Australia Day – A Festival of Identity

Well, today we celebrate a festival – Australia Day. In my last entry I wrote that

Festival times are periods that take us away from the normal passing of time. To celebrate well means that we take time from our ‘useful’ activities. We mark the time in different ways – with food, dress, gifts, songs, symbols, with friends and family and with worship.

Today, many Australians at home or abroad will celebrate this festival. What in fact, do we celebrate? For days even weeks, in the lead up to today the media has talked/written of cockroach races, barbecues, thong-throwing competitions, beach parties – all the activities that are supposed to epitomise Australians. Pity about those Aussies who don’t identify with any of those activities.

On the more serious side we have the Australia Day awards and citizenship ceremonies.

With the Australia Day awards we recognise Australians who have made outstanding contributions to society. Theoretically they are not political and theoretically they celebrate commitments to society over and above what we accept as the norm. Perhaps we don’t always get it right and it is these times that make me really think about what is, or should be the criteria for such awards.

I wonder what God’s Australia Day awards would be. What criteria would God use? If the acknowledged saints and martyrs are anything to go by, some of the criteria would be very different. Some of God’s gongs may go to the oddest people if the criteria of the Gospels are any indication. Take Matthew 5-8, the ‘Sermon on the Mount’: Jesus tells his listeners that those who are poor in spirit are blessed, those who are sorrowing, those who hunger and thirst for holiness, those who show mercy, the single-hearted and the peacemakers. Blessed too are those persecuted, ridiculed and insulted for Jesus’ sake. Jesus asks us to forgive, to be utterly faithful sexually, to keep to our word, to relinquish revenge, in fact to love our enemies, to pray with filial trust, to know where our true riches lie, to be satisfied with enough, to ‘Treat others as you would have them treat you’. To respect others as my very self.

Finally, lest all this sounds a little like the 60’s hippy ‘all you need is love’ stuff, Jesus tells us to watch out for the liars, to develop an inbuilt charlatan-detector. ‘Be on your guard against false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but underneath are wolves on the prowl.’ This is tough stuff. It gets even tougher. Those who will receive God’s gong will be those who take these ‘criteria’ and strive to live them out day by day by day. These are the ones Jesus calls wise.

Now, I have no doubt that many who have received the civil awards today have lived out many of these qualities. However, there are many people who will never be recognised because they discomfort us or their service is unobtrusive or their triumphs are inner – the triumph of survival over destruction, of sanity over insanity. We pray to see the world as God sees it – not as we have learned to see it. I think we will be in for a very big surprise when we see God face to face.

This brings me to Citizenship. Today we welcome people into full participation in the life of our country and they accept the rights and obligations that go with that. Culture is an ever changing thing and each new citizen will bring something new to Australian culture and in turn Australian society will change them. Our citizenship is one of God’s gifts to us. It is part of our identity and the shape of our place in humankind.

It interests (and irks) me that in the press we (Aussies) are regularly defined as ‘taxpayers’. In doing this, the economy has become the new criteria for defining people. The economy has been exalted to almost religious status and people are really only of importance when we contribute to the economy and are not a drain on the economy. Well the economy is important, but it is important in a context of what it means to be a citizen, of how we participate in our society, of what sort of a society we want to live in.

This brings me back to the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus tells us here what is asked of us as ‘Citizens of Heaven’. I don’t think it is really too different from the sort of society in which we would like to have citizenship. Forgiveness, compassion, generosity, honesty are probably good qualities for a society, however they don’t just happen. We make them happen. Each one of us.

The early Spanish explorers called this part of the globe ‘The Great South Land of the Holy Spirit’. As Australians we are a facet of God’s face in creation. So, today, let’s us celebrate, rejoice, repent and give thanks for Australia – our land and our people. Citizens.

On Putting Away the Christmas Decorations

Today we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus, a feast that marks the end of the Christmas liturgical season.

Each year at some mid point in Advent I put up the Christmas decorations and bring in the potted Daintree pine (which has very courteously, not died off on me during the year). It is always a joyful ritual for me as it marks the heightening expectation of Advent and another moment in the unfolding of the liturgical season of Advent-Christmas-Epiphany-Baptism – the time of festival. It also marks the time to honour friends God gives me.

My Christmas decorations usually come down after Epiphany. In the past, taking down the decorations seemed to be a chore. Take them down, tidy the house, back to normal. Putting away the decorations was something that had to be done in order to move onto the next part of the year.

However, this year as I began the task, suddenly my attitude was transformed. In that instant the task became a contemplative moment opening out to understanding and insight. I carefully, even reverently cleaned each star, bauble, rope, angel and spangle, wrapped each one in tissue and packed it away. It became a ritual, a transition moment that took me into the meaning not only of the Christmas festival, but of all Festivals.

The truth is, that this year as Christmas drew near I did not ‘feel’ festive. Several sad and anxious things had happened to me prior to Christmas and I was feeling out of step with the joyful anticipation expressed in the liturgy and in the social life around me. Yet as I brought these experiences and feelings to the feast, I saw that the great festivals take us beyond ourselves. One of the functions of Festival is to give our ordinary lives a context of meaning.

In the liturgy of the Christmas cycle, the extraordinary poetry of the Scripture juxtaposed an image of God who makes the crooked ways straight and moves mountains with that of a child born to an insignificant family in the vast Roman empire. God and humanity meet; God and humanity are revealed.

If the manner of this birth tells us anything, it is that God works within the human. That our human contradictions, our deaths and births, our coping with disorder, our lack of mathematical certainty about our lives, our giftedness and our striving for goodness are the very place that Incarnation happens for us. We collaborate with God and God conspires with us.

Glory in the Ordinary, the Every Day. However for us to live this out in ever greater honesty, we need Festival.

Festival times are periods that take us away from the normal passing of time. To celebrate well means that we take time from our ‘useful’ activities. We mark the time in different ways – with food, dress, gifts, songs, symbols, with friends and family and with worship. No matter how materialistic a culture becomes, how distorted our sense of celebration becomes, the need to mark times that are special and different will always be part of our human hearts. These times help us understand who we are and importantly, who we can be.

This holds for both the great religious festivals as well as our national festivals and our personal celebrations. For example, Australia Day helps us remember and celebrate what makes us all Australians – our privileges and responsibilities. Birthdays, anniversaries, weddings take our individual stories and place them in the midst of family and community. No matter how personal our festival may be, it will always evoke a wider context. Festival, in its deepest sense evokes the sacred in our midst and reminds us that we are always greater than we think we are.

However, we are not meant to live in festival mode every day. It is impossible. We must return to the ordinary, the every day. If we have allowed the festival to transform our minds, hearts, relationships and deeds, then the every day becomes more profound. It is here that we live out the conversions, insights and joys that were given during the festival. It is in the ordinary that we experience the sacred as abiding.

Conversely, without commitment to the ordinary, that every day commitment to love which is sometimes humdrum, sometimes demanding, sometimes delightful, Festival time that allows for that contemplative, joyful affirmation of our deepest meaning will never be heartfelt.

The commercialisation of Christmas in our culture tends to obliterate the process of Festival, let alone the meaning of the celebration. For many of us, the lead up to Christmas as well as the celebration itself is busy and stressful for one reason or another. However, if this time of Festival is to work its unique power, we have to make choices about how we celebrate – what is of value to us, the quality of our celebration and relationships etc. etc.

My Christmas decorations remind me of this. That we need times of festival to celebrate God who is abidingly and passionately in our lives, to gaze upon this mystery in order to take it into ourselves, to understand with mind and heart and to be transformed into God bearers.

In the end, it did not matter that I did not ‘feel’ festive. What mattered was that the truth of what was happening around and to me was drawn into the mystery of this festival and so became filled with meaning, acceptance and hope which I carry into my every day.

So, as I put away the Christmas decorations for another year, they will lie hidden in a cupboard. They must be put away – just as the festival must end in time – in order for the festival of the heart, those hidden treasures of love, commitment, generosity, forgiveness, transformation and insight to be nurtured and acted upon in the world of the Ordinary where we have the gift of bringing Jesus to birth by our acts.