16.10.05 - St Lukes Day

I have a file in my filing cabinet labelled "St Lukes B.C." The "B.C." means, of course, "Before Clark". It contains a selection of papers from the first part of the 1980s, before I came to the parish. I pulled it out recently and flicked through it, recognising the contents from previous flicks-through, especially from around the time I first arrived here in 1988 and was trying to get the hang of St Lukes and its Community Centre. One of the documents I occasionally go back to is the statement of policy St Lukes drew up 21 years ago in 1984 concerning the Community Centre. I want to read their statement of general principles.

Consciously and unconsciously that statement of principles has been a foundation for the Community Centre??s existence and life and activities for all of these 21 years since it first opened. It states clearly, simply, and unambiguously a vision of a church-based, church-maintained but thoroughly community-facing activity and place. It avoids meaningless and empty religious terminology, the kind of thing found in the statements of purpose of many churches and church-based operations. And it makes it clear that there are some important standards if the Community Centre is to indeed be a safe place where people may change and grow.

It might be a 21 year-old statement, but I also find it refreshingly contemporary in expressing general principles most of us here, even those who have arrived in recent years, would still hold central to what St Lukes is and what St Lukes stands for. It asserts a standpoint of openness and receptivity, of welcome and hospitality, which is just as important in the intolerant, exclusivist religious climate of the two thousands as it was in the nineteen eighties when it first emerged.

It might be worth noting that in my seventeen years here as minister, I am aware of a only a few times when groups have been declined permission to use the Centre or asked to leave. In each case, they were groups of a religious or spiritual nature which we recognised or learned did not respect the convictions and integrity of others, and / or which by their very nature were coercive and manipulative of those who came under their influence. Not surprisingly, some of those have been Christian groups. The 1984 statement of general principles gave a platform on which we could take a stand.

According to the gospel-writer we know as Luke, following a period of intense reflection and examination of the purpose of his life, Jesus returned to his home town and was invited to read from the scriptures and speak at the Sabbath service in the synagogue. Jesus read a passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah which in effect declared his platform, his manifesto: 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 let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord??s favour. In other words, his manifesto, his statement of general principles was nothing less that the transformation of society and of people.

All was well while he expressed the general principles of his mission and purpose, and the congregation seemed to approve of what was being said. But then in the verses following the passage we heard, Jesus went on to be more specific about what those general principles might mean in practice, and then things turned nasty. Eventually he was thrown out of the synagogue and the town. Even more eventually, he was put to death because he deliberately and intentionally lived out in his words, attitudes and actions, the statement of general principles he gave to his home town synagogue. There can be a cost to having, and to standing by, strong principles.

The platform on which the Community Centre was established as an essential part of St Luke??s life and mission is not the kind of thing that is likely to lead to death for one??s principles. Nevertheless, the platform contains principles that are not easy to live out, especially when they are taken not just to be the principles for governing the Community centre but also as principles under-girding and overarching our life as a Church and as Christians in the world around us. When we claim to be open and inclusive, by standing for that very principle we effectively or in practice exclude people who are not willing to be open and inclusive in their thinking and actions. We could even be accused of being intolerant and breaching our own principles. When we say we stand in the liberal tradition and expect everyone else to similarly have an open spirit and respect the convictions and integrity of others, but then ourselves challenge and reject conservative and fundamentalist viewpoints, it can begin to sound and feel as if we ourselves are being exclusive and excluding.

As Jesus found, there is always a gap between vision and reality. He did not achieve his vision in his lifetime. In fact, he hardly got anywhere towards achieving it. Instead, the Christian tradition claims, the vision was passed on to those who called themselves his followers. It is a vision of living not just for themselves and for their own sakes and their own spiritual wellbeing and relationship with the Divine, but for transformation of women and men, of society and the world. Over the past two thousand years, Christians have sought to do this with varying degrees of success and failure. Sometimes that vision and mission of transformation seems so overwhelming that it is tempting to give up altogether. One writer, addressing the Church??s commitment to social justice, which is another way of saying transformation, reminds his readers that it is like women coming together to make a quilt. No one of us, no one church community, is expected to make the whole quilt. But we are asked to be faithful and attend to that piece of the quilt that is ours.

St Lukes isn??t asked to change the world. But we are asked to be faithful to our little piece of quilt, to our little corner of the world. And that is what the vision of the first half of the nineteen eighties came up with in establishing the Community Centre and the principles underlying it. We won??t always get it right; we may sometimes make enormous blunders. We will not always be true even to our own vision and stated principles. Life is like that. There is always a gap between vision and reality.

Every now and again, it is good to be reminded of the vision, and to be reminded also of the ways in which the vision has been fulfilled in part if not in whole. Jesus became known for the principles he announced to his home-town congregation. He became known for his unflinching determination to live for his God and his God??s vision of wholeness and wellbeing, of transformed people and society, of freedom from the coercion of religion and of state, of oneness with the Divine and the human. And when he died without having brought that vision to fulfilment, it was passed on to people like us, and eventually on to us ?± a vision which sees us attending to our portion of the quilt of transformation and love.

Our own visionaries of 1984 have given us a strong biblical principle on which to do that; on which to base and continue our life as a Church, in the Community Centre, and in our own lives as Christian men and women. It is a principle of hospitality and welcome, of openness and of change, of liberality in mind and spirit and action ?± open-hearted, open-minded, and open-handed. Today, when we celebrate St Lukes Day and also the 21 years since the opening of the Community Centre, is a day to recognise that although there are always gaps between vision and reality, there also are convergences between vision and reality. We celebrate today that original vision which continues to be lived out in the life of our Centre and of our Church and which does contribute to personal and community life; we celebrate twenty-one years of providing a safe place which is free of coercion, and where all are welcome regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, social status, or race; we celebrate the years of and the ongoing commitment to fostering the liberal / progressive Christian tradition of open spirit in a world of growing religious intolerance, narrowness, and fundamentalism.

Living God, may there be sense in our persistence,

and reason in our tenacity.

May our existence as your people not be deemed an end in itself,

but solely a way and a means.

May we live our lives conscious of our past and true to our heritage,

keeping ablaze the fires our prophets lit.

May we, like our forebears, still stand out against the multitude,

protesting with all our might against its follies and fears.

May a divine discontent give colour to our dreams,

and a passion for holy heresy set the tone of our thoughts.

May the soul of the rebel still throb in us as it throbbed in our forebears, that,

refusing to be silenced, we may take the part of those without a voice.

Terry Falla, Be Our Freedom Lord (alt)

The background of this prayer is the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century,

and the ongoing twenty-first century reformation of the Church

in which St Lukes, as a progressive church, plays a part.