People Smuggler or Good Samaritan

1 04 2010

 

Jack Schmit from Project Safecom (http://www.safecom.org.au/ahmadi-case.htm) reports that Mr Hadi Ahmadi, an alleged people smuggler, may finally be given the opportunity to have his say in court. Jack asks if most of the people, approximately 97%, that Mr Ahmadi assisted were found to be genuine refugees, then was he really a ‘people smuggler’.

The issue of people smuggling is one that has intrigued me for quite a while. My beliefs and ideals, grounded in a social-justice oriented Christianity, lead to me wanting to help anyone in need any way I can, at least to the point of breaking ‘the law’. Beyond ‘the law’ I would have to way up the justness of ‘the law’ and the unjustness of the situation and perhaps make some tough decisions.

The situation of helping someone in need, someone who isn’t in a position to help themselves is clearly demonstrated in the story of the Good Samaritan, but in that story, the Samaritan paid for the expenses of the injured man and offered to continue paying until the man was well and able to support himself. As Australian citizens, I think we are morally and ethically bound to be the Samaritan to the hurting, defenceless refugee, regardless of the personal or financial cost. But I am not sure about the morality or social justness of the Good Samaritan asking the injured man to pay for his expenses and perhaps even making a little profit before picking the injured man up off the ground. In that scenario, the Samaritan would have been no better than the people who walked by on the other side of the road.

Whilst I fully support, and would even encourage the practice of refugees making the journey to Australia, I can never support the practice of people making money out of other people’s distress. Nor do I support the practice of sending helpless people out into a dangerous situation on a hazardous journey in a leaky boat. I personally don’t have all the facts in Mr Ahmadi’s case, but I will be watching with interest to see how the Australian justice system handles, what should be, a very tricky situation.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: ,
Categories : Reflections

An Emmaus Journey

14 10 2009

My wife and I were on our way from Jerusalem to Emmaus. I think it was the Sunday after Jesus had died. He’d been crucified on the Friday. We were feeling pretty low, and we’d decided that there was nothing else to be done now that Jesus was gone, so we’d left the others and started on our journey home.

The days before Jesus had died were really quite incredible. They had an unreal inevitability about them. And it all happened so quickly – it was like a runaway camel in the market place – no way of stopping it. But at the same time, it was all happening so slowly. It was like when the kids are running around inside the house and one of them runs into the water jar and knocks it over. You can see the jar falling, its all happening so fast that you know there’s nothing you can do about it, but it also seems to happen so slowly – it takes for ever to hit the floor and smash into a million pieces, and then when it does there’s an incredible sinking feeling as you see all the water flowing across the floor – water that you spent two hours carrying up from the well before the sun came up – and now there’s no water for the rest of the day. The few weeks before Jesus died was just like that. We sort of knew what was going to happen, but at the same time we didn’t know. And now the bottom had fallen out of our world.

Well, this particular Sunday afternoon, we were talking about these sorts of things as we made our way to Emmaus, when we both suddenly became aware of someone walking beside us.

Gidday, he said. What are you talking about.

We stopped walking and looked at him. He didn’t look like anyone that we had ever seen before.

Are you the only traveller, who’s been in Jerusalem in recent days who doesn’t know what’s happened, I said

The stranger simply said, Tell me about it.

So we told him all about how Jesus of Nazareth had been this great prophet who we thought was going to be the Messiah; the one to save us from the dominance of the Romans. How he’d been betrayed and handed over to authorities and how he’d been crucified.

A few of the women had gone to the tomb early on that very morning to anoint the body as was the custom, but when they got there the tomb was empty. Later on in the morning, Peter and some of the others went to the tomb and they found it empty as well. The women had even said something about seeing angels and that the angels had said that Jesus wasn’t dead but was risen. We didn’t really believe them. You know what women are like in these situations!

Anyway, the stranger started talking to us about who the Messiah really was. He went through the laws of Moses and the writings of the prophets and he showed us all the places where it talked about the Messiah, and how the Messiah wasn’t going to be a powerful king that would destroy the Romans, but rather he would be one who would live and suffer and even die so that we would know how much God loved us and to show us how God wanted us to live. The Messiah would come not so much to do the work, but to show us how to do the work, so we would understand how God had given us the law to live in harmony, and the words of the prophets to help us understand that it was the spirit of the law that mattered rather than the law itself, how God wanted us to show mercy and sacrifice even if it meant that we didn’t follow the very letter of the law.

So if we saw an injured man on the side of the road, and it was the Sabbath, we shouldn’t walk by on the other side of the road and leave him there, but we should go over to him and pick him up and help him and take him to the inn and make the necessary arrangements to care for him. And if we saw a person travelling on their own or maybe someone who was lonely and miserable outside our gate, then we don’t just ignore them and we don’t just throw them a few coins and send them on their way. Rather we should invite them in, share a meal with them, give them a bed for the night. Make them feel that they are worthwhile people to have around. Make them feel part of the community, part of the family. It was certainly an interesting way of looking at things, and it all had that ring of familiarity about it. A bit of de-ja-vu perhaps. I’d heard all this somewhere before.

Well, by this time, we had reached Emmaus, and were outside our house, because we lived on the main road. The stranger said Goodbye and started to walk on.

My wife turned to me and said, Don’t let him go. Ask him in for dinner. Its getting late.

I said, But he’s a stranger. We don’t really know him.

She said – Don’t you understand. That’s exactly what he’s been talking about.

Hmmmmm. She was right of course. Funny, that. Well, you know how women are in these situations…..

So I called after the stranger, and invited him in.

We didn’t have much in the house because we’d been away for a few days, but we had bought some bread and fish on the way, so we set that out on the table. And we had some wine in the cupboard. I was just about to give thanks, because I was the host, when the stranger picked up the bread and started the blessing, which went something like this:

Almighty and most wonderful God, we praise you and give you thanks for the laws of Moses and for the words of the prophets through which you have shown us your great love. Help us to understand how to allow that love to flow through us and into the wider community around us. Bless o Lord, this bread and this wine to our bodies that it might strengthen us both physically and spiritually, that through it you will empower us to meet the stranger and to know when we do, how to care for them and to help them to feel part of our community. We praise you our God and we thank you for friendship. We thank you for fellowship and we thank you, as we break this bread again, for your love for us that allows us to be part of the ongoing community of people who belong to you.

Just as he said Amen, and as we joined him in saying Amen, he broke the bread, and at that very instant we turned and looked at each other, and were filled with a feeling of great joy. This was no stranger at our table. And both of us at the same instant looked back to where the stranger had been, and sure enough. The stranger was gone.

The stranger was gone.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Refractions

The Peace We Seek

15 09 2009

The following piece, The Peace We Seek, was inspired by a recent 9-week course I did. The course was conducted by Scott Vaswer from OnEarth. The course was centred around the SBS series, The First Australians, and consisted of 9 sessions discussing and trying to relate to the First Australians’ experience of white rule in Australia. The course was conducted at the invitation of PeaceChurch, an experimental ecumenical para-church, of which I am a member of the Steering Committee.

 

The indigenous people of Australia are thought to have migrated to Australia from South East Asia around 50,000 years ago, perhaps even as long ago as 100000 years ago. They probably first encountered this country near modern day Darwin or even in the north of what is now Western Australia.

Over time they spread out through the mainland until they occupied pretty much the whole country, living and developing in to distinct cultural and linguistic groups, which became individual nations.

These nations engaged in trade and cultural exchange and developed complex legal, social and spiritual systems that knew boundaries similar to the boundaries that exist between nations today around the world.

They developed a spiritual awareness which permeated every part of their culture and socio-economic systems. This spiritual awareness as we can see in many of their stories extended to a deep understanding of and communion with the natural environment that surrounded them.

For 40-50,000 years these social religious environmental economic systems developed in a way that seems to have been almost at one with the country in which they lived.

Into this system, came firstly the incidental explorer and trader, but then 220 years ago this country was invaded by a totally different, almost opposing culture that had developed literally on the other side of the world.

Naturally, problems arose from the beginning. Health, land and cultural issues caused a great deal of pain within the indigenous population, exacerbated by the fact that those who came saw the indigenous inhabitant as less than nobody, less than human and the country as ‘Terra Nullous’ – a land inhabited by nobody.

Move on 221 years to a little church in Wembley Downs in Western Australia.

About two years ago, this church involved itself in somewhat of an experimental para-church project, which we have called PeaceChurch. PeaceChurch’s mission is to explore non-violent resolution to conflict. We recognise conflict exists in all aspects of life and that sometimes we need to accept that conflict will continue to exist, but hopefully we can find ways to move through the conflict and hopefully come out the other side with ways of moving forward even though the conflict itself is still there. We can accept differences, we can accept differing views, we can even accept differing goals, but within that we can still move forward with a Christ-centred common experience. We can both change but also not-change.

Over the two years we have explored this idea of idea of ‘peace within conflict’, we have discovered that one of the keys is to listen. Listen to what each other has to say, listen to what each other’s grievances are, listen to how we view each others’ strengths and weaknesses.

Out of that idea of listening came the idea of travelling on a listening journey – a journey that had no aim of solving problems, no aim of achieving goals and no desire to impose one view over another. Just listen and hopefully, perhaps understand. And then maybe some sort of journey could happen together.

An obvious candidate for a context in which to embark on this listening journey was the story of the inter-twining of the lives of the new white settlers and that of the indigenous population of this, our own country. Hence we began the PeaceChurch OnEarth Listening journey using the SBS series The First Australians as a catalyst for our exploration and listening with Scott Vawser leading from the front or maybe he was pushing from behind.

The course and associated discussion was brilliant and it culminated in a weekend retreat to Mandurah and a wonderful trip to several remote communities in the Kimberley. It was an inspiring experience that opened my eyes to something I vaguely knew about. As I listened to the stories and became more a-tune to listening, it occurred to me that the journey was rather like the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. As the disciples listened and engaged in hospitality, the stranger vanished. If we take the time to listen to our indigenous sisters and brothers, then maybe the strangers among us will also vanish.

 

The Peace We Seek

 

I met the man unexpectedly,

I neither heard nor saw him,

He just appeared behind me, saying

Hey man – is it peace you seek?

 

We walked the dry and dusty road,

And I was so thirsty for the truth,

I listened as He talked about

Living the peace we seek.

 

Acknowledge misdeeds of the past he said,

The misunderstandings and even the hate,

Denying the stealing and the crying children,

Will only darken the peace you seek.

 

As we walked the road together,

His words rang loud and true,

Walk together; share the load, he called.

You’ll see the peace you seek.

 

By exercising your responsibilities,

He said, as we journeyed on,

By building relationships, showing respect,

That’s what will bring the peace you seek.

 

In times of silence with meditation, he said,

Perhaps via tears and inner pain,

Through confession and forgiveness,

‘Sorry!’ a light will be, on the peace you seek.

 

He talked some more, I listened intently,

on that dry and dusty road.

We finally arrived at our destination,

And I could almost feel the peace we seek.

 

It is in the dance and the stories, he continued,

In the trees and in the stars,

It is through the Spirits and the Dreaming,

That you can see the peace you seek.

 

Show some love and understanding.

Work at tolerance and friendship.

Share the joy, the happiness and hope,

For there, in that place, is the peace you seek.

 

A black ‘fella’ carrying a cross, he was.

And as he broke the bread and gave thanks for the wine

This is what it’s all about, he said.

For together, we can live the peace we seek.

©2009 Steve Mellor


Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Categories : Reflections

Who do you say that I am?

20 04 2009

Who do you say that I am?

 

When I was hungry, you gave me food

When I was thirsty, you gave me water,

When I was cold, you gave me warmth,

When I was naked, you gave me clothes.

 

Who do you say that I am?

 

When you were sick, I comforted you.

When you were afraid, I gave you support.

When you were unsure, I encouraged you.

When you grieved, I grieved with you.

 

Who do you say that I am?

 

When I was a stranger, you welcomed me.

When I was blind, you helped me to see.

When I was deaf, you helped me to hear.

When I was injured, you cared for me.

 

Who do you say that I am?

 

When you were in prison, I was there too.

When you were insulted I felt the pain.

When you were laughed at I stood by your side.

When they threw stones I was your shield.

 

Who do you say that I am?

 

When I was tired, you gave me rest.

When I was lonely, you were with me.

When I was angry, you listened to me.

When I was lost, you looked for me.

 

Who do you say that I am?

 

When you were wrong, I told you.

When you saw pain and did nothing, I reached out to you.

When you saw me lying by the road and you walked by on the other side, I cried for you.

When you were guilty, I died for you.

 

Who do you say that I am?

Who do you say that I am?

 

Our response to that question will help us decide whether we take up the cross and follow Jesus, and it will influence the way in which we become the blood and body of Christ in the world around us.

© Steve Mellor 2009


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : Refractions

A Response to the Stranger

9 04 2009

The Gospels were written primarily as teaching documents that enabled or assisted teachers in the early christian communities to help their students to know the crucified Jesus of Nazareth and to encounter the Risen Lord. The first christians debated not only who Jesus of Nazareth was, but how one could still know him and see him after his death. They wrote their own life stories in terms of the Jesus stories to which they had access. The early christian communities didn’t just talk about theology. They did theology. They lived it. The stories that we find in the Gospels contain the very fingerprints of the individual early christian communities out of which the Gospels arose. They reflect the poiesis, or poetry and meaning, and the praxis, or practical demonstrations, of the community’s theological understandings. They enabled the family of Jesus (Lk 8:21) to refract and reflect Jesus’ life and death into their own lives and experiences as well as into those of the wider community.

This has far-reaching implications within Churches of Christ today. As members of a supposed ‘New Testament Church’, recognising its intrinsic diversities, do we ‘do theology’? Do the Gospel stories ‘live’ for us in the twentieth century? The Gospel Stories remain simple words from myths and legends scratched onto ancient papyrus sheets until we, as the 20th/21st century family of Jesus, re-read, re-interpret and respond to them in a way which reflects, expresses and interprets our own life experiences. The stories of Jesus of Nazareth, and those of the Risen Lord, only become ‘real’ when they are embodied within the lives of those who read them.

One of the keys to the identity of Churches of Christ lies in its weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and almost invariably presidents make the link between that supper and the memory of Jesus’ death and, perhaps less often, his resurrection. Whilst Luke’s interpretation of the Lord’s Supper and of the Resurrection are only one of a diverse understanding that permeates the whole of the New Testament, it is perhaps in Luke’s stories, and in particular the Emmaus story (Luke 24:13-35), that we see one of the clearest images of an appropriate response to one of the earliest christian creeds, ‘Christ is Risen’.

When looking at many of our churches today, outsiders may perecieve that our repsonse to this ancient confession is closer to ‘So What?’ than to anything else. Yet in gaining an understanding of what the early christian communities understood by these events, how they were inextricably bound together, and in examining what it meant for them to see the Risen Lord, perhaps our response might more appropriately be ‘Christ is risen indeed!’

In entering into and becoming part of the Emmaus story, we have the opportunity to walk beside Cleopas and his companion. We are able to enter into their discussions of the events leading up to our mutual hero’s untimely and unexpected death. We listen with The Stranger as Cleopas explains the reason for their sadness. We learn what sort of Messiah Cleopas and the other disciples were expecting Jesus of Nazareth to be. We have the opportunity to listen as The Stranger explains how to see the Lord in the texts that make up Moses and the prophets.

Here is, however, where our story and that told by Luke may diverge. The reaction of the two travelling companions to what the Stranger has said was to invite him in for a meal and provide lodging for the evening. The Risen Lord became visible, not simply because Jesus broke the bread. The two friends engaged in an act of community which involved the breaking of bread. The Risen Lord was present because he was an active participant in the life of the community. Our reaction to what we see and hear within these texts determines whether we too see the Risen Lord by engaging with The Stranger in community, or whether The Stranger simply continues walking the road of life alone.

One of Luke’s major themes is the importance of table-fellowship. Within Luke’s Gospel, meals occur at significant points and often involve the acceptance of the stranger into the community, or the gathering of people from outside into the smaller household circle. (5:27-32, 9:12, 14:1-24, 19:1-10, 12:16-21). Table fellowship was not just a case of eating together and perhaps engaging in a few ‘spiritual activities’. Whilst Eucharist, or ‘thanksgiving’ was an important symbol for Luke in presenting the nature of the Jesus movement, community was not simply meeting together around the Lord’s Table. Table-fellowship for Luke embodies the whole concept of community: sharing of wealth and property, communal meals, distribution of provisions for the poor outside the community, support networks and so-on. By inviting The Stranger in to share a meal, by extending hospitality to the stranger, the travellers respond to Luke’s suffering messiah. But this is not simply a case of feeding and accommodating a hungry, tired traveller. There is a unique and amazing mutuality of community here. To allow a visitor the role of host was a unique sign of absolute and total acceptance within the household. In having The Stranger make the blessing and break the bread Luke indicates that The Stranger was welcomed as a friend and as a valued member of the community.

Celebration of the Lord’s Supper does not simply celebrate the individual person-Jesus-God relationship. The cross had an horizontal beam as well as a vertical one. In almost all images of Jesus on the cross, he has his arms outstretched, reaching out to the physically suffering and the spiritually hurting. Much is made today of the Eucharistic part of the Lord’s Supper, the personal thanksgiving, while the building of community aspects of the agape, the love-feast, have long since been vanquished to the extremities of worship services, and sometimes one would struggle to find them at all.

Luke’s Jesus of Nazareth was one who responded to people’s needs, one who met people where they were at, whereas many of the religious leaders of the day did not. Throughout his Gospel, Luke shows his community their responsibility to respond to the needs of the powerless and the poor, the suffering and the hungry, and yet at the same time recognising that the powerful and the rich had a place at the table provided they were totally committed to the ‘kingdom’ community. For Luke, having wealth and power in the wider community was not immoral. Indeed, many of Luke’s heroes were rich – the good Samaritan, the father of the prodigal son, the man who prepared a great feast to name a few. It was the use of that wealth and power that determined the morality or otherwise of one’s behaviour. In this story, the travellers were expressing the mercy and compassion which God had expressed through the law and the prophets, but which had been lost in the legal interpretations of the law and in the exclusive power and wealth-gathering of the ruling classes.

Luke’s risen Jesus is found in The Stranger, the unrecognised one, the suffering messiah. He is not the Jesus of Nazareth who died on the cross (24:19-21). He is the one who ‘is not here’ (24:5, 24:22-24)). He is the one who is living. He is to be found in the hungry, the needy, the suffering; the people who were outside the gates of Luke’s community (16:20). For the Lucan community, recognising the Risen Lord, or having the competency to see the Risen Lord, involved being an active participant in a community whose members knew both how to be hungry and how to feed the hungry. Unless the community actively seeks to alleviate the sufferings of the wider human community and to speak out against injustice, the Risen Lord ceases to exist. Yet at the same time, when the community responds to the Word of God, the Risen Lord disappears. Each time a hungry person is fully and unconditionally accepted at the table, she disappears, for the needy one is no longer needy. Here on the road to Emmaus, the two travellers listen to Moses and the prophets and respond, not to the walking, talking ghost, but to the love, mercy and compassion of God as expressed in the scriptures. This isolated invitation to community expressed to The Stranger by the community is the climax of Luke’s story of Jesus. This is what Luke’s story of Jesus is all about. This is resurrection. Jesus of Nazareth may have been crucified, but the resurrection happens because the community lives out his life practices and teachings.

As Luke’s community seeks access to Jesus, they find him not in the grave by which to place flowers and shed a tear. They find him in the stranger who accepts the invitation to table-fellowship and who therefore accepts a share of the physical, financial and spiritual wealth that is offered by the community of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, though of course it should be understood that the community may not have been ‘rich’. Emmaus is not about the renewing of a relationship with a dead person, that Jesus of Nazareth character who was crucified on the cross a few days before. Emmaus is much more a story of encountering The Living Stranger. Emmaus involves meeting the one who travels the road of life, who experiences hunger and knows what it is to be thirsty, who may be homeless and friendless, but who can be identified with and accepted regardless of her circumstances, as one seeks ways to alleviate the hunger, to quench the thirst, to provide a home, and above all to provide true friendship and companionship.

Emmaus is Luke’s Gospel in miniature. Within this story Luke presents the gospel as he saw it. It is a story that never happened, and yet it always happens. Luke’s resurrection stories show how the Lucan community was to reflect and refract the stories from their own past into their own present and future. The stories look back to the basis on which the community came into being and on which it exists and they look forward to what is to follow from their experience of Jesus – namely the gift of the Spirit or the ability to see the Risen Lord, and the consequential mission of the church. The resurrection was not something that defines a unique point in human history. Rather, it should be human history. The resurrection never happened unless it continues to happen.

Later in Luke’s story ‘Jesus himself’, not ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, appears to the eleven and their companions, and even though he shows them the physical reality of his being (24:39) and expresses his continued physical needs (‘I’m hungry’) they don’t fully comprehend who is in their presence. Just providing food is not enough. There is more to seeing the Risen Lord than just meeting physical needs. As on the road to Emmaus it is to the Law and the Prophets, the existing texts, that Jesus turns in order to explain the nature of the Gospel to them, but when The Stranger leaves, we are left wondering whether they have correctly identified and responded to the Risen Lord. The response of that Jerusalem group was to go into the synagogue and continually praise God. Is that what Jesus intended?
As proponents of ‘New Testament Christianity’, as Churches of Christ, what is our response to the creed ‘Christ is risen’? Are we only in the temple and continually praising God? Or are we out on the road of life re-encountering the Stranger and building community? ‘So what?’, or ‘Christ is risen indeed!’

SOURCES
Crossan, JD Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, San Francisco: Harper and Collins, 1994
Curkpatrick, S Easter and Hermes’ Conceit, Reo, Iss 2, 1996, pp60-65
Gill, A Life on the Road: The Gospel Basis for a Messianic Lifestyle, Homebush West: ANZEA Publishers, 1989
Moxnes, H The Economy of the Kingdom: Social Conflict and Economic Relations in Luke’s Gospel, Philadelphia, 1988
Sawicki, M Seeing the Lord: Resurrection and Early Christian Practices, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994

© 1996 Steve Mellor


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Reflections