A handful of us in the Synod Office have been meeting each week for prayer and bible study for over five years now, on zoom and face to face. This time together shapes our week and reminds each of us of our first calling; most of us find the time together in prayer and reflection to be indispensable.

As I write this, we have just celebrated the wonder of Pentecost, and the reading for Trinity Sunday is the closing words from Matthew’s Gospel:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
[Mt. 28.16-20]

It is no surprise to anyone in this generation of society and church that compliance and regulation can dominate the agenda of those in roles chosen with other expectations. Ask teachers, or medical professionals, or ministers, about how their diaries (even their vocations) have been incrementally changed to comply with the demands of administration.

In our church and community, we need to ensure that people are safe, especially those at most risk; we need to take appropriate responsibility for our resources – human, financial and property. No one questions that.

However, we can become forgetful.

The insistent demands of compliance can easily drown out the vital voice of our first call, if we are not careful. We can fall for the illusion of planning carefully, of “managing our risks”, when risk and sacrifice are inherent to our vocation.

In reading the Gospel yesterday, I was reminded that the tension is supposed to exist. Sacrifice and mercy, reconciliation and adherence to an alternate life are inevitable consequences of our discipleship to Christ.

We baptise, and remember. We break bread and share wine, and remember. We hold the Word before our gathered communities, and remember.

Our communities of faith have innumerable contacts within our wider communities. We offer meals, and groceries; we have community gardens, we visit hospitals and hospices and people’s homes; we offer breakfast in school and church and the local café; we sit in courthouses and injecting centres and prisons of the body and mind, because sometimes company is all people require; we serve and bless people at the beginning of life, throughout life’s journey and as life draws to its completion.

When we are asked why we are caring and serving and offering hospitality, what shall we say? Some carefully scripted, even formulaic, lines written with no attention to context? Some bland murmurings about “being on the roster”? Awkward silence?

Or might we speak about the sense of hope we find when we consider how loved we are by Jesus Christ? We could talk about how our faith community has made a place for us which gives us purpose.

We might even talk about our Uniting Church which asserts the passionate love of God for each and every person, in a world where many people are told they have no place, or no name worth enunciating.

Perhaps we could invite those new friends into our faith community, or to the pub, or café, and listen to their story. In those mutual conversations we might discover together our shared doubt and hope, and discern what the Spirit might sing into our lives. Could you invite them to share in worship, or a small group, or to your home for a meal?

From the commencement of Jesus’ ministry to the gospel’s completion, Jesus is inviting people to walk with him; might we not offer a similar invitation? To follow Christ is to live a life of hope – in this world – for mercy, for justice and for life itself.

Is this not worth inviting others to share?

Remember your first love, which placed you here. Recall the hope, the passion and the blessing. Is that not a story worth offering to others with the care and generosity it was offered to you?

In the Beginning, not in time or space,
But in the quick before both space and time,
In Life, in Love, in co-inherent Grace,
In three in one and one in three, in rhyme,
In music, in the whole creation story,
In his own image, his imagination,
The Triune Poet makes us for his glory,
And makes us each the other’s inspiration.

He calls us out of darkness, chaos, chance,
To improvise a music of our own,
To sing the chord that calls us to the dance,
Three notes resounding from a single tone,
To sing the End in whom we all begin;
Our God beyond, beside us, and within.

Trinity Sunday | Malcolm Guite

In the silent waiting before God speaks the creation’s beginning, and as God’s breath is building over the waters, we are invited to listen, to attend.

And God speaks light. And dark, and sky and sea and land and life and wonder. And humanity.

There are stories woven throughout scripture, and our experience, where it is only in the silence that God’s voice is heard. In our world, where silence is less and less likely, how shall we find the space to attend to what God might say, in between breaths, in the waiting?

Can we attend to God in the silence, in the whispered breath, when we are being subtly attuned only to wait for the next sound?

“Only in silence the word,
only in darkness the light,
only in dying life…”

– Ursula K Le Guin

It is not only the audible distractions, there are also the “devices” which drag our attention and decimate our concentration, so that everything is truncated to bite-sized pieces of information – and misinformation. Notwithstanding a vital and historical invitation to listen by our First Nations, to heed their voice from history and in our present, other images fill our screens and louder noises fill our ears because there’s a tax on millionaires or MAFS has another fabricated crisis.

As we are trained for sound bite after tiktok, how we will discern what God has to say, when we need to pause, to pay attention? The measured steps to Easter – the journey we name as Lent – require pauses along the way; we lay burdens and distractions aside so that we might better heed what Christ has to offer us.

However, we have better, more colourful things to do and hear and see. We can find a way for worship and witness to fit our culture, so everyone will be satisfied. If we fill our worship with content, then we can hold everyone’s attention; we can craft a sermonette, so that there’s barely a hindrance to our day and our discipleship; and, of course, silence is “dead space”, so we trim that from our diet.

Yet, Easter finds us, each and every year.

We have always tried to whittle God’s presence from our own, and to shape it for our purposes. Lent is offered to challenge that, gradually; Easter stands, at the heart of creation and history, to repudiate it.

When we are sufficiently deceived to think of power as earthquake, wind and fire, a still, small voice, speaks in the silence and the dark.

Before all the hallelujahs, the whisper of God is heard from Gethsemane to Golgotha. We would want to rush to glory, but there is more to hear and see.

At the moment when Christ is silenced, when his execution echoes throughout creation, God’s fullness is proclaimed to us. In the silence, we listen for what God, in Christ, is saying, and we wait. Here, crucified, is God. There is no moment when God is more completely God than this.

This is God, for us, at the heart of history. In the deafening silence of the cross is Jesus Christ.

There, at the foot of the cross, we wait.

And there, at the tomb, we wait, holding every breath.

Then, in the emptiness of the second, new, morning, everything is transformed. God’s breath is stirring in the silence. God speaks light, and life and wonder. And renews our humanity.

We cannot rush here, nor tell this story in a sound bite. We cannot sprint from cross to resurrection without attending to the death of Christ and the wonder of what God in Christ has done. We dare not let ourselves be distracted from this event of God residing at the core.

For all those breaking, or broken; for all those who are lost, or who have lost; for all those believing themselves beyond hope, this story is essential.  

Our hallelujahs rise, because having waited with Christ in the silence, we see what God has done, and is doing. Our hope, our forgiveness, are here, because this event proclaims that death is not the whole story, that resurrected life through Christ speaks more fully than any utterance of death, and our emptiness is filled with the love and glory of God.

Listen, if you have hope, in the silence, for what God will say.    

#WordintheSilence

The desert waits,
ready for those who come,
who come obedient to the Spirit’s leading;
or who are driven,
because they will not come any other way.

The desert always waits,
ready to let us know who we are –
the place of self-discovery.

And whilst we fear, and rightly,
the loneliness and emptiness and harshness,
we forget the angels,
whom we cannot see for our blindness,
but who come when God decides
that we need their help;
when we are ready
for what they can give us.

– Ruth Burgess, 1990

As we gather this week in worship and in prayer, we are confronted by the disaster following the earthquake in Türkiye and northern Syria.

As the death toll passes 20,000 people, and the physical devastation is appalling, we are mindful of those whose lives have been changed irrevocably. People are overwhelmed with grief at what is happening before them, as they try to survive the chaos. There will be years ahead of recovery and rebuilding; the grief alone is almost too much to bear.

This will not be over within a news cycle; our prayers and support will be needed for many months ahead.

We will pray, and I offer a prayer, below. We need to pray for our friends around us in the church and community who are from the Middle East, whose lives and families and communities are affected. Don’t simply pray for them; call them, offer them your support.

We can also offer financial support through the National Council of Churches of Australia https://www.ncca.org.au/ or the Australian Relief Organisation https://aro.org.au/home/homepage

Prayer

O God, our God,
the world is not what it was;
the ground has shifted,
the earth has taken people we knew and loved
and we don’t know what to do,
or how to understand.

Hear our grief,
hear our lostness,
hear our prayer. 

We pray for the people of Türkiye and Syria,
as they are addressed by chaos.
As they act to save others,
to provide safety,
to recover those who have died,
be present in all the destruction,
in grief, in calamity,
in every sign of hope and life.

Hear our grief,
hear our lostness,
hear our prayer. 

Urge governments to act,
especially in Türkiye and Syria,
and in every nation,
that resources might be made available,
for hope, for recovery.

Hear our grief,
hear our lostness,
hear our prayer. 

Spirit with us,
keep us mindful of our neighbours,
welcomed from that region of your world,
that we might share meals, and grief,
and stories with them,
offering them hope and hospitality
in their bewilderment.

Hear our grief,
hear our lostness,
hear our prayer. 

We pray, in time,
that you lead these nations, these families,
these people, to life again;
holding their grief,
and enabling them to know your presence
is with them
in every aspect of their lives,
even in their worst moments.

Hear our grief,
hear our lostness,
hear our prayer. 

May the hope we find in the risen, crucified Lord,
find them now
and every day.

Through Christ we pray.
Amen.

In the midst of it all, a baby.

Tiny and defenceless, the promise and presence of God.

In this wondrous moment, in the simple vulnerability of God in the world, hope is asserted. This assertion is not only about Jesus’ birth offering hope for humanity; God’s hope reaches even more profoundly.

The birth of Jesus is how God asserts hope in humanity. In us.

This single grain of sand in the whirlwind of Caesar’s empire is what transforms everything. This assertion of God that we are worthy of hope and life; God’s hope, God’s gift of life.

Sit with this, for a moment.

Too easily and too often we have been convinced it is our failure which motivates God’s act, as if God is harnessed and haltered by us. Too simply and too loudly we are told that God was so angry at our sinfulness that God’s son is only born to die, making our lives and prayers engagements of fear over love.

We are too quickly inclined to believe the worst of ourselves and the worst of God.

As God breaks into the world as Jesus, we hear and see – and proclaim – God’s absolute engagement, God’s entire commitment to our lives and to our world.

At the heart of the Christmas event is God’s statement of faith in us. The gift of Jesus for the sake of the world.

What does that mean right now, that God has hope in us?

As I write this piece, the travesty of Russia’s invasion and war continues in Ukraine; while war scars other nations not deemed as newsworthy. What does hope mean as Ukraine fights for its very existence?

As empires which we have trusted, or feared, for these last few centuries topple and seem likely to fall – into disrepair, or despotism – there are echoes of Herod’s violent jealousy as a tiny baby destabilised everything he believed about power.

What sense does the birth of Jesus make as we consider formalising a voice to Parliament for our First Peoples?

The still, small voice of Jesus spoken into a corner of the Roman Empire rose to become a song which questioned the meaning of Empire and reordered the world. What might the disciples of this Jesus say about advocating to those in power, offering a voice when so many have been unjustly silenced?

What sense does the advent of God make for communities addressing the immediate challenge of floods, or striving for recovery after a season of extraordinary rainfall?

When we are overwhelmed with loss, or chaos, or with grief, the presence of God in the world is found in the starkness of a stable, or even less. Our loss is not airbrushed, or ignored, but God is present in the chaos of our lives. Emmanuel, “God with Us” means precisely that, and never more than when all seems to crumble.

God, exercising extraordinary hope in the birth of Jesus, invites a response from us: to act in hope, in life, as God has acted, and continues to act.

God elects to offer life, because God is completely convinced of our value. The truth that God has chosen to become precisely like us is not just a wonder, but the profound assertion of the inherent worth we have to the God of all creation.

Can we believe that at Christmas – and in the astounding wonder which awaits the world at Easter – that we see the best of the living God, because God believes in what is possible for us?

As Mary and Elizabeth sing with prophecy and power,
as the angels’ song fills the sky,
as shepherds stumble to the light and magi find their way,
as Herod’s depredations appal us still,
and as we wait for the family’s return from Egypt;

We name a God who is with humanity in all our wonder and all our frailty, and yet declares in the child born where all God’s hope resides – in Jesus and thus, in us.

May the hope of God find you this Christmas.

#GodsHopeInUs

Image: Our Lady of Kyiv, on the wall of the Kyiv metro by an unknown artist.

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This Christmas we encourage those of you that can lend a helping hand and those that are in need, to visit our website at www.findafeed.uca.org.au where you will find a range of support services and help.

More than two and half thousand years ago, an Old Testament prophet wrote

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen?
Or cry to you “Violence!”
and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrongdoing
and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack
and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous—
therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

A child was assaulted on an Australian street in this last fortnight. As a result of the brutal beating he received, by an older man with an iron bar we are told, this child died.

The language we might use for this unjustified act of appalling violence, if we were so inclined, is that a child was lynched on the streets of Perth.

Where is the outcry? Where are the nation’s leaders – social, political and religious – crying out for justice? Are we so accustomed to violence like this that it slides from our screens and our memories as we swipe to a less confronting story?

Suddenly we remember the discomfort we feel when that Melbourne footy club remains accused of deep-rooted racism. We turn the channel to avoid listening (certainly talking) about offering a voice to our First People in a referendum.

Some will say that these are not associated, that one has no relevance to the other. Ask the ones whose voice is silenced. Ask the ones who received the violence of language, of social exclusion, of stereotype, or worse.

And a child lies dead; another family is paralysed in grief and despair.

Some will claim this child had caused harm to property. So, let me ask you, what crime can a child commit that justifies him being beaten with an iron bar? What community, what society, can use slippery language, or bastardised ethics, to justify the violent death of a child?

We grieve today, but only as a dim echo of this family’s grief. We pray, and act in support, because no-one can survive this trauma alone.

We speak because someone needs to do so. More than one – person, church, community – needs to cry out for justice, because a child lies dead at a man’s hand.

This child’s death cannot fade from our sight because we are afraid to discover what hides in the shadows of our lives and communities.

My faith in Jesus Christ talks of mercy, which is always hand in hand with justice. Our church speaks of the need to forgive each other and to be reconciled, but they come with the cost of humility and seeking forgiveness from the person we have harmed.

This is more urgent than any other story in our lives.

It is not enough to be sad, to offer thoughts and prayers.

What shall we ask, what shall we do, to find justice? What shall we require of our leaders?

What shall we require of ourselves?

I remember preaching for a Combined Churches’ Pentecost service a few years ago. Amongst other things, I spoke of the Spirit’s presence, stirring and brooding over the creation as it found shape and purpose under the articulation of God.

I then asserted the charge of the gospel to care for God’s good earth and, at that point, a couple of my ecumenical colleagues laughed out loud.

This, in a rural community shaped by weather and climate, by the availability and scarcity of water, by many farmers’ willing engagement in environmental options and the angry intransigence of a minority.

Is it possible we can believe that our discipleship has nothing to do with the care of the world in which we live? Have we made “salvation” so much about the heavenly rescue of an individual that we have missed the biblical imperative that we are part of God’s creation and God’s history – a creation and history which it is God’s intention to restore?

All too easily we apply weight to one aspect and neglect the other. We can (we must!) proclaim a God who desires to restore every human being – and the creation in which all of us are held.

It is when we attempt to hold both of these faithfully together that we comprehend the challenge of what it means to bear witness in a world where the creation is under extraordinary stress. Scripture is bookended with the wonder of creation and the new creation; these images are not decorative, they are proclamation about our God, our world and our place within it.   

As the drought began to break, there was a call from some in our community that we should no longer be farming cattle because of the impact of methane in the atmosphere. There are graziers who battled to keep their breeding stock alive during five years of drought, and to hear that must have been almost unbearable.

People in rural communities have been addressing the changes in the climate for years, even decades; the incoherent and ill-informed utterances from a few invested politicians are a false measure of the significant transformation in farming practices which have been undertaken.

When we speak of caring for God’s good earth, we are mindful of the land of which we are stewards, and the people whose stewardship is in their blood and bones. We must address the climate crisis before us; we cannot ignore those whose lives are woven within it.

It is not only our rural communities, of course. We have heard and seen the immediate destruction facing our neighbours in the Pacific; what does it mean to love God and to love these neighbours, as we love ourselves? Rescue from drowning islands may well be the necessary functional response to this crisis, but how does it address the deeper issues of justice and honouring those whose voices we have so long ignored, or patronised?

And what of those first voices, whose stories of creation and stewardship are millennia older than the ones we hold in scripture? How shall we honour them, and pay attention as the earth and all its creatures cry out for justice?

The escapism of some aspects of Christianity is understandable but leads us up a dry gully. There is no hope there which speaks to discipleship here, but only avoidance of responsibility.

Diminishing our role for this place, this life, dismisses the worth of each person as they work and live and serve and save and worship. We are called here. We are disciples here. Our lives bear witness to the reign of God, proclaimed in Jesus Christ – on this earth.

Our Basis of Union affirms that Jesus Christ became flesh; in Christ’s life, death and resurrection, God has reasserted a claim over the whole creation. This is not only about a God who says yes to life for each human being, but a God who acts in hope and love for all creation.

The new heaven and new earth celebrated in the penultimate words of scripture are a charge for every disciple of Jesus about the inherent value of each of us – and the creation of which we are an intrinsic, eternal part.

As we wrestle with the vital transition to justice for our earth and all its creatures, our discipleship reminds us of the promise of life which is held for us in Jesus Christ. This hope is for each of us and for the whole creation, formed under the Word of God, in whom we find our life.

When Mark mentioned the theme for this edition of Ruminations, my first thoughts turned to scripture, then to poetry. Verses about death, and the wondering which surrounds it; the beauty and the sorrow and the ruminating, as poets and theologians seek both to express their feelings and to plumb the depths of something which comes to each and all.

Death, and birth, are the most common things among us, we humans. Thus, we write and theologise, we compose and wonder, we rage against the dying of the light,[i], while some of us spend some portion of our lives always glancing behind.[ii]

There are those of us try to airbrush death from our language altogether, by using phrases which attempt to hold it at arm’s length; people no longer die, they simply “pass” as if they have mystically moved into the next room or graduated in some ghastly (ghostly?) exam.

These euphemisms are an attempt to lessen our fear, or our loss. They do neither. Our grief reflects our joy and love and lives shared; it not a problem, but rather, a gift. Our fears reflect a measure of what we don’t know, and of what we do; we need each other for this journey.

Much of our writing and praying reflects us trying to make sense of the lives we lead, as we face suffering on a personal level, and a global one. As we struggle to know what – and how – to pray for our friend who is facing their own death, we are confronted by the immensity of Ukraine’s invasion and the deaths which accompany it. At that moment, words can seem almost irrelevant, perhaps we fall to weeping.

Across our communities and our world, we have been immersed in conversations, even protest, about voluntary assisted dying and in these last few weeks, about abortion. How we engage – in all ways – reflects our fear, our anger, our experience and our hope.

As we speak of birth, life and death, we speak inherently of our faith. As disciples of Jesus, we approach dying and death with caution; our fear and our concern are seasoned with hope. Our hope neither makes death a minor problem, nor an easy path, but it addresses the depth of our life with more than poetry.

I have often pondered whether we are less fearful of death than we are of resurrection. How might our hope, in Christ, be realised? When we affirm our Easter faith, what do we imagine we are, in fact, affirming?

Our hope lies in Jesus Christ. Our affirmation begins, and is complete, in Christ, crucified and risen. We begin, in faith, to make sense of our lives and our suffering, our fear and our weeping, because we name Jesus as the hope in which we locate ourselves.

This story is neither easy, nor untroubled. We need our poets and our scriptures to speak when we cannot; we need our siblings with us, to remind us of the God who has expended everything to seek us out and find us.

Death is not the last word. Life is, in Christ.

To each and all of us, “I wish you God.”[iii]

---

[i] Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night”
[ii] John Foulcher, “Death”
[iii] Les Murray, “The Last Hellos”

“Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”               [I Kings 19.11-13]

How easily we define our task, our identity, our selves, by where we have come from. When Elijah is asked, he reflects upon the journey which brought him face to face with God; he did not imagine that God might be asking him about the future into which God might lead him, in hope and wonder.

We are the Uniting Church because of where God is leading us and calling us, not simply because of the vision and courage of our parents and grandparents. Our mission lies before us, and not behind. We have served God’s world in worship, witness and service, but there is yet more for us. 

The faithfulness and hope which responded to God’s call forty-five years ago and more is not our identity. Our past is not our call. It is the future into which Christ has already spoken, and in which we are called to bear witness to what Christ has done, and to what Christ is doing – and yet to do.

What are we doing here?

The Spirit of Christ urges us to proclaim in new and radical ways; to serve in communities of faith our founders could not imagine; to offer hope and justice to people who the world would discard, punish or deny.

We are the Uniting Church, because of the risen, crucified Lord, who calls us to serve today and into tomorrow.

To this end they declare their readiness to go forward together in sole loyalty to Christ the living Head of the Church; they remain open to constant reform under his Word; and they seek a wider unity in the power of the Holy Spirit.                              [Basis of Union, Para. 1]

I was born and lived the first stanza of my life on Cammeraigal country;
I moved to Dharawal country, as a Youth Worker,
while studying as a candidate on Burramattagal country;
my first placement was on Wiradjuri country in the west;
I then moved to Ngunnawal country in the south;
I have lived for the last sixteen years on Gamilaraay country in the north-west,
and the Synod Office where I base my work stands on Gadigal country,
part of the Eora nation.

At the 2019 Synod in Session, I learned a formal way of introducing myself and acknowledging country, which is to step out each of the chapters of where I have lived. It helps all those to whom I am paying respect to know my history, and all those by whom I am welcomed to see where my feet have walked.

It places me in context; not just my name, but my pilgrimage. It has been an invaluable lesson; about country, about respect. I am learning more about myself.

These weeks are full of acknowledgement and celebration and, might remain only that, if we fail to recall how we arrived where we are.

Sorry Day and National Reconciliation Week call our attention to our First Nations community and the fraught, costly path we have walked and continue to walk.

As we mark the Week, in worship and school and our community, we risk only looking at this week, this moment. Neglecting the past is a grave mistake. The wounds people bear cannot be discounted, nor the way we have begun to listen to the stories. Once we have learnt to pay attention, we move to reconcile with each other – seeking forgiveness, which is one of the first signs of justice, hallmarked by hope.

Reconciliation Week always dovetails into Pentecost, followed by our Uniting Church anniversary.

We live in some tensioned space, our Church. The worry of where we are and the fear of where we might be headed; the challenge of the Church’s place in our world, and our role within it.

There is a strong inclination to manage our way through this. We are tempted by business models and the language of leadership and review which are caught up in profit and success. We reframe the story which shapes us to suit these fraught times and neglect the steps which have brought us here; it is an illusion.

We need to remember the origin of our hope, and call each other to remember.

The Uniting Church acknowledges that the Church is able to live and endure through the changes of history only because its Lord comes, addresses, and deals with people in and through the news of his completed work.  [Basis of Union, Para. 4]

I was asked, recently, if I am optimistic; I said no. I told the consultant that I am a person of hope, found solely in Christ. I have no time to waste on optimism.

I do not believe we can manage our way out of the mess in which we find ourselves, whether it is the political playground brawl being decided as I write, or the plethora of other challenges before us – as large as history, and as personal as people’s battles with mental illness, domestic abuse, or addiction.

At the recent Assembly, I spoke from the floor for the first time. Part of what I said was,
“In this Easter season, the risen, crucified Jesus charges the disciples – no ifs, buts, or maybes – to make disciples. The power of proclamation, the integrity of witness, the wonder of forgiveness are deliberately and directly commanded in the Gospel resurrection stories.

How able are we to disciple people?

Where is the call to articulate the gospel in such a way, that people are invited in hospitality, into community, into faith, into discipleship – in Jesus Christ?”

We must remember who we are, and in whom we belong.

We are not called to save the church, the world, or anyone; we are called to bear witness to the One who has saved history and creation, and to invite people to follow, with us, in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.

May the Spirit at Pentecost, and every day, breathe new life into you, and your community of faith.