No, it’s not the resurrection of Jesus that we are celebrating (which was last month) and it’s not even the birth of Jesus (which was last year). It’s the birthday of the church, and I appreciate that any number of people might want to question whether that is really something worth celebrating.

When we look at the history of the church there are plenty of chapters in that history that are nothing to be proud of, and when we look at the controversies surrounding the church today they do start to make Hinduism and Islam look a lot more attractive!

Why celebrate the birth of the church? It’s a good question, and behind it is an even more painful question: ‘Does the world really need the church?’

In as much as we love our little Christian community, we do need to recognise that the institution of the church is not viewed by most as God’s greatest gift to humanity! Did the world ever really need it? After all, what was wrong with the good ol’ synagogue?

It’s a fair question, but if you look at the story of Acts chapter 2 that marks the birth of the church, you get the impression that the disciples of Jesus felt that there was plenty to celebrate! It’s a story filled with excitement and passion and noise and carry-on and all sorts of wonderful miracles that indicate that God joined in that party too!

What went wrong? Did we forget something?

I think we did forget something. Perhaps we forgot a lot of things, and that’s why it’s so important that we hark back to the birthday of the church every now and then and take a good look at what we were created to be.  It’s all here in the Pentecost story, Indeed, I believe it’s all contained in the miracles!

Miracles play a very special role in the Bible. Yes, miracles play a special role for anyone who experiences them – giving us encouragement and strength and joy – but they play a very specific role in the New Testament as ‘signs’ – signs of things to come. Indeed, the word normally translated as ‘miracle’ in the New Testament is the Greek word ‘semeion’, meaning ‘sign’.

Miracles are signs. They point to something. They point to the identity of Jesus, the miracle worker, but more often than not they also point to the future – to what the Kingdom of God will be like when we one day reach it – a place without sickness or hunger, where ‘the earth is as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ (Isaiah 11:9). The miracles of Jesus give us a glimpse of that future, and likewise the miracle of Pentecost – the miracle that takes place at the foundation of the church.  It gives us a glimpse of what the church is destined to become!

You can’t work it out in reverse unfortunately. I tried! It doesn’t work!

What I mean is, if you forget for the moment the story of Pentecost, and start with the church today, and then guess what miracles might have taken place that foretold what it was to become, you get very erroneous results!

Try it!

Let’s assume for a moment that the story of Pentecost was lost and that all we knew of the birth of the church was that the disciples were gathered together and that God came upon them and that wonderful miracles started taking place.

My reconstruction – projecting backwards from the church today – is that the Heavens must have opened and amazing gifts of administration must have fallen upon each of the disciples!

All of a sudden, a group of hapless fishermen who barely knew which way to hold up an abacus were turned into geniuses of accountancy, meticulous minute-takers, prodigious producers of protocols – persons who now had the nous to transform their poverty-stricken band into one of the most wealthy and powerful institutions ever known to humanity!

Indeed, if you project back from the Sydney Anglican Diocese specifically, you can almost see the beards dropping from the faces of the disciples as their humble clothes are miraculously transformed into suits, after which they come out speaking in languages that were previously unknown to them, such as legalese and realpolitik.

Sorry. I am being deliberately facetious but, in truth, it is hard to work out what miracles might have inaugurated the church if you start at this end of the process and, quite frankly, it would have been equally difficult to have anticipated what miracles might have taken place had you been there just before this ‘Day of Pentecost’ took place.

I think if I’d been one of the disciples I would have been hoping for gifts of healing!

Lots of people have been healed in and through the church, of course, and it is appropriate, I believe, to think of the church as a place of healing. Why didn’t an outpouring of miraculous healings mark the birth of the church?

Or what about a simple ‘gift of love’.

“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples”, said Jesus, “that you have love, one for another!” (John 13:35). In that case should not the miraculous gift that fell upon the disciples have been a great outpouring of compassion!

Perhaps St Peter could have been given the ‘gift of listening’ to balance out his constant chatter? Perhaps James and John – the ‘sons of thunder’ – could have been filled with the spirit of gentleness such that they might have become known as the ‘sons of tranquillity’.

None of the above happened, did it? Instead …

“When the day of Pentecost came, all of them were together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like the roaring of a mighty windstorm came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated, and one rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts 2:1-4)

The scene that follows is quite bizarre, and it makes clear to the reader that the strange ‘tongues’ that the disciples are speaking in are all human languages that were previously unknown to them!

The city where the disciples were was filled with pilgrims at the time – people from ‘every nation under Heaven’ (Acts 2:5) – and it seems that each of the cultures and language groups represented there had some disciple that spoke their language!

“How is it that each of us hears them in our native language?  Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,  Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome  (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” (Acts 2:8-11)

This is the question that is posed by the pilgrims, and it receives no immediate answer from the disciples as they must have been just as surprised as the members of the crowd were! This was something that God was doing and it was entirely unexpected!

God was founding a new spiritual community, and He was kicking it off with a miracle that pointed to the future of what this community was going to become, and God made it very clear that, from the first, this was to be a community for all peoples, races and language groups!

God did not inaugurate the church with gifts of healings, even though the church was to become a place of healing.

God did not bestow and extra gift of compassion on that special day, even though love was to be the life-blood of the Christian community.

God certainly didn’t pour out gifts of administration (and I’m guessing that the disciples themselves never experienced those gifts).

God gave them the gift of inclusiveness, such that everybody was welcome, everybody could be heard, everybody would be taken seriously, nobody would be excluded. God gave them the gift of inclusiveness.

If you read between the lines of the Acts 2 story, you can see that this strange miracle is actually the reversal of an ancient curse ancient curse spoken of in the book of Genesis – the curse of Babel!

If you’re familiar with the book of Genesis you know that the first eleven chapters of the book are a very ancient collection of stories that includes such favourites as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, and Noah and the great flood.

And those great stories culminate with a story in Genesis chapter eleven about the first time human beings ever really united together for a common purpose. And it turns out to be a sinister purpose – a quest for power and self-aggrandisement.  And so, we are told, God curses the people involved by confusing their language so that they can no longer understand one another, and so their community fragments, and they are not able to accomplish what they set out to accomplish.

And whether we take this story literally or not does not matter.  What is clear from the story is that the division of the nations into different races and language groups was always seen in the Bible as a curse, and as something that God would one day overcome.  And what is clear in the Pentecost experience, in the miracle of cross-cultural communication that takes place there, was that God, in the very formation of the church, was undoing this ancient curse!

Just as the human community had been confused and pulled apart way back at Babel, so now the Spirit of God was healing those divisions and bringing the races and language groups back together in the founding of the church as a truly multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-linguistic community!

No, the church was not founded on a great outpouring of healings, though healing is important. No, it wasn’t inaugurated with a special outpouring of love, though love is the absolute life-blood of the Christian community. The church was founded on the miracle of inclusiveness, because that was who we were uniquely destined to become!

So does the world really need the church? What was wrong with the synagogue?  Well … the synagogue was for Jews only! Not so with the church! Of course, over time, we have made the church an exclusive club – not for Jews only but for whites only, for men only, for middle-class educated people only, for straights only, and certainly for good people only! But we were founded on the miracle of inclusiveness!

I’ve just returned from Syria, as you know, and one of the enduring memories for me is the woman in black who grabbed my hand in the foyer of our hotel, telling me about her 12-year-old son who had been blown to pieces by the rebel soldiers. “They put the bomb in his pocket”, she told me, “and why? Because we are Shi’ite!”

These are the sectarian labels that fragment us and destroy us. I’m a Shi’ite, you’re a Sunni. You’re a Muslim, I’m a Christian. I’m the good guy. You’re one of the bad guys!

I had a friend write to me while I was in the middle of this, warning me not to forget what they (meaning ‘Muslims’) are like. I had to write back and say, ‘brother, I just don’t believe in ‘them’ any more. I only believe in ‘us’, for we’re all in this together.

And that, I think, could be a fitting tag-line for the church as a whole: ‘we’re all in this together!’

We’re all in this together – Jew and Greek, black and white, rich and poor, slave and free, straight and gay, male and female, the good, the bad and the ugly! We’re all in this together and together we are the church! The more inclusive we become, the more we are the church of Pentecost. The more exclusive we become, the more we move away from what is our destiny and our birth right!

Does the world really need the church? Well … the world badly needs an open and inclusive, loving community that can face up to the sectarian violence that so plagues our world and threatens to bring an end to human life as we know it. The world desperately needs that kind of church. As for the other one, I’m not sure any of us needs it.

We need to pray for a new outpouring of the Spirit of the God of Pentecost – a new outpouring of the spirit of inclusiveness that will bring people together with love and forgiveness, where every child of God will hear the Good News of the Gospel in their own language! For this is who we were destined to be! This is our birth right! This is what it means to be the church of Pentecost and the church of God.

First preached by Father Dave at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill on May 19, 2013.

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The summary conclusion of the Mussalaha delegtion is that Syrian refugees in Lebanon are forced to rely mainly on their own resources and Lebanese hospitality, both of which are strained to the limit and portend a humanitarian tragedy when they are exhausted.  Lebanon hosts a disproportionate share of refugees in both absolute terms and relative to its population (4.3 million).  Reliable numbers are unavailable, but the most commonly quoted refugee figure is one million persons.

Since the cause of this crisis is the widespread violence in Syria, we call for an immediate end of all aid – lethal and nonlethal – to all combatants, an immediate and mutual ceasefire, and immediate negotiations among all the parties without preconditions.

With respect to the existing refugees, the lack of aid and support is disgraceful.  The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) claims that normal processing is 31 days, while in fact refugees wait up to four months, often without even tents for shelter.  UNHCR also charges a registration fee of $100.

UNHCR says that it is overwhelmed and has insufficient resources.  It should have facilities ready and waiting for new arrivals, and money should be flowing to the refugees, not from them to UNHCR.  In order to make this possible, donor nations should immediately live up to their obligations.  However, UNHCR also needs to be fully transparent, including an audit on the use and allocation of resources.

A lot of refugee care is happening at the individual level, as generous Lebanese and even Palestinian refugees in their camps open their doors with compassion to accommodate their Syrian brothers and sisters.  However, this support is often untenable over the long term and insufficient for the numbers of refugees, leading to makeshift camps that do not meet minimum international standards.  These camps often receive no supervision by UNHCR or any other agency for eight months or more.

In addition, the refugees become increasingly vulnerable to exploitation, including prostitution and human trafficking.  These conditions bring shame to the agencies and committees and their sponsors charged with refugee rights and support.  All refugees have a right to the basics of life and safety.  They must have immediate access to support services and adequate protection from abuse.

Lebanese citizens, Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, Lebanese charitable institutions and other Lebanese civil society institutions deserve much credit for providing support that the international society has not done.  However, a refugee influx of this magnitude is more than any society the size of Lebanon can accommodate without massive aid from the United Nations and its constituent members.  It is a matter of urgency for them to make their actions match their words of sympathy and compassion.

The Mussalaha Delegation to Syria was a group of 16 human-rights activists from seven countries who participated in a 10-day fact-finding mission across Syria and Lebanon:

• Francesco CANDELARI (Italy) 
• Marinella COREGGIA (Italy) 
• Susan DIRGHAM (Australia)
• Mel DUNCAN (USA) 
• Tiffany EASTHOM (Canada) 
• Denning ISLES (Australia) 
• Alistair LAMB (USA)
• Franklin LAMB (USA) 
• Paul LARUDEE (USA)
• Amir M. MAASOUMI (Canada) 
• Mairead MAGUIRE (Northern Ireland) 
• Michael MALOOF (USA) 
• Ann PATTERSON (Ireland)
• Antonio Carlos da Silva ROSA (Brasil) 
• Father Dave SMITH (Australia) 
• Professor William Stanley (USA)
• Luke Waters (Australia)

Syria exhibits a massive and terrible breakdown of human decency and respect. There are millions of innocent victims and many individual acts of heroism, but amongst the powerful we see an appalling degree of violence, hypocrisy and corruption. Tens of thousands have died, millions have been displaced, and nearly the entire population of 23 million lives in fear. The international community has stated and we confirm that the Syrian tragedy is possibly the worst since World War II.

States, political organisations and combatants are the primary causes of the misery, which they pursue for their own advantage, sewing terror and manipulating the suffering to reflect badly on their opponents while all too often refusing to compromise or even talk to each other.

These are the findings of our delegation, consisting of 16 human rights activists from seven countries. Over the course of nine days we visited refugee camps, affected communities, religious leaders, combatants, government representatives and many others – perpetrators and victims – in Syria and Lebanon.

We were already horrified by what we knew before coming, but what we have learned as a delegation brings shame to almost everyone involved.

We call on the international community to protect the territorial integrity of Syria and to respect the fundamental rights of Syria as a sovereign state. We deplore any intent to breach the integrity of Syria’s frontiers or to damage the unity and rich diversity of the Syrian people.

We recognise the legitimacy of the aspirations of the Syrian citizens for change, reforms, the eradication of State corruption and the implementation of a democratic life that respects and protects the fundamental rights of all citizens and minorities but we believe that effective and lasting reforms an only be achieved through non-violent means.

Our primary appeal is that all countries stop their interference in Syrian affairs – more specifically, that they halt the supply of arms and foreign combatants to both sides of the conflict. If foreign countries agree to eliminate the influx of arms and fighters, we are confident that Syrians can find their own solutions to their problems and achieve reconciliation.

We unequivocally oppose all aggression and foreign intervention against Syria under any justification. At the same time we appeal to all parties, including the government, to show restraint in response to the provocations that aim to escalate the violence and broaden the conflict.

We consider it beyond debate that the Syrian people have the right to determine their own government and their own future. Foreign interference is currently preventing the Syrian people from exercising their right to self-determination. We are concerned that such pernicious intervention is tearing apart the fabric of the country itself, with long-term consequences that can only be imagined.

The cautionary example of Iraq serves to remind us of the dire consequences of such international folly. This humanitarian crisis is already spilling into neighbouring countries. A collapse of Syrian society though will destabilise the entire region. We appeal to the international community to show that it can learn from history and make better choices in the case of Syria, which will spare further tragedy for the courageous Syrian people.

Secondly, we appeal to the international media to stop the flow of misinformation regarding the Syrian conflict. We believe that every Syrian, both in and outside the country, should be given the right to be heard and we do not see this reflected in the international coverage of this crisis.

Thirdly, while we entirely support the embargo on arms, we ask the international community to review and reconsider the crippling sanctions that are taking such a heavy toll on ordinary Syrian people.

Fourthly, we urge the international community to take seriously the vast number of refugees and persons who have been internally displaced by this conflict.

We look towards the cessation of all violence when these people might be allowed to return to their homes. In the meantime, however, humanitarian aid efforts must be expanded to meet the basic needs of such persons.

Our earlier report, the “Declaration of the Mussalaha Delegation to Syria on the Refugee Situation in Lebanon”, outlines the inadequacies of current refugee programmes. We appreciate that various government authorities have attempted to respond to the refugee crisis. We recognise though that the International Committee of the Red Cross and its affiliates, as well as other humanitarian agencies, must be allowed to set up centres inside Syria to care for internally displaced persons, so as to prevent these displaced persons from fleeing to foreign countries.

This work requires immediate and significant funding by the international community. While this will be a costly undertaking, we believe that the costs will in fact be only a fraction of the amount currently being spent on destroying Syria.

Finally, we appeal to all parties involved to put an end to all forms of violence and human rights violations – actions that target and terrorise innocent civilians and prisoners, indiscriminate terrorist attacks on the civilian population, the unjustified systematic targeting of vital state infrastructures, civilian installations, industrial zones, factories, communication facilities, agriculture reserves, health centres and hospitals, schools and universities, and religious and cultural landmarks – all of which results in the transformation of the residential areas into war zones, resulting in the flight of the civilian population.

We likewise oppose the use of religious decrees that encourage, trivialise and justify barbarity, rape and terrorism. We appeal to the entire religious community to call the faithful to nonviolence and peacemaking, and to reject all forms of violence and discrimination.  We express our admiration and respect for the many Syrian religious leaders who have refused to endorse the use of violence and have dedicated their lives to working for a peaceful solution to this conflict, and we appeal specifically for the immediate release of the two abducted Christian bishops, both of whom were dedicated to the work of peace and reconciliations, as we appeal for the release of all Christian and Muslim clerics and other abducted Syrian citizens.

We conclude by commending the work of Mother Agnes Mariam and the Musalaha initiative. We have witnessed their work inside diverse communities across Syria. We offer our unequivocal and ongoing support to these brave people, and we commit ourselves to continue to work alongside them until Syria is truly at peace.

We  thank the Patriarch, Gregorios III Laham, for his kind invitation and his ongoing support for Mussalaha. We likewise thank Mr. Jadallah Kaddour for his generosity that made our visit possible, and we express our gratitude  to all those who have facilitated our path, most especially the Organization Committee of the delegation’s visit and the Popular Council for the National Reconciliation.

Damascus, the 10/5/2013,

Mairead Corrigan Maguire in the name of the International Delegation to Syria for Mussalaha and Peace.

Mussalaha team members at Baalbek preparing to cross into Syria

Signatories from the Mussalaha Delegation to Syria:

Francesco CANDELARI (Italy) His current role is International Coordinator of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and he has held previous positions at the United Nations and as journalist covering the Arab Spring. He has been in close touch with people from Syria and interested in looking for possible nonviolent solutions to the conflict in Syria.

Marinella COREGGIA (Italy) Italian journalist and writer in the field of ecological justice; and an ecological farmer, Marinella Correggia, has been active for peace since 1991. Associated with the No War Network, she co-organised many demonstrations in Rome, petitions to the UN, sending information to some Un missions in Geneva, writing articles and conferences.

Mel DUNCAN (USA) is Director of Advocacy and Outreach, Nonviolent Peaceforce. Mel Duncan is the founding Executive Director and current Advocacy and Outreach Director of Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP). Modeled on the Gandhian concept of Shanti Sena, Nonviolent Peaceforce is composed of trained citizens from around the world. Mr. Duncan has 40 years of experience organizing and advocating nonviolently for peace, justice, and the environment. He currently focuses on advancing the recognition, policy and funding support for nonviolent peacekeeping at the UN.

Tiffany EASTHOM (Canada) She is Country Director for South Sudan for Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) which is an international non-governmental organization (INGO) engaged in the creation of a large-scale unarmed peacekeeping force, composed of specially trained civilians. Prior to becoming NP’s Country Director in South Sudan, Tiffany served as Country Director at NP’s Sri Lanka project as well as Country Director for Peace Brigades International in Indonesia.

Denning ISLES (Australia) is a graduate of Welsey Institute, majoring in Audio Technology (2008). He currently works for Fr. David Smith with Fighting Fathers Ministries, in which he supports various youth and community organisations such as Dulwich Hill’s Holy Trinity Youth Center, Binacrombi Camp Site and the Dulwich Hill Gym.

Alistair LAMB (USA)

Franklin LAMB (USA) is an international lawyer based in Beirut-Washington, DC. A former Assistant Counsel of the House Judiciary Committee of the US Congress, Lamb has written widely on Middle East issues as part of his commitment to the cause of Palestine.

Paul LARUDEE (USA)is a former Ford foundation project supervisor, and Fulbright-Hays lecturer in Lebanon, and a U.S. government advisor to Saudi Arabia. He has been a faculty member at several universities in the San Francisco Bay Area,an organizer with the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine and co-founder of the movement to break the Israeli siege of Gaza by sea, and was aboard the boats that succeeded in doing so in 2008 as well as the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which was attacked by Israeli forces on May 31, 2010. He is a cofounder of the Global March to Jerusalem.

Amir M. MAASOUMI (Canada) is a sociologist, specialist of contemporary Islam, intercultural and interfaith relations, dialogue among cultures and civilizations. He is also a peace, social justice and human rights activist.

Mairead MAGUIRE (Northern Ireland) is Nobel Peace Laureate (l976) Hon. President, Co-Founder Peace People, Northern Ireland. Mairead (Corrigan) Maguire is a Nobel Peace Laureate (l976) Hon. President and Co-founder of the Peace People, Northern Ireland. Mairead was responsible for co-founding the Peace People. She has received many honours and awards, including an honorary doctorate from Yale University, the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award and the Nobel Peace Prize Award (l976).

Michael MALOOF (USA) is a senior writer for WND (WND.com), or World Net Daily, specializing in international political and economic reporting and analysis. He also writes a weekly column for subscribers only for WND’s G2Bulletin providing analysis in these areas. As part of his reporting, Maloof travels many times a year to Lebanon where he is expected to set up a bureau there for WND.

Ann PATTERSON (Ireland) is a family therapist at the Quaker Centre in Belfast, she works to provide counseling support for families from the divided communities. During the peace process in Northern Ireland, she worked with imprisoned paramilitaries from both sides, preparing them to enter into peace talks. She is founder member of the Peace People, a pacifist movement that played a critical role in promoting the Good Friday Agreement and advancing the peace process in Northern Ireland.

Antonio Carlos da Silva ROSA (Brasil) is the editor of TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS since its inception in 2008, he is also the Secretary of the Board of Conveners of TRANSCEND International-A Network for Peace, Development and Environment, founded by Johan Galtung in 1993.

Father Dave SMITH (Australia) started Fighting Fathers Ministries in 2002 – a company that aims to offer an alternative culture to young people, based on values of courage, integrity and teamwork. This work has been the subject of numerous TV documentaries and one short film. Particularly well-known for our use of boxing-training as a means to help young men overcome anger-management issues. He was twice nominated for Australian of the Year on the basis of this work. He is known for his friendship with Mordechai Vanunu (the Israeli ‘nuclear whistle-blower’), which started in Sydney in 1986, started my involvement in social justice work in the Middle East and has subsequently developed a strong profile in Australia as a Palestinian human rights activist.

Professor William Stanley (USA)

Reverend Dave Smith said he believed a disgruntled youth was likely to be behind the fire, which destroyed a celebrated parish hall adjoining his Holy Trinity Church in Herbert St, Dulwich Hill.

The blaze broke out about 3:45am and demolished the structure, used as a youth drop-in center and boxing “fighting club” for many years.

“I think it’s probably some disgruntled kid in the area – you can’t run a facility like this without someone getting pissed at you,” said Reverend Smith, who lives across the road and watched as the blaze unfolded.

“It’s a community facility that people have been using for a lot of years, it’s been a youth drop-in center. I mean there are hundreds of people who use it so it’s a real slap in the face.”

Asked weather he has passed any names of suspects to authorities, he said: “It’s quite possible – I’ve got a shortlist. Things like this don’t just happen by themselves.” He praised the work of emergency services, including the fire brigade and police, who rushed to the scene within minutes of thiple-0 calls being places.

“The dog was barking like crazy and there was a flash of light and I got up and opened the door and got hit by the heat from across the road.” He said.

The Fire was contained to the building and did not spread to a home next door where six people were sleeping.

The historic hall was built in the 1870s and was recently used by Reverenced Smith for a charity event that broke a world record for most continuous boxing rounds.

During the event the 50-year-old “fighting father” took on 66 opponents, including Anthony Mundine, to complete 120 three-minute rounds. The officer in charge of the investigation, Marrickville detective Russell Newitt, had previously assisted Reverend Smith with a number of church investigations, so he was optimistic the case was off to a good start he said.

Article by Yoni Bashan.

The Holy Trinity Anglican Church building in Dulwich Hill was found well alight when fire crews responded to multiple 000 calls at 3:45am on Sunday.

The severely damaged structure, built in 1886 and used to house a youth center with a gym, boxing ring a playgroup, faces demolition.

The parish priest, Father DaveSmith, said he suspected the fire to be a deliberate act of vandalism.

“There’s CCTV footage which is suggesting that already, but also the next door neighbor heard something, saw some people scurrying around there starting a little fire or something,” he said.

The Anglican minister said he had not noticed anything amiss while working on his Sunday sermon in his office overlooking the building until about 3am.

“I’m just thankful that no one was hurt. It could have been far, far worse,” he said.

Inspector Chris Sedgwick, of Fire and Rescue NSW, said the cause of the fire was yet known.

“It was a fierce fire and well alight when the brigades got there,” he said.

About 30 firefighters battled the blaze, which crews stopped from spreading to a neighboring house.

A police spokeswoman said inquiries were continuing.

Father Dave, a former professional boxer, said the parish would consider options for the site, such as rebuilding a community center.

“As we say in the game, we’re on the ropes but we’re not on the canvas,” he said.

Article by Leesha McKenny.

I don’t know if that was the advice most others received who attended Christian youth groups, but the idea was that we shouldn’t get bogged down in trying to analyse the text too deeply but simply accept it as a personal message from the Creator, spoken directly to us as individuals.

Sometimes that’s a very natural way to read the Bible: “Come to me, all ye who labour and are heavy laden” … hey, that’s me!

Some passages do feel like a direct personal word from the Almighty but others do not, and today’s reading from Acts chapter eleven is surely one of the ‘not’ passages.

So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”

Starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story: “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles and birds. Then I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’ “I replied, ‘Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ “The voice spoke from heaven a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ (Acts 11:2-9)

Now I’m cutting off the reading there because Peter’s full story is a long story, and the story told in chapter eleven is actually a retelling of the story of chapter ten. Even so, at the heart of both stories is this dream, and in terms of the Bible being a personal message to me, it has to be said that this is not the sort of dream I can remotely identify with!

Peter dreams of all sorts of animals being lowered down on some sort of giant picnic rug and is told to “kill and eat”. While I like food, I can’t imagine having to personally kill things that I eat. Moreover, I don’t have a problem with pork, and that’s the real issue here!

“Kill and eat” the voice says, to which Peter replies “Surely not, Lord! Nothing unclean has every entered my mouth!” In other words “Lord, I don’t eat pork” (or crustaceans or birds of prey or other animals with uncloven hoof, etc., etc.)

If this is supposed to be God’s personal word to me for today I’ve got to say, “Lord, this is not my issue!” I already eat pork, I’ve always eaten it and most other people I know eat it without reservation too!

Now I’m not saying that I don’t find this passage interesting and I’m not even suggesting that there aren’t aspects of this story that I don’t find confronting, but what has the lifting of the prohibition regarding pork got to do with me?

Of course I appreciate that there are persons in our church community who refrain from eating pork but I don’t think that’s for especially religious reasons.

I know, for instance, that Ange (my wife) is concerned about inhumane treatment of farm animals that are used for meat, and I know she gets in a lot of arguments on Facebook over this. She tells me that there is a fair degree of hostility between on Facebook between some of her vegan friends and the Evangelical Christians that she’s ‘befriended’.

Ange showed me a picture of a dog and a pig, side by side, that one of her vegan friends had posted recently. The caption underneath it read “what’s the difference?” In other words, ‘why do we kill and eat one and not the other?’

Ange says she didn’t appreciate it when a certain well-known Evangelical clergyman said ‘but the dog isn’t full of tasty bacon!’ (or something like that) as she felt it trivialised the issue, as indeed it does.

I appreciate that there are genuine issues there involved with animal cruelty, but I also recognise that this is an entirely different issue from the one that bothered Peter and the other Apostles. Peter wasn’t concerned about killing pigs because it was cruel. He didn’t want to touch them because they were ‘unclean’ and hence forbidden creatures!

Of course the real issue on view in Acts chapter eleven isn’t about food but about people. The breaking down of the food barriers is just the leading edge of a far more comprehensive breaking-down of barriers between the people of different racial and religious backgrounds who eat these different foods,  but even then, accepting gentiles into our midst is not my issue either!

For who are ‘the gentiles’ on view in Acts eleven – the people that the twelve Apostles feared were going to pollute their religious community? They are us!

This is one of the jarring things that I got stuck on when I read through this story again this year.

I always tend to think of the Apostles (particularly Peter, James and John perhaps) as being my kinda guys! I’d always imagined that if I could transport myself back into the first century that I’d get on really well with those boys. Reading this passage again made me realise that if I were coming towards Jesus’ disciples on the road, they’d most likely cross to the other side of the street to avoid being contaminated by me!

That’s hard to accept for an upright middle-class white boy like me, of course. We righteous middle-class white people are used to being the ones who show the prejudice – not the ones on the receiving end!

Of course we good church people don’t do that, do we – and certainly not us progressive Australian church-going people? We would never show prejudice towards people because of their skin colour or country of origin, would we … unless they’re refugees of course, or Arabs (Muslim Arabs, at any rate), or perhaps Chechens!

I don’t know if you’ve been following the propaganda closely of late but I get the feeling that Chechens are the new group of people that we’re now supposed to hate!

The ‘Boston Bombers’ were Chechens, we’ve been told, and all of a sudden I’m hearing about Chechens in Syria, and I’m getting the feeling that the way is being paved for some violent targeting of a lot of Chechen people.

Or maybe we’re just supposed to hate them because they’re Muslims? I’m not sure but I must say that it’s hard sometimes to keep up with where you are supposed to be focusing your prejudices!

I know that we in Australia often like to think of ourselves as a model of tolerance and harmonious multiculturalism but in many ways we have one of the worst records in the world!

Let’s take a quick quiz here:

• When was the slavery of African people banned in Britain?William Wilberforce and his friends saw slave-trading made illegal in 1807 and they went on to pass the ‘Slavery Abolition Act’ in 1833.
• When was slavery abolished in the United States?December 1865 with the passing of the ‘Thirteenth Amendment’.
• When did Australia officially recognise its Indigenous people as being genuine human beings?May 27, 1967! Before that Australian Aboriginal people were dealt with under the ‘Flora and Fauna act’!

1967 wasn’t that long ago! I was certainly alive then! I was five years old. I don’t remember that day any more but I’d bet that some of the Indigenous kids who were my playmates in Kindergarten at the time will still remember!

I recall Irish comedian Dave Allen speaking of his experience of our country. He said that the Australian people he’d met were amongst the most generous and open-hearted people he’d met anywhere in the world and that it was only the white bastards that he couldn’t stand!

It is confronting, this passage, as it’s all about shifting prejudices but, in truth, what I find most confronting in this passage is not the shift the disciples had to make in their thinking but the way they got there!

What unnerves me in this story is the fact that these people changed their minds about what God required of them with regards to what they should eat and who they should mix with on the basis of what? …

• A piece of Scripture that they had never read before?
• An ex-cathedra statement of an early Pope (or his equivalent)?
• A direct word from Jesus Himself?

They shifted their entire understanding of their faith based on a dream that Peter had, and on their intuitions about what the Holy Spirit was telling them! This is really quite bizarre, as these people were over-turning stuff that was written in the Scriptures that was completely unambiguous.

In the book of Leviticus, chapter eleven, it is written: don’t eat pork!

“The pig, though it has a divided hoof, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you.” (Leviticus 11:7-8)

There it is, in black and white! You can’t argue with that, can you?

On the one hand you have the Word of God in all its unambiguity. On the other hand you have Peter’s latest dream. Which one would you consider authoritative? The disciples go with the dream!

This doesn’t sit comfortably with me! As a good Evangelical with a high regard for the Scriptures I know how you argue for something new and innovative.  You do what Keith does in his latest article about Gay marriage (found on www.arestlessfaith.com.au).

• You do a deep exegetical analysis of the wording of the law in question
• You compare this Biblical law with other Biblical laws.
• You look at the way in which the Biblical writers themselves might have adapted laws similar to this one?

Peter and the other Apostles of Jesus do absolutely none of these things. They just accept Peter’s dream and apparently disregard everything else!

That’s painful, as it’s actually this method of Biblical scholarship that allows us Evangelical Christians to draw our line around who are the legitimate interpreters of God’s word and who are not!

This is how we judge who can be taken seriously as a spiritual teacher. We look for this sort of scholarship and we listen to those who practice it and we engage in intelligent conversation according to the rules of that game, and those who do not play that game (such as those who wake up and want to tell us all the things that God has taught them in their sleep) get written off!

But we can’t write off the Apostles, and we can’t write off this dream, as we know that this dream did come from God. And I don’t know why God could not have revealed all this to the Apostles in a Bible Study, but He did not!

And where do we go with that? What principles for Biblical interpretation can we draw from that? What template of divine communication can we put in place on the basis of this account? How can we use this experience to be able to better predict the will and the activities of God in the future? So far as I can see, there are absolutely no satisfactory answers to any of these questions!

What we Evangelicals tend to forget is that God is God, and that God will do whatever God chooses to do. God will communicate with us in whatever way He deems to be appropriate, and in the end there is absolutely no way of predicting what God is going to do next.

And that’s all very difficult to take on board! I’m having enough trouble trying to find room in my heart for the homeless and refugees without having to make room at the top for a God whose movements I cannot anticipate and whose mind and being I will never truly understand!

And so maybe there is a personal message in this passage for me after all? The personal word for me today seems to be this: expect the unexpected, let God be God, and dream the dreams He gives you!

May God add his blessing (and his own personal message to you) to the reading of His word.

First preached by Father Dave at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill on April 28, 2013.

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I’ve spent a bit of time on Keith’s blog this week (www. arestlessfaith.com.au) and I must say that it was encouraging to engage in some of the online debate that’s taking place in that little corner of the virtual world.

Keith (in case you missed it) recently published an article in support of gay marriage. More specifically, he wrote about how we might respond to the Biblical injunctions that appear to prohibit gay marriage, and his article has generated a healthy amount of discussion in the comment section that follows his article.

I was thoroughly convinced by Keith’s article (of course) so my comments were friendly and supportive. Not everybody who commented was quite as supportive but I must say that I was encouraged by the fact that nobody was openly hostile either!

This is not my normal experience in online debate, and I do get involved in online arguments quite a lot. I publish just about every day to www.israelandpalestine.org. We generally add at least one new sermon per week to www.fatherdave.com.au, and I also manage an online forum on www.fighting-fathers.com where we have had some vibrant discussions of late – probably the longest and most painful of which was on the topic of gun-control in the USA.

I did not start out as an expert on issues of global gun control, but after many hours on our forum I feel that I have become one! Certainly I (along with many others) have managed to pull out statistics from this country and from around the world about the effectiveness of gun-control laws and their correlation with reduction of gun-crime.

What I found remarkable though, when I eventually stood back and looked over the lengthy forum thread in which so many people had participated, was that not a single participant had actually changed their mind! Those who had started out as being in favour of restrictions on gun ownership (like myself) were still adamantly despising firearms. Those who had started out beating the drum for the ‘right to bear arms’ were still sticking to their guns (so to speak).

And so I thought I should look more carefully at the way Keith manages his blog, as he seems to be bringing people around on there! Moreover, I thought it might be worth going one step higher and looking at the way that Jesus handled those he debated with, to see if He might help me master the art of persuasion.

Today’s Gospel reading seems tailor-made for that purpose, for in today’s Gospel reading we find Jesus debating with some of his religious opponents, and so we get a direct window on Jesus in debate!

He was in the temple, we are told. More specifically, He’s in the ‘Portico of Solomon’, which is on the outskirts of the temple. Apparently the ‘Portico of Solomon’ was on the outer perimeter of the temple and was walled on the outside, to the east, which would stop the cold east wind from coming in. The Gospel writer is quite explicit in telling us that it was winter, which helps make sense of the whole scene.

Jesus was in the most user-friendly part of the temple if he was looking for a debate. He wasn’t in the inner part of the temple, reserved for prayer and sacrifice, but he hadn’t left the temple either. He was in the ‘Portico of Solomon’ where, even on a winter’s day, you could still stroll and converse comfortably.

And as we might have expected, a number of worshippers do approach Jesus with a question, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly” to which Jesus replies “I did tell you, but you do not believe!” (John 10:24-25)

This is exactly the sort of question we might have expected from members of the temple community. Jesus’ response though is probably not what we might have expected, and it was almost certainly not what His questioners expected!

We assume it is a sincere question – “tell us plainly if you are the Messiah”. Jesus says “I told you already” which suggests that either Jesus hadn’t told them very clearly the first time round or that his listeners were too stupid to grasp what He was saying, and I think that, being good Christians, we’re going to lean towards the latter option – that the problem didn’t lie with Jesus but with them.

These people must have been just too stupid to work out what Jesus was saying. Perhaps Jesus hadn’t used the actual word ‘Messiah’ and explicitly applied it to Himself but, so far as He was concerned, He had said enough to communicate His hidden identity to them, and if they couldn’t work that out they were just ignorant!

That’s a comfortably Sydney Anglican take on the passage, certainly! We Sydney Anglicans do tend to believe that if someone fails to embrace the Gospel it’s because of some kind of failing at an intellectual level. That’s why our diocese invests so much energy in educating our clergy and why all our Archbishops have to have doctorates and why our iconic leaders are people who are master debaters rather than people with a history of caring for the poor. We know that the encounter with God takes place first and foremost in the mind and that there’s nothing that turns a person’s life around better than a good argument!

We’re at the end of a ten-year mission in this diocese, and the vision, if I remember, was to see tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of new members added to the church over that time, and the method for achieving this was to communicate the Gospel message clearly and compellingly to our neighbours!

The assumption is that if you communicate the Gospel clearly enough to someone, the compelling logic of that presentation will overwhelm them to the point where they will suddenly ask for baptism! That’s how it works, isn’t it?

That’s how it worked for you! That’s how it worked for me! We – all of us – were overwhelmed by the logic of the Gospel, weren’t we?

That’s how the Biblical figures themselves were converted, wasn’t it?  St Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus happened like that, didn’t it?  There was Paul, travelling on the road to Damascus – all ready to imprison and persecute Christians, and then he stopped at a roadside café for a coffee and got into a long, detailed conversation about the Bible with a travelling Sydney Anglican academic!  Lo and behold, four hours later Paul emerged and had changed his mind about everything!

No, that’s not how it worked!  God didn’t convince St Paul with a good argument. He convinced him by throwing him off his horse, shouting at him from the Heavens and blinding him until he came to his sense!

Paul’s conversion experience was more like being in a boxing ring than a classroom, and the issue in Solomon’s Portico wasn’t an academic one either. According to Jesus’ own analysis, the problem with the people with whom he was conversing was not an intellectual problem but a spiritual one!

The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; ²⁶but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. ²⁷My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. (John 10:26-27)

This issue was not that they couldn’t understand what Jesus was saying. The issue was that they weren’t Jesus’ sheep and so they weren’t listening!

Now I have to admit that I know almost nothing about sheep and shepherding, but I know enough to know that the relationship on view runs entirely parallel to the relationship between a boxer and her trainer who works her corner.

Above all the noise and the chaos of the ring-fight, the fighter hears the voice of her corner-man, and then follows what she’s told.

I worked the corner for a young girl on Friday. She had a tough time. She twisted her knee in the first round. She went on to fight two more rounds but couldn’t finish the bout. She couldn’t move properly and so she couldn’t perform. I did ask her though afterwards “did you hear my voice” and she said “yes”.

You have to have a relationship with your trainer in order to hear your trainer’s voice and to understand what your trainer is saying to you. That’s the way it works. Likewise, you have to have a relationship with Jesus in order to hear the voice of Jesus and to understand what He is saying.

“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27). These people in the temple, on the other hand – they are not His sheep and so they don’t hear His voice and so they don’t follow!

I appreciate that it’s a bit circular. You can’t understand Jesus until you have a relationship with Jesus. But how can you build a relationship with Jesus if you don’t understand what Jesus is saying? It’s a bit of a conundrum!

The Spirit of God solves that conundrum for us, of course, because the Spirit of God works within our hearts to bring us to Jesus, and so we understand the words of Jesus because we already have the Spirit of God working within our hearts. But if we don’t have that Spirit then we won’t understand, and no amount of solid argument is going to make any difference.

Those who know me well know that before I ever put on boxing gloves, I spent many years training traditional martial arts, most particularly in the Korean art of Hapkido.

Hapkido is a mixed martial art that teaches a bit of punching, a bit of kicking, a bit of grappling, and a lot of door techniques, by which I mean techniques that you would use if you are working a door (in a pub or a night-club). These are techniques whereby you get someone in a wrist-lock or a headlock or an arm-lock or a finger-lock, such that you’re then able to use that lock to lead them back out the door.

I studied Hapkido for more than ten years and ended up with two black belts and a lot of door techniques, such that I was ready to work the door of just about any pub or night-club in the country and could even have worked the door at the annual Sydney Anglican Synod! And yet I reached the conclusion some years ago that almost all door techniques, through which you use the mechanism of pain to lead someone where you want them to go, work really well so long as the person you’re trying to move more or less wanted to go with you anyway!

As I say, a good door technique generally uses pain (such as a hyper-extension of a few fingers) to persuade someone to go where you want them to go, but these really only work if the other person sort of wanted to go there anyway. They weren’t really looking for trouble, so the technique works. On the other hand, if they are frantically trying to kill you, they won’t care if you break a few fingers or break all of them, they’ll still kill you (with the other hand or with a weapon).

Good arguments are like that, I think. A good argument can be very persuasive in moving someone to a new position, but only if they sort of already wanted to go that way anyway!

I think that’s what I see operating in the comments section at the end of Keith’s blog. Keith’s gentle arguments are indeed shifting people in their thinking and taking them to new places, but I sense that they are being taken to places that (courtesy of the Spirit of God) they were already wanting to go to anyway!

Conversely, I assume that’s why a lot of people are impossible to shift in their thinking!  They don’t want to move so they don’t.

As I’ve often said, ‘why do we expect rationality to shift someone in their thinking when rationality didn’t lead them to adopt their position in the first place?’ People hold to their beliefs – especially religious beliefs – for a variety of reasons, and no good argument is going to change someone’s life unless that person wants to change and unless the Spirit of God is at work within that person’s heart!

This is all a bit depressing really, as I would really like to be an agent for change!       I would love to be able to turn people around and set them on new courses in life by the power of my words, my skilful rhetoric and my outstanding homiletical prowess!

I would love to help turn this church around with my sermons – stop the almost inevitable drift into middle-class captivity wherein we shift from being a radical outpost of apostolic activism to becoming just another Christianised golf-club!

We are in that process, I think! I’m not suggesting that there aren’t individuals and families within this church community who are still pouring themselves out for Christ and for the Gospel, but I do think that on the whole we are giving less, caring less and doing less.

And what can I do to stop that? Absolutely nothing! No amount of powerful, pithty, pulpit-pounding preaching is going to make a single bit of difference!  I cannot hope to do any more with my skilful rhetoric than entertain! Not unless the Spirit of God is at work. Not unless the Spirit of God is at work, convicting and convincing people from within! Not unless His sheep hear His voice, know Him and follow!

²⁷My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. ²⁸I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. ²⁹What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. ³⁰The Father and I are one.” (John 10:27-30)
First preached by Father Dave at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill on April 21, 2013.

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It’s the question the risen Jesus asked of Saul (better known to us as ‘Paul’) on that fateful day on that fateful journey on the road to Damascus.

“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Jesus asks. “Who are you, Lord”, Paul replies. “I am Jesus who you are persecuting” the voice replies and Paul, it seems, asked no more questions.

It’s a dramatic story of a dramatic encounter, made all the more dramatic for me personally because in two and a half weeks’ time I am scheduled to be making exactly the same journey on that same road to Damascus myself, and I do so likewise with an expectation of encountering Jesus (though in a less dramatic fashion I hope).

“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” This is the point at which Saul becomes Paul! This is the point at which a transformation begins, wherein the man who had been the arch-enemy of the church up to that point – a man who had been arresting and imprisoning the early Christians – turns and becomes the church’s most articulate spokesman!

It is a dramatic story and it’s an account of what may be the most significant religious experience in the entirety of human history!

Is that an exaggeration?

Of the 27 books in our New Testament, just under half – thirteen in fact – are attributed to St Paul! Some still suggest that Paul wrote the “Letter to the Hebrews” too, which would mean that more than half of the books of the New Testament can be attributed to Paul!

Clearly he was the single most significant thinker in the early church, and his writings have been at the centre of every pivotal movement in Christian history since. He was the leading influence on both St Augustine and Martin Luther, who in turn was the key figure influencing the Protestant Reformation.

Some people see the church as being the creation of St Paul rather than Jesus! At the very least it is clear that it was Paul who pushed the Christian message beyond the geographical boundaries of Israel – becoming the “Apostle to the Gentiles”.

Certainly no figure apart from Christ Himself has so influenced the growth and development of the church in history as has St Paul, and his influence continues to be felt around the world today and will no doubt continue until the church is no more, and it all begins here – on the road to Damascus, where Paul encounters Jesus!

The problem, I believe, is that we regularly misunderstand St Paul, and many of the problems we face today in the church have arisen, I believe, due to misunderstandings of St Paul. I sincerely believe that if we are going to fix the church we are going to need to get St Paul right, and the key to understanding Paul, I believe, is grasping what really happened to him on the road to Damascus.

Of course in order to understand the Damascus road experience we also need to understand how Paul got there, but there’s no great mystery about that. Paul gives us plenty of autobiographical material about himself in his letters and so we know full well what his life was like prior to meeting Jesus.

“You have heard of my former life in Judaism, how thoroughly I ravaged the church of God and tried to destroy it; and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my kinsmen, being exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.” (Galatians 1:13-14)

St Paul was a ‘zealot’ – that’s how he described himself – and those who are familiar with New Testament history will know that the term ‘zealot’ is normally reserved for militant revolutionaries – Jews who were intent on bringing an end to the Roman occupation of Israel and setting up an independent religious state.  As I understand it, the early Paul was exactly that kind of zealot.

Now I know that Paul describes himself as having been trained as a scholar and a theologian rather than as a warrior. Even so, the division between church and state – between the theological and the political – is a rather artificial creation of the 20^th century and certainly not one that St Paul would have made any sense of.

Paul was a Jew, and he was a strict Jew – “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee” (Philippians 3:5). – and as a strict Jew – a Hebrew of Hebrews – he shared in the great Jewish hope for the coming of the Kingdom of God as he understood that.

The writings of Pauls’ religious contemporaries make it quite clear what constituted that hope. It was a hope for God’s own people worshipping the one true God in God’s own way in their own God-given land!

That’s not to say that it was an essentially political hope as against a religious hope. The division would not have made sense to the early Paul. You couldn’t divide the people of Israel from the land of Israel any more than you could divide the individual worshipper from the rest of the worshipping community.

The hope of the individual Jew was the hope of the whole Jewish community and the vision of true worship of God could not be divorced from the temple in which that worship took place, just as the temple could not be extracted from the city of Jerusalem or the city of Jerusalem from the land of Israel!

It was a holistic hope of God’s own people worshipping in God’s own temple in God’s own land according to God’s own law, and Saul of Tarsus was zealous for that hope! And make no mistake about it – the early Paul’s zeal was not something that expressed itself only in prayer. It expressed itself just as readily with a sword!

You can see plenty of modern-day Saul’s in the land of Israel today. They are the characters building ‘settlements’ and gobbling up whatever land has been left to the Palestinians. They carry the Torah in one hand and a machine-gun in the other!

These people have their counterparts in militant Muslims who also believe that they are God’s own people trying to regain God’s own land that was promised to them!

And just to complete the picture we should not forget the militant Christians who are, by and large, funding the militant Jews against the militant Muslims.

In my view this sort of religious fundamentalism is basically all the same, whether it is Jewish, Muslim or Christian. It’s basically the same mindless group-think, characterised both by militancy and by an unyielding belief in the fact that we are the ‘chosen people’ and everybody else is not. In other words it is ‘tribalism’.  It’s all about my tribe getting what rightfully belongs to us, and bugger everybody else!

This was the religion of the early Paul – the Pharisee of Pharisees – and it was this tribalism of Paul’s that led him to persecute the early church.

We need to understand this if we are to understand the persecution of the early church at all. People like Paul didn’t start persecuting the church simply because they were heretics who believed in the wrong ‘Messiah’.

In first century Judaism there were lots of beliefs about ‘the Messiah’ circulating and there was a fair degree of flexibility within the religious establishment when it came to who or what you thought ‘the Messiah’ was.  Different Jewish sects had different beliefs about the Messiah, and that in itself did not exclude any of them from membership of the broader religious community.

What upset the establishment about the followers of Jesus was that from day one they started welcoming non-Jews into their midst, just as Jesus had done before them, and they consequently started watering down the requirements of the religious community such as circumcision, by which a Jewish man marked himself as a person of faith, and it was this ant-tribal multiculturalism that was the beginning of the great divorce between synagogue and church!

This is why the early Paul hated the church – because they were diluting the true faith by welcoming non-Jews into their houses – and he hated them vehemently!  If there’s one group that a Pharisee like Saul hated more than the Romans it was his fellow Jews who diluted the faith to the point where threatened the entire tribe!

Nothing has changed in that regard. I remember my dear friend, Sheikh Mansour, assuring me that if we ever bumped into Osama Bin Laden (who was still alive at the time) and he only had one bullet in his gun, he would shoot the Sheikh ahead of me.  I might be public enemy number two but the weaker brother who dilutes the faith is always enemy number one!

And so Saul travels to Damascus. He’s on a mission to purify the tribe, to preserve the faith, and to arrest and imprison those who would dilute the racial and religious integrity of his religion. And he encounters Jesus!  And his entire world is turned upside-down!

“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?”

Who could have guessed at that point that within a few years this same Saul of Tarsus – the great defender of Jewish tribalism – would be penning these words:  “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26-28)?

The tribe has gone. The new creation has come! We are all one in Christ Jesus! There is no distinction!

This story of Paul’s conversion turns up three times in the Book of Acts and Paul tells it all over again in his letter to the Galatians (chapter 1:11-24). Evidently it was a story he retold a lot of times, presumably because the experience not only transformed him but also stayed with him for the rest of his life!

I come from a religious tradition that warns us all against getting too carried away with our emotions and counsels good thinking and common sense as the hallmarks of good religion. Not so for St Paul!  All his good thinking and common sense left him a militant religious fundamentalist until Jesus got hold of him, threw him to the ground and shook the truth into him!

Hopefully most of us don’t require the same level of aggression from the Lord before we get the message, and as I say, I’m trusting that my Damascus road experience, while significant, will be significantly less dramatic.

Even so, I am convinced that God will do whatever God needs to do in order to get his message through to us – that there are no good guys and bad guys, no insiders and outsiders, no Jew and Greeks, no slaves and free, no male and female, no ‘us’ and ‘them’ – but that Christ is all and in all, and that all are one as Christ is one!

“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

“Who are you, brother? Who are you, sister? Who are you, Lord?”

“I am Jesus!”

First preached by Father Dave at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill on April 14, 2013.

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Our triumphant Holy Day!

Ha-a-a-le-lu-hal-le-lu-ul-jah!

It’s nice to be triumphant every now and then, isn’t it?

So much of the time we walk around feeling defeated – defeated by the powers that be, overwhelmed by our workload, subjugated by our domineering spouse (I’m talking in general terms, of course).

Likewise, the church as a whole seems to be generally in a state of defeat or at least of ongoing decline. Our message and values are seen as being increasingly irrelevant, our Atheistic detractors seem ever-more robust in their logic, and any claim we might have thought we had to moral superiority collapses under the weight of the Royal Commission’s enquiry into the ecclesiastical sexual abuse!

But today, on this day at least, we regain the high ground! On this day – Easter Day – we celebrate. We are victorious, triumphant, and on the right side of history, or so it would seem.  For the odd thing is that when we get to our Gospel reading – the proclamation around which our entire Easter celebration revolves – there is not a hint of joy or celebration or triumph or anything of the sort!

We read from Luke’s account of the resurrection today:

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. (Luke 12:1-3)

We’re told that the response of the female disciples who had made the trip to the tomb was that they were ‘perplexed’. We’re told though that their perplexity quickly gave way to terror as they noticed two rather spectacularly dressed men who had suddenly joined them in the tomb!

These characters seem to know something about the missing body of Jesus – “He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” (Luke 24:5b-7)

The women, we are told, then exit the tomb, but they do start to put the pieces together in their minds. When they tell the men though what they have seen and heard (or rather, what they have heard and what they have not seen) they are met only with cynicism.  Peter though does rush to the tomb, looks in, sees Jesus’ clothing there but no body, and he, we are told, is amazed (or confused, depending on how you translate it). In other words, he was left with lots of questions and very few answers!

And so our resurrection narrative closes, against this backdrop of questioning, confusion, cynicism and fear …

Ha-a-a-le-lu-hal-le-lu-ul-jah!

It’s not what we might have expected of the official account of the resurrection. Indeed, apart from celebration and triumph, the only other thing missing in this resurrection account is an actual account of the resurrection!

That’s true of all the Gospel accounts of course. All four feature accounts of the resurrection that don’t include any actual account of the resurrection. Instead we get hints and second-hand information and our imagination is left to fill the void!

How did Jesus rise from the dead? How did He get through those grave-clothes?  Did he transubstantiate through them or some such, or did He take them off Himself and then fold them all up again? Evidently the Gospel writers didn’t have a clue and so they say nothing!

And where exactly was the body of Jesus at that time the women visit, and who were those strange men, and how exactly did the Spirit of God go about breathing life back into the tortured body of Jesus? Or did it not really happen that way at all? Was Jesus simply given a new body? Again, we have no idea!

What is reflected in our piecemeal Gospel accounts are the confused and disjointed experiences of the disciples themselves, and it appears that even with the wisdom of hindsight those women and men were simply not capable of filling in all the blanks! It all starts in fear and confusion, and it seems that while the fear does pass, the confusion never entirely dissipates!

We don’t know how Jesus rose. We don’t know who those two men were, and we have no idea why things happened the way they did, but we do know that the impact on Jesus’ disciples of the events of that resurrection morning were that they left them feeling anxious and confused!

I know that any number of psychologists since Freud have been keen to explain away religious belief in terms of it being a form of wish fulfilment.  We really wish that we had a Heavenly Father watching over us, just as we really wish that we didn’t have to die. Hence in our wanting and wishing these things to be true we allow our imaginations to run wild and make them true!

It is astonishing, the extent to which this wish-fulfilment analysis just doesn’t square with these Gospel accounts! There are no accounts of Jesus disciples sitting around wishing, wanting, waiting for Jesus to come back! On the contrary, all the Gospel accounts are at one on this point – that when news started to circulate that Jesus was back on the scene, this was not something that the disciples initially embraced with any enthusiasm!

We could do our own psychological analysis at this point as to why the news of Jesus’ resurrection generated such an ambiguous response in His disciples, but let it suffice for now to say that genuine religious experience often leaves people feeling a little ambiguous.

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”, says the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews (10:31), and this is true of much religious experience.

I can tell you that when people are reaching the end of their days in hospital, often the last person they want to see is a priest or chaplain!

Contrary to popular dogma in psychotherapy, there is a certain freedom that comes with disbelief! It is, in truth, somewhat liberating to think that we are ultimately responsible to no one beyond ourselves and that we are free to design our own futures, build our own kingdoms, and that we are not ultimately responsible for the well-being of our neighbours, let alone our enemies!

The thought that our Heavenly Father is watching over us, while comforting in some respects, is invasive in a very real sense as well! We want to be captains of our own ships, masters of our own destiny, answerable for nothing and to no one, and so it is often with great reluctance that we are dragged towards the conclusion that God the Father and the Lord Jesus are laying claim to our lives!

The great Oxford Don, C.S. Lewis, articulated this reluctance in a particularly memorable way, noting that he was brought into Christianity like a prodigal, “kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape.” (“Surprised by Joy”, London: Harvest Books, p.229).

“You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England” (“Surprised by Joy”, p. 228-229).

Now we can’t know for sure how closely the emotional state of C.S. Lewis approximated to that of Jesus’ first century disciples, but what we do know is that these early followers of Jesus – both men and women – reacted to the initial news of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead with both confusion and fear.

Gradually they put the pieces together. Over time their cynicism gave way to joy and their confusion gave way to slightly less confusion, but it took time.

I read a lovely story recently of an American pastor by the name of Clint Tidwell who apparently pastored a church in a small rural town in the South.

Tidwell was apparently blessed with having the 80-year-old owner and editor of the local paper as a member of his congregation – a man who admired Tidwell’s preaching so much that he would publish a weekly summary of the Sunday sermon in his paper so that those who were not willing or able to attend his church might nonetheless benefit from his pastor’s homiletic insights!

This column was apparently the source of constant embarrassment for the pastor, largely because the weekly summary of what Pastor Tidwell had said often differed enormously from what pastor himself thought he had said!

Even so, the most embarrassing report actually came not when the newspaper editor misunderstood Tidwell’s preaching but when he understood it very clearly!  It was the Easter edition of the paper, coming out the day after the pastor’s Easter Day sermon. Emblazoned in bold letters across the front page of the paper was the headline “Tidwell Claims Jesus Christ Rose From The Dead!” (Thomas G. Long, “Whispering the Lyrics”, Lima, OH: CSS, 1995)

Evidently it does take time for the penny to drop in some cases. And evidently in some cases the confusion never entirely dissipates.  But that’s ok, I think. Indeed, I believe that’s the gospel model!

We stumble forward. We regularly have little idea as to what is really going on. We continue to struggle with feelings of defeat, cynicism, confusion and fear. Yet the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not quenched that light yet!

“He is not here. He is risen!” No, that doesn’t answer all our questions but it does change everything!

If Jesus is risen then the universe is not ultimately as hostile as we thought it was! If Jesus is risen then maybe the good guys do win in the end after all!

If Jesus is risen then even the torturous situation of modern-day Syria is not grounds for despair, as we know that death and lies and murder and violence in the name of religion are never the end of the story!

If Jesus is risen then everything is cast on to a broader canvas!  Our own pain, and the death and suffering of those we cherish become a part of a larger story where Christ ultimately triumphs on our behalf and points us to a brighter day and a bigger world!

And we don’t have all the answers, and it still can be very confusing, but this is indeed our triumphant Holy day, and it’s good to be triumphant every now and then!

Ha-a-a-le-lu-hal-le-lu-ul-jah!

First preached by Father Dave at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill on March 17, 2013.

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