Living out the teachings of Jesus in Australia - and, in particular, the Anglican parish of Gosford

Father Rod Bowers is a bit of a stand-out within the Anglican Church in Australia.  His fame has grown on social media with his use of the noticeboard at the Anglican Church of Gosford. Father Rod posts pithy sayings on the church noticeboad, photographs them and everyone sees them on Facebook.  Most - but not all - relate to current affairs.  With some of these, Father Rod points out the contrast with the teachings of Jesus.  However, as you can see from the picture above of the current (as this post is written) header on the parish Facebook site, Father Rod has become quite blunt indeed on his assessment of this nation's matters of governance. 

Picture above is from here

Here is the latest noticeboard offering from Father Rod ...

 

(for those who haven't heard what Australia's Prime Minister

has been saying this week - this is a reference to the PM's

talk of TEAM AUSTRALIA)

Lives given for others : Stations of the Cross - Of gods and men

Last evening about a dozen or so people gathered in Saint Paul's Anglican Church in Ballarat at 5.30 pm for a Lenten evening.

We began with the ancient Christian meditation on the last hours of Jesus, The Stations of the Cross.  Last night, the experience had added flavour. As well as the traditional form of meditation, the words of Julian of Norwich were added.  These words come from her visions recorded in Revelations of Divine Love.  This way of 'doing' The Stations was most helpful and enlarging. Picture at left from here.


After The Stations, we had a shared meal at The Parish Centre followed by a movie.

The movie was something very special - Of gods and men. 

The movie is based on the events leading up to and surrounding the deaths of seven Trappist monks, men of the Cistercian order, in Algeria in 1996.  These men were of the same religious order as the well-known Thomas Merton.  The film is beautiful, reflective, much awarded and should be accompanied by a box of tissues.  For a taste, please watch the trailer below.

The various characters depicted were interesting - but none more so than the leader of this little band of men living in the shadow of the Atlas Mountains, Christian de Cherge. Christian's leadership and legacy demonstrate the kinship that can be found among the people called Christians and the people called Muslims.  

In the movie, we see - without explanation - Christian writing a letter and putting it in an envelope and sitting it on his desk.  This was duly found following his capture and death and is known as his "Last Testament".......

Taken from First Things -

If it should happen one day—and it could be today—that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country. I ask them to accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure. I ask them to pray for me: for how could I be found worthy of such an offering? I ask them to be able to associate such a death with the many other deaths that were just as violent, but forgotten through indifference and anonymity.

My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood. I have lived long enough to know that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, even in that which would strike me blindly. I should like, when the time comes, to have a clear space which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God and of all my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.

I could not desire such a death. It seems to me important to state this. I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice if this people I love were to be accused indiscriminately of my murder. It would be to pay too dearly for what will, perhaps, be called “the grace of martyrdom,” to owe it to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam. I know the scorn with which Algerians as a whole can be regarded. I know also the caricature of Islam which a certain kind of Islamism encourages. It is too easy to give oneself a good conscience by identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideologies of the extremists. For me, Algeria and Islam are something different; they are a body and a soul. I have proclaimed this often enough, I believe, in the sure knowledge of what I have received in Algeria, in the respect of believing Muslims”finding there so often that true strand of the Gospel I learned at my mother’s knee, my very first Church.

My death, clearly, will appear to justify those who hastily judged me naive or idealistic: “Let him tell us now what he thinks of it!” But these people must realize that my most avid curiosity will then be satisfied. This is what I shall be able to do, if God wills”immerse my gaze in that of the Father, to contemplate with him his children of Islam just as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of his Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness, delighting in the differences.

For this life given up, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God who seems to have wished it entirely for the sake of that joy in everything and in spite of everything. In this “thank you,” which is said for everything in my life from now on, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you my friends of this place, along with my mother and father, my brothers and sisters and their families the hundredfold granted as was promised!

And you also, the friend of my final moment, who would not be aware of what you were doing. Yes, for you also I wish this “thank you”—and this adieu—to commend you to the God whose face I see in yours.

And may we find each other, happy “good thieves,” in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both. Amen.

Translated by the Monks of Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, Leicester, England.

 

The Archbishop of Canterbury: a Christmas message about answering, responding and praying The Prayer Book

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Archbishop Rowan Williams' sermon for Christmas Day 2011

When the first Christians read – or more probably heard – the opening words of John's gospel, they would have understood straight away quite a lot more than we do. They would have remembered, many of them, that in Hebrew 'word' and 'thing' are the same, and they would all have known that in Greek the word used has a huge range of meaning – at the simplest level, just something said; but also a pattern, a rationale, as we might say, even the entire structure of the universe seen as something that makes sense to us, the structure that holds things together and makes it possible for us to think.

Against this background, we can get a glimpse of just what is being said about Jesus. His life is what God says and what God does; it is the life in which things hold together; it is because of the life that lives in him that we can think. Jesus is the place where all reality is focused, brought to a point. Here is where we can see as nowhere else what connects all reality – all human experience and all natural laws. Edward Elgar famously said about his Enigma Variations that they were all based on a tune that everyone knew – and no-one has ever worked out what he meant. But John's gospel declares that the almost infinite variety of the life we encounter is all variations on the theme that is stated in one single clear musical line, one melody, in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. 'In him was life, and the life was the light of men.'

But this shouldn't make us forget entirely the underlying image. The life that lives in Jesus, the everlasting divine agency that is uniquely embodied in him, is like something that is said – a word addressed to us. Because, like any word addressed to us, it demands a response. And the gospel goes on at once to tell us that the expected response was not forthcoming. Before we have even got to Christmas in the words of the gospel we are taken to Good Friday, and to the painful truth that the coming of Jesus splits the world into those who respond and those who don't. Once the word is spoken in the world, there is no way back. Your response to it, says the gospel again and again, is what shows who and what you really are, what is deepest in you, what means most. What we say or do in our response to Jesus is our way of discovering for ourselves and showing to one another what is real in and for us. Like the other gospel writers, John hints very strongly that some people respond deeply and truthfully to Jesus without fully knowing who he is or what exactly they are doing in responding to him; this is not a recipe for tight religious exclusivism. But the truth is still an uncompromising one: if you cannot or will not respond, you are walking away from reality into a realm of trackless fogbound falsehood.

There is the question we cannot ignore. It's been well said that the first question we hear in the Bible is not humanity's question to God but God's question to us, God walking in the cool of the evening in the Garden of Eden, looking for Adam and Eve who are trying to hide from him. 'Adam, where are you?' The life of Jesus is that question translated into an actual human life, into the conversations and encounters of a flesh and blood human being like all others – except that when people meet him they will say, like the woman who talks with him at the well of Samaria, 'Here is a man who told me everything I ever did.' Very near the heart of Christian faith and practice is this encounter with God's questions, 'who are you, where are you?' Are you on the side of the life that lives in Jesus, the life of grace and truth, of unstinting generosity and unsparing honesty, the only life that gives life to others? Or are you on your own side, on the side of disconnection, rivalry, the hoarding of gifts, the obsession with control? To answer that you're on the side of life doesn't mean for a moment that you can now relax into a fuzzy philosophy of 'life-affirming' comfort. On the contrary: it means you are willing to face everything within you that is cheap, fearful, untruthful and evasive, and let the light shine on it. Like Peter in the very last chapter of John's gospel, we can only say that we are trying to love the truth that is in Jesus, even as we acknowledge all we have done that is contrary to his spirit. And we say this because we trust that we are loved by this unfathomable mystery who comes to us in the shape of a newborn child, 'full of grace and truth'.

Finding words to respond to the Word made flesh is and has always been one of the most demanding things human beings can do. Don't believe for a moment that religious language is easier or vaguer than the rest of our language. It's more like the exact opposite: think of St John writing his gospel, crafting the slow, sometimes repetitive pace of a narrative that allows Jesus to change the perspective inch by inch as a conversation unfolds. Or of St Paul, losing his way in his sentences, floundering in metaphors as he struggles to find the words for something so new that there are no precedents for talking about it. Or any number of the great poets and contemplatives of the Christian centuries. It isn't surprising if we need other people's words a lot of the time; and it's of great importance that we have words to hand that have been used by others in lives that obviously have depth and integrity. That's where the language of our shared worship becomes so important.

This coming year we celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer. It has shaped the minds and hearts of millions; and it has done so partly because it has never been a book for individuals alone. It is common prayer, prayer that is shared. In its origins, it was meant to be – and we may well be startled by the ambition of this – a book that defined what a whole society said to God together. If the question 'where are you?' or 'who are you?' were being asked, not only individual citizens of Britain but the whole social order could have replied, 'Here we are, speaking together – to recognize our failures and our ideals, to recognize that the story of the Bible is our story, to ask together for strength to live and act together in faithfulness, fairness, pity and generosity.' If you thumb through the Prayer Book, you may be surprised at how much there is that takes for granted a very clear picture of how we behave with each other. Yes, of course, much of this language feels dated – we don't live in the unselfconscious world of social hierarchy that we meet here. But before we draw the easy and cynical conclusion that the Prayer Book is about social control by the ruling classes, we need to ponder the uncompromising way in which those same ruling classes are reminded of what their power is for, from the monarch downwards. And the almost forgotten words of the Long Exhortation in the Communion Service, telling people what questions they should ask themselves before coming to the Sacrament, show a keen critical awareness of the new economic order that, in the mid sixteenth century, was piling up assets of land and property in the hands of a smaller and smaller elite.

The Prayer Book is a treasury of words and phrases that are still for countless English-speaking people the nearest you can come to an adequate language for the mysteries of faith. It gives us words that say where and who we are before God: 'we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep', 'we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table', but also, 'we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs through hope of the everlasting kingdom'. It gives us words for God that hold on to the paradoxes we can't avoid: 'God... who art always more ready to hear than we to pray,' 'who declarest thy almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity, 'whose property is always to have mercy.' A treasury of words for God – but also a source of vision for an entire society: 'Give us grace seriously to lay heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions'; 'If ye shall perceive your offences to be such as are not only against God but also against your neighbours; then ye shall reconcile yourselves unto them; being ready to make restitution'.

The world has changed, the very rhythms of our speech have changed, our society is irreversibly more plural, and we have – with varying degrees of reluctance – found other and usually less resonant ways of talking to God and identifying who we are in his presence. If we used only the Prayer Book these days we'd risk confusing the strangeness of the mysteries of faith with the strangeness of antique and lovely language. But we're much the poorer for forgetting it and pushing it to the margins as much as we often do in the Church. And it is crucial to remember the point about the Prayer Book as something for a whole society, binding together our obligations to God and to one another, in a dense interweaving of love and duty joyfully performed.

The Prayer Book was once the way our society found words to respond to the Word, to say who and where they were in answer to God's question. Those who prayed the Prayer Book, remember, included those who abolished the slave trade and put an end to child labour, because of what they had learned in this book and in their Bibles about the honour of God and of God's children. They knew their story; they knew how to give an answer for themselves, how to join up the muddle of their experience in a coherent pattern by relating it to the unchanging truth and grace of God. That's why the coming year's celebration is not about a museum piece.

The most pressing question we now face, we might well say, is who and where we are as a society. Bonds have been broken, trust abused and lost. Whether it is an urban rioter mindlessly burning down a small shop that serves his community, or a speculator turning his back on the question of who bears the ultimate cost for his acquisitive adventures in the virtual reality of today's financial world, the picture is of atoms spinning apart in the dark.

And into that dark the Word of God has entered, in love and judgment, and has not been overcome;
in the darkness the question sounds as clear as ever,
to each of us and to our church and our society:  
'Britain, where are you?' Where are the words we can use to answer? 

© Rowan Williams 2011

Tweets 1 - the Spirit of Wisdom

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Advent: liturgical, personal, a reality of life at various points in life

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This post is printed in full from Interrupting the Silence 

with kind permission of its author, Father Michael Marsh,

and gratitude from Miss Eagle.

“In Those Days….” – A Sermon on Mark 13:24-37, Advent 1B by marshmk The collect and readings for the First Sunday in Advent, Year B, may be found here. The following sermon focuses on Mark 13:24-37. “In those days….” So begins our entry into the Season of Advent. It sounds ominous and it is. Advent is not just a liturgical season of the church year. It is a reality of life. It happens in all sorts of ways. It comes at various points in life, not just the four or five weeks before Christmas. "In those days … the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” These are Jesus words to his disciples. The disciples have been admiring the temple and the large stones. They are impressed. Jesus, however, is telling them that change is coming. The temple of their life is coming down. If you have ever experienced significant change in your life, whether desired or dreaded, you know about “those days.” You know about Advent. You know what it is like to enter the darkness of change. All change, whether welcome or unwanted, brings some kind of loss. It may be the loss of a relationship, the loss of a loved one, the loss of what is comfortable, familiar, safe. Regardless, the world as we have known it has ended. The Advents of our lives set before us important questions. How will we find our way forward when the usual lights that illumined our path no longer shine? What do we do when it feels as if our world is falling apart? Where do we go when it seems as if darkness is our only companion and God is no where to be seen? The dark times of life are threshold moments. The temptation is to do something; to fix it, to ease the pain, to escape the uncertainly, and to get back to what used to be. The God of Advent does not allow that. We can never go back to the way it was before the lights went out. God does not undo our life. God redeems our life. Advent is not so much about the losses as it is about the hope and coming of what will be. That hope and coming is the Son of Man, Jesus the Christ. The presence of Christ is the ultimate answer to every prayer, to every light extinguishing loss, to every Advent of our life. Every time we tell the Advent story of our life we echo the prophet Isaiah’s cry, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down” (Is. 64:1 ). And God does. God is faithful. God strengthens us to the end. In the midst of our losses we lack nothing as we await the revealing of Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 1:7-9). The Advent times of life are times of waiting. They are liminal times. In Advent we live in between what was and what will be. We are neither here nor there. We are betwixt and between. They are times of transition and it is hard, sometimes even impossible, to see the way forward. If we allow them to the dark threshold places of life can draw us deeper into the divine mystery. They remind us that we do not know everything. We do not see all possibilities. We can neither predict nor control anything. We are not in charge. Advent challenges us to give up our usual sources of illumination, to let go of our habitual ways of knowing, and to question our typical ways of seeing. Advent invites us to receive the God who comes to us in the darkness of life. At some point our world falls apart, life changes, or the lights go out. More often than not we see this as the end. When these things happen, Jesus says, remember the fig tree. Read the signs correctly. When its branch becomes tender and it puts forth leaves you know summer is near. So also when the darkness overtakes your life know that the Son of Man is near. Christ’s presence, our healing, and salvation, are always taking place in the dark and messy parts of life. We have not and never will be abandoned to the darkness. “Be alert,” Jesus warns. He commands us to “Keep awake.” Darkness is not our enemy as much as is falling asleep. We fall asleep whenever fear controls or life, when hope gives way to despair, when busyness is equated with goodness, when entitlement replaces thanksgiving, when we choose what is comfortable rather than life-giving. Whenever we think our life is over, that darkness is our final reality, that we have been abandoned, or that loss and darkness are our only reality then we have fallen asleep. To often we allow the darkness to deceive us into believing there is nothing worth waiting or watching for. So we close our eyes. We fall asleep and we become part of the darkness. We refuse to see the One who is always coming to us. The danger in the darkness is that we do not give out eyes time to adjust. We do not trust our night vision. Night vision is not about the light around us but the light that is within us, a light that can never be extinguished. The Advents of our lives ask us to trust the Coming One more than the darkness. It means we must sit, listen, wait, watch. That is contrary to what most of the world believes and what our society rewards. We must show up every moment of our lives not just in spite of but because of the darkness. To show up and be present in the darkness of life is some of the hardest work we will ever do. Run from our darkness and we run from God. In the darkness of Advent we move slower, we listen more than we speak, we hold questions rather than answers. We wait expectantly but without specific expectations. Waiting in darkness is an act of faithfulness and surrender to the Coming One. Waiting becomes our prayer, a prayer that is and will be answered by God’s presence. Tell your Advent story; a story of change, loss, darkness. Then sit down. Be still. Be quiet. Listen. Wait. Watch. These are the practices of Advent. Why? Because God “works for those who wait for him” (Is. 64:4).

Crown Him with many crowns: the feast of Christ the King

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 Picture from here

The Feast of Christ the King has been my favourite feast of the whole year since I was a child.  Father Paul Butler (@RedRector) has tweeted the pew sheet for this Sunday.  You can download it from below.

Can I hear you singing along?

Anglo-Catholicism: is it out for the count?

Over at Khanya, my long-time internet friend (goes back further than blogs) Steve Hayes has written an excellent post about Anglo-Catholicism and its diminution if not yet complete disappearance.  I commend this post to Desert readers.  I have also commented on the post.

I believe it raises deep questions relating to history and culture.  Do we expect such a rise and decline of the expressions of faith?  Are we so tied to our culture that we can only express and respond to faith in contemporary ways that are condemned to rise and decline throughout human history?   

Many people of faith hold to a certain absolutism of key areas of faith in season and out of season.  Certain expressions of faith - take for example Desert Spirituality - never quite go out of fashion or season.  Sometimes, like in recent years, they become more widely known and practised and at other times such expressions gain the interest of only a few.  

These are just a few questions that could be discussed - and not least of these issues is that of mission: of the Christian community's Christ-given task to take the good news into the world and the response or lack of response our implementation of the mission might receive.  Comments welcome.

Bishop John Noble: New monasticism : Resources

DIARY DATE : TUESDAY 13 JULY : 7.30PM-9.30PM

INSTITUTE OF SPIRITUAL STUDIES

ST PETER'S EASTER HILL

MELBOURNE

Bishop John Noble

former Bishop of North Queensland

will speak on

The New Monasticism

Cost $15 - Concession $12

Monasticism is simultaneously ancient and wonderfully new in the Christian tradition. In recent times people have been responding to the call of the Spirit to live consecrated lives with others in new contexts.  Bishop John will help us to her something of this new movement and share our own experience and wisdom.

Related reading:  

  

New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today's Church 

 

 Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World: From Macintyre's After Virtue to a New Monasticism (New Monastic Library: Resources for Radical Discipleship) 

 

 Community of the Transfiguration: The Journey of a New Monastic Community

 

 The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time

Introductory Bibliography of the New Monasticism (Resources for a New Monasticism Series #1) (Resources for a New Monasticism, Volume #1)

The Wisdom of the Desert (Resources for a New Monasticism, Volume #3)

Further reading:

New monasticism

The Jesus Manifesto

The Mustard Seed House

Christian communities try "whole-life" faith 

Anglimergent - new monasticism - Anglican/Episcopal

Third Way - a blog by Karen Ward

 

Coal for breakfast?

There is a saying about us here in Australia:

If it moves shoot it.

If it stands still, mine it.

That saying probably came from our own droll sense of humour. This next one came from a marketing company:

Queensland. Beautiful one day. Perfect the next.

I've come up with another which expresses both sayings in one:

Queensland.

Beautiful one day.

Mined the next.

I am an expatriate Queenslander exiled and living in Melbourne. Many moons ago, I lived in Toowoomba on the Darling Downs. The Darling Downs and the neighbouring South Burnett region were ancestral homelands for one branch of the family tree: places like Pinelands, near Crows Nest; Bunya Mountains; Neumga near Nanango; Maidenwell; Cooyar (where my grandparents were the first to be married inthe Catholic Church there); MacLagan; Kingaroy. As you can no doubt guess, I came from farming stock at a time when most Australians living in urban areas had relatives back on the farm to whom they would go to for holidays.

The Darling Downs is a beautiful part of the world: a major granary and a major wool producer. Rich soils under cloudless blue skies for miles on end. The sort of place in which you wouldn't travel without picnic basket and thermos at the ready.

On my recent visit from Brisbane to Toowoomba, I didn't get out on to the Downs proper but the urban blight contaminating the landscape up through the Lockyer Valley to the Toowoomba Range made me wish I hadn't made the journey. When I left the Downs just over 30 years ago, the blight had started but it was minimal. Now it has sped up along Warrego Highway and the memories of rolling green paddocks made me want to weep.

Just as I want to weep when I see the video at the top of this blog. If we let this go irreparably to coal, what does this say about Australian society, Australian governments, Australian corporations. It says that we are after the quick buck taken from leasehold land, mining leases.

True, much of our pastoral and agricultural land was once taken the same way and those interests were not unlike miners insofar as they picked the most suitable country from which to "mine" its contribution to agricultural production. That sort of tenure has long since gone and there has been too much hard labour and sacrifice by men, women and children poured into winning a livelihood from the land to think to hard on the actual investment made.

We now live in a land of competing resources: mining -v- agriculture and both compete with urbanised communities for dwindling clean water resources. We are playing one resource off against another as if we can afford to play this game as long as all the balls stay up in the air.

Of course, the balls won't stay in the air. Governments will see to it that agricultural land is swallowed up to miners or land developers. As the video points out, we can't eat coal for breakfast. We can't drink clean water when it is no more because of our own carelessness and bad management. What a bequest to future generations.

Our friendly Network, Denis from The Nature of Robertson, has sent the following Statement from the Anglican, Catholic and Uniting Churches on the Darling Downs. Clearly, the churches are standing right where they should be: beside their people. Listen. Because, it is not only here that the battle is being fought. It is also being fought in the equally rich Liverpool Plains of NSW - and I am sure, dear Networkers, you will write and tell me of others facing similar impending catastrophes.

~~~~~~~~

A Statement of Concern Regarding Mining and Agriculture on the Darling Downs

The local leadership of the Anglican, Catholic and Uniting Churches on the Darling Downs have great concerns about the impact of some proposed mining activity on prime agricultural land. They support calls for a regional plan that would identify areas which could be mined and others which should be kept for sustainable agriculture and food production. Two areas in the region currently under consideration for coal mining are Felton and Haystack Plain.

Caring for creation is a strong part of the three Christian traditions. We believe that we are called to be wise stewards of the earth. In terms of our fragile planet we are facing an ecological crisis. Respect for nature and ecological responsibility are key parts of our faith.

Transformation to wise and sustainable use of the environment is at heart a spiritual matter. Environmental concern is a legitimate and necessary part of a Christian's response to God's loving provision for us. (Green by Grace A Report prepared for the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia 2004)

Experience shows that disregard for the environment always harms human coexistence, and vice versa. It becomes more and more evident that there is an inseparable link between peace with creation and peace. (Message of his HolinessPope Benedict XVI for the celebration of the World Day of Peace 1 January 2007)

We are concerned with the basic human rights of future generations and will urge the wise use of energy, the protection of the environment and the replenishment of the earth’s resources for their use and enjoyment. (Uniting Church, Statement to the Nation, 1977)

As communities of faith we stand in solidarity with those farmers who fear for their security and future way of life at this time. We also understand the contribution of mining and the generation of electricity in our region. We have a particular perspective on development which centres on the human person, the family and the community. When we consider future planning or development our primary question would be, “What is happening to the people?” rather than “What is happening to the economy?”

With the current world food shortage we believe it is important to protect land that has a history of sustainable food production. With a growing understanding about the impact of climate change we would also urge the Queensland State government to consider alternatives to coal mining in the Felton and Haystack Plain districts. These alternatives should be more sustainable and contribute more to the local community and economy.

We have concerns that the proposed coal mines will have an irreversible damaging impact on the soil and people of Haystack Plains and Felton. We would urge respectful and genuine dialogue between the resources and agricultural sector. For generations farmers in the Felton and Haystack Plains district have produced food for the wider Australian and international community. They have adapted their practises to ensure that future families can also live from and with the land. Our hope is that decisions made on the future use of these areas are based on the common good of all humanity.

Bishop Rob Nolan (Bishop of the Western Region, Anglican Diocese of Brisbane)

Bishop William Morris (Catholic Diocese of Toowoomba)

Sharon Kirk (Presbytery Minister Uniting Church in Australia Downs Presbytery)

God's Kingdom, Reign & Justice: Prison & Sentencing: Victims and the Oppressed

On Sunday, 25 November 2007, the Feast of Christ the King and the last Sunday in the Year of the Church, Jonathan Chambers - who heads Anglican Criminal Justice Chaplaincy in Victoria - delivered the following sermon at the Church of St Thomas, Upper Ferntree Gully.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Reign of God in Luke’s Gospel .
Feast of Christ the King 2007 UFTG
Nature of the Kingdom of God -What sort of Kingdom?

_______

Jesus’ Final Words to another human being before he died were to the Criminal beside him “….Today you will be with me in paradise”

The Kingdom of God is not something in the future- It’s NOW
“Today you will be with me in paradise”
Why would Luke finish this way?

What clue does it give us to the Nature of the Kingdom of God?

To understand the nature of this Kingdom, it is necessary to go back to Nazareth and the Jesus Manifesto, his campaign speech:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

And he rolled up the scroll,

gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.
The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.
Then he began to say to them,
Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

……“Today you will be with me in Paradise”
The Reign of God which Jesus declared and commenced with his ministry was about:
God’s Justice
Relief from poverty
Release to Captives
Recovery of sight to the Blind
Freedom for the Oppressed

In Luke, we see Jesus living out His Manifesto about the Reign of God - and what it looks like - in his life, ministry and teaching

Good News To The Poor
Magnificat
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

Beatitudes
Blessed are you who are poor,

for yours is the kingdom of God.
But woe to you who are rich,

for you have received your consolation

blessed are you who are hungry now,

for you will be filled.
Woe to you who are full now,

for you will be hungry.

And then there were:

The Rich Man and Lazarus
Zacchaeus – the rich man who shares his wealth. Salvation has come to your house Today

Jesus was concerned about the gap between Rich and Poor
Luke was concerned about the gap between rich and poor in the Christian Community for which he wrote his Gospel.

Look at:
Housing at Docklands and the High Rise Commission Flats of Fitzroy or Flemington
Median Household Income in Braybrook is $575 pw
Median Household Income in Kew is $1850
(Median Household Income in Upper Ferntree Gully [where St Thomas’s is] is $1277)
25% of Victoria's Prison intake comes from only 13/647 in Victoria

The Reign of God is about the rich like Zacchaeus sharing wealth with the poor; and including the socially disadvantaged through equal education, maternal health care, adequate housing, employment.

Hugh Mackay in yesterday's Age spoke of reclaiming egalitarianism- a fair go - which was part of our Australian culture only 15 years ago.

Release To The Captives
Jesus brought release and community inclusion from captivity of sin. He included the sinful woman who anointed his feet; release and inclusion to the Leper; release and inclusion to the sick woman bent over for eighteen years; release and inclusion of the hated Samaritan Leper who returned to thank him for healing.

In the Gospels, Jesus didn’t spring anybody from prison.
But in the Book of Acts, Luke records four occasions when early Christians were released from prison by Divine intervention. Demonstrating God did indeed come “to set the prisoners free”

“Holding people captive” is a foundation of our Criminal Justice system in Victoria in the hope that paying people back with deprivation of liberty will deter them and others from offending again.
But 62% of those who go to prison will return.
The payback system.

How does it sit with Jesus command to love your enemies and do good to those who hate you?
If someone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.

In the story of the Prodigal Son, contrast the response of the Loving Father and the Older Son to the Prodigal. We are challenged and overwhelmed by the generosity of the Father who doesn’t “give the prodigal what he deserves”

The wisdom of God’s Reign as shown in this story is demonstrated in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa following apartheid.
“Healing through truth telling”.

Jesus shows the futility of inflicting more harm in order to “pay the price for the harm done”
Walter Wink says:
“As a society we run the risk in endeavouring to fight evil with evil – of becoming the very evil that we hate”.

God’s Reign and Kingdom looks to the future and aims to restore and repair the harm done. It builds up. It doesn’t beat people into submission.


Recovery Of Sight To The Blind
I discovered that The Blind in Luke’s Gospel were not the physically blind - whom Jesus healed - nor the spiritually blind who regained sight like Zacchaeus.

The Blind were Scribes and Pharisees who always complained about anything Jesus did to help anybody. “Tut tutting”. They are like Older Brother who complains that the son isn’t getting what he deserves, or like the Pharisees who complained that Jesus was breaking the rules.

In Victoria, The Blind - as far as the criminal justice system is concerned - are the Community in general. Because what goes on in prisons is hidden, we don’t know – other than what the press tells us. Or what the Ombudsman reports, as we saw this week.

The Press, generally, only report newsworthy stories- ones that will reinforce peoples’ beliefs and, particularly, prejudices. They don’t portray people as someone’s son or daughter, but dehumanise them stereotyping them as “Monsters” and defining them by the crime.
Murderer, Rapist, Paedophile, Thief.
Truly dangerous serial offenders = 2%.
The rest are tarred with same brush.

So the public are blind to the true story - and so there are calls for tougher sentences and longer jail terms.

• Academic studies by psychologists, criminologists and sociologists point to the futility of locking people up.
• Anyone who works in the prison system agrees it is counter productive and makes people worse.
• Politicians associated with the prison system know that it’s costly and ineffective, but not one is willing to risk the electoral backlash if they appear to be “soft on crime”
  

With no other voices, other than the media, the Community continues to be Blind.
We like to believe it’s a Just system,.
Collusion terms are there like “Collateral Damage” in War.
We talk about:
Humane containment. Duty of Care. Modern prisons.
We hide the damage done by kidding ourselves we are rehabilitating
And we euphemistically call the govt dept ‘Corrections Victoria’ – when 62% return !

You can’t bring about a change of heart when you’re holding someone under force, isolated from the community. We each need community to survive.

The Reign of God is demonstrated by the story of the Shepherd who would care for each lost one so much that he would do the irrational thing of leaving 99 to go after that one. And when he finds it, like the loving father who found his son, throw an extravagant party.

The kingdom of God is not about condemning the lost by exclusion,

but by seeking them out, costly caring and celebrating –

even when they don’t deserve it.

To Let The Oppressed Go Free
The oppressed in the Gospels are those who are captive. To Roman and Jewish Laws- which were oppressive. Served law makers – not the people.

In the Criminal Justice system “The Oppressed” are the Victims of Crime- who, because of our legal process, don’t get a fair hearing. Crimes aren’t against a victim; they are offences against the State.
Therefore the only reason for involving a Victim is to call them as a witness.

Howard Zehr:
We don’t listen to what they have suffered and need
We do not seek to give them back what they have lost
We do not help them recover
We may not even let them know what has transpired since the offence.

Consequently, Victims feel that no justice has been done which recognises their loss. There is no closure .Which leads to anger, fear, and demands for vengeance.

Consequently Victims of Crime Groups are angry –
because they are oppressed

A Restorative Justice system, focussed on healing the wounds, with compassion as seen in the tender treatment of the Good Samaritan to the victim of crime on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho would go a long way to letting these oppressed go free.

A compassionate system which gave a place for victims to be truly heard and which still held offenders accountable to restoration could result in more Victims of Crime becoming Survivors of Crime.

The Reign or Kingdom of God as shown by Jesus actions and teaching in Luke are clearly at odds with the values of the Kingdoms of this world.

The Day of the Lords Favour, which Jesus declared began with his ministry
“Today this scripture had been fulfilled”.

If God’s Reign, which commenced in Nazareth is to continue, then WE are called too - as Christ’s Body to-day -to practice what we preach.

We are to do what we can to:

• Restore the poor.
• “Make poverty history” not just overseas but for the households of Braybrook who receive $570 per week
• Set the captives free.
• Work to find better ways of making offenders accountable rather than locking them up. Impossible? We did away with the death penalty. They said you couldn’t abolish slavery yet Wilberforce knew about the Kingdom of God. As did Mandela.
• Open the Eyes of The Blind.
• We need to let the Community know the truth about what harm prison does. We need to inform politicians that they will lose their seats if they let this injustice continue. Because God’s justice isn’t about payback. It’s about restoring right relationships.
• Let the Oppressed go free.
• We need to change the legal system – so that it is not combative with winners and losers. To change it to a place where victims are truly heard and offenders are truly held accountable. A place where people don’t just look at an offence and say : “this is what you will have to pay for breaking the law”, but instead we ask the Victim “what can we do to heal the damage, what can the offender do to bring restoration, what reparation should be made to the community, and what can we do to help prevent this offender from needing to offend again.”

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ final words to another human were addressed not to his disciples but to a criminal. Most of his followers had abandoned him. They were words of inclusion to the outcast who on his own admission was guilty - but who sought Jesus’ acceptance.
Today this scripture has been fulfilled
“….Today you will be with me in paradise”

Can we be as inclusive –
so that the Kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven.
Today?
I believe yes, we can –
as people who want to live in the Reign of God and God’s Justice.

Jonathan also handed out a document with the title Victoria's Prison Population: 2001 to 2006. It, along with its statistical documentation, can be found here. It is a publication of the Sentencing Advisory Council.

For more about Howard Zehr and his work with Restorative Justice, see here.