John Flynn Uniting Church Alice Springs

When the River Runs, new life comes. We are swept clean, swept away with water's healing caress. For a while we can swim and marvel in it all. In the floods wake, we can reflect on the debris that has moved from our lives, and watch new growth spring forth before our eyes. A moment of grace, in a desert that nurtures us. 

To all of you who have found your way to this blog site during the year, I wish you a merry Chistmas, and a peaceful new year.
Sermons and worship only reflect one perspective on the life of the Uniting Church in Alice Springs this year: festivals, redeveloping Adelaide House, and exciting plans for developing the site in the Mall as an embracing heart for Alice Springs, have been just some fo the ways that the Church has engaged with its community, in ways that promote life, love and wellbeing for all people.
In our journey into 2007, we hope that you will also partner with us in prayer, in projects and in our thinking about what it means to be Gods church at the heart of a desert town. We look forward to hearing from you!

Cheers

Tracy Spencer (Rev)
tracyspencer@internode.on.net

Christmas Day: Alice Springs 2006


Xmas bowl is the offering
No morning tea: just cut up watermelon on the way out

Crib in open area with hay in it and bundle of gift wrapped up (heart inside)

Need: present box for heart
Heart (Jenny)
Pitj hymn books for anangu
Hymns book on seats at back
All songs on pp
Hymn numbers up
Turkish carpet for under crib
Hay
Crib
All long colourful cloths – Tracy
Watermelons, cutting board, knife

Readings:

Luke 2: 1- 5 Traveling to Bethlehem (pitj reading too)
Luke 2: 6-8 Birth of the baby (pitj reading too)
Luke 2: 9-14 Angels sing to shepherds
Luke 2: 15-20 Shepherdds go and see baby (pitj reading too)

Songs: all on pp, and TIS on back pews

As with gladness men of old PHB 35 TIS 314 (5 vs, e/p/e/p/e)
Love came down at Xmas time TIS 317
Child in a manger (to tune Morning has broken) in PHB 32 TIS 319 (Vs 3 e/p/e)
As shepherds watched their flocks by night (in pitj in singing book) TIS 299
Away in a manger PHB 38 (4 vs: repeat last verse) TIS 318 (p/e/p/e)
Joy in the heart of Australia

************************************************************************
Setting: Crib and hay and gift lying wrapped up in it (box with heart inside) at bottom of stairs

No communion table
Sermon and bible readings from top lecterns
Mic also set for singers/activity on font side of church at bottom of stairs.

Preworship
Play music from TIS 314 plus other

Procession
Worship party Process in from outside: a child holding the star at the front, then Bible, then candle
All stand (child and advent candle party stay up top)

When they fix star in place, and open bible and candle on top table, Tracy welcome and announce first hymn…alternate in English and pitj, use screen or books.

Welcome – Tracy
Welcome to worship this Christmas Morning! We meet together in this place, the church built to memorialize John Flynn who hoped for an inland cathedral where people of all faiths might gather. And we acknowledge the Arrernte people, traditional owners of this land, who continue to care for this place, and have welcomed Christ’ church to it.
My name is Tracy Spencer and together with Murray Muirhead, one of the ministers of this church. You are all welcome here, because the Christ child is Gods gift of love, for everyone.

Song: As with gladness TIS 314 (E/A/E/A/E)

Lighting of Advent candles and getting out heart (Jenny and Bronwyn, based on Seasons of Spirit but a bit different)

Jenny: Through all these weeks we have waited and journeyed to this day.
On Sunday mornings we laid out a purple path on the floor to remind us of our journey, and lit the advent candles to remind us of our preparation for this day:
(light first candle)
Bronwyn: When we lit the first candle, we recalled our Hope for those we share this world with, in the symbol of leaves, signs of new life
(light second candle)
Jenny: When we lit our second candle, we recalled the cries of those around us in this world, in the symbol of flowers floating in a bowl of tears
(light third candle)
Bronwyn: When we lit our third candle, we recalled our own commitment to acts of kindness for others we meet on our life journey, in the symbol of stones built up into a cairn
(light fourth candle)
Jenny: When we lit our fourth candle, we recalled the surprising joy that other people have brought to our lives, in the symbol of a star that guided them to us, and us to them.

Bronwyn: Through Advent too, some of us have come here to light candles, to sing and to pray as we waited for this day when we celebrate the Christ child’s birth amongst us
(light Christ candle)

Jenny: And so we light our final candle, the Christ candle, recalling that the baby Jesus is given as a gift to us and to the whole world.
(open the gift lying in the crib: set heart in crib where easily seen)

Bronwyn: God’s gift to us this day and every day, is the gift of love.

Song: Love came down at Xmas time TIS 317

Prayer of confession
Leader one: Murray
O God is our lives have become blurred with cynicism so that we no longer feel the depths of joy, or if we hear the stories of Christmas and hand them over to children as though we have less wonder in our hearts;
Leader Two (Tracy): Forgive us
All: Gather us in and surprise us with new delight.

Leader One (Murray): If we have so exhausted our bodies and souls with preparations for this day that we have little energy left for coming near to the fullness of all that you bring to us:
Leader Two (Forgive us): Forgive us.
All: Gather us in and surprise us with new delight. We open our lives to your grace now, O God. Amen.

Assurance - Murray
Leader: Just as the Christ was born into our life, moving past all the barriers and traveling towards the people, so the love of God pursuyes us past our failings and guilts and brings us grace. On this day of all days, we are forgiven!
All: Thanks be to God. Amen.

Song: Child in the manger (AHB 241) sung in English and Pitj E/P/E

Readings and Actions

PP mary and jospeh traveling

Luke 2: 1- 5 Traveling to Bethlehem - Bronwyn
(pitj reading too…gordon on tape [explain and into who he is], or other?)
Action: Tracy lay out our path to advent between crib and up steps to table and set with with : leafs, flowers/water, stones/acts of kindness, love/stars

PP baby image

Luke 2: 6-8 Birth of the baby - Jenny
(pitj reading too)
Action: Tracy make 2 large colourful (orange, red, yellow) circles around the crib with material (like Indigenous art symbolism for camp/water place)

PP angels

Luke 2: 9-14 Angels sing to shepherds – Bronwyn

Song: While Shepherds watched alternating english and pitj (eng 1,3,5, pitj 2,4,6)

Pp: baby

Luke 2: 15-20 Shepherds go and see baby - Jenny
(pitj reading too)
Action: Tracy lay out green cloth from cong to crib and lay some sandals along it making a track towards the crib, and also two other arms of tracks.


Christmas Reflection: Tracy
The Christmas story centers on a baby, and so it should. That baby Jesus, that small soft skinned baby that cried and fed and fretted and kept his parents up half the night, just like our children do, just like we ourselves did, that baby Jesus was the most perfect expression of God the world has ever seen.

Pp cake jesus

Now, I have three children I love very much, but you can be sure I am not romanticizing babyhood. But all that aside, what could be a more fitting symbol of Gods love than a newborn baby…intricately wrought, so delicate that it draws awe and gentleness and great love from us in response.

This image of Jesus is actually part of the decoration from a Christmas cake…

PP whole cake

PP close up of flowers

PP with clancy

And you can imagine the care and attention to detail that goes into such a marvelous creation.

So it is with a baby. But, gift tho it is, a baby, or a cake like this, symbolizes far more than just itself.

For these are gifts that do something. This cake is a ‘thank you’ to David Marshman for the handy work he had done on his friends place during the year. This cake binds David and his friend together, in thankfulness and love.

This baby Jesus likewise, is a gift from God that does something. What we have made on the floor here, is a meeting place of many paths…the path that Mary and Joseph took to Bethlehem, the path the shepherds took to come and see the baby, the path this congregation has taken towards Christmas through Advent, the path others take to come and gather round the heart of the Christmas season together. The birth of the baby Jesus at Christmas is a gift that does something to all of us: for once, we travel towards the same day, drawn together by the power of Gods love. Gods gift at Christmas is – yes - a baby, but as well as that Gods gift at Christmas is to bind us together in thankfulness and love.

Pp card tree small

But I must admit where my inspiration for this theme came from. Amidst the various Christmas cards we have been receiving – very gratefully I must say because I’m a terrible Xmas card giver – was one from the Central Australian Stolen Generations and Families Aboriginal Corporation, from here in Alice. I looked briefly at the cover and then read the inside, thinking, ‘nice Christmas tree’

PP card large

But then I looked at the cover again. What I had taken for tinsel were tracks, linking the gathering places, that I had taken for baubles. And at each gathering place, two people symbolized, sitting, facing each other. The Wiradjuri artist, Marromarra Darren Wighton, had incorporated into the traditional European fir tree design, Indigenous symbols of the tracks and gathering places linking across the shape, relinking perhaps stolen generations with their families.
Here in Alice, the idea of relinking families at Christmas time was only underlined by the many many conversations I was having: ‘Are you going away?’ ‘Yes, we’re driving to Melbourne, seeing my grandparents, then heading to Bundaberg to stay with my family and we’ll be back at the end of January’. Or any number of variations on that theme, including the reverse ‘the kids are all coming to us this year: the youngest arrives Thursday, then the other two on Sunday, and they’ll be here for the week.’
Now, knowing the distances and having had some experience of driving with a car full of kids, in my imagination the Christmas season seemed to be as much about the journey, as the destination! But the destinations are also important: those places that hold a welcome, and often memories, for us. In many ways, the travel at Christmas time for many of us is as much of a pilgrimage as it was for the shepherds traveling from nearby, or for the wise men, making their way over vast distances.
The point of Christmas, it seemed to me, was to get together with others – near and far, family, friends and sometimes strangers – in thanksgiving and love. And to reconnect also with country: places of origin, or meaning in our life journeys. We can think of Christmas as a celebration of connection, a celebration of those relationships that make us who we are.
In South Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has famously used the traditional term ‘ubuntu’ to describe the Zulu concept that ‘people are people through other people’. We do not exist in isolation. None of us are ‘self made people’, or ‘self sufficient’. We have become who we are through the people who have joined us in our journey, and they have become who they are through us, and the others they in turn have known. It’s not so different to Indigenous concepts, like Anpernirrentye in Arrernte, that network of kinship that describes relationships with people, and relationships with country, a whole web of connection and meaning that tells you who you are, and where you belong. So ubuntu, anpernirrentye, the Christmas pilgrimages to family and places: A vast network of connections, relationships, tracks, trails, that bind humanity together in gratefulness, and love. And, scriptures tell us, where love is, there also is God.

For the root of the very word ‘religion’ – re – ligio – re: to do something again, ligio, like a ligament, joining two parts together. Religion in its very essence is about joining parts together again…people to people, people to place, and especially humanity to God. How appropriate that we meet today on this site of one of the earliest Christian buildings in Alice springs, a bush nursing hostel (still there) and where we stand now, a clubhouse, both centres of social life in the fledgling town, the place to come and have a chat and a cuppa, and where the whole population would come together for dances and other social and family activities.

And how fitting that next door to a place where many of the towns newborn babies were nursed, it should be the birth of Christ, Gods own gift to the world, that activates our impulse to reconnect with each other on Christmas morning. Gods gift to us in Jesus is a divine outpouring of love in the world, and love cannot help but seek out its beloved. Love orients us towards each other, so that gathered together around the manger, we see each other, and become bound together by the power of love in our midst.

This is what the gift of a baby does to us. May we take that gift with us, wherever we go. Amen.

Song: Away in a manger TIS 318 PHB 38 p/e/p/ then repeat vs 3 in English

Prayers for others: reaching out across the country to those we love – Murray

Lords Prayer

Offering: For the Xmas bowl appeal
Prayer: Murray and Tracy

Voice 1: You call and empower us to assist in emergencies
– to care for people suffering.

Response: In your Spirit of love we commit ourselves to care.

Voice 2: You call and empower us to respond to injustice - to be a voice for the voiceless, the oppressed, the forgotten.

Response: In your Spirit of truth we commit ourselves to listen, and to speak out.

Voice 1: You call and empower us to engage in development and poverty reduction - to be stewards of the earth, to work side-by-side with the peoples of your world for the long-term.

Response: In your Spirit of faithfulness we commit ourselves to take the risk and stay for the long haul.

Voice 2: Let us believe that through these gifts we give, and these lives we live, your love and justice will flow to the ends of the earth.

Response: In your Spirit of Hope, we pray these things to you, Creator of the universe who meets us again in a tiny child. Amen.


Blessing
All our journeys all our paths, have led us to this Christmas morning, gathered around the Christ child in the heart of Alice, in the heart of Australia. Gods gift of Love has found us here, and we have become one community. And now, as the shepherds and the wise men did so long ago, and as our banners leading out of the foyer remind us, it is up to us to travel on, seeking the son of God wherever he may be…down the road a bit, in someone’s back shed, beneath a star filled sky. God speed your journey, until we meet again.

Song Joy in the heart of Australia

( or God be with you till we meet again?)

Sermon: Paul writes about Joy -Tracy
The cell would not be luxurious: not even clean, I imagine. The ancient world was not known for compassion to criminals. And yet here is one who in the midst of the strained and dangerous community of convicted men, pens a letter to a community in another country.
Paul of Tarsus was in prison not far from his birthplace in the country we now know as Turkey. Ephesus was then a fine sea port, a fully fledged roman town on the Aegean sea. Paul, you might remember, made himself a menace to the population by putting the silversmiths trade at risk when he incited a riot in the Agora. And so he was imprisoned. And behind bars, he thinks of the band of Christians in Phillipi, another port town across the sea to the north, in Macedonia. And he writes to them a letter, or better a series of letters, preserved by the church throughout the ages. From his prison cell, he writes about…joy.
He addresses other issues too, but briefly. His over riding concern is the joy available to them in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Does this mean Paul is choosing to ignore his physical circumstances, to focus only on his spiritual being, or even worse, on a pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die hope? No: he mentions his circumstances, and indeed that the fear of death does not overwhelm him. What Paul writes, balancing his writing things on his lap in his small space in the cell, is about the joy that exists in the very midst of whatever experience humans may endure. What he is doing, in a place where others are likely either scheming, plotting or despairing, is living within the realm of heaven, here on earth.

And so the letters of Paul to the church at Phillippi become markers of where heaven - the experience of the realm of Gods love – is found on earth.

PP map Paul

Imagine on a map a pin for each place heaven meets earth…Not just places of great epiphanies like Bethlehem in a stable, or the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, or on top of Mount Sinai, just to choose a few moments from Christian history. But places like the Ephesus prison, the struggling and o so human house church of Philipi. We mark these places in our history like the early white surveyors marked this country with cairns, places to take our bearings from.

PP aim

Or, if you like, like the many maps that John Flynn drew up as his mantle of safety spread across the inland – in this case, through nursing hostels like AH - we mark the places where in the midst of a tough life, deprivations and often suffering, healing and new life took place.

In our era, we might mark places like Robbin Island prison in South Africa, where, as Desmond Tutu describes, Nelson Mandela spent 27 years locked up and yet growing the kind of moral leader who can invite his former jailer to his inauguration at President. Let me read from Tutu’s book for a moment: (p73, 74)

Tutu’s theology takes us beyond just finding joy in a prison cell. In fact he takes us necessarily into places of suffering from whence emerges new life and a source for good. It is not that we seek suffering. I am reminded of a phrase I used to have up on my wall from Shalespeares play King Henry v, taken from his preparation for the battle of Agincourt, where the French, on horseback, outnumbered the English, only footsoldiers and weary from recent battle, 5:1. It went something like: We do seek a battle as we are: nor as we are do we shun it…(and later)… we are in Gods hands, not theirs.’ Sometimes suffering finds us, and we can only meet with it. It is at these times – especially at these times - that Christians can recognise and trust the heaven that is born in the most unlikely places: the light that comes in the darkness, and which darkness cannot overcome. It is these places and times in our own lives that we might mark with a cairn in our memory, a site to take our bearings from, a memory of the joy, love or new life that emerged in the most surprising places.

Let me quote from Michael Leunig:

Love is born
With a dark and troubled face
When hope is dead
And in the most unlikely place
Love is born: Love is always born.

Our faith is so radical. Just when we should give up hope, we claim it even more strongly. This peace from God, really does pass all understanding, and yet it guards our hearts and minds at all times.

What must we do then? Two things. Trust that joy is waiting for you even in the midst of trouble. And pass that joy onto others in the kindnesses you can do for them in the midst of their troubles: share, and be just. Like Paul, live in the kingdom in the midst of the world, and urge others to do so too. Amen

Sermon: prepare ye the way Tracy
This second Sunday of Advent asks a lot from us. We are head long into the Christmas frenzy, of parties and buying presents, decorating trees, and planning holidays. At least some of us are. This second candle of Advent reminds us that we are in a time of preparation…not preparation for a festival, but a time where we prepare ourselves to prepare the world, transforming it into the kingdom of love and justice.

I am reading a book right now lent to us by Leoni, that is all about the transformation of the world. It is called ‘God has a Dream’ by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and I couldn’t recommend a better Christmas gift for anyone. The title of course plays in Martin Luther King’s famous sermon, I have a dream…, preached at the height of the civil rights movement in America some 40 or more years ago. Tutu writes from a more recent time, his experiences during the apartheid regime of South Africa, disbanded only in the early 1990s. Both these eras immediately bring to mind for us the awful injustices perpetrated in these places, and other places in the world as well, where people discriminate against each other, refusing to recognise and respect Gods wonderful creation in each and every person, and treat them accordingly. But Tutu’s title says something more. God has a dream. And Gods dream is for Shalom, for the world to dance to the rhythm of Gods love, and not be captive to the drum beats of war. This is Gods dream, says Tutu, and we are the dancers. It is up to us to prepare ourselves and our world for the dance.

I had the privilege of seeing and hearing Tutu in the flesh at an NCYC at Ballarat, in the early 1980s. I was a youth group leader, and at about 19 years of age, in charge of a tribe of younger people intent on getting lost in the rain sodden tent cities. But Tutu was elecrtrifying. We had no sense that apartheid would tumble, and yet there he was, grinning and dancing away on the stage, the happiest little man you could imagine. He told us about South Africa, but it was his stories I remember. About the black man and white man in a pit, having to help each other out of it together. Because, he said, apartheid diminished the white South Africans as grossly as the black South Africans. It had dehumanised everyone. And then there was the story of the little angel…


It is up to us. And that’s what Advent 2 is all about. Preparing ourselves to make Gods’ dream for the world come true. And of course the first thing we do is look around Gods world and see the extent of the task. Huge. Overwhelming. And on Human Rights Day, with images of suffering fresh in our minds and our prayers, we may well feel overwhelmed at the impossible task. In the Australian context, it is salutary to remember the words of our prime minister on this day 14 years ago:

December 10 1992 Paul Keating’s Redfern Address: ‘And, as I say, the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the tradition lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask – how would I feel if this were done to me? As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us. This is a fundamental test of our social goals and our national will: our ability to say to ourselves and the rest of the world that Australia is a first rate social democracy, that we are what we should be – truly the land of the fair go and the better chance.’

Paul Keating, Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996

We know we still have so far to go in Australia. Let alone Peace and Justice for the entire globe, or Feed the world. We pray and pray this kingdom will come, but when?

I had an interesting conversation after the Taize service last Sunday, and you’ll read about it in my reflection in GO magazine. Basil Schild was leading it, and ended with the South African freedom song ‘Freedom is coming, o yes I know’. As I sang, I thought of Desmond Tutu, and of Morris Stuart and the choir he raised during the year that inspired us all with accapella songs, like the one about Nelson Mandela locked up on Robben Island, but not defeated. Brings tears to my eyes. So, I thought, singing away that I know freedom is coming, if black South Africans could write and sing this song in the midst of apartheid, then how much more can I believe in hope in m y own life and situation. There’s a lovely quote from Emily Dickinson that goes:
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops—at all—."
Yes, hope keeps us believing something better will come. A very appropriate advent theme.

But outside the church in the evening dusk, a friend of mine said…But why do we always say freedom is coming? Doesn’t that just disempower the present? If freedom is always coming, then its never actually arrived!

It’s a good point. And its good theology. We can get so sucked in to the symbolism of the season, that we begin to see the ritual as reality. Advent is not a time before Jesus is born amongst us. Jesus was born into our world over 2000 years ago and has been with us ever since. No, Advent reminds us to look hard at ourselves and our world so we are prepared to see where Christ is being born…every day. In every child of God.

When we hear stories about those young women from Bronwyn, recognise that not only have they come from a situation of suffering, but that salvation has already come to them. They have jobs. When we hear Beth speak of those children who have known such terror, recognise that she can tell their story purely because they have already been saved from that situation and now live here, in safety. When we see pictures like this one of the shoes, recognise the human ingenuity that rises even in the midst of poverty. When we hear stories of Desmond Tutu talking about the faith that was honed through the injustice of apartheid, recognise the great miracle God wrought in that country to enable Tutu and Mandela to become the moral leaders that have led that country to democracy and through truth and reconciliation. Freedom is not just coming. It has already arrived. Prepare yourselves to see it, and celebrate it, even as you prepare yourself to be part of the coming of peace and justice for the whole world. Starting today. Starting now. Starting here.

In Advent, let us ‘wait’for Jesus in the same way John the Baptist did: loudly and actively calling on our world – and ourselves - to repent and be born again into the new life of Gods kingdom where Jesus meets us every day.

Amen.

Sermon – Tracy.
Ah, this must be an easy one. Jesus sits outside the temple and compares the rich and the poor. There are two kind of rich people he notices: the scribes, religious men of status who swan about, and then the rich people paying their temple taxes, putting bulging planned giving envelopes into the temple coffers. And then there is the poor widow, who gives barely anything, maybe not even enough to clear her debt to the temple, or pay for decent sacrifices. But she puts in all she has, and we know she is the hero of this story.

Funny how often widows seem to feature as Biblical heroes. I could make comment on our own band of heroic widows in this congregation, but I wouldn’t want anyone scrutinizing their offering later! There have been orders of widows from time to time in the churches life, set aside for church work because of the holiness ascribed to the condition of widowhood. But that’s after the fact. The Biblical widows don’t get remarked upon for their holiness. Their ordinary holiness is remarkable because they are widows. It is hard for us to conceive the degradation, powerlessness and disgust towards widows in the ancient world, let alone the sorrow and grief they may have carried. I caught the tiniest glimpse of it earlier this year when Araluen showed an Indian film set in the time of Indian Independence from Britain, about a community of childless widows, condemned to an enclosed life bar for necessary prostitution to bring food to the community. Families would not receive them back, they would bring shame to any subsequent marriage partner, they could not be employed, they could only visit prescribed public places for necessities like shopping and washing. Having no children, and particularly no sons, they had no prospects of improving their situation through their child’s marriage. The main character was a young girl of 7, widowed on her wedding day, and now condemned to this social code for the rest of her life. The film ended when the child was whisked away to live with Ghandi, and then words came on the screen, telling of the thousands upon thousands of women still living under these social conventions throughout the world today.

We might be tempted to say what archaic practices, surely the world is gradually improving. But a saying from the Hebrew Talmud reminds us that there have always been voices against sexist practice:
It says:
"Be very careful if you make a woman cry, because God counts her tears.
The woman came out of a man's rib. Not from his feet to be walked on.
Not from his head to be superior, but from the side to be equal.
Under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved."

This is the tradition Jesus placed himself in. And Mark shows Jesus in a particularly critical mood, observing the practises at the Jerusalem temple, the ultimate in sacred places. Observing the practices and perhaps wondering how that widowed women there experienced them. There is no doubt Jesus is unsettled by the behaviour of the priests, and scribes, and government officials. But the very last observation he makes before embarking on his own Passion, is of a woman, a poor widow.

We are used to seeing the scene, where a woman gives all she has in devotion and service to God. But is that really what Jesus sees, or the only way to see this passage? Some commentators that wrestle with the nature of these parabolic vignettes in the Gospels suggest that in them, we see not morality tales or even examples of piety, but practices from real life that Jesus wants to call attention to because the situation is fundamentally wrong, but no one has noticed. So lets try and hear the passage again, without our assumptions of piety filling in words that aren’t there.
[Reading Mark 12:41-44]
So perhaps, as Jesus sits there opposite the Temple treasury and in opposition to it, he observes a religious practice that leaves the poor destitute. That what he sees is the Temple stripping a poor person of what little they had. The woman had no choice but to make payment, and it left her with nothing to feed herself with, except what she might earn through her body or other menial and unwanted service. It’s a tough world Jesus is showing us, and our appropriate response is not to go and give all we have to the Treasury as well, but to rail against the whole system itself.

A Japanese poem says this about poverty… (Imaging Penniless…)

I could have used todays sermon to encourage you all to greater giving, and indeed the financial report in the GO magazine will give you the information you need to think about your level of financial support for the church. Or I could have made it an occasion to revisit that National Council of Cjhurches theme of Make Indigenous poverty history, although as Bruce Walker pointed out, and as many of us know, here in Alice the issue is not poverty as a lack of money, but, as Rose Kunoth Monks said the other week, it is poverty that cannot turn money into wealth. But through this simple observation of a widow making her tithe, Jesus is asking us to look at the bigger picture. What are the institutions or social conventions that are robbing our people blind? What are the pressures and addictions of our community that strip people of choices that might be better ways to care for their own and their family’s well being? On an even bigger scale, think of the cash cropping and third world debt that keeps the poorest countries poor and paying the wealthiest countries for the privilege. The action of one widow caught in her social circumstances demands action in all of that.

But that is not all. This woman, this figure of a victim of powerful forces, in one fell swoop, becomes for the Gospel writers a figure of God, a figure of the Son of God on his way to crucifixion. After seeing this woman, Mark has Jesus pour forth his furious sorrows for Jerusalem, before he is anointed for his death at Bethany and so begins the final act of his Passion. Borne by forces beyond his control, Jesus becomes victim to the confluence of circumstances that will ensure his death. He becomes the one who gives everything he has – his very life – not as a temple tithe, although the language of sacrifice evokes this interpretation. He doesn’t give his all to the Treasury: he gives it to us. In every way you can think of, Jesus gives his last 2 shekels worth to us. Not because it’s the law, or social code, but because he believes we are worth it.

Imagine that the widow lifts her eyes and turns around, and sees Jesus looking at her: does the pain of knowing she has condemned herself and maybe her children to another day of hunger? I doubt it. But maybe, just maybe, she can read the anger in his eyes, and perhaps she follows close enough to over hear his blasphemous conversation with his disciple as he leaves the Temple…’You see these great buildings? Not a single stone will be left on another, everything will be pulled down’ he says. And even if she doesn’t really believe that such as he could smash the entire state and religious apparatus, perhaps she feels a little stronger in the knowledge that someone has noticed how oppressive the system is, that someone cares that it hurts her. What Jesus gives to the poor and to us, is not money or bread, but hope. Let us do the same. Amen.

Sermon: Tracy
Do not urge me to leave you, or to turn back and not follow you.
For wherever you go, I will go;
wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die and be buried.

These words could have been those of our friend Davood, an Iranian refugee caught in Autralian Detention for 4 and a half years after fleeing his home and family, in fear of his life. The vessel that delivered him to Australia was detained off Christmas Island, and he was sent to Curtin Detention centre in NW WA. There, he met the Patrol Minister and member of our Synod, Andrew Watts, and through his experiences there, became a Christian. Andrew baptised him, and others, in the Detention centre. When Curtin was closed and he was transferred to Port Hedland, Rev Bev Fabb, another Patrol Minister, continued to teach and pray with Davood and her growing congregation of Christians in detention. They even formed a choir. Davood was again relocated when Baxter Detention centre opened in Port Augusta, and that’s where we got to know him, while we were living in Hawker and patrol ministers in SA. Gus has already told you the rest.
During this time, our federal government policies towards people like Davood hardened into a position of suspicion and punishment…imprisoned for the crime of seeking asylum. Davood, like the vast majority of people in his situation, was eventually granted release…on a limited form of permit to stay in Australia – but this assessment by the government processes absolutely validates his claims…by every measure he was determined to be a genuine refugee fleeing threat to his life, and entitled to asylum according to UN treaties.

Do not urge me to leave you, or to turn back and not follow you.
For wherever you go, I will go;
wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die and be buried.

This first speech on Ruth’s lips is axiomatic for the entire book. It is a beautifully balanced piece of poetry, confirming it as the iconic motif of the book. We take it as a statement of loyalty, and moreover loyalty to what we in the church think of as our faith, although of course it wasn’t, it was loyalty to ancient Judiasm. So it’s an easy story to embrace, when we read it as someone different, wanting to become like us. We feel validated as a superior religion or culture when others seem to assimilate to us, our ways, our faith, our culture.

But this speech in the Book of Ruth was not spoken just to Naomi. In fact the Book of Ruth was mostly composed in the post-exilic period of Israel’s history, after both the time of Judges, which opens the book, and the time of Israels monarchy, with which the book closes, had both been smashed to pieces by the Babylonian defeat of Israel in the C6th BCE and the deportation of Israels leaders and ruling classes to Exile in Babylon. Only the poor and peasants were left in Israel, those too insignificant for the Babylonians to feel they needed to disempower. After 70 years in exile, Israel’s leadership and ruling classes – including the middle classes – returned…but to what? The temple in Jerusalem, the very home of Yahweh, was ruined, the monarchy – appointed by Yahweh - had been slaughtered: both pillars of religion and governance were gone.
In the meantime, those peasants left behind had got on with surviving and feeding themselves…and over those several generations, had taken up the properties and homes that once belonged to others. A bit of a social crisis, you must admit…one we still stuggle with in Israel where only 40 years later, Palestinian families can point to the homes they grew up in, now said to belong to the Jewish families that invaded the country in the 6 day war of 1967. One we still struggle with here, where we both acknowledge traditional owners of this very land we claim as private property. ‘Co existence’ has become a handy way to avoid the contradictions of legitimate land ownership in Australia.

There was not only a social crisis over land ownership for the nation of Israel…there was also a religious and cultural crisis, as Babylonian traditions mixed with Jewish traditions, both intellectually and through the many mixed marriages made during that 70 years. And it was a governance crisis…the royal families in ruins, and no obvious successors, nor an agreed system of appointing them. No doubt various factions and tribal arrangements had proliferated in both Israel and Babylon in the political vacuum of the Exile.

And so, as most social crises do, this situation bred multiple documents analysing the situation and proposing solutions for future cultural cohesion and stability. What’s known as the Exilic literature of the Hebrew Scriptures represents responses to these events; earlier traditions reinterpreted to address exilic issues, or a retelling of events to support arguments for varying actions of the people during and after the exilic period.
You see, for Israel in exile, the questions were:
is Yahweh still a living God after being defeated by the Babylonian Gods, and if so, should we continue to worship Yahweh?
Or did they get defeated because Yahweh abandonned the people, and if so, why did Yahweh do that?
And in Babylon, how should the Jews keep themselves a pure people, when intermarriage and adopting other cultural ways was possible?
Or should they try to retain cultural purity?
How could they continue to be a faithful people when they had no temple?
And when the richer classes returned, to find that the poorer classes left behind had taken over some of their property, who could say which bit of land now belonged to who?

And so the Exilic literature, which includes the book of Ruth tries to answer some of these questions, in various ways.

For instance Jeremiah offers a causal interpretation of how Israel’s sin led Yahweh to abandon them, and then advice to those in exile to settle down, marry and build houses, and work for the wealth of Babylon (ch 29).
But Ezekial focusses on the hope of a return and restoration of Jerusalem in the future;
But the book of Esther opposes the emphasis to return by being a story about making exile your home, and the politics of multiple identities that requires.[1]
Joshua is not interested in settling elsewhere, and reinterprets the Exodus tradition as a narrative of violent conquest, providing an ideological basis for those returning to repossess their land;
But then Chronicles represents the claims of those who remained in the land.[2] Lamentations are poems of grief at the loss and destruction of Jerusalem;
And second Isaiah offers comfort to those mourning.
Tobit is another one that urges constant hope of return.
And the book of Ezra elaborates this theme with detail about how a return to the idealised religion of the past – through rebuilding of the temple after exile, and enforcing the strictest version of the Yahwist temple cult – would create national unity again. Importantly, Ezra’s reforms included the instruction to ‘put away foreign wives’ so they could return to a racially pure mono-cultural Israel.

But then there is the book of Ruth. And not just of Ruth, but Ruth the Moabite. Her ethnicity is mentioned frequently throughout the book, the point being that she is not an Israelite. And the point behind that – and some would say the whole point of the book and its inclusion in scripture – is to remind that nation that even their greatest King, David, was of mixed racial heritage. To Ezra’s proposal that Israel be rebuilt into a mono-cultural nation – the ancient easts version of a white Australia policy – the Book of Ruth says: Don’t kid yourself. We are all hybrids. We all have multi-cultural heritages. Embrace ethnic diversity…no, even more than that, celebrate it, because from the example of diverse cultures, we all learn more about what it means to be fully human. Ruth the Moabite – not Naomi the Israelite – shows us what loyalty means. And through her example, we finally understand what it means to be loyal to each other, and loyal to God.

Do not urge me to leave you, or to turn back and not follow you.
For wherever you go, I will go;
wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die and be buried.

Those of you who know a little of my research work, know that both my research subjects, an English wife of a tribal Indigenous man, and a white missionary, found their way into belonging in the Adnyamathanha community of the Flinders Ranges, early last century. And in my research, I reach back over time and across continents, to a Moabite woman, to interpret the kind of loyalty their lives displayed. In the same way, I reach out to a man of Iranian culture, to understand what loyalty to my own nation means, in a time when I am frequently disgusted with our national leadership. You see, through 4 and a half years of waiting, Davood never gave up his faith in Australia to be a just, compassionate and tolerant nation. Davood’s faith in us, reminded me of who we are at our best, and who we are called to become again.

And in case you’re wondering where God is in all this, you might like to remind yourself that the Book of Ruth refers to Yahweh only very slightly, in an exclamation of joy over the birth of the mixed race child Obed, the grandfather of King David, and incidentally 16 generations later, the direct ancestor of Jesus. God’s lessons are there for us to learn in the lives of all the saints, wherever they come from.
[1] Michael Goonan, A Community of Exiles: Exploring Australian Spirituality St Pauls Publications, Homebush NSW, 1996.
[2] Norman C. Habel, The Land Is Mine: Six Biblical Land Ideologies, Overtures to Biblical Theology Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, 1995. P55

Mark 10:2-16 (Receive the Kingdom as a child….)
· Talk about our journey through Turkey - overland via public bus with a 13 month old and 5 year old. Cannakale story - shrapnel
· Place of children in this society. Contrast between Australian society and Turkish society that we experienced in day to day travel.
· Helped me to understand that children are valued differently in different cultures and allowed to participate at different levels in different cultures.
· We don't often think consciously about the place of children in our society. We simply react towards them in ways we are socially conditioned to do.
oo000oo
People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this he was indignant and said to them, 'Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the Kingdom of belongs. Truly, I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a child will never enter it.' And he took them in his arms, laid his hands upon them, and blessed them.
This is the second time in a few chapters of Mark's Gospel that Jesus drew attention to children. In Chapter 9:36 Mark tells us that in the midst of an argument between the disciples about who should be the leader, Jesus took a small child and placed it among them. Then he took the child in his arms and said to the disciples "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.
In contrast to modern day Turkey, in the ancient Mediterranean world children were at the very bottom of the social scale in terms of status and rights. Age and tradition were revered in that society and early childhood training was characterised by harsh discipline. It was not until early adulthood that a young person began receiving serious consideration as a member of the family group, let alone as a member of the wider society.
So it is quite remarkable that Jesus drew attention to children so directly on at least two occasions. And his assertion that they were somehow central to our understanding of the kingdom of God was quite a radical idea.
In shooing away the parents who were bringing their children to Jesus, the disciples were simply acting according to the "rules" of their culture. They were not doing anything out of the ordinary. They were not being particularly mean. They were simply making a reflex reaction to children that had become embedded within their social etiquette. It must have caught them unawares when Jesus suggested that the way that they treated children was somehow parallel with how they received or rejected the Kingdom of God.
So why was Jesus so indignant about their behaviour if they were just following established social norms?
The two stories in Mark's Gospel about Jesus and children can easily be trivialised or romanticised. Many interpreters of the stories have emphasised the "innocence of children" or their "trusting nature" and suggested that we need to become childlike in our innocence and trust if we are to receive the kingdom of God.
But I don't think that Mark intends us to hear think them as stories about us needing to be "childlike". If Jesus was just saying that we need to have a childlike innocence or trust why was he so cranky with the disciples for turning the children away? There must be something else going on in these stories! I think the real sting in the tail of these stories is that Jesus was placing the "class" of people with the lowest status, and the least rights, of any in his society at the very centre of his teaching about the Kingdom of God. I believe these stories are much more about the dignity and worth of children as human beings than about some romanticised ideal of childhood.
Given the worldview of those who witnessed his actions at first hand, it is very likely that they would not have thought Jesus was using the child as metaphor for innocence, or trust, or unquestioning love and acceptance. They are modern categories, not ancient ones.
What those first witnesses would have seen was a social reversal. What they would have heard was a challenge to their hierarchical systems of power, which, Jesus said, were at odds with the reign of God. And unless they renounced such power they would have difficulty receiving, or even recognising, the reign or kingdom of God.
Throughout the world today children as young as 5 or 6 are used a soldiers, sex slaves and enforced labour. In Australia they are physically, sexually and psychologically abused and exploited. And they are often excluded from full participation in the community or the Church.
Last week as we celebrated the baptism of a child we recognised that God does not accept us on the basis of how much theology we understand, or whether we follow all the proper liturgical protocols, or whether we respond with a maturity beyond our years. God simply accepts and loves us as we are and challenges us to treat all human beings as equals within the family of God, So that all might flourish and each one of us, infant, child or adult, might reflect the image of God in God's world.
Jesus was directly challenging his closest disciples concern for power by turning the social-order upside down. He was linking their acceptance of those within their community who had the lowest status and least power with our reception or rejection of the kingdom of God.
It was a political and social challenge that cut right to the heart of the tendency in all societies to marginalise some groups of people. And in our modern, sophisticated society children are still amongst the most powerless and abused people in the world.
We need only think of the Federal Senate's inquiry into "The Forgotten Australians" which was released last year. That report emerged from extensive public hearings around Australia and detailed the widespread physical, sexual and emotional abuse that many Australian and English children experienced in some church and government institutions in the 1930's to 1970's.
Or we need only think of the millions of children who are still enslaved, or forced to work in grossly inhumane conditions across the world. Or the hundred of thousands of children, some as young as 5 or 6, who are used as child solders in civil wars in Africa and the Middle East. Or children who die from malnutrition everyday in a world where you and I can slowly eat ourselves to death.
In this sort of world we cannot reduce the stories of Jesus response to the children to trite words about childlike innocence and trust. On the contrary, God calls us to dismantle all value systems which undermine the equality of all human beings in the eyes of God. For it is as we receive the most lowly members of our community that we somehow - mysteriously - also receive and make real the kingdom of God in our midst.
People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this he was indignant and said to them, 'Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the Kingdom of belongs. Truly, I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a child will never enter it.' And he took them in his arms, laid his hands upon them, and blessed them.
Amen.

Everyday saints (Hebrews 11)

NOTE: This sermon is an extensively modified version of a sermon first written by Rev Ross Bartlett (United Church of Canada) and taken from Richard Fairchild’s website. It also includes material from Miriam Therese Winter’s WomanWitness (Pt II).

The book of Hebrews is populated with all sorts of incredible people. In fact it can be a little intimidating at points and we might be tempted to think "I could never be like one of those people!" The chapter I read this morning is the roll-call of the faithful of Israel and includes all sorts of people who did great things. Among them is Noah, who spent years building an ark before it rained. Enoch, who was so holy that he didn't die but simply went for a walk one day and ended up in heaven. Then there’s Abraham, who picked up lock, stock and barrel and moved simply because God said “go”. The list includes Moses, perhaps the greatest figure in the Old Testament; the one who did God's greatest work before the time of Jesus. Then there’s Joshua, leading the people across the river Jordan, and dropping the walls of Jericho with trumpets. These are the people we often remember as we recount the stories of our spiritual ancestors.

But then intriguingly, given the pre-eminence of others in the list, there is Rahab the prostitute. Did you notice that when we heard the reading? I wonder how many times people have simply read over that bit as the stream of “heroes of the faith” has been read out. Rahab was a harlot; a common prostitute, who sheltered two of Joshua’s men when they came to spy on Jericho. And yet here she is in a list of great people of the faith. Rahab deified the King’s orders, deceived the town soldiers and helped the Israelite spies escape to safety. For this act she and her family were spared by Joshua during the destruction of Jericho. She was cunning and quick witted woman. But she appears in this list because she acted on her faith in God and became instrumental in Israel’s eventual entry into the promised land of Canaan.

The inclusion of Rahab in a list of great people of faith reminds us of God’s freedom to upset our neat predictable boundaries. To offend our sensibilities. To choose people who would never have occurred to us. To make saints of the most unlikely individuals. This is a God who reaches out to a prostitute inside an enemy city and invites her to become part of the people of God. Rahab is a most unlikely saint. And yet, saint she is. And what makes her such is not the specific action of hiding the spies, but the strong faith in the God that lead her to do so.

For the writer of Hebrews to have such faith is to be sure that the things we hope for in God will come to pass, even when things look uncertain, and to be convinced of the reality of the invisible dimensions of life, even when there is no tangible proof.

But sometimes it‘s hard to hold to those convictions. Sometimes it’s hard to believe without some sort of tangible proof. Sometimes our faith may seem to fail us. We may be tempted to think of saints as having some extra-special capacity for faith that we will never have, or as being special people in unique situations. We might occasionally think “well, if I was in their place I might do something wonderful too", although I suspect we are more likely to say "Well, I'm just a teacher”, or, “I just balance the books”, or, “I’m just a common housewife", “what opportunity do I have to be great, or saintly or heroically faithful?” But what this passage from Hebrews seems to be saying, is that true greatness comes through us finding a place to live out God's will in our life and actually doing it. Not because we know how it will turn out, and not because we know all the answers before we start, but simply because God has called us to be part of the people of God. It does not necessarily involve grand acts, but rather a day-to-day commitment to live by faith in the service of God and our neighbour.

The Australian folk singer, Pat Drummond, sings about a taxi driver named Harcoran, who struggles to find the courage to drive his taxi again after he is robbed and stabbed by a passenger. Pat sings
….. “Most of us have little courage, compensating for that fact, we often hope to find redemption in one grand heroic act, focused in one fleeting moment to prove trustworthy and sure we overlook, beyond the plot, the greater courage to endure…..”
He concludes that Harcoran is a hero, every single night he drives. For he overcomes, each day, the fear within.

Whilst their heroic deeds often distract us, it was their day-to-day trust in God, and their service of other people, that made the “heroes of the faith” great. It was the constant willingness of Jesus’s disciples to let God pick them up, dust them off and start them on their way again when they stumbled and fell, that eventually made them saints. Faith and service, lived out one day at a time.

I suspect very few of us will ever be called to make big sacrifices all at once or to perform great feats of faith or love. That would almost be easier I think. To go to the bank, mortgage our home, take all we have and spend it on one grand act of nobility and sacrifice. But I think God would say something like this: "Good for you. Now take those life savings back to the bank and change them into five and ten dollar notes. And I want you to use them a bit at a time, day by day, in acts of love and service to me, and to your neighbour." Be willing to stand for what is right even though it may be unpopular. Be willing to oppose the prejudice that what is different is automatically wrong, or inferior, or bad. Be willing to give of your time and love to people, to causes and to prayer. Believe in what you hope for and have certainty in what you cannot see. And over the long haul, as you run with perseverance the race set before you, you’ll become an unlikely saint. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Job: God talk and human suffering

The book of Job is an extended exploration of some of the most painful and challenging questions that can arise in our lives. How do we make sense of the suffering of innocent people - whether it be ourselves or others? How do we talk about God when people suffer misfortune through no fault of their own? How do we sustain faith and belief in God, when appalling events overtake our lives, and in the silence that follows, God seems to be totally absent. How can our lives have meaning when catastrophe can so rapidly tear the tenuous threads by which our lives hang? How can we maintain a sense of hope if we are suddenly diagnosed with a degenerative or terminal illness, or deep depression or psychosis?

oo000oo

There is no historical evidence that Job existed as a real person, or that God had a wager with Satan to make his life miserable. But that doesn't alter the insights contained in the Book of Job, or its place within the canon of the Old Testament, because the human experiences that it explores, and the questions its wrestles with, touch most of our lives in very real ways. And its insights into the nature of human life, and God, and suffering have resonated with believers down through the centuries. The Book of Job, more than any other book in the Bible, has been studied by atheists and adherents of other faith traditions, all of whom grapple with the same universal experience of human misery and unjust suffering.

oo000oo

The wager between God and Satan that sets the scene for the dialogues that follow is a literary device to explore the question of whether faith in God can be "disinterested". Can we continue to trust in God if God does not reward the righteous and punish the unrighteous? What answers are we left with if God is not actually a God of retribution as many of our assumptions presuppose?

The opening scene in the Book of Job does not provide a particularly attractive portrait of God as he brags to Satan about Job's integrity. Satan cannot deny that Job is a good and devout man but he argues that it's very easy for Job to remain faithful to God as his life is so blessed with material possessions and family. So God lets Satan take those things away from Job by killing his children and taking away his vast flocks of animals. Job is pretty upset but he refuses to curse God. So God brags to Satan again. Then Satan says that's all well and good but if Job himself is afflicted physically with illness and pain he will not be able to retain his faithfulness and integrity any longer. So once again God lets Satan inflict Job with horrendous sores from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, the only condition being that he not kill Job. In anguish, Job sits among the ashes of a fire and scraps his sores. His wife chides him "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die!".

Then, just when Job thought that things couldn't get any worse, his friends turned up to comfort and console him. Initially they sat alongside him in silence for seven days awestruck by the depth of his misfortune. It was a powerful act of solidarity as they connected with his deep pain and sense of abandonment. But they could not stay with it. They had to speak. And when they did, they slowly but surely began to blame Job for his suffering and to suggest that the only way to reverse his fortunes was to repent and submit to God.

If you believe in a God who punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous then you can only conclude, when you see someone is suffering, that they must have done something wrong. But in consistently maintaining his innocence, Job rejects such a theology of divine retribution.

His friend's responses are mixed. They echo some of the prophetic literature in their concern for the poor and dispossessed. But they distort that tradition by failing to see there is no evidence that Job had acted inappropriately with regard to those who were poor. And they sought an explanation for his misfortune in his own behaviour. In the face of such pressure Job shows an immense strength character in not succumbing to an idea that has continued to influence human conscience for centuries.

Hymn 674 (vs 1-3) Inspired by love and anger, disturbed by need and pain…

In a famous poem called the 'Masque of Reason', Robert Frost explored the meaning of the Book of Job and grasped something quite profound about the theology that emerges from it. In a conversation between Job and his wife and God, Frost has God say to Job….
(God to Job) …..I've had you on my mind a thousand years to thank you someday for the way you helped me establish once for all the principle there's no connection man can reason out between his just deserts and what he gets. Virtue may fail and wickedness succeed. 'Twas a great demonstration we put on. I should have spoken sooner had I found the word I wanted. You would have supposed One who in the beginning was the Word would be in a position to command it. I have to wait for words like anyone. Too long I've owed you this apology for the apparently unmeaning sorrow you were afflicted with in those old days. But it was of the essence of the trial you shouldn't understand it at the time. It had to seem unmeaning to have meaning. And it came out all right. I have no doubt you realise by now the part you played to stultify the Deuteronomist and change the tenor of religious thought. My thanks are to you for releasing me from moral bondage to the human race. The only free will there at first was man's, who could do good or evil as he chose. I had no choice but I must follow him with forfeits and rewards he understood - unless I liked to suffer loss of worship. I had to prosper good and punish evil. You changed all that (Job). You set me free to reign. You are the Emancipator of your God, and as such I promote you to a saint.[1]
In these inspired words Frost points out that the idea that God must operate through punishment of the wicked and reward of the righteous confines God and tries to create God in our image. It confines the gratuitous nature of God's love which, can transcend evil and unjust suffering in this world and break down the barriers between those who suffer and those who unconsciously believe that unjust suffering is somehow deserved and that we have no obligation to rail against it.

Job's theology suggests that such ways of thinking and talking about God lack depth and authenticity and have something satanic about them. The expectation of rewards that is at the heart of the doctrine of retribution and contemporary "theologies of prosperity", debases our relationship with God and limits our recognition of the many different ways in which God works in the world.

The doctrine of retribution does contain a valid principle in that we are called by God to behave in ethical ways and to live in solidarity with all who are marginalised and dispossessed. But the principle became distorted when it was forced into the narrow framework of "reward and punishment" by the Deuteronomic writers of the Old Testament and many other proponents of this belief.[2] God calls us to live ethically toward one another because of the innate value of each and every person, and to live in solidarity with all who suffer, for in doing so we express God's deep solidarity with each human person. He does not call us to live this way in order to be rewarded.

When Job's friends first appeared they sat alongside him in silence sharing the depth of his pain. And that silence was a much deeper expression of their understanding of what he was going through than any words they later spoke. In the silence of empathy they were present to Job in ways they could never be once they started to blame him for his own suffering.

Throughout the course of the dialogues with his friends, Job moved from a narrow focus on his own experience of unjust suffering to a wider awareness of the unjust suffering and needs of others. In doing so he abandoned the idea that people's misfortune is a result of God's punishment. When the arguments he heard from his friends proved to be so inadequate to address his own suffering, Job abandoned any attachment he might have had to such ideas and experienced a sense of brotherhood with all people who have suffered unjustly throughout human history ; those who are oppressed by unjust regimes, those who experience severe illnesses or natural disasters, and those excluded from society for belonging to a particular ethnic or social class or racial group. Job discovered that he could no longer blame the victims for their poverty, or exclusion, or disease or failure to thrive. Nor could he attribute his previous good fortune to any sense of superiority. He discovered that good things and bad things happen in life, and they will continue to happen. And the reasons "why?" are lost somewhere in the mystery of God.

But in the midst of this harsh awakening Job also discovered that despite his experience of "deep depression" and despair he had not been abandoned by God, either in the depths of his suffering or the peaks of his joy. He then moved beyond the impulse of blaming the victims of unjust suffering and entered into solidarity with all who challenge oppression or live through the pain and isolation of illness and natural disasters.

In the end the Book of Job is a story of hope. It doesn't really give an answer to the "why?" of unjust suffering, but it does undermine the distorted Old Testament image of a God of retribution.

It suggests that if our primary motivation for remaining faithful to God is a desire for rewards, or a fear of punishment, we have been sadly mislead. But it does suggest that as we enter more fully into relationship with God through the good times and the bad times in our lives we will discover ways to move beyond such a limited view of God and find rest from all the unanswered questions of our heart in God's mysterious embrace.

Then we may be more able to live by the words that Lorna used in our call to worship. Words spoken by eighth century Sufi mystic Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya (c713-801) who echoed the insights of Job when she said….

"O my Lord, if I worship you from fear of hell, burn me in it; if I worship you in hope of paradise, exclude me from it. But if I worship you for your own sake, then do not hold me back from your eternal beauty."[3]

Amen.

HYMN 674 (4 -6): To God, who through the prophets proclaimed a different age….
[1] Extract of 'Masque of Reason' in Hamilton, I (Ed). Robert frost: Selected Poems. Penguin Books, 1964, p232 - 233.
[2] See Gutierrez, G. On Job: God-talk and the suffering of the innocent. Orbis Books, 1988, p 64.
[3] Bowker, J (Ed) (1997) The Oxford dictionary of world religions. Oxford: Oxford University Press (p 789)

A parable for Worship with reference to the Exodus and Deuteronomy 8

By Rev Tracy Spencer
030906

Remember the desert.

Remember…. how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years. Remember. Remember, because this is the way God disciplined you, this is the way God taught you how to truly live. Remember. Remember the desert. Remember how to live as God’s people.

Remember at the beginning of todays service I read a poem, called ‘The Desert’, written in 1908 by an American woman called Minnie Louise Haskins.
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'

And he replied, 'Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!'
That’s all I knew of it at first, when I came across it quoted in one of RM Williams books, ‘Beneath whose hands’, where he describes travelling through the Musgrave ranges with a missionary, Bill Wade, in 1927, who quoted this to him. He describes Bill as naïve and fearless, walking up to groups of Indigenous people he had never met with his arms wide open for embrace and singing out ‘Hallelujah!’ In fact, Anangu this days remember him, and call him ‘Hallelujah Wade’. This poem, with the rest of it, was later made famous when King George the fifth read it in his Christmas address to his empire on the eve of WW2. Even the recent Queen Mother had it read at her funeral. The poem ‘The desert’ is fundamentally about an orientation to life that dares to embrace the desert. Fundamentally about what we might call a spirituality that embraces the unknown, believing it will be life giving. A spirituality of complete trust.

That’s what forty years in the desert – two generations of desert living – might teach you. But that spirituality did not come easily for whitefellas in Australia. Around 1860, a gentleman explorer to ‘central Australia’, William Jessop, stood atop a hill and described 'the great western desert": "The sight that burst upon me was fearful: a complete and unbroken semicircle of red, glaring, parched, and cracked earth started from my feet as a centre and was bounded by the horizon and by nothing besides…It weas a lurid yellow everywhere, tormenting the eyes; above it was a canopy of blue, as uniform and as wearisome as the ground itself; through all and over all rolled the glowing sun in all his fiery might. I had at last met a palce on earth where no life was, but death rather lived."[1]
The irony is he was only standing on Mt Remarkable in South Australia’s mid north. He hadn’t seen anything yet! Around that same time, John McDouall Stuart was at what he believed to be the centre of Australia, where he erected an English flag, and gave a speech, not to the two other men in his meagre party, but to the Indigenous people he assumed were around, although he could not see them. The speech he gave to the people who had lived, survived and thrived in this place for thousands of years, went something like ‘give three cheers for the flag, the emblem of civil and religious liberty, and may it be a sign to the natives that the sawn of liberty, civilisation and Christianity is about to break upon them.’ (Mr Stuart’s Track p143) Like so many other settlers, he brought with him the idea that this desert was empty, and in need of his resources to make it a place able to sustain life. And then he feasted on parrot and native seed damper in celebration that night.

How do you travel in this desert? Is it a place to be feared? Is it a place to be changed into something else? Is it a place that nurtures you from its abundant life?

And even more fundamental is the question: what are you doing here anyway?

All life is a journey, and yours has led you here. There is a mystery in that, although we could each map out the twists and turns of our years to this point. There is a mystery in the future, no matter how confident we are of where we think we might be headed. The point of the desert is to teach you, so that whatever happens next, you remember your lessons here, and carry them with you.

In the OT, the desert has been all these things – fearful, needing transformation, nurturing, a place of learning. But it is this last that the book of Deuteronomy emphasises. Of all the Biblical books, Deuteronomy has the most signs of an author who had really experienced the real desert. It names places, describes conditions, and most of all, sees the desert time as a very positive experience for God’s people. Remember the desert! Is its message. Ian Robinson, who some of you know from the Desert Journeys argues Deuteronomy was written by authors who intimately knew the desert, and write from their experience of living as God’s people in a desert environment. The idea of the promised land is still there, but it is secondary to the concern to live, survive and thrive as God’s people in the desert. This is where they encounter God, are tested or taught, are kept safe and nurtured, and learn complete trust in the God who dwells with them there. It takes forty years. They get beyond culture shock. They get beyond conquest. They learn to twist and turn their wanderings to avoid entering others territory where they were not welcome; and when they did enter the territory of Amalkites and other –ites, they negotiated peaceful passage. This people of God were in no mood for war. They were just learning how to live, survive and thrive in the desert where God was found in fire and cloud and law, where water sprang from rocks and food appeared with the dew.

We are the church in the mall in the desert. We think perhaps our lawns are too green to be desert, our houses too comfortable. But its not the case. Every day, we see God’s radiance glowing on the ranges, and feel the touch of God’s mercy in the warmth of winter sun and the chill of summer evenings. Every day, just walking across our lawns, we negotiate our passage through Arrernte territory, making peace or detouring as the situation demands. Every day, we are learning how to live, survive and thrive in this place where God is teaching us about who God is, and who we are.

Last weekend I saw a film reminding me again about who Australians have been in this desert country. ‘Kanyini’ is a word meaning something like connection, and Bob Randall described Anangu life with connection to country, family, law and spirituality. And then through black and white archive footage of our past, he showed how settler Australians cut the connections of Anangu to law, to country, to family. Settler Australians like John McDouall Stuart, themselves disconnected from families overseas, home countries far away, and even from their own law as they killed people, coveted other men’s women, and stole possessions. That’s our past, and Bob, smiling and speaking evenly and carefully, reminded the audience of it. But he reminded us, for the purpose of teaching us. Towards the end of Kanyini, an image is shown of a whitefella, wearing the headband, and Bob saying something like ‘why didn’t they come to us and say can we share this place with you, and we could have taught them how to live in our good ways, and they could have taught us about their ways too.’ The connection that remains unbroken for Bob is the connection to spirituality, an orientation to life that believes in adapting to the world as it presents itself, that everything in the world is meant to be there for the good of all. A spirituality of trust, and hope.

In this desert, God’s word to us is ‘remember’. I was reminded that at the beginning of the year, I preached just the opposite, ‘Remember not the things of times past’ although I wanted to argue for the value of history then. And there is a time for remembering. The experience of the last 150 years in the central deserts teaches us many lessons. The experience of people in the central deserts more than 150 years ago teaches us many lessons too. What we might learn from these is a fundamental orientation to face the unknown not with fear and control but with humility and trust and faith in the Spirit who preserves life.

‘Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep Gods commands?’ Remember? That’s why you’re here. Amen.



Works Cited

William RH Jessop. Flindersland and Sturtland; or the inside and Outside of Australia. London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington St publisher in ordinary to her majesty, 1862.
John Milton. "Paradise Lost." (1667).


[1] William RH Jessop, Flindersland and Sturtland; or the inside and Outside of Australia (London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington St publisher in ordinary to her majesty, 1862). P259

Minister’s reflections

Last weekend members of the Church Council, along with other key leaders of the congregation including our Sunday School teachers and the Adelaide House Caretaker, attended a Presbytery Workshop entitled ‘Called to Care’.

The Presbytery’s purpose in running these workshops throughout the Northern Synod is to inform congregations about the work being done across the Uniting Church to ensure that Church agencies and congregations are safe places for all people. This not only includes physical safety but emotional and spiritual safety also.

Whilst the Uniting Church has worked hard over the past decade to ensure that it has adequate policies and procedures to prevent physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual abuse occurring whilst people are participating in congregational life we recognise that this is not sufficient. Whilst policies and procedures are important we also need to build and sustain a culture of safety and respectfulness within our congregations. This means that we must take care about the ways in which we interact with each other. This is especially so during times of change when people are experiencing a range of heightened emotions.

Over the past few weeks, since the Congregational Meeting decided to renew our worship services, some cracks have begun to appear in our congregation which had seemed to be drawn more closely together by the anniversary celebrations and the reinvigoration of our financial and governance structures.

The changes that many people in the congregation have embraced have been difficult for others. And a few people are wondering whether they will remain with us or seek out another faith community which might provide more satisfactorily for their needs. Some people are angry about the changes, some are disappointed or angry that change has not been equally embraced by all. Some people are hurt by the behaviour of others, some feel confused or isolated and some feel more hope and energy than they have for many years. Some people feel unsettled but are deeply committed to staying. Others are reassessing where they belong.

All of these emotions have been expressed to Tracy and me and the Elders over the past few weeks and it’s okay because that is part of how human life unfolds in any community with more than one member.

In the midst of all that is going on it is important that we not lose hope or confidence in the presence of God’s Spirit. And it is important that we treat each other in ways that will enhance our life together and make space for those who choose to, to leave well, or to have the freedom to explore other places for a time before returning to once again share fellowship with us.

We have a duty of care towards one another, for each person is created in the image of God. And we have a duty of care because love is a “mark” of an authentic Christian community – something that distinguishes it from other human groupings.

During August the lectionary readings include a couple of passages from the Book of Ephesians that are particularly relevant at this time. The writer of Ephesians begins by reminding his readers of the unity that we have in Christ. He then reminds them of their call to be a community characterised by gentleness, humility, respect and love. And he let us in on what was actually happening in the life of the early church with these words….

“So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another…. Be angry, but do not sin, and do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not make room for the devil…. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear… Put away all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God”.

It appears that the Church in Ephesus had become a place where people did not tell truth about one another, but were selective with that truth in a way that was slanderous of others. It had become a place where gossip was the currency of communication. And it was causing division and concern that was evident to people beyond the congregation.

The Ephesians were not speaking to one another in ways they could be proud of, or in ways that reflected their mutual belonging to the community of faith. They were expressing their anger in destructive ways that failed to resolve their differences and turned them into ongoing feuds. And bitterness, malice, anger, wrath and wrangling had come to characterise their life together.

That is why the writer of Ephesians wanted to remind them of their calling to be imitators of God, who live in love, just as Christ loved them. That is why the writer reminded them of the distinctive call of the Church to be a fellowship marked by gentleness, humility and love.

We are also called to be that sort of community, because that is the only authentic way we can claim to be a Christian community, not just a group of people. Wherever the sort of behaviour that characterised the Ephesian Church is allowed to flourish, the community will self destruct and individuals will be damaged.

So I encourage each one of us to take special care during this period of transition in the life of the congregation. Speak the truth to one another in love - simply, openly, and honestly. Resist the temptation to pass on the latest gossip without checking its accuracy with someone who has the full story. Because the gossip whirlpool has caused unnecessary distress to members of our congregation in the past couple of months.

Resist the urge to defame people if you are angry or hurt by them. Instead, ask them for an opportunity to talk through with them how you are feeling. Or approach an elder or minister you trust to help such a conversation happen.

A couple of years ago the congregation developed an exciting new vision of becoming a church that cares for its community, a sanctuary for pilgrims, and a reconciling community. There are exciting times ahead as we embark on the journey of making that vision a reality. In the process a lot will be asked of us. And there will be points of tension and inevitable change. But we will realise that vision if we continue to work together and allow God’s Spirit to lead us.

May God guide us, and strengthen us, as we respond again to the call to be the Church of Jesus Christ in this time, and this place.

Murray Muirhead
August 2006

Living Simply
On July 31, the Congregation raised $534.00 for the Matthew Rusike Children’s Home in Zimbabwe, at its ‘Living Simply’ meal. This has been our fourth ‘Living Simply’ meal since October 2005, and so we have now-raised $1,534, which is not a bad effort. We hold the fund-raising event on the fifth Sunday of the month. At the ‘Living Simply’ meal, we have been selling a Vegemite or Peanut Butter Sandwich, an orange and a cup of tea for a cost of $10.00. Indeed it’s hardly a bargain, but this simple Sunday lunch helps to remind participants that there are so many who go hungry in our world.

The Matthew Rusike Children’s Home is a project that has been supported by Uniting Church Overseas Aid since 1995. Information that we have been sent relates how Zimbabwe is currently facing enormous social and economic problems that are having a great impact on children. 70% of the population are unemployed and are living below the poverty line. An increase in urban and rural poverty, and especially the impact of HIV/AIDS, has meant the number of children in need has increased dramatically.

The Home has provided a safe haven for abandoned, orphaned, abused and disadvantaged children since it was founded in 1950. A hundred and twenty children between the ages of 3 and 18 are currently being cared for. As well as providing the children with a loving and safe home, they are given an opportunity to gain an education and participate in vocational training.

“After the children have been in the home for a few months, they improve physically and emotionally, they learn to laugh and cry, they become bright, they develop a sense of hope and purpose, they discover life again.” Mr Mangobe -[former superintendent]

Our next ‘Living Simply’ meal will be on October 29.

My experience with the East Timorese Police.
When we spent 6 weeks in East Timor in 2005, I was only dimly aware that there was a Police Force there. They were more of a presence when we arrived this year. Groups of them, in their bright blue uniforms, were regularly stopping vehicles to check on registration papers.
On 28th April a middle aged Police Officer was admitted to Dili Hospital with severe head injuries after he had been assaulted by a mob. He had been liberally sprayed with tear gas, and his blue police jacket had been ruined when he had been dragged along the road. It was the first time that I had treated a Police Officer who had been severely injured while on duty.
For the first 2 months of our time in Dili there had been several demonstrations after 600 Members of the 1400 Defence Force personnel had been dismissed by the Prime Minister. There had been some references to this in the Australian press.
After 28th April East Timor featured regularly in the Australian news. As well as the Police Officer, an estimated 5 -7 people were killed that day and there were 16 men, mainly members of the Defence Force admitted to hospital with gunshot or grenade injuries.
Ten days later members of the rapid response unit, an elite group of members of the police, went to the hills behind Dili aiming to disarm rebellious members of the Defence Force. They were unsuccessful, and ended up being surrounded in a compound by members of the Defence Force. A truce was negotiated, and it was agreed that if they surrendered their arms they could leave. They did this, but as they were leaving two of the Police Officers were stabbed, one fatally.
His body was bought to the hospital later that afternoon accompanied by about 40 other members of the police rapid response unit. They looked incredibly angry, and as well as their pistols they had machine guns (enough weapons to kill everyone in the hospital very quickly). For no obvious reason they were running up and down the hospital walkways in groups fully armed.
The other Police Officer had a small wound which was sutured. He could have been discharged, but it seemed a good idea to admit him for the night He ended up staying for a further six days, in a cubicle with usually 4 -6 heavily armed police for company.
On 18th May, during the afternoon when we went to town for an hour, our bungalow was broken into, and some money, our laptop computer, and camera stolen. East Timorese are small, but the teenager who did this was very small. He removed one louver, bent a security bar, and got through a gap of 16cm.
The hospital staff were very upset about this. It was the first time that the bungalow that surgeons sponsored by the College of Surgeons stay in had been broken into in five years. It was largely due to their persistence that the thief was caught. I ended up going to the police station with them on the night of the break in, and on three other occasions, for a total of about four hours, after which I was getting the feel of Dili Central Police station. Badly in need of paint: a lot of fairly young police moving around in their distinctive, brighter than average blue uniforms; and a lot of patient East Timorese waiting to have their problems listened to.
My last visit there was on the 23rd May, when I finally got a police statement for insurance purposes written in Tetun. When I left Dili Central Police Station at noon on that Tuesday there was nothing to suggest that in 48 hours time the East Timorese police force would not be functional.
That afternoon there was a lot of shooting as Defence Force personnel and their supporters came down from the hills, and we did not leave the hospital for more than a week, and our only knowledge of things that were happening in town came from the radio, or internet. To quote from the press:-
“On Thursday (25th) things turned very nasty. The Dili district Police Headquarters was under attack from the military and the police were holed up in their barracks in the city, fearful of coming out. The United Nations intervened, negotiating for the police to lay down their arms, and leave their barracks to walk several blocks to the UN compound. The UN had been given assurances that the police would be able to surrender in peace. However, the column of unarmed police, accompanied by unarmed UN guards had walked less than 100 meters when two soldiers opened fire on them, killing nine of them.”
Shortly after the shootings, the scene in the emergency hospital was one of the worst I have ever seen. I found multiple Police Officers in their blood stained blue uniforms, particularly young female officers who had been severely injured, very distressing. We operated on 14 seriously injured, mainly police, that afternoon and evening, and a further 10 the following day. We were able to evacuate 10 of them to Darwin three days later.
We left Dili as planned on the second of June, and some members of the Police Force were still in hospital when we left, but I did not see any police in uniform in the hospital after Thursday 25th May. They were not seen in the streets either. East Timor did not have a functioning police force after the shootings to help control the rioting and house and shop burning that continued in spite of the presence of the Australian Defence force.
From David & Julie Hamilton

THE UC ADULT FELLOWSHIP organised a get-together at Elsa Corbet’s on the 29th to share in a pooled lunch and listen and see a presentation first hand from David and Julie Hamilton of their recent time in East Timor. About 25 attended and enjoyed the time together - having lunch outdoors, doing an activity identifying countries from photographs from around the world and then the excellent insight from the Hamiltons. (If you missed out another is to be arranged so let Julie know)

THIRTY EIGHT SOFT TOYS were sent to Adelaide mid-July, as the Alice Springs contribution to the U.C.A.F. National Appeal for “1000 Cuddlies for Children in Zambia”. Greyhound Bus Lines kindly took two cartons free-of-charge, so a big THANK YOU to those who knitted, along with the freight company.

UPCOMING DATES FOR YOUR DIARY:
Tues 15th Aug Church Council meet at 7pm Mission House

Friday 18th Aug Australian Christian Women Fellowship Day Service 7pm Anglican Church – Theme is “I Am The Bread of Life”

Sunday 20th Aug ‘White Men are Liars’ – Margaret Bain Conversations about her book 4.30pm at Adelaide House

Friday 29th-30th Sept. CWCI Retreat for ladies at Yirara College – theme “It’s Time to take Time”


The next edition of Gospel Outback is scheduled for Sunday 9th September therefore deadline date Sunday 2nd September – email contributions or leave in box in church foyer
PS With the changes to technology, we are now able to post sermons, liturgies, GO and comments on a web site, for you to visit at your leisure and leave comments to create some online dialogue. Visit our blog site at
http://unitingchurchalicesprings.blogspot.com
Kindness in words creates confidence,
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness
Kindness in giving creates Love
CENTRAL AUSTRALIAN SHOW REPORT:
Although the 2006 Alice Springs Show is history, we should be aware of the number of Church family members who participated.

While inspecting the cakes and biscuits, it was great to see the name of Ruth Lamb-Carlsen and Pat Hood. Elsa Corbet’s name appeared in the floral arrangement section.

Grace Darling’s entries did not quite fill a whole display case – knitted articles made from different yarn and in another cabinet a crocheted cardigan. Jean Thurgood is also a “crafty” person with her tapestry contribution. We want to check out Jenny Marshman’s vegie garden after seeing her broccoli and pumpkin. Nathaniel and Lochlan Carlsen were also contributors. Charles and Laurel Butcher’s grandchildren would have kept the judges busy - children are so innovative these days.

Old Timers residents, three or four of them, were represented also. St. Philip’s College would have had some of the Station kids busy with animals. Warwick Marsh entered many caged birds in the aviculture section and spent some time reassuring attendees that a certain parrot was not going to die but was just moulting! We were represented for the first time this year in the arena events with Mady Muirhead riding “Sharni” and Gus Muirhead on “Brutus”. To others who may have entered but weren’t identified, continue to be involved, by participating we inspire and encourage one another to give of our best in whatever we do. Can’t wait for the 2007 Show

LECTIONARY READINGS:
August 20th
1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14 Psalm 111 Ephesians 5:15-20 John 6:51-58
August 27th
1 Kings 8(1,6,10-11), 22-30, 41-43 Psalm 84
Ephesians 6:10-20 John 6:56-69
September 3rd
Song 2:8-13 Psalm 45:1-2,6-9 James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23
September 10th
Proverbs 22:1-2,8-9,22-23 Psalm 125 James 2:1-10 (11-13),14-17 Mark 7:24-37


PILGRIMAGE IN THE HEART:
Are you interested in exploring ideas and activities about pilgrimage and desert spirituality in the Heart of Alice Springs? Alice Springs is a point of arrival or departure for many many pilgrims of all types, yet many journeys overlook the spiritual gifts and inspiration of Alice Springs itself. As the Church in the Mall in the heart of Alice Springs, the Uniting Church has identified engagement with ‘pilgrimage’ and ‘pilgrims’ as part of its congregational vision, and we are keen to grow a network of people who would like to explore what this might mean in Alice Springs, together. Our first ‘gathering’ of the network will be on Sunday 27th August. Be part of walking from the Church along the river to the Telegraph Station directly after church (have a cuppa first!), or meet us at the Telegraph Station for a BYO BBQ about 11.30am. Please feel free to invite friends who are interested to join us. If you need food taken on ahead for you, please hand it to Murray on the day. I look forward to sharing the journey with you! Contact – Tracy Spencer 8952 1126