SERMON 12 September 2004    

 Readings:      Exodus 32: 7-14        Psalm 51: 1-10        1 Timothy 1: 1-2, 12-19a        Luke 15: 1-10

In the name of God, who calls us to life.  Amen. 

The bomb crater in the streets of Jakarta. Smiling faces claiming responsibility for the death of people who had done them no wrong. 

The haunted faces of the children who survived the siege at Beslan. The overwhelming grief of those who lost children, brothers, sisters, wives and husbands in the massacre. The tragedy of a town shattered by the loss of so many of its people. 

These are some of the images that have crowded into our homes on TV and in newspapers over the last few days. 

They come on top of the ever present stories of people whose lives have been disrupted by war, on top of the wave after wave of pictures of atrocities committed in refugee camps in Palestine - places people have gone to, looking for safety. They come on top of the reporting on the terrible situation in Iraq where so many thousands of people have lost their lives in the last 18 months, on top of the images of the civil war in the Sudan. 

On the home front we have been hearing the stories of Australians who spent their early years in institutional care. The recently released Senate Committee Report called ‘Forgotten Australians’ focusses largely on the middle decades of last century and reveals a high level of abuse, assault and emotional deprivation in homes, whether they were run by the State, churches or other charitable organisations. Certainly, standards of child care were different then and much that was acceptable in the 1950s would not be seen as acceptable today. They were harsher times when ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ was a common maxim. However, much occurred in those homes that would have been viewed with horror by the society of the time had it become known. The airwaves have been full of people telling their stories – stories of being locked in dark cupboards for hour after hour; of only been referred to by number, never by name; of sexual abuse; of violent beatings. The dark side of our attempts to care for abandoned children has been on very public display. 

Human sin has terrible consequences. Sin matters. It is not trivial. Violence breeds violence. Inhumanity breeds inhumanity. Malice breeds malice. We can look at these stories and dismiss their relevance for us – after all, they are dislocated from us in time or space. They are happening in other parts of the world, or they happened 40 years ago, not now. But to do that is, I believe, a terrible mistake. These are all manifestations of human sinfulness – of the human failure to love, to be compassionate, to walk in the ways of God. And we are all guilty of that. Rather than seeing these events as examples of how evil or how misguided other people are, we can see them as a clarion call to greater awareness of our own sinfulness and its possible consequences. 

Am I being too harsh? I don’t think so. It is easy for us to condemn terrorists – but what are the conditions that have given rise to terrorism? Why is so much of the world’s wealth concentrated among so few people?  

There are many systemic injustices in our world. The development economists tell us that there is food enough in the world to feed the entire population – why is it not distributed equitably? Why, in our own society, does there continue to be outrageous discrimination against gays and lesbians? Why is the average lifespan of aboriginal Australians about 20 years less than for white Australians? Why are small children the primary carers for hundreds of families in the ACT?

Even if none of us here today are directly responsible for any of these injustices, we are all complicit in them, as in so many others. They are endemic to our society, flowing as natural consequences from the structures within which we live. Our societies deliver some good things and they deliver some bad things.

We all participate in corporate sin as well as in whatever individual sins we may commit. This is not a trivial matter. A simple message thunders through today’s readings: sin matters – whether it be the corporate sin of apostasy, a whole people turning away from God, or individual sin – the lost sheep of the Gospel reading. We grieve not only each other but also God. Why is there so much joy when a sinner repents, when a person turns towards God? Because of the grief that we cause to God when we persist in ungodliness, in behaving selfishly, violently, greedily, lustfully. We damage other people, ourselves and God. 

As Christians we live in an odd tension between our capacity to participate in sin, and the forgiveness, the new life that is offered to us by God. We know that we are loved, indeed cherished by God. Just as parents love their children, even when those children are being right royal pains, so God loves us. But we know too that we are sinners – both individually and as members of sinful human societies that perpetuate systemic injustices.

As Christians we have a commitment to identify and act against deep systemic sinfulness as well as attending to our own spiritual health. As Dom Helder Camara who worked with the poorest of the poor in South America during the last century, said, "The hunger of the others condemns the civilisation of the ones that are not hungry.”

This is not always easy. Camara also identified the enormous resistance there is to such systemic change, noting "If I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. If I ask why the poor have not been eating, they call me a communist. " 

How can we do these things? It is, after all, hard enough to tackle our individual sinfulness, let alone the structures of society. We can do a number of things. Be politically aware – our political system is accountable to the people. If things are happening at government level that you do not believe are right, make your views known. We are in an election campaign – tell the candidates from all the parties what really matters to you. 

If you have spare resources, and not everyone has, indulge in some generosity to people in need – either here or overseas. As the bumper sticker has it ‘Practise senseless acts of kindness and random acts of beauty’.  

Live simply (says she, in the midst of a chaotic life!). Pray. Ask God to guide you. Many of us here, perhaps all of us, are already involved in some forms of social action, working in some way towards a fairer society. May those commitments continue and flourish and may God open our eyes to the sinfulness that we do not see, the inequities, the prejudices so deeply hidden we take them for granted.  

God of justice,
open our eyes that we may see,
our ears that we may hear,
our hearts that we may love. Amen.

Sarah Macneil