As we gather again at the start of a new year, it is good to remind ourselves of who we are, as a community. Oftentimes Christians add adjectives to describe what kind of Christian they are: they are a ‘progressive’ Christian or a ‘Bible-believing’ Christian, a ‘born-again’ Christian or a ‘social justice’ Christian. Sometimes these labels are useful, and yet the more I sink into our faith and our life in Christ, the more I simply want to claim Jesus as our sole identity. I want to say: we are a community that dwells in Christ and shares Christ’s identity. We are a community who follows the way of Christ, which is love. We are a community that dies, like Christ, to the pursuit of power and riches, and seeks to die to all that does not give Life. And we are a community that rises again to New Life, with Christ. All who encounter us, I hope, get a taste of what it will be like when Heaven meets with Earth.
What more of an adjective could we possibly need, when we are claimed and named as Christians: “Christ’s Ones”?
Yet there are many movements and ideologies that seek to pull us away from our primary identity. In the USA, we are seeing the way Christians are being tempted away from the pathway of love and humility, and being drawn into a politics of fear, hatred and arrogance. In other circles, we can easily fall uncritically into strong cultural currents, and treat opposing groups with distain, forgetting our call to be peacemakers.
On Sunday it is the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet and the plunging of the British flag into Dharawal soil – claiming it and all of the surrounding lands as the territory of Great Britain. It is a day when the different ideas of nationhood butt heads; when different ideologies clash and vie for space. It is a day many migrants become citizens, and express gratitude for a new home found. It is a day when the First Peoples of this land mourn for everything they have lost since that day in 1788. The 26th of January is a day of many competing ideologies, many competing stories.
For those of us whose primary identity is in Christ and Christ alone, how are we to navigate these stories, these ideologies? Amongst all of the words that will be spoken and sung and written on Sunday, what is the Word – the Word from Galilee! – saying to us?
On Sunday we will be encountering two texts involving the public reading of scripture – one in Nehemiah 8, and one in Luke 4. How does scripture help us to hear the Word amongst the words? How can this orientate us to truly be ‘Christ’s Ones’, especially at the beginning of a new year?
Words by Rev Andreana
Image by Zoe Belle, Guwa Koa and Kuku Yalanji woman
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