This sermon was preached on the 26th of January 2025, The Third Sunday after Epiphany, in the civil calendar known as Australia Day (or as Survival Day.)
Texts:
I don’t know about everyone else here, but lately I find myself sick and tired of division. It seems to me that year by year, even day by day, the world gets meaner and angrier. People seem to be drifting apart from each another, and our civic society is getting smaller and smaller.
Those places where people of all stripes, those places where people in all of their diversity of opinion come together, sporting clubs, community groups, churches or other faith communities, even trade unions: they’re all dwindling.
Just the other day, I was scrolling away on my phone, watching videos, and I had a moment of clarity. I realised that I was suddenly angry: unreasonably angry, filled with something approaching hate. And I wondered to myself – Where did this come from? Where did this feeling of anger emerge from?
The horrible truth is that our eyes and our ears have become commodities; and in a way, we, as people, have become commodities as well. We look into our phones, or at our computers, and we’re bombarded with content, videos from YouTube or TikTok, Facebook, Instagram… wherever. And much of this stuff that we watch online sells us things: sometimes, tangible things, it might be a book, a new watch, a gadget for the car, some tool that looks useful but will actually end up in a drawer.
But other times, we’re being sold intangible things, we’re being sold ideas, we’re being sold opinions.
A long time ago I used to be involved in politics. And these days, more than ever, political campaigning is about targets, and numbers, and above all winning.
And if you want to win an election, well, you need so and so many people to vote for you. And now, with computers and technology and data, it’s possible to figure out just exactly, just precisely, which people are persuadable… and it’s possible to figure out how to persuade them.
You can picture it: it creates an inherent division. Imagine it in this space, this church. There’s slightly more people sat over here, than over here. Well, I’ll persuade this aisle, and I don’t give a fig about what any of you over there feel, or believe, or suffer.
And this is the insidious side to all of this. Suddenly, I think without even realising it, political parties speak to those people they can persuade, and ignore those people that they can’t. It’s tricky stuff: this is more political than most of my sermons, but there is an important reality to this. And this Australia Day, this is our national day, so it’s worth some consideration.
It’s fair to say that our politics has been more fractious than it has been before. The common ground that unites us is starting to be lost; and more and more, a gulf is growing between people. Something must be behind it.
Standing in a synagogue on the sabbath, Jesus read from these words from scroll of the prophet Isaiah: “[God] has sent me to proclaim release to the captives.”
Release to the captives! Well, we are all captives. Captives to evil, captives to sin, captives to what Saint Paul refers to as the spiritual forces of evil. (Ephesians 6.12)
And it’s a sad reality that evil is a very real thing – a very insidious thing.
I talked earlier about scrolling on my phone, and realising that I was suddenly filled with hate. Hate for those people who I thought disagreed with me, hate for those people who I thought threatened me. Well, after that odd experience, I went outside, and looked around – I stood on the corner over there.
And I saw people going about their lives, people, ordinary and lovely, going about their lives with those little acts of care and respect for one another that we all take for granted.
It was like I’d seen a weather report for a cyclone, and then gone outside to find a calm summer day.
Well Jesus did come among us, proclaiming release for the captives. And so we are being released from the powers and principalities: Jesus has defeated the spiritual forces of evil. That victory is breaking into the world, as the Kingdom comes to be.
But in this time in-between, we must remain vigilant. Saint Paul today, in his letter to the Corinthians, speaks so beautifully of our interdependence, with his metaphor of the body. And this is very real: we, together, are each members of one body. And so we are each irreplaceable. We’re not the same. If we are sundered from one another, we are greatly, greatly diminished. We cannot be a body, we cannot be the Church, if we are apart.
And that same understanding can be applied to our nation. We need one another – together we make this place our home, a shared inheritance for those who will come after us.
And so we do rely upon one another – we sometimes forget that, we forget how much we rely on one another.
We care for one another, we are connected, and we are connected even and perhaps especially when we disagree… and there’s the key. I’m not arguing that we should all blithely pretend to get along, pretend to agree on everything, to just concede to one another about what the future should look like.
Today is Australia Day: it’s a happy day for some, a day of pride. And for others, it’s a day of mourning and desolation, sorrow and loss. What are we to do with that?
Well, maybe we do the simple, compassionate, Christian thing. We listen to one another – we listen to one another and we care for one another. We show empathy, we dare to enter into the complexity of the debate around this day. We acknowledge that we are not all the same.
And if if we do that, if we listen to one another, if we care for one another, then we’ll start to get to not just our opinions, but what underlies them: our values, our virtues, the deeply held things that bring our conviction. And it’s there, in the values and the virtues that we will found our common ground. And from that common ground, empathy will spring forth.
We’ll still be people who argue and debate, and rightly so: but we will do it well, with love, with care, with respect, never infringing upon the personhood, the dignity and worth, of another person.
Jesus said “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.” (Luke 4.18)
Jesus does this! Jesus proclaims freedom for the oppressed, release for the captives. And these things go hand in hand, they go together.
And so, be released, and release others!
Seize your freedom… and then free your neighbour!
We all have pain, we all have wounds. And in some ways, sadly, technology is making it easier and easier for those that would seek to manipulate us, to press upon those wounds, and so cause us to fear, or even to hate.
Don’t buy into it.
If you are watching something on your phone, or on the TV, if you’re reading a newspaper or a book, and you suddenly find yourself more afraid, more angry… more alone… then stop. Stop and pause and reflect.
And then, perhaps, go and be with other people, go to a diverse place. Meet people who aren’t like yourself – which is exactly what we do at church, every time we come for worship.
Love one another as you love your God. Set free those who are oppressed. Make this place, this nation, what it might be; make the world what it might be.
And so, by God’s Grace, the Kingdom shall be built.
The photograph at the top is a cairn I came across with a friend while walking in the Perth Hills, between Darlington and Kalamunda.