The Sermon . . .

Sharyn Volk

Verses 35-52 of Mark chapter 6, the verses which are sandwiched by our gospel reading today and which we don’t hear, tell us of the miracles of feeding the five thousand and of Jesus walking on water and stilling the stormy seas. Of all the miracles that are recorded during the ministry of Jesus it is only the feeding of the five thousand which is described in all four gospel accounts. It is undoubtedly seen as one of the most significant miracles - it involved the most people in terms of numbers and therefore had the most eyewitnesses. It is often viewed in tandem with the miracle of turning water into wine. Bread to the multitudes and wine to the wedding guests - both still offered to us today.

As a child I attended church and Sunday school in a very small Victorian country town. Our attendance at St Thomas’ on Sundays was a routine event and was generally followed by an extended family lunch with my grandparents and great aunt – I think my favourite lunch was stew with lambswool (our way of describing steamed dumpling), followed by apple roly-poly. The teachings of Sunday school were an integral part of my childhood, just as family Sunday lunch, and both contributed fabric toward my blanket of comfort and security. I learned of a Jesus who would ensure I would never be hungry, who was such an amazing person he could walk on the seas, calm a storm and then go about healing sick people. My childhood was very safe, secure and happy.

I matured into adulthood and of course walked into my own inevitable personal storms. Sometimes it felt as though they would never be stilled. As is oft the case with young adults I questioned whether or not my faith was relevant and whether my childhood naivete was simply blindness to the real truth. I worked through those challenges and then in the first semester of the 2003 university year at the Melbourne University School of Anthropology studied the Anthropology of Religion and a second subject titled The Evolution of Consciousness. By about mid semester I was again questioning my faith, but as my reading continued I was a little more reassured to know that even some anthropologists who clearly pronounced themselves as non-believers, felt that religious practice, no matter the faith, was pivotal to maintaining societal order. This was an encouraging thought.

Let’s return to the first part of our gospel reading for today ...

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him

It is so easy to transplant this situation into the lives of many of us within the walls of this building today. We are very busy in our daily lives,doing and doing evermore, so much so that often we even manage to neglect feeding ourselves properly. The idea of being able to escape to a deserted place to rest for a while is indeed appealing. And so off they went to this deserted place but the people learned of this gathering and before Jesus and his apostles arrived the throng had gathered to demand more of them. I know that when I have been immersed in keenly sought private solitude and have been interrupted at only the beginning of this quiet time I am inclined to be quite grumpy. Time is such a precious commodity in the 21^st century and this lack of time can easily lead to preoccupation with self. Not only this, but to questioning the place of self in a world which seems to spin faster and faster. If this is how I feel, how do my teenage children feel, and what will face their children?

In the Parish Profile published in June New Vision Keith Dempster wrote:

This is certainly a true statement. No matter our attitude toward the "good old days", the approach of contemporary society has determined that times have changed. Does the church have a part to play in contributing toward future generations experiencing the security, safety and happiness that I felt cocooned by as a child?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, when presenting the 2002 Richard Dimbleby lecture, discussed the relationship between the church and the nation state. In the course of this discussion he made some comments which may have application to the potential relationship between the parishioners of St Johns Camberwell and our local community. I quote from this paper ….

..so if you see your choices here and now in the context

of a larger story, this is a way of giving some sort of shape

or sense to your own life, some sort of continuity to it. People

learn how to tell the story of their own lives in a coherent way

when they have some broader picture to which to relate it. You

can only tell the story of your own life, it seems, when it isn’t just

your story, or even the story of those immediately close to you..

what is different about religious belief is its bold claim that there

He goes on to say that ..

..the institutions that help you shape a story for your life

are not around. Family continuity is rare, conventional

religious practice is minimal; shared public activity is unusual

..so the challenge for religious communities is how we are to

offer our vision, not in a bid for social control but as a way of

opening up some of the depth of human choices, offering

resources for the construction of growing and critical human

identities.

What a challenge these words present to us!

Pascal Boyer, a French evolutionary psychologist wrote a book in 2001 very boldly titled ‘Religion Explained’. Boyer contends that religious beliefs can be explained through understanding the workings of the human brain and that all human brains have the capacity for religious belief. He particularly claims ‘that the religious concepts people acquire and transmit are in general the ones most likely to seem convincing to them, given their circumstances’. Whether or not Boyer’s theory is accepted, it reinforces how important it is for us as a church community to be relevant to the contemporary society in which we reside - that is of course if we want to interact with our community. If we want to keep the doors of our private club closed then maybe we could just continue to do more of what we have always done.

Here at St Johns we can proudly declare our outreach programs alive and well. The Friends of St Johns are active amongst the elderly in our community. Our winter dinner will support a theology lecturer at Nungalinya College. The proceeds of our Spring fair will be distributed to a number of causes, the majority of which will probably be church related. We have just contributed generously toward the Anglicare winter appeal. All of this activity is to be highly commended but unfortunately in some quarters, with the exception of Friends of St Johns, could mostly be seen as merely supporting the club. These are all very safe activities for us.

What is the perception of the residents of the City of Boroondara of the Anglican Church as an organisation? Is St Johns high on their list of "must visit" places? Probably not. It is sad to think that top of their minds when they think of Anglicans at the moment are the headlines speaking of our church tearing itself apart because we can’t agree with each other over the place of homosexuals in our community. Our difficulty in coming to terms with this issue is even more highlighted by the decision this week reached by the Uniting Church of Australia. I would guess there might be a number of people here today who might disagree with me, but it is my feeling that homosexuality is simply no longer an issue for Mr and Mrs Average, and particularly not for the young adults in our community. The worries of a teenager in 2003 do not include a concern about whether or not people practice same sex relationships. Their concerns include self-esteem issues, family security, drug use, terrorism, education, employment, environmental issues. Many teenagers are now suffering depression and anxiety disorders and especially disturbing are the eating disorders which seem to becoming more and more prevalent in the young women of our community - yes, perhaps even more so here in the comfy south eastern suburbs. Are we seen by our community here in Camberwell as doing anything practical regarding these problems? I must emphasise by practical, I don’t mean participation in protest marches or being critical of opinions which are not allied with our own. What I mean is - are we actually being seen by our community as doing something for our community? I fear not. Despite all the good work that we know our church does the public perception of those outside the club is that we are so concerned with inner politics we have little time left to deal with the issues that impact many in our community. Instead of our church being seen as a leader as a group we might now be perceived as followers, or even worse, as a bunch of people simply not able to make decisions which reflect majority contemporary thought.

Like Jesus we need to be always willing to allocate time out of our busy schedules and more importantly, to take some risks. We need to become relevant to the people around us and we must interact with them on a regular basis and in a practical way. We must find new ways to reach out to the people around us and clearly show ourselves as a community which people aspire to join.