#3 HOPE FOR THE CITY

Every Good Friday, thousands of Melburnians gather in the streets of the city for a pilgrimage. Retracing the final steps of Jesus to his crucifixion, the crowd moves together from church to church, reading, praying and bearing witness to their faith. There are many of us at Collins Street who join them.

We begin outside St Francis Catholic Church, the city’s oldest, on Elizabeth. From there we nod to the Welsh Church on Latrobe before heading east to the Church of Christ on Swanston. Navigating around the QV, we continue up to the Wesley Church on Lonsdale and, from there, into the garden of St Peters Anglican on the rise of Eastern Hill. Across the road we pause twice in the grounds of the grand St Patrick’s Cathedral and then re-group outside the smaller Trinity Lutheran that sits snugly in the cathedral’s shadow. Heading down Collins we stop at St Michael’s Uniting Church. We then cross the Russell Street intersection to Scots Presbyterian before gathering beside our own white pillars. From there it’s on to the steps of St Paul’s, and then for the truly dedicated, we regather at dawn on Easter Sunday at St Johns Southgate across the river.

Like every city of its age and size, Melbourne has its share of grand ecclesial buildings, each one beautiful in its own way. But for every admirer of these churches, there are critics. And not just unbelieving ones. There are those within the Christian community who want to call us to account for our use of these buildings. In fact, I have a file of letters from them. I can’t simply dismiss their criticisms because, in fact, I agree: there is much for a city church to wrestle with. In some cases, old city churches house dwindling congregations struggling to keep their buildings up and open. There’s the never ending costs of maintenance, insurance and the sheer monetary value of the real estate. One critic from whom I received a call late last year — a fellow Baptist pastor — suggested strongly that selling up this “relic of the past” would free up an extraordinary amount of money for more strategic acts of mission.

We would be foolish to close our ears to these critics. As stewards of this fine building, we do have an obligation to ensure our stewardship of both property and resources is wise and always in response to God’s leading. Having said that, I have often wondered what the city would be like if all of these church buildings were gone. If the bulldozers moved in and razed these structures to the ground, what would be lost? Under the sheer force of economics they would be replaced, no doubt, with more towers of glass and steal that pay homage to the gods of commerce and profit. In the process, something of the city’s soul would be gone.

Whatever else church buildings like ours do, by their sheer presence they remind the city of an alternative set of values, of possibilities beyond the cold logic of the marketplace. At their best, their dramatic spires point not to the glory of human industry, but to something beyond it.

Churches like ours are often referred to as sacred places; places set apart, holy, dedicated to God and faith. As we continue this morning to think about the role of the church in the city, it’s this idea of sacred place that I want to explore. It’s not so much the sacredness of this building that I’m interested in. Rather, it’s the impact the community that meets in this building can have in nurturing the sacredness of the entire city.

The respected proponent of public spirituality, Philip Sheldrake, argues that the urban environment has a profound impact upon the human spirit. Cities shape the soul. It’s why the city’s development should be important to people of faith. City making, Sheldrake says, is about the functional, the ethical and the spiritual — what works, what is right and what is good. Good cities—cities that nurture the soul—are those that (i) enable their inhabitants to flourish through the stages of life; (ii) nurture belonging and connection; (iii) facilitate relationship with nature; and (iv) offer access to life as sacred. It is this idea of the church as facilitator of the sacred in the city that might just provide us a renewed sense of our place and purpose.

The text

We have read today from Revelation, one of the most confounding books in the New Testament. It’s an ancient form of writing we call apocalyptic literature. It takes a particular form in the Jewish tradition to reveal what God is up through time. It borrows heavily and idiosyncratically from multiple periods of history, ancient mythology and poetic imagery, painting pictures that often leave readers wide-eyed and bemused.

Revelation is sent as a letter to seven small churches in the Roman province of Asia. Each one of these communities lived under the influence and might of the Roman Empire. Rome was the centre of the universe and its Emperor a god. In Revelation it’s called Babylon and every one of these seven communities orbited around it, politically, socially and economically. Their daily lives were shaped by it, its influence pervasive, its power seductive. In order to know the Empire’s blessing, one had to surrender to its truth—the truth of the Emperor as God; the truth of Rome as the arbiter of social and economic blessing; and the rejection of all other truth.

The call of Revelation is a call to come out of Empire. It’s a call to these seven churches to live distinctively as God’s chosen people and according to the values of God’s kingdom. To illustrate the difference between the Empire of Rome and the Kingdom of God, the author of Revelation paints a picture of two cities, Babylon and New Jerusalem. These are not literal cities. They are apocalyptic, two contrasting realities, two different ways to live. Babylon represents a reality in which God is displaced and where the sacredness of life is decimated in favour of the Emperor’s power and dominion. New Jerusalem, on the other hand, is found wherever the community rejects the lies and violence of the Empire and places God at the centre of its life.

Importantly, this is not a call for these seven churches to leave Babylon and move to Jerusalem. It’s a call for them to live Jerusalem into existence where they are. It’s a call to hope the city of God into being. It’s this that makes the text from Revelation 21 and 22 such a challenging text for us. This is our role: to hope the city of God into existence right here.

The challenge

Our reading today paints a magnificent picture of this New Jerusalem and of the river of life flowing from the throne of God down the middle of the great street of the city. Can you see it? A torrent of grace and life and hope surging down Collins Street with the trees of healing and nourishment sprouting up from its sidewalks. It’s beautiful, poetic, inspiring. But as with all apocalyptic poetry, it leaves you none the wiser with how to actually live it. How does a church like ours live and minister in such a way that the river of life flows around us? How do we live and worship in a way that our entire city becomes sacred space?

In the few minutes we have left, let me identify some characteristics of this city of God that have application to the way we function here in Melbourne.

First, this New Jerusalem is a city of history and our role is to embody that history.

Chapter 21.12 says: “It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and … on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites … And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”

This New Jerusalem is a city of hope because it is built on a continuing story of faith; it is built on the foundations of faith, obedience and sacrifice laid generations before. By the fact that this church community has been here for more than 180 years, we bear testimony every day to the continuing certainty of God’s presence at Melbourne’s heart. This does not make us a museum of faith long past, but a living community witness to the story of God today amidst the story of Melbourne. As we keep telling that story of God, so we remind the city of the sacredness of its own story.

Second, this New Jerusalem is a city of prophetic courage and our role is to embody that courage.

Chapter 21.22 says: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light.”

Amidst a culture of oppressive power and exclusion, the city of God is a beacon of light by which the nations will know truth and justice. Our call as the church is to be a beacon of light in Babylon. It is our vocation to stand on the side of righteousness and redemption. To do so requires courage, for we will need to speak when the powers of this city work to exclude and marginalize. We will need to speak God’s radical hospitality and inclusion while other voices in the church shout us down. When others prioritise the voices of those with resources and influence, we will stand up for those who are silenced and ignored. And in so doing, we will ensure the humanity of this city is maintained and the New Jerusalem realised.

Third, this New Jerusalem is a city of open doors and our role is to keep them open.

Chapter 21.25 says: “Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations.”

An ancient city was marked by its high walls and gates securely guarded and locked. But in this New Jerusalem the gates will be forever open and all will be welcome. The movement between the city of Babylon and the New Jerusalem is fluid. They are not two different cities, but two different ways of being the city. When we choose to be a church of open doors, embodying what it means to be a hospitable community of welcome in the neighbourhood, we live the city of God, we nurture the New Jerusalem at Babylon’s heart.

I’ve called this series City of Dreams. We people of faith are the dreamers. We refuse to believe that Babylon is all there is. We dream of New Jerusalem. But we are more then dreamers. We are activists. Our calling is to live that dream into reality. If a city church like ours is nothing more than a grand religious trench to hide in while we await our eternal transport to some other place, then our critics are right. We are guilty as charged, guilty of wasting our resources and we should be held to account. But here at Collins Street that is not the case. Our vocation is to live the New Jerusalem right here, right now. As long as we remain committed to that task, then the questions of our stewardship can be answered with integrity. I pray that will always be the case.

Amen.

#2 seek the peace of the city

A reflection on Jeremiah 29.1-7

Have you ever had an epiphany, a moment of revelation or calling? I’ve only had two in my life. One was in the Spring of 2006, eighteen years ago. 

At the time I was working at Whitley College and living in Little Lonsdale Street. My revelation happened mid-morning and mid-coffee. I was returning home from a meeting in Docklands. I remember standing at the peak of Batman Hill on the western extension of Collins Street, coffee in hand and the undulating roof of the new Southern Cross Station to one side. As I looked down the fall and rise of Collins Street disappearing into the CBD, I had this strong awarenesss of God’s presence and an equally strong sense of this city as the place to which I am called. As the years go by, that sense remains. In fact, it has deepened with time. 

I imagine in a congregation like this, there will be different responses to the idea of an epiphany. Some of you will be encouraged. You like your pastor to have a strong sense of God’s calling. It’s reassuring. Others of you will identify. You, too, have known moments of clarity and calling in your life. You get it. Others of you will be mystified, even skeptical. Really? God does that?

Whatever your reaction, I know not everyone here today will feel the same way about the city as I do. The fact is, we are here for myriad reasons, not many of them to do with such grand things as a divine calling. Sometimes we end up in a place for more mundane reasons: family history, marriage, retirement, work, study, immigration, affordability, or perhaps a crisis of some sort. Truth be told, we might prefer to live somewhere else if only we could. For some of us, living in this city is a matter of choice. For others, it’s all circumstance: life happens and here we are. 

Over three Sundays we are talking about the role of the church in the city — the role of this church, you and me together. It’s a tough subject to explore because we are such a mix of people, stories, cultures and perspectives. That said, what holds us together in our differences are two things: the faith we share and the place in which we share it. However we feel about this city, however much or little we are invested in it, however deep or non-existent our sense of calling to it, this is where we are. So what does God ask of us in it? 

The text

Today we have read from the prophet Jeremiah and his words to the people of Judah.  Last Sunday we were with them at the end of their exile in Babylon as they returned to their home city of Jerusalem. Today we head back in time to the beginning of their exile story, a period of no less than 70 years in which they were displaced from their homeland.  To appreciate this reading, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the people of Judah.  That’s a tough call for us, but imagine it this way.  

Australia has been invaded by a foreign power.  In a matter of days our military resources have been overwhelmed and destroyed.  As a consequence, our government has collapsed.  Our Prime Minister and his cabinet along with all elected members of parliament have been forcefully relocated off shore.  Corporate leaders, educators, public servants follow in a mass, forced evacuation.  Religious leaders are executed, along with our poets, writers and political activists.  Slowly but surely all who remain are picked up and taken into exile, dropped in the same place as their leaders, encamped at the edge of a foreign city in a foreign land.  

Jeremiah speaks to the people of Judah on the edges of Babylon.  His track record as a prophet is not strong.  Though he has spoken to them in the past, his admonitions were always rejected.  The trouble is with Jeremiah, he never knew how to make palatable the challenging things God asked him to say.  Still, he persisted.  

Of course, what the people wanted to hear in their exile was that God was about to swoop down and rescue them from this dilemma, but that is not Jeremiah’s message.  His message is that this exile is going to last, and what they need to do is to settle down and make a home.  They are to build houses and plant gardens, get married and have children, and then watch their children get married and welcome the grandkids.  This is no short-term stay.  Here at the edges of Babylon is their new home. Jeremiah ends with an even more challenging word in verse 7.  They are to “seek the welfare of the city” to which God has sent them. 

God was not just calling the people of Israel to put their heads down and wait this thing out.  God was calling them to engage with this new home, to invest in it, to treat it with the same degree of respect and care that they would Jerusalem.  God’s command was that they put down their roots and to make this their home until God directed otherwise.  

The challenge

In truth, we cannot begin to understand what this meant for the people of Judah. Indeed, to make easy connections between their story and ours can do their story a great injustice.  Regardless, in our search of an answer to this question of what God expects of us in this city of ours, I really do think God’s admonition to the people of Judah is worth hearing: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you … and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” 

We human beings are a people of place. We are created that way. We are not made to be homeless or without roots.  As the philosopher Martin Heidegger says, “to dwell is to be.”  Equally, to be is to dwell. Certainly from a theological perspective this is true. From the very beginning of the biblical story we are made for place — we are made to be home, to belong.  From the garden in the creation story to the final city of our eternal hope, we are created for dwelling.  It’s why the experience of homelessness is so violating.  It cuts at the core of our human identity and our in-built, God-given need for security and home.  What’s more the places we inhabit can only ever be fully human when we live into them with intention and energy. For when we seek the city’s good, we seek the good of our shared humanity.

What is the role of the church in the city? In part at least, it is this: to live into the city, to fully inhabit it, to take our place in its neighbourhoods with intention and grace. To use Jeremiah’s language, our role is to seek the neighbourhood’s welfare and peace wherever we are.  

Let’s be clear: whether we feel a sense of call to this place or not, we are called. It is part and parcel of our discipleship. Jesus’ invitation “come and follow me” is the calling that governs our lives. This call of Jesus to follow is not a call into the ether, or even into the whole world for that matter. Instead, Jesus calls us to live our faith in particular places, the places we can see and walk. This place. Our Christian call is not be everywhere but somewhere. It is particular. This shared call of God upon our lives has to be lived. We live it here, or we don’t live it at all.

At the beginning of 2023 we appointed Katherine as our Coordinator of Neighbourhood Mission. This appointment came out of our commitment as a church to be part of the renewal of this city post pandemic. We appointed Katherine with a clear job description: to lead the church in the development of its ministries of renewal and hospitality in the city. Importantly, we did not appoint Katherine to do this work for us, but to do the work with us. For together we are called to seek the good of this city. This is our calling.  

The word welfare is the Hebrew word shalom. Quite simply it means peace. More deeply, it carries a sense of wholeness or completeness. It speaks of a complete and unbroken relationship in which all is in harmony: “seek the wholeness of the city and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its wholeness you will find your wholeness.” There is a clear relationship between individual wellbeing and the wellbeing of the city, an unbroken continuum between God’s intention for us and God’s intention for this city of ours. 

You may have never experienced an epiphany. The language of calling may feel alien or awkward to you. Regardless, I remind you today of a conviction deep within our Baptist tradition: the priesthood of all believers. To seek the wholeness of this city is part of our priestly vocation — that is, our calling to embody the presence and healing grace of God in the world, wherever we are. Together we are the agents of shalom, we are the conduits of wholeness in our neighbourhoods.  Lest this talk of a priestly vocation still sounds too grand for you, let me finish with a story, a story I first told years ago in a little book on cities and neighbourhoods.  

I stood with Belinda by the front gate. The sky was overcast and rain threatened. After sitting at the kitchen table for an hour chatting about the neighbourhood, she was keen to show me her street. Belinda is a single mother living with three children in a modest 1970s brick home in suburban Brisbane. Since an acrimonious divorce six years ago, Belinda had to secure a restraining order on her ex-husband. He has a propensity to violence and she is fearful for her children; the past decade has been harrowing. Still, this home and neighbourhood have been constants for Belinda. Determined to ensure some degree of stability and normality for the kids, she has consistently refused the temptation to move. The kids are happy in their schools and the support of neighbours has been, in her words, priceless.

Belinda spoke animatedly of those who live in her street. There is one neighbour she talked about with particular warmth. As she looked across the street, Belinda pointed out an elderly man in a beret pottering in his front garden. “That’s Bill!” she said and waved. Bill is a retired school teacher; he and his wife never had children of their own and, though he never talks about it, it is known up and down the street that she has a mental illness. “He’s just the most wonderful man,” Belinda reflected quietly. “I don’t know what I would do without him.” Belinda recounted easily the ways that Bill had helped her and her neighbours. After mowing his own lawns, she said, he routinely takes his mower to the homes of other elderly residents—those unable to keep up with their gardens. She has often seen him taking bags of his home-grown vegies and leaving them anonymously on doorsteps.

“He’s also the neighbourhood handyman!” Belinda said with a laugh. “Nothing’s ever too much trouble.” “He’s not a great talker,” she continued, “He’s a doer! He’s always fixing something for me. I saw him clearing out Joan’s gutters a few weeks ago. He’s even had his arm down my toilet, unblocking the drain pipe!” Belinda recalled, too, the times Bill has watched out for her and the kids. “One night my ex-husband kept calling on the phone. He was drunk and threatening to come around and hurt me. He said he was going to take the kids. I was beside myself. I didn’t know what to do, so I called Bill.” Belinda wiped away tears as she told of how he came straight over and sat on her front fence: “He stayed there for hours into the night, just smoking his cigarettes.” As she pulled a tissue from her pocket, Belinda looked across at Bill: “I know he’s a religious man, though he never talks about it. He used to go off to the Catholic church every week, sometimes two or three times a week. He can’t leave his wife for too long now. I guess he doesn’t go as often.” She paused. “Still,” she finally shruged, “he’s one of the best men I know.” Belinda paused again, then looked directly at me with a mischievous smile and concluded, “He’s a bit like our own neighbourhood priest really.”

In truth, this idea of God’s calling upon our lives — our shared vocation to live the grace of God wherever we are — is an extraordinary thing! But it’s no mystery. It’s not a truth hidden away for the few who can find it. It simply is, part and parcel of our discipleship. We are called to seek the peace of this city together. May God grant us the courage we need to do so.

Amen.

#1 IMAGINE THE CITY

A reflection on Isaiah 65.17-25

For five years, Brenda and I lived in Los Angeles, California.  It’s where our two children were born. They were good years.

Though Los Angeles literally means ‘city of the angels’, in American mythology it’s more commonly called the city of dreams.  That said, as you fly in over Los Angeles, the place can look more nightmare than dream.  The air is thick almost year round and the freeways clogged.  Even more, the ‘placelessness’ of LA is overwhelming.  As you drive the city’s freeways from one point to another, you rarely have a sense of arriving, anywhere. To quote urbanist James Howard Kunstler, LA’s endless sprawl is one “where every place looks like no place in particular.”    It took two years into the five we lived there before I caught my first glimpse of the dream.  

It happened early in the morning, mid-winter. I was returning from dropping friends at the airport. It had rained heavily through the night. The morning air was crystal clear and the sky picture-book blue. As I drove along the 405 and looked out toward the city skyline with the snow covered Santa Monica Mountains behind,  the view was extraordinary.  For the first time I saw the city of dreams and it was breathtaking.    

For thousands of years, the city has been part of human society. Its beginning dates back to around 5000BCE.  And for almost that long it has captured our imagination.  Historically, we’ve imagined the city in one of two ways: first as nightmare, a religious and cultural nightmare, the embodiment of all that is wrong with the world. From this perspective, the city is a place where evil and depravity are concentrated and where the gifts of beauty and peace are almost non-existent.  For those who’ve imagined the city in this way, salvation is found in the escape from the urban and our return to the garden, to the idyllic rural where true virtue resides. 

At the other end of the spectrum the city is imagined as a place of dreams — an idealized place, imagined in its perfect form as the ultimate expression of human achievement. From this perspective the city is a utopian home to humankind in its most developed, intelligent and sophisticated state.   In this dream, salvation is found in our movement toward the urban. We walk our own yellow brick road toward the alluring promise of the city.  

In religious terms, one perspective paints the city as heaven and the other as hell.  It is, in fact, neither.  For those of us gathered here this morning, the city is simply where we live.  Before it’s a cultural category, a spiritual metaphor, a demon or an angel, the city is a place—a place of footpaths and light poles, of streets and skyscrapers, of coffee and car horns. It’s a place of transit and busyness, of buying and selling, a place of struggle and loneliness. For us here at Collins Street, the city and its surrounding neighbourhoods is where we live and worship. It’s our home.   

The question I want to raise with you these three weeks is this: what is the role of a church in the city?  What part do we play at the heart of the one of the great cities of our nation?  Clearly we do not subscribe to the city-as-hell philosophy.  As those who choose to worship here, this is not for us a God-forsaken place. But neither do we subscribe to the city-as-heaven ideal.  We know it too well to be beguiled by it.  Neither heaven nor hell, the city is simply our place, the place in which we are called to live out our faith.  Because of that, we are obliged to take this place seriously, asking ourselves what it means to be the people of God here.  

This is not a new question.  Indeed, we’ve been wrestling with the question since 1843 when this church first began, but it’s one never squared away because the answers to it change as the city itself changes.  The question of what it means to be the people of God in this city is as pressing today as it has been for our 181 years. 

The text

We have read today from the prophet Isaiah. These are God’s words to the people of Judah.   After decades of exile in Babylon, the people have finally returned to their homeland and their beloved Jerusalem.  But all is not well.  Upon their arrival they find their city in ruins, their surrounding farms desolate, their homes and neighbourhoods destroyed and their enemies circling like vultures.   A terrible drought grips the land.  The children are hungry and dying.  What’s more, lawlessness now permeates this fragile and aching place.  These are not happy days.  After their songs of lament in Isaiah chapters 63 and 64, songs in which the people of Judah cry out to God for mercy and help, God’s response comes in chapter 65.  

God’s promise in these verses is that he will rebuild their lives.  But this is no promise of a return to Eden, a return to the idyllic rural. No, God’s promise is of a city.  But neither is this a promise of some other-worldly city, a celestial nirvana with streets of gold. No, this is God’s promise to rebuild this city, to renew the city that lays in ruins around them. It’s a place of bricks and mortar, of pavements and houses, temples and marketplaces in the here and now of their lives.  What will be different is that this city, rebuilt, will be one where the values of love and justice flourish, a place of genuine human delight and divine joy.  

The challenge

It is to this very business of city renewal to which we are called as the church.  This city, today!  During the pandemic, we committed ourselves to a process of discernment about our church’s future. As a consequence, we recommitted ourselves to what we understand to be the enduring priorities of this church. The third of those priorities was this: 

As a church in the CBD, we are committed to participating in the flourishing of Melbourne and the neighbourhoods in which we live. We work to see goodness, justice and love prevail in our city.

You see, we already know that our calling as people of faith involves the city in which we live. God’s call to love our neighbours, a calling central to our Christian faith, assumes a neighbourhood. Our call is not to hunker down until we’re ready for glory, but to embrace what is around us as the place of God’s presence and plan.  This city of ours may not be heaven, and it is certainly not hell.  What it is is our place to live out the faith God has invested in us.  

For the past fifteen of so years that I have served as your pastor, I have sat on numerous advisory boards to the city of Melbourne and have been a part of resident’s groups and neighbourhood associations. I have sat in tense and angry meetings between proprietors of nightclubs, construction companies and residents.  I’ve watched competing arts and cultural groups vie for the city’s backing and I have seen providers of social services competing fiercely for financial support.  I’ve watched multiple proposals come before Council vying for the affirmation of Melbourne as an international city, a residential city, a 24-­‐hour city, a city of literature and the arts, a child-friendly city, a world-class city of fashion and food, and more. Each proposal carries with it an implicit critique of competing visions for the city. More recently I have been part of conversations around the establishment of a safe injecting facility in the city and experienced first-hand the anger that people feel about this, both for and against. There is perhaps no more contested space than this 6.5 square kilometres of the CBD.  And it’s little wonder.  Every day the centre of Melbourne enfolds some 1 million people, workers, residents and visitors, and we all want it to be different things.   

So within this conflicted and competitive environment, where does the church fit? The retired Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has reflected intelligently on the role of the church in the city.  Williams discourages the city church from seeing itself as just one interest group among many bidding competitively for scarce resources or seeking to determine how the city’s community is defined.  He writes: 

“The contribution of the Church must always be something on another level from that of the various bodies struggling for dominance and access.  It must simply offer a radically different imaginative landscape — one in which people can discover possibilities of change, and perhaps of ‘conversion’ in the most important sense — a ‘turning around’ of values and priorities that grows from trust in God.”

As we wrestle with the question of the church’s role in the city of Melbourne, it seems to me this provides a helpful place to begin.  It may not get us all the way, but it does give us a starting point. The possibility of our vocation as a city church is to offer the city a ‘different imaginative landscape,’ one in which people can discover life and hope. This possibility arises out of two important perspectives that we bring to the table. The first relates to our self-understanding, and the second to the nature of the city itself. 

1. The church has a distinctive identity in the city, and we embrace it. We are not a commercial business — we are not driven by profit or by securing market advantage over our competitors. We are not a political organisation with a particular barrow to push, left or right.  We might be engaged in political issues, and that is appropriate, but the church enfolds people of many convictions.  We are not a cultural institution nor a venue for the arts. We are not simply a provider of social services. We are first and foremost a community of faith and belonging in the heart of the city. Whatever else we do, whatever else we provide, we are called to stay true to this identity. The church is an open community of belonging in which the questions of faith and life are held and explored. We are shaped by that faith, called by that faith. And because of this, our invitation to belonging knows no boundaries. 

• The church has a distinctive perspective on what the city is. Before it is anything else — commercial, political, cultural or residential — we believe the city is sacred. We view the city as a place holy from its beginning, one filled with the goodness and the beauty of life for all of those who inhabit it. It is because of this that we refuse to allow the city to be defined purely as contested, commercial or competitive space. Part of our vocation is to call others to imagine this city with us as the city of God — that is, one marked by the values of justice, hospitality and inclusion.  

As I said, this does not get us all the way there, but it’s a good beginning. For us, this city of ours is not heaven, nor is it hell. But what it is this: the dwelling place of God, and the place in which we are called to live our identity and vocation as the people of God in the world. So as we grapple with this question through the month of April, may God grant us the courage to embrace that calling. 

Amen. 

the sun always sets

We live in a place where the sunsets are magnificent … every night. As I walk home from work, it’s like a daily reminder that beauty is stubborn. It persists, regardless. 

Life is overwhelming right now. The whole world feels brittle. And so do I. But the sun still sets, and rises, and sets again. Breathe.

The Cicadas are Still Singing
by Will Small

I tricked myself again,
that life is waiting round the corner
that it will all be simple soon
that I’ll be everything I hope to

And all my future proofing
all my constant scheming
my somewhere else dreaming

Was rudely interrupted
by a strangely peaceful moment
on an ordinary evening

I am weary, maybe wounded
scattered, inconclusive

But that sun doesn’t care
and those cicadas are still singing
no price here for admission
no losing, no winning

All the ever-present grace
that doesn’t wait for my achievement
it’s just thread through all the lining
of this air that I am breathing

time is short?

The Australian poet Banjo Patterson loved the bush. Man from Snowy River, Waltzing Matilda — his poems are filled with imagery of wide open spaces and those heroic figures who inhabit them. That said, he was not so keen on the city. In the classic Clancy of the Overflow, Patterson described the bustle of 19^th century Sydney and those who walked its streets:

And the people hurrying daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me

As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,

With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,

For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

He’s a bit rough, I reckon, but his point is made. Certainly we ‘townsfolk’ inhabit a different world to his. In 21^st century Melbourne we live and work in one of the busiest neighbourhoods of the nation. Patterson’s ‘rush and nervous haste’ is part of our lives. We are driven by the clock and at a speed inconceivable to previous generations. Indeed, we are now so accustomed to life at speed we’ve become impatient with the slow.

In his book Faster, the sociologist James Gleick documents our obsession with speed. He argues that we’ve become so addicted to it that the slow gaps in life have disappeared: we talk into our phones as we walk down the street; we scroll Facebook as we stand waiting for the traffic light to change; if the driver ahead of us hesitates at a green light or our train is running a minute late, we’re on edge. 

Driving all of this is the assumption that time is short — we have a limited amount and must make it count. The pace of our lives only accentuates this. The philosopher of transportation John Whitelegg observes a universal truth: the faster we can travel, the further we travel. In the same way, the faster the basic tasks of life can be done, the more tasks we take on. Our natural instinct is to fill the space.

I have to admit, Patterson’s assertion that “townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste” has a personal kick to it. My son’s recent comment, “You’re always so busy, Dad” is a thud to the chest. Instinctively, I know that things of worth take time — friendships, conversations, family, prayer. I know from experience that unfettered speed in my life has the potential to alienate me from those I love. And even from myself. 

Earlier this year, I sat with another pastor on the front verandah of my church.  We are friends and he was exhausted. His previous year of ministry had been demanding in the most intolerable ways. His relationship with his wife had suffered and his team ministry had crumbled. His confidence was shattered. Close to tears, he looked off into the distance and said, “I hardly know myself anymore.” The Australian theologian Robert Banks argues that when  we are consumed by speed and its busyness, we have neither the time nor the quiet to see ourselves. “Since the opportunity for inward attention hardly ever comes,” he writes,“many of us have not heard from ourselves for a long, long time.”

This mantra that ‘time is short’ pervades our lives.  Look just below the surface and you discover what feeds it: arrogance and anxiety. In the New Testament letter of James, the writer addresses business people, merchants most likely, in his community: 

“To you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes … As it is, you boast in your arrogance.” 

The conceit is obvious. The assumption that time is ours to master betrays a blinding self-importance, as though our little portion of time is all that matters. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks more gently. He addresses not arrogance but the crippling state of anxiety that pushes us forward. It’s fuelled by a narrative of lack — if time is short and resources meagre, then I grasp at what’s there and fret for more. Jesus’ response: “And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?”

Whether fuelled by arrogance or anxiety, this idea that time is short is a lie. From the perspective of Christian faith, time is not short. It is eternal. It has no beginning and no end. Certainly my portion of it is meagre, but I hold what I have with humility, understanding that my small handful is not the full story. It is just one tiny part of time everlasting.

James Hudson Taylor was a missionary who spent 54 years of his life in China. He was a busy man, responsible for bringing more than 800 missionaries to the country. Under his leadership they started 125 schools and established 300 stations of work across eighteen provinces. Regardless, in a biography of his life, Taylor imagined himself as a child standing at the edge of the ocean with a bucket.  He kneels down and scoops up his little bucket of God and carries it to his sand hole. He pours what he has into the hole before turning back to the sea. When he does, he notices that not even the slightest indent has been made. The vastness of what’s before him is just the same. That is us and the reality of time.  

It was the great Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel who observed that “the spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.” My sense is, only as we hold our small cups of time in the presence of the eternal can we live generously with each other, peacefully with ourselves and humbly with God.  

Time is money?

I love a good sandwich. So when I read recently about a new sandwich shop at the top end of Little Collins, I was there. As was the rest of Melbourne, so I joined the queue. The man directly in front of me was tall, well dressed with pointy leather shoes. He was on his phone, agitated, demanding loudly that a contract be on his desk by 2pm. When his turn came to order, he continued his phone conversation, jabbing his finger at his choice on the menu card.

As I stood behind him, I noticed a sign in the shop: “a good sandwich takes time.” Clearly, this man didn’t read it. After placing his order he paced, still on the phone. Finally he barked at the young man behind the counter, “Where’s my sandwich?” “It’s coming sir.” A moment later he hung up and snapped, “You’ve just wasted six minutes of my time!” And he walked. No sandwich. 

No doubt, time is a precious thing. No matter who we are or how pointy our shoes, what we do for a living or how much money we have in the bank, our lives are contained by time. Each of us have the same number of hours in a day and days in a year. What’s more, our lives have a beginning and an end. Our time is limited. 

Perhaps that’s why the most common way of understanding time is as a commodity. It’s something to be counted, a currency in limited supply. There’s a whole language of time that supports this idea: we can save time or spend it; we can waste time or lose it; time can be stolen, budgeted, allocated or invested; effective managers of time are those who take control of it, banking it strategically or spending it wisely. 

This language of time as commodity is all around us. We are impacted by it, perhaps more than we know. I think of the person who approached me earlier this week and asked if I could give them an hour of my time. I pulled out my calendar to see what I had to spare. To some degree this organisation of time is part of an ordered and productive life, but the assumption that underlies it has a dark side. 

Karl Marx, the 19^th century philosopher and economist, once quoted a British factory master who said, “moments are the elements of profit.” Time is money. It’s a powerful idea that shapes our days and, in time, determines our lives. 

First, it separates out what is profitable from what is unprofitable, what is productive from the non-productive. It infers that the productive use of time is virtuous while non-productive time is laziness. The so-called Protestant work ethic was fuelled by this notion. It’s like that meme that does the rounds online: “Jesus is coming. Look busy!” From this perspective, rest has no value. We justify our worth through busyness.

Second, it assumes that what I am paid per hour correlates with what I am worth. A management consultant who charges thousands of dollars per hour is clearly worth more than a childcare worker on close to minimum wage. Even more, if time is money, then the retired or unemployed are left wondering if they have any worth at all. 

Third, this notion that time is money verges on idolatry. It can be so in two different ways. Either our lives are controlled by the demands of time — we bow down to the god of profit as though it can save us — or we assume that once we subdue our time, we will have life under our control.

The fact is, these are all falsehoods. 

One of the ancient hymns of the Bible is in Psalm 90. It’s identified as a prayer of Moses. In reality it’s dated long after Moses. Most likely it was written for the Hebrew people after their years in exile. They return to their homeland decimated, their homes destroyed and their city in ruins. They sit together in the dust and they weep. This hymn is a reminder to them of two things. First, God remains eternally present in the world no matter what the circumstances: 

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” 

Second, our lives are momentary, a sigh — here and gone — and can only have meaning when gathered up in a story larger than our own:

“For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday  …  You sweep them away; they are like a dream … our years come to an end like a sigh. The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty if we are strong. Even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” 

This contrast between the God who exists “from everlasting to everlasting” and our brief existence demands from us a certain humility. Even more, it exposes this notion that ‘time is money’ as a lie. Frankly, it is nothing but hubris. The truth is, in whatever quantity it comes, time is a gift. Further, its brevity finds meaning only when it’s enfolded into the eternal story of God.

The hymn ends with a plea on the part of those who sing it: “So teach us to count our days so that we may gain a wise heart.” This task of counting our days is not so much a mathematical one, as though we can tally up what’s left. That would be foolishness, not wisdom, for who knows how long we have? The more accurate rendering is, “so teach us to deal with our days …” That is, teach us to understand our days, to confront their brevity and hold them with humility.

Time is not money. That’s a lie! Time is first and last a gift. Whatever time we have, it is grace from beginning to end. 

In the mood with joyce carol oates

True for me, mostly

“One must be pitiless about this matter of ‘mood.’ In a sense, the writing will create the mood. If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function—a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind—then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in. Generally I’ve found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

Joyce Carol Oates, The Art of Fiction (an interview with Robert Phillips) in The Paris Review, Issue 74, Fall-Winter 1978.

ANOTHER YEAR

Today begins my 14th year.

For thirteen years I’ve been pastor of a city church, one of the nation’s oldest. Fronted by tall white columns, it stands temple-like on Melbourne’s most prestigious street. With neighbours like Versace and Prada, we’re surrounded by theatres, gleaming office towers and clubs full of old port and even older money.

It’s not always been that way. When the settlement’s first residents lived down by the river, they complained about the churches being out in the bush. Back then our street, Collins Street, was nothing but a dirt track. There are stories of potholes large enough to swallow a horse. But not anymore.

I often wonder how I ended up here. The church’s heritage is one of great names and influence. Its ornate pulpit attests to a grand tradition of oratory and the calibre of its ministers to leadership far beyond the church’s front doors. I’m a decent pastor, I know, but my skills in oratory are middling at best and, if I’m honest, my influence as slim as the railings on the front steps.

What I have in spades, though, is a love for this city and a continuing belief in the role of the church at its heart. Certainly the church’s place in the public square is different today than it’s been. Though still a privileged keeper of real estate and tradition, its historic ‘entitlement’ to voice and political influence is mostly spent. What a local church like Collins Street maintains is its God-given identity as an embedded community of courageous faith and generous belonging. We may not be as prominent as we once were, but we persist as a living sign of hope and of God’s all-embracing grace in this neighbourhood.

There are moments when I crave just a little of the church’s past glory. But I know much of that is driven by self-interest. The church does not function for itself and certainly not to stroke the egos of those that lead it. In whatever place it is, the church exists to glorify God and love its neighbours. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.”

Perspective is the rare benefit of age. For 185 years this church has shared Melbourne’s journey from fledgling settlement to thriving city. We have tracked with its ups and downs — we’ve not just watched the roller coaster; we’ve ridden it. And now as our city claws its way back from the disabling impact of the last few years, we are here, as committed to the city’s flourishing as we have always been. Another year of that sounds good to me.

[My thanks to Geoff Maddock for a beautiful image]

Bibleman

It was Bibleman!  We saw him, first in New York at the zoo and then in Texas. He was in homewares at Wal-Mart.  Actually, his mum was trying to coax him back into the stroller.  He threw a super-tantrum and his cape ended up around his knees. 

My kids were in primary school at the time. My son dressed up as Spiderman more times than I could count. But never Bibleman. I felt like the most negligent church-going parent. 

I checked the website and, sure enough, Bibleman had been battling the “flamboyant villains of darkness” for a decade. The local Christian bookstore carried all the videos:  Six Lies of the Fibbler, The Fiendish Works of Dr Fear, A Fight for the Faith. Armed with a light-saber of truth and his ammo belt of bible verses, the fearless Bibleman appeared in blue. His mission: to rescue doubters from the darkness of arch villain Luxor Spawndroth. Wow!

Honestly, as a pastor there are times I would love to be Bibleman. I’d skip the blue spandex, but that arsenal of bible verses ready to fire in any situation of doubt or pain — it sounds perfect. If only.  

As I settle in for my 39^th year of pastoral ministry, I’ve already had conversations with people in the most wretched circumstances: a life-altering diagnosis; depression that won’t lift; news of a senseless and tragic war in a beloved homeland. For each person there’s an awkward mix of faith and doubt and an almost desperate hope for things to be different. 

No matter how long I’ve been at this, I never get past that longing to make things different, to fix things for those in pain, to speak perfect words that liberate or heal. But I have no superpowers and no evil villain to blame. All I have is me, the world as it is, and deep sense of God’s grace. 

Don’t get me wrong. There are times when ancient words quoted from sacred texts can be a balm for weary souls, a reminder of truths that hold and sustain. Even more, the care I offer is grounded in more than who I am and my trifling skills.  But as much as I have confidence in the love and immediacy of God, I have no secret weapon apart from my willingness to be present. As one made in the image of God, it turns out the only cape I have is my humanity. So, on that goes for another year. 

resolutions

My track record on resolutions is atrocious. A new year appears and my resolve is strong. Typically, it lasts all of five minutes. So why do I persist? Because often there’s wisdom that sits beneath a resolution, no matter how trite. I look back on resolutions past and the longings they name are still worthy.

A few years back Jason Zweig, a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, provided a list of resolutions worth considering. Here are some of them: 

• Listen to what someone else is saying without hearing what you already think. It’s one of the hardest challenges for the human mind.
• Say “I don’t know” at least 10 times a day. That will disqualify you for a career in politics but make you a better person.
• Learn something interesting every day; learn something surprising every week; learn something shocking every month.
• Be more judgmental about ideas and less judgmental about people.
• Get outside more — a lot more.
• Don’t laugh at things you don’t understand. Take the time and trouble to understand them first. Most likely, you will find that once you understand them, they either become even funnier than you thought in the first place, or not funny in the least.
• Own your mistakes; lend your successes. They will come back, with interest.
• Get home 15 minutes earlier. It will make you 15 minutes more efficient the next day.
• Call your mum.
• Forget about getting better at what’s easy for you. Get better at what’s hard for you.
• If you think you’re the smartest person in the room, you must not have talked to everybody in the room yet.
• Stop walking with your phone in your hand all the time. Look up and see how strange and beautiful the world is.
• Never try to get other people to change their minds without first trying to understand why they think the way they do. Never do that without being open to the possibility that the mind that might need to change the most could be your own.
• Show, don’t tell.
• Teach, don’t preach.
• Befriend someone at least 20 years younger than you, and someone at least 20 years older than you. Each of you will make the other smarter and better.
• Get better at accepting compliments; despite all you know (and all they don’t know) about how the sausage was made, people still have a right to like what you did. And you have an obligation to thank them.
• Tweet less; read more.
• Talk less; listen more.
• Say more: Use fewer words.