From the Bishop
Dear friends,
There is a simple question that all followers of Jesus must include in their decision-making: is the behaviour I am about to engage in consistent with the way of Jesus?
Our response is shaped by the way we have received the Christian faith. There may be significant moments when it takes time to work out the answer. Often, however, we will be able to say, “As my church has received and taught me this faith—yes or no.”
When we reflect on our past behaviour, we might see that we were mistaken. We chose a wrong path, and we repent. At other times, we might celebrate that our life and faith have been consistent.
One of the gifts God has given us is the Church—the community of believers. Christians, individually and together, help one another live a Jesus-shaped life.
Paul is a leader of the Church doing this work. As an apostle and teacher, he writes to the Christians in Rome.
Contemporary Christians spend a lot of time reflecting on sexual sin. Perhaps this is partly because our patterns of relationships are different. We live longer, and our lives are more portable than ever. White Western Christians do not have the same kinship patterns as many Asian and First Nations Christians, or Christians in other communities of people of colour.
The general thrust of a recent Synod ordinance and motion was to help us recover a way of thinking about sexual intimacy as belonging within committed relationships and, ideally, within marriage. The intention was that same-sex marriages would be recognised as committed relationships, just as the Church has recognised some marriages involving divorced people. The intention was also that holy relationships could be modelled in the ordained ministry.
The present sticking point is the division over whether any same-sex intimacy can be holy. Some Anglicans say that it can. Others hold that sexual intimacy can only be holy within marriage between a woman and a man. Our Church has already determined that two people in a same-sex relationship may receive a blessing.
Our shared desire is that Anglicans in our diocese live clearly moral and ethical lives shaped by their faith in Christ. We seek a way of behaving that honours Christ and is a source of blessing for others.
We need to be careful about a strict transposition of Roman society into Australian society.
The Christians in Rome lived within the prevailing views about the roles of women and men, sexual expression, the treatment of other people and the use of power.
The Roman way of life made clear that some people could give orders and others were expected to comply. Some bodies were protected. Others were not.
A slave owner could demand sex from male or female slaves. This was not understood in terms of sexual orientation as we understand it today. It was shaped by status and power. The person with power could use the body of the person without power or meaningful consent.
Roman society had moral rules about sex. It was not a society in which anything was accepted. But the rules were not applied equally. What was permitted often depended upon whether a person was male or female, free or enslaved, powerful or without status.
Paul did not invent the idea that what people do with their bodies matters. Roman and Jewish moral teachers already thought that.
But Paul took this in a countercultural direction.
The bodies of Christians belonged to Christ. Social status did not give one person an unrestricted right to use another. Paul’s teaching did not dismantle slavery or remove all the inequalities of his world. We should not pretend that it did.
But his gospel placed pressure upon those inequalities. How Christians spoke, consumed, worked, exercised authority, sought pleasure and treated other bodies expressed important things about their faith.
Someone else will unpack Paul’s language about flesh and Spirit in Romans 8. I simply want us to notice that living according to the flesh cannot be reduced to sexual behaviour or sexual nonconformity.
Our task is to take Paul’s insights and apply them today. We cannot assume that Roman society and Australian society are the same. We also cannot assume that our understanding of what is normal is necessarily Paul’s understanding—or God’s.
There are moral principles that matter.
Every person should be treated with dignity. Every person has equal worth. No one should be treated as an object for another person’s pleasure.
Sex should not be commodified. Another person’s body is not something to purchase, possess or use.
Consent matters. But consent alone does not settle every moral question. We also need to ask about power, vulnerability, honesty and whether each person can make a genuinely free decision.
Coercion and violence have no place in a relationship. Neither do manipulation, intimidation or the use of religious authority to secure another person’s compliance.
Restraint matters as well. Not every desire needs to be acted upon. We need to consider the wellbeing of the other person, the consequences of our decisions and the commitments we have already made.
I want to encourage relationships that move towards faithfulness and lasting commitment. That does not mean every relationship will last. People change. Relationships fail. Sometimes leaving a relationship is necessary for safety or wellbeing.
But there is a difference between discovering whether a relationship can become a lifelong commitment and treating relationships as temporary arrangements in which people remain only while their immediate needs are being met.
These are principles for all human relationships. They apply to anyone seeking to live with integrity.
Our question is not simply whether a relationship conforms to a traditional pattern. We need to ask whether people are treated with dignity, whether power is shared, whether consent is real, whether there is restraint and faithfulness, and whether the relationship enables each person to flourish.
These are questions we must apply not only to other people’s relationships, but first to our own.
For those in ordained ministry, there has and always will be a careful process of discernment about each person’s suitability for ministry, including their formation, conduct and commitment to godly living.
Grace and peace,
Bishop Peter Stuart
Anglican Bishop of Newcastle
Bible reflection: Roman 8
By Bishop Sonia
In his book, “Let Your Life Speak” Parker J. Palmer writes about what he calls “Functional Atheism”:
A third shadow … is “functional atheism,” the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with us. This is the unconscious, unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen here, we are the ones who must make it happen – a conviction held even by people who talk a good game about God.
This shadow causes pathology on every level of our lives. It leads us to impose our will on others, stressing our relationships, sometimes to the point of breaking. It often eventuates in burnout, depression, and despair, as we learn that the world will not bend to our will and we become embittered about that fact. i
As I have reflected on Romans 8, it seems Paul was also writing about this shadow. In this section he is reflecting on the difference between ‘life in the flesh’ – ‘relying on myself for all I need’ – and life in the Spirit, which is learning to lean into and live in God’s grace.
In essence here, Paul is calling people away from self-reliance alone and towards reliance on God… away from reliance on keeping the letter of the Law for its own sake (by human achievement) and towards depending on God’s grace.
Romans 8.1-5
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do… For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
You may wondering just what Paul means when he writes about FLESH and SPIRIT. Arland Hultgren put it clearly in his reflection:
Paul is not talking about flesh that adheres to one’s bones. He uses the term “flesh” as a metaphor for the human tendency to seek and to possess all that brings immediate and imminent satisfaction to one’s own self and without regard for a spiritual perspective. The consequence of this way of living is death. Again Paul uses a metaphor. The term “death” in this context does not mean physical death, but a dying of the self as God intends one to be, spiritual death. ii
Paul is inviting his readers, across the ages, to the freedom and grace of life in the Spirit, a new life that entails deep trust in God for our future.
A related question, which is at the heart of Paul’s writing in this climactic chapter of Romans is this question: “How does the living God speak to the living church today?”
We already have clues. In Acts 10 Peter had a dream about God’s new way, which invited him to ease his grip on the Law as he heard God inviting him to include Gentiles(!) in this new Christian movement. This was unheard of for Peter, and yet it was part of God’s plan. Earlier, the Pharisee Gamaliel (Acts 5) had urged the Sanhedrin to allow for the movement for God’s Spirit when dealing with the Apostles. Law (flesh) and Spirit (God) is an ongoing struggle for us in the church. But with God’s grace we can do it.
For, as Jennifer Pietz puts it:
Paul doesn’t give a list of ten tips for righteous living, but rather calls believers to continually let themselves be led by the Spirit who dwells in them (vv. 9, 13-14). The foundation of Christian life is an active awareness that we have been brought into the very life of the Triune God, where we are loved, secure, and empowered by God’s Spirit. This gift is what enables us to reflect Christ in daily life.iii
And so, to finish with Paul’s own words (Romans 8.9, 14)
“But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. … For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.”
Prayer Teaching
By Bishop Charlie
Paul’s letter writing has a way of turning lyrical at climactic moments. He catches his readers up with him in a community of adoration. So… ‘in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life…nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
And when wordy Paul ran out of words, was he left in silent adoration? Did he sit in his mind’s eye beside the communities he wrote to together with the image of Christ Jesus our Lord? And there did he hear anew the voice of the love of God? Maybe this is a dimension of the gift of those who pray without ceasing.
This is all imaginative projection on my part. Once I ran out of engaging stories. I was telling them attempting to build a bridge to a not wordy someone who became very important to me. And then in the silence I began to hear their voice.
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