Distant Strains of Triumph

Psalm 96, 2 Cor 2.14-17

A Sermon preached at the Australia Day Service 2006, St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Canberra.

Australia Day, our national day!

For some it is a day for remembering the fragile settlement established on a far shore, the hard work of pioneers and the sacrifice of many that has built the country we are today.

For some, it is a day for recalling and grieving a world largely lost, a world of Aboriginal cultures and languages that covered the continent, a continent some feel was invaded on our national day many years ago.

For some, it is a day for acknowledging a nation newly joined, a tolerant and welcoming land in which many tales and traditions find their home.

For some, it is a day in which they are honoured for the part they have played in the life of this community through professional diligence, generous spirit or extended service.

But it is also a day for reflecting on where we stand after centuries of settlement from all over the globe. There are many urgent and important themes that might take our attention: situation in Iraq, riots in Sydney, the arrest of alleged local terrorists, corruption in business and warming of the planet.

Pundits and politicians have explored these themes at length - I do not wish to go there. Here in worship, as we bring our nation to God in prayer, what does Christian faith have to offer in nurturing Australian identity and direction? We might explore the social capital the church delivers, or the volume of its voluntary service to the nation, or the churches' institutional infrastructure in education, welfare or international development. Instead, I wish to speak about the churches' contribution of ideas to Australian society

I speak as a Baptist, a minority tradition arising from the Reformation. At the centre of that tradition are three ideas about Christian faith and public life that have been a precious resource, now widely accepted by the community. The ideas are toleration, the separation of church and state, and dissent.

In the very origins of the Baptist tradition in the English speaking world is the notion of toleration, or expressed slightly differently, freedom of conscience. From the outset Baptists believed that people should be free to worship as they chose, that no-one should be compelled or forced to adopt any religious viewpoint. The individual human conscience should be free! For much of Christian history this was not self-evident: people were hanged, or burned, or they were Anabaptist, drowned, for what they believed. It was a little over 300 years ago that Thomas Aikenhead, an 18 year old student of Presbyterian theology was hanged for heresy in Edinburgh.

Of course, in centuries past, the extent of toleration was limited to the Christian community. Today we must extend the principle to embrace all manner of religious faiths for it still far from universally accepted.

There are many societies where religious freedom is still seriously curtailed and 'non-official' religions are outlawed or repressed. We find democracies such as France, where all religious symbols have been banished from schools and wearing the headscarf or other forms of Islamic dress for women is banned. In Australia some of our own politicians have expressed interest for such policies. In the United States even reference to 'Christmas' is becoming politically incorrect or subject to sanction by local authorities or the courts.

An even more serious assault on the principle of a free conscience is the rehabilitation of torture as an acceptable practice in the "war against terror". Torture is not primarily an assault on the body, but an assault upon conscience, the freedom to believe and to speak, or not speak. While still officially denied, the admissibility of torture is being debated in the media, and by some philosophers. In societies where freedom and toleration still hold legal sway, governments get around it by rendition, moving people to a different jurisdiction where the same rights and freedom of conscience do not apply, as if humanity and integrity is defined solely by geography.

There is no greater challenge in the world, or in Australia, today than fostering toleration, of accepting each other and learning to live with difference. If we cannot learn cohabitation and communication among communities on this earth, our future is bleak indeed.

The second great principle is the separation of church and state. This means that religion should be protected from political interference or control, and conversely, that no form of political power should be legitimated by religious ideology. It does not mean that leaders of the state cannot express religious opinions, nor that religious leaders should not express views on the policies of the state. The principle affirms that the state may not control the church, and the church may not bequeath its moral authority to the State. After a brief flirtation with established religion in the 1820's and 30's, Australia has always respected these principles. The United States has struggled with it, in various legal battles to separate religion and public life. In parts of the Islamic world the opposite view is held, that a state defined by religious doctrines and administering religious law is the way forward. In Australia we have clearly rejected this option, and believe that religion and the State have no role in controlling one another's affairs.

This does not mean that church and state have nothing to do with each other, that they are completely independent spheres of action. As Psalm 96 asserts so powerfully

". the Lord is coming to judge the earth, he will judge the world with justice and the peoples with his truth". (Psalm 96)

This Scripture is sacred to both Jews and Christian, and many other spiritual traditions affirm a similar principle. We believe that the state is not subject to the judgement of Bishops, Rabbis or Imams. But the state is certainly subject to the judgement of God, and that is something about which Bishops, Rabbis and Imams must surely teach.

Recently it has been suggested that our government should oversee or mandate the 'licensing' of the clergy and religious leaders of a particular faith. There are various religious groups in Australia (my own included) whose rights and legal foundations have been clarified through Acts of various Australian Parliaments. But it does not relate to managing or mandating religious leaders. I suggest that this is an inappropriate direction for us to embrace. Where does it lead? Our Anglican friends have always been a cultured lot. The Uniting Church is unfailingly civil. These may never need the moderating hand of the State. But how long could anyone risk leaving those mad Baptists and passionate Presbyterians unsupervised and unexamined?

The great challenge of our time is not that the state will seek to license the church or religious traditions (although it may well try to marginalize it!) A far more subtle danger comes from the other side. It is that religious traditions will be tempted to grant their moral and spiritual authority to various adventures in war or statecraft or even to political parties. The rhetoric of 'good in a war with evil', of righteousness battling with wickedness, is widely invoked, from the Middle East to the capitals of western powers. The religious and moral rhetoric of spiritual traditions is easily co-opted by human beings engaged in struggle. Wherever we see religious justifications for acts of violence or the alliance of religious groups with particular parties or governments, or the blessing of war, the separation of church and state (or religion and state) is being compromised.

The final theme is summed up in one word, Dissent. 'Dissenters' were so named because they opposed or 'dissented' from the social settlement of the state-backed churches. "Dissent" is a precious word in the broad sweep of Christian history. It says that you don't have to go along with things, or agree with the majority, or accept the reigning social consensus. You can hold a different view and that view should be respected by others.

It's not always easy to put up Dissenters. In my own call to the ministry I struggled with whether I should be a Baptist or an Anglican minister. One day a Anglican friend asked me where I was in the course of this decision. "I'm leaning towards the Baptists", I said. A terribly pained expression came over her face. "Oh Jim", she said, "You're not enough of a ratbag to make a good Baptist minister". In that instant my calling was clear: she was right about the Baptist ministry and wrong about me. Dissenters always have a touch of the ratbag in them, and this is a valuable quality in any church and in society. I'm not personally interested in burning the flag as some people did on Australia Day but I thank God that people can. I don't mind if people drink chardonnay and chatter about their views amongst themselves - the freedom to think and hold views of all persuasions, to dissent, is vital for any society. Dissent is a key indicator of social and spiritual health. This has its roots deep in the life of faith.

Toleration, separation of church and state, dissent: these things are fundamental to our national life and they are grounded in the life of the church. And each of them faces a measure of threat in our society. What should we do about it? Should we become combatants in what Americans call "the culture wars" and Australians have known as "the history wars"? Does the world need another group of religious warriors?

The adversarial spirit rises easily in our culture and in our world. Everything appears to be a battle and the world seems divided into 'winners' and 'losers'. It's a terrible thing to be described as 'a real loser'. We all want to be winners, and I suppose most of us here are winners in our fine clothes, and offices and honours. And if we are winners in life, why should it not be so in faith?

At first blush our New Testament lesson supports such optimism. The New Revised Standard Version announces: "But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession..".

The Authorised versions speaks of God " who always causes us to triumph in Christ". This is welcome news for people accustomed to win. Yet the Good News Version perhaps gets closest to the sense of the original when it translates it "Thanks be to God who leads us as prisoners in Christ's victory procession". The image St Paul is drawing on is the Roman triumph when the conquering general parades his prisoners and plunder through the city. We are not the victors, says Paul, but the vanquished, we are not the winners, but the losers. We are the prisoners, the captives, bumping along in the baggage train of Christ's victory.

This text says that we do not need to fight because the victory has already been won. In the Cross love has been revealed as the over-arching destiny of human history. God doesn't kill us: he dies for us. Suffering love, not angry violence is the way forward. We are all prisoners of Christ's history and there are no winners or losers. The robes of office that we carry and the badges of honour that we wear are but the rags and baubles of prisoners, straggling along in that victory procession, knowing that God will come to judge and set right the wrongs of the past, and that love will triumph over hate. We are not the agents of God's judgement, nor the storm troopers of the future. We are but prisoners, those who have been vanquished by love!

Sometimes the losers see life more clearly. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, surveying the ruins of war and the ashes of his personal hopes from a prison cell of a Gestapo prison: "or is there something within me like a broken army fleeing in disarray from a victory already achieved".

The poet Emily Dickinson wrote:

Not one of all the purple host which took the field today

Can tell the definition so clear of victory

As he, defeated, dying, on whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph break, agonized and clear.

The battle has already been won on an ancient field. We are but

prisoners in the procession that flows out from that victory. We see the

problems of contemporary Australia but even more we hear the distant

strains of triumph.

So

Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice,

Let the sea roar and all that fills it.

Let the field exult and everything in it.

Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy

Before the Lord, for he is coming,

For he is coming to judge the earth,

He will judge the world with justice

and the peoples with his truth".

Even so, come Lord Jesus!

Jim Barr, 29th January 2006