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SERMONS Sean Gilbert — Christ Church 1/6/08 2 Corinthians 5:16-19; Matthew 7:21-29Communion Reflection Without doubt, one of the most influential books I’ve read in the last 10 years is Raimond Gaita’s A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice. It’s
a book I’ve quoted here in sermons, cited in articles, used in
a funeral eulogy or two, and even read at table in a Benedictine Abbey.
Needless to say, I think Gaita is onto something! The author also of Romulus
My Father, Gaita was a post World War II migrant, who therefore
writes with rare and precious insight into things of race and culture
within the Australian context. And, in tune with the apt description
of Jesus in Mark, he speaks with authority, unlike many other social
and political scribes of his day. “James Isdell was Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia in the first decade of the twentieth century. Commenting on the forcible removal of Aboriginal children of mixed blood from their parents, he said that he ‘would not hesitate for one moment to separate any half-caste from its Aboriginal mother, no matter how frantic her momentary grief might be at the time. They soon forget their offspring.’ When I read this in Bringing Them Home, the report on the ‘stolen children’, I was reminded of a woman I knew when she was grieving over her recently dead child. I shall call her M. M was watching a television documentary on the Vietnam War which showed the grief of Vietnamese women whose children were killed in the bombing raids. At first she and the Vietnamese women shared a common affliction. Within minutes, however, she drew back and said, ‘But it is different for them. They can simply have more.’ That remark could mean different things in different contexts. Coming from her I knew it to be a racist remark of a kind I trust is easily recognisable. Isdell said much the same of Aboriginal mothers. M did not mean that whereas she was sterile they were not. Nor did she mean that as a matter of fact Vietnamese tended to have many children. Hers was not an anthropological observation. She meant that they could replace their dead children more or less as we replace dead pets.” In other words, the depth of feeling (in this case, grief and loss) denied to Aboriginal mothers and the Vietnamese woman, is the very essence of racism, or that all-too human experience of separateness, one-upmanship or sheer bloody-minded judgementalism. It is the uncritical assumption that the ‘other’ cannot feel or experience the depth and breadth of human life that we do. (Now another factor in this may well be that such uncritical thinking is symptomatic of an unexamined life anyway, but we don’t have time to go there this morning). The point here being for us, I think, that truly empathic and reconciling life reponses, begin and end in our preparedness to feel for another; not in isolation from our life circumstance, but as an integral part of it. For it doesn’t matter how many fences, walls, or barriers we might build to create a sense of separation and security, we are all in this together. As the poet suggests, we are not just our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper; rather we are our brothers and our sisters as a whole, indeed always as a potential unity. Now of course such a depth of feeling has its risks, and by that I mean the so-called bleeding heart might be so tender that it lacks a certain wisdom, allowing itself to be consumed and used up by the other’s great needs, but that need not dissuade us from the reconciling and warm disposition that hopefully marks the Christian Church; that gives it its particular identity and calling: A truly reconciled and graced people, entrusted with the good news of Christ, that is, love and empathy for the whole human race. And surely this sense of being is what we renew ourselves in as we gather around this table. A balm for our own brokenness (the reassurance of our own place in the heart of God), and yet the given Spirit of courage and grace to be the people we are called to be: Broad-shouldered, big-hearted, open-minded and discerning, and in all this warmed by the vision of what can still be. Those determined to have a go at doing the reconciling and healing will of God in our world, and not resigned to fear or the security - even safety - of institutional religion. May we then, allow ourselves to feel, in newer, deeper ways; to be stirred by the reconciling spirit that make this celebration of love what it is, and that with no small amount of confidence and joy, live out the calling to embody the message, or in Paul’s words, to be ambassadors for Christ in a world so needful of healing and wholeness. Amen
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