From the Bishop
Dear friends,
I have some vivid memories of testing the boundaries when I was in grade 4. I made some choices that I had a fair idea would bring disapproval; but gave them a go anyway! For a little while I was in the bad books!
We can do the wrong thing – by accident or by choice. Often, there will be consequences.
As we grow older, we learn more about the formal and informal norms of the societies. We learn that some behaviours will lead to ostracization, punishment or both. We discover, implicitly and explicitly, what is acceptable and what is not.
We also experience people challenging the rules and customs. Not everything that is passed on to us needs to be embraced. Many generations explore afresh the codes they want to express and the boundaries they wish to enforce.
The scripture passage for this edition takes us to the behaviours Jesus affirms. He affirms behaviours like feeding and welcoming strangers. He condemns those who behave only in self-interested ways. The doers of good are described as sheep; the others as goats.
Jesus is described in the scriptures as the just judge; one with exquisite judgement. History tells us that his followers do not.
While bearing the responsibility to make significant decisions, we know of judgements that do not bear the weight of contemporary scrutiny. At the same time, we have learned to speak more clearly about conduct that harms, degrades or exploits others.
Marriage, family, companionship, and sexual expression are a regular source of contest among Christians. This continues in our own time.
As we endeavour to navigate the wide array of family structures and intimate expressions in the broader community, we want to name behaviours we see as wrong – behaviours which we want to condemn.
In our code of conduct for clergy and church workers we say, “You are not to abuse your spouse, children or other members of your family.” That statement gains universal agreement.
We say of sexual expression that “there is no place for casualisation of intimacy or predatory behaviour in which your conduct may be seen as exploiting or endeavouring to exploit another person for your gratification.” Some Christians consider that boundary insufficient and maintain that every sexual relationship outside marriage between a man and a woman is wrong.
These questions will continue to be contested. Within the scriptures we hear that we are accountable to God for our behaviours as individuals and communities. Do our thoughts and actions honour God and those who bear God’s image? Do we recognise Christ in the hungry, the stranger, the vulnerable and the excluded?
I know a lot more now than I did in Grade 4! Before deciding who might be blessed or condemned, I hear Jesus’ invitation to look closely at my own life. We can all do the same. Are we living the way of Jesus – with lives shaped by mercy, justice and love?
Please pray that our lived culture as disciples of Jesus in this Diocese is fashioned this way.
Grace and peace,
Bishop Peter Stuart
Anglican Bishop of Newcastle
Bible reflection: The Kingdom is wider than conversion moments
By Bishop Charlie
There was a lot to enjoy in my early job in a guitar shop. But there were a couple of things that pained me in contrasting ways. Stocktaking was tedious. The compensation was listening to music and doing it in company with others.
The other thing was about the customers. Some of the most gifted musicians I met, gigging musicians, lived difficult lives in penury. They would buy single strings, not full sets. The people who bought the most expensive instruments and gear were often more collectors than players. And to this day I ache to remember one person who seemed to be trying to bind their wounded heart with guitar straps. How many do you need?
In the last judgement passage from Matthew, Jesus paints a word picture of stocktaking sheep and goats. It seems to me, that revisiting this passage in the context of scriptural images of beasts, cattle, sheep and shepherds—good and bad—is an invitation, an invitation to take stock of our place in the kaleidoscope of humanity’s need, indeed the needs of all creation.
First, I say our place because anybody of any experience knows the scale of need is truly overwhelming. Sometimes the sharing of a cup of cold water and the interaction that goes with it is enough, and sometimes it really isn’t.
It’s not that material needs don’t matter, but we know there’s more to the hierarchy of needs. Feeding the hungry, supplying drink for the thirsty, welcoming strangers, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting those in prison, a list far from exhaustive that stimulates further reflection.
We know the structures of the nations of the world cause a lot of the misery and needs of the vulnerable.
We know everyone has needs. We know nobody who reads this reflection is likely to sell all they have and give to the poor. We know the radical redistribution of resources among the trillionaire and everyone else would not solve everything. We know, even in our nation of plenty, there’s the need of systems to address a lot of need.
Commentators readily remark the resonance of Jesus’s sheep and goats judgement with Ezekiel 34.11-16 and so on where the Lord God ‘will search for my sheep and will sort them out… they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture… I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strays, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.’
I don’t want to get into Zionist debates, so I’ve left those bits out.
My interest today is in how the near kingdom of heaven Jesus proclaims can liberate and empower us. We can be liberated from an obsession with our personal final destiny. We can be held in the promise of the good shepherd who will rescue us from the places we are scattered to bring us to lie down in good places.
We can also be liberated from the overwhelming sense of knowing too much about the apparently insurmountable needs of the world. It is empowering to know that not all the problems are mine or even ours to address. I know it might be a novel reading, but there is this from the good shepherd passages, John 10.16: ‘I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.’
It is empowering to remember a sheepfold is a place of shelter and safety for a particular subset of sheep, particular to the cultures that use them. Folds have varieties of designs, suited to their local environments and climates. Lucy Lind Hogan reminds us ‘the good shepherd decides who is in which sheepfold, we do not.’
When it comes to needs, there is a tension we live with as the church. I can’t remember who put it this way, but it’s something like this: every Christian faith community is made up of people seeking safety and rest. At the same time, that community is called to share and to serve. None of us can do it alone. None of our communities is adequate to the whole task.
As for me, I’m glad to belong to a worldwide network of congregations and agencies responding to the needs of our situations, according to our calls and insights and capacity.
And I’m happy the Good Shepherd has not asked us to sort out the sheep and the goats.
Points for Prayer
By Father Rod
Jesus teaches that an act of kindness towards another is also an act of kindness towards him. This causes me to wonder if an orientation of kindness towards another can also be considered as a prayer.
At the very least there is the potential to help another with a prayerful attitude.
I find this discipline helpful when oriented towards someone for whom I do not have a particularly bright disposition.
Firstly, I ask the Holy Spirit to help me into a prayerful orientation towards the other.
Secondly, I might ask Jesus to reveal himself to me in the other.
Finally, I ask Jesus in the other to reveal to me how I may be of service to them. This may be as simple as asking them.
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