melbourne Anglican diocese later in October. It can be found in the booklet 'Part-B-Final.pdf' on the Synod website, and runs from pages 22-25. It is titled 'Next Steps for Reconciliation' and it is signed by Bishop Kate Prowd in her capacity as the 'Chair, Reconciliation Action Committee'. The report is significant because it represents the diocese's first and only response to the motion Glenn Loughrey and I successfully put to the Synod meeting in October 2019. That motion read:
This synod requests
That Archbishop in Council make a considered formal response to: (a) the review of the diocesan Reconciliation Action Plan tabled by the RAP Working Group on Feb 20, 2018; and (b) the Statement to Provincial Leadership tabled by the Aboriginal Council of the Anglican Province of Victoria in November, 2018.
That Archbishop in Council make an interim report of its responses by electronic communication to all Synod members by May 31, 2020, to be followed by a full report of its responses to the Diocesan Synod of 2020.
The documents our motion referred to, along with the details and rationale for that motion, can be found here. My speech to the Synod at that time can be found here.
Glenn and I were forced to bring this motion to the floor of Synod because the Archbishop had, to date, made no response to either the review of the Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) tabled by his own RAP committee or the subsequently offered Statement to Provincial Leadership tabled by the Aboriginal Council of the Anglican Province of Victoria (ACAPV). These documents, each in their own way, invited both Diocese and Province into a dialogue with the Aboriginal clergy of our church about ways to give concrete and practical form to the notion of 'reconciliation'.
After the motion was passed, very little seemed to happen. Two months after the date when Archbishop-in-Council was supposed to have made an interim report to Synod members about progress on the motion, the members of the Archbishop's RAP Group were asked by Ken Hutton (the Archbishop's EA) to make some clarifying remarks as part of the preparation for a prospective AiC report on the matter. Glenn and I did so in writing, but heard nothing more until an ad clerum appeared from the Archbishop in May of this year advising that 'Our diocese is reframing its action plan for reconciliation under the leadership of Bishop Kate Prowd' and inviting parishes who are interested to join in the work of a newly established RAP Working Group of Archbishop in Council.
I've recently been in touch with the seven other members of the previous RAP Group. Of those who chose to respond, only one person seemed to have known beforehand that a new RAP Working Group was being established. No one from the Archbishop's office or his Council has, in the meantime, been in touch to advise us on what the plan is. We are currently seeking clarity on that. The new report to Synod appears to imply that the old RAP Group is being replaced.
So that is some of the background.
But now I'd like to make some specific observations about this new report, prepared by Bishop Prowd for the October 2021 Synod.
First, the positives. I affirm the decision of Archbishop in Council to set up a dedicated Working Group to progress the cause of reconciliation. I affirm the decision to set up conversations with Indigenous consultants, traditional owners, the Yoo-rrook Justice Commission and with Bishop Chris McLeod (Aboriginal Bishop of the Anglican Church in Australia). I affirm the decision to work on an 'Indigenous leadership and advisory structure to progress reconciliation'. I affirm the decision to more closely align activities in this area with the diocesan Visions and Directions strategy, particulary when it comes to transparency of communication and accountability.
If any of this issues in reparations and the return of stolen land, the elevation of Indigenous voices and perspectives, and greater attention being given to our status as First Peoples in the whole business of the church, I will obviously support the Diocese in what it claims to be trying to do.
For all that, I find it very difficult to believe that our diocesan leadership has any real care for our people or really wants to work towards something resembling justice. I say that because at no stage in the past four years has anyone from the Episcopate or Archbishop-in-Council or Provincial Council troubled to pick up the phone, or send a letter or email, or in any other way initiate a meaningful dialogue with the church's own Indigenous people about what we think, feel or pray for. On two occasions Glenn and I were able to speak briefly to the Archbishop about some of the written proposals we had already tabled as part of our work with the RAP Group and the ACAPV. On both occasions it was made very clear that what we had proposed was unacceptable and that no more correspondence would be entered into about those matters. So there was no dialogue. There was simply a laying down of the law by the Archbishop and a call to compliance. This has been the pattern for the past four years. Either a refusal to talk with us, or rebukes from the Archbishop.
From where we stand, therefore, it is actually very difficult to see the proposed initiatives as anything other than a public relations exercise. The church wants to look good in public, and to be seen to be doing the right thing. It claims to be 'open to further discussion.' All the while it continues to ignore, lecture and exploit its own Indigenous people, just as colonisers have done since they first arrived. 'By their fruit you will know them' (Matt 7.16). We see no fruit. What would good fruit look like? It would look like the measures we, as Aboriginal clergy of this province, have put on the table for consideration.
It is not surprising, then, that the diocese has no Indigenous candidates for Holy Orders. This is not the kind of church in which Indigenous people, least of all clergy, will be valued.
I sincerely hope that I will be proven spectacularly wrong about all this. But, in speaking with some of our older, now partly retired, Aboriginal clergy, the disrespect evident in current ecclesial leadership is completely consistent with the disrespect of those who led us in the past. We do not feel, therefore, that we can allow ourselves the luxury of hope.
All of which fills me with a deep, deep sadness about how far the church has strayed from the call of Jesus to love one another, especially the last and the least.
And now a few final comments for the sake of the public record.
Glenn did not know that his report to the diocese would be incoroporated into the 'Next Steps in Reconciliation' document from Bishop Prowd. He feels that this incorporation might be read as evidence that he is in lock-step with the rest of the report. He is not.
The Mullum Mullum Indigenous Gathering Place was puchased from the church with more than 5 million dollars of government money. Glenn and I had strongly suggested that the diocese simply hand it back as an appropriate act of reparation for past acts of thievery.
The primary reason why the ACAPV has not met for some time has little to do with the pandemic. Rather, the Council was set up as a body that might dialogue with the Provincial Council and Diocesan Bishop's Councils about Indigenous matters in reponse to our written invitation. We have not yet received a response from any of these bodies indicating that they wish to commence a meaningful dialogue. Once we get a 'yes, we'd like to dialogue' from one or more of these bodies, there will be a reason to meet.
Bishop Prowd implies, in her report, that I have 'left the diocese'. I have not. I am a licensed priest of the diocese. I live in the diocese, I work in the diocese, and I worship in the diocese. I have not gone anywhere.
