Passage: Matthew 5:21-26
Series: Matthew's Gospel: Jesus In His Own Context (14 of 26)

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Series: Mother's Day (05 of 5)

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Passage: Matthew 5:20-48
Series: Matthew's Gospel: Jesus In His Own Context (13 of 26)

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Passage: Matthew 5:16-20
Series: Matthew's Gospel: Jesus In His Own Context (12 of 26)

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From the Dean | 11th May 2012

If you want to divide a church, cause a rift in a family, ruin a dinner party, and bring hatred upon yourself – raise the issue of working mothers. Few subjects create more heat and antagonism than this one. There are not many more sacred cows, nor more strident voices bullying opposition into silence, than this topic.

So most people keep their wisdom to themselves. And woe-betide any man who cares to venture an opinion. He is not a mother, does not understand, has a vested interest in having somebody to stay at home and serve his needs and never adequately shares the housework, so has no right to speak. Thus, with nervous fingers I approach the keyboard, remembering that there is not much difference between a brave man and a fool.

The decision for mothers to continue with, or return to, paid employment is fraught with emotional difficulty. It is not an academic theoretical decision but one that impacts every aspect of life. Those who stay at home can feel put down as non-persons who fail to contribute or participate in society. Those who go to work can feel guilty, uncaring mothers for not being there for the children. Furthermore, there is a sense of critical judgmentalism – both real and imagined - in the comments made by others.  Wiser to say nothing; but so delicate and deep are the feelings on the matter, your silence will also be taken to be a criticism.

Staying at home or going to work is an individual decision, which for every family is different. Each family has different economic circumstances with different values, desires and aspirations to fulfil. It is not up to others to criticize people’s choices, especially when they don’t, and can’t, see the particular situation of different families. The choice of some families is the necessity of others. However, while this is an individual decision for every mother to make, her decision does affect others around her. Obviously it has a great impact on her husband and children, but it cannot be contained there. As the Australian Institute of Family Studies reports: “One of the most significant social trends of the 20th century has been the move of mothers into paid work, with widespread repercussions for family life, workplaces and community supports for families." Children and households will always need to be cared for – if not by the mother then by some others. Hence the development of child-care and after-school care facilities and the change to more family-friendly workplace practices. The increase in two-income families has affected standards of living and the competitive pricing of housing. The choice of some families becomes the necessity of others.

Yet for all this, it is still possible to make some general observations that can help guide our choices. The Christian perspective on this issue is more about the role of economic activity than that of either mothers or work.

Anybody who is foolish enough to suggest that mothers do not work has never observed the amount of energy expended by a mother with her children. Few people work so hard – and often at difficult and even unpleasant tasks – as mothers of young children. I spoke to a young mother the other night on her way home from the hospital emergency ward with her baby. She had one child at home with conjunctivitis, another with a very painful ear infection and the baby close to dehydration because of throat infection. The hospital doctor advised her to feed the baby every hour! Few people have so little control over their life and work as mothers – the demands can be twenty-four hours a day. The workload of the excellent wife described in Proverbs 31 generally exhausts most who read it.

The choice of going to work is not ‘going to work’, but ‘entering paid employment’. The stay at home mother is part of the 'not-for-profit' economy, while the working mother is part of the ‘for-profit’ economy. There is nothing wrong in being in either. The ‘for profit’ economy feeds, houses, shelters and enables the whole society to function. Without it we could not even exist. People who contribute to it are contributing to community wellbeing by their activity and should be commended for their labour. But the ‘not for profit’ sector of the community is also beneficial and important to the wealth and health of society and should not be denigrated as of lesser or no value.

Still the choice of ‘entering paid employment’ is more complicated than this because of part-time work. The model wife of Proverbs 31 is clearly engaged in economic activity while still being committed to her household tasks. In 2009, 37% of mothers living with dependent children were at home with their children, 35% were in part time employment while only 27% were in full time employment.

Yet there is a form of paid employment that is hostile to family life not just for mothers but equally for fathers. Careerism is working to find personal fulfillment and satisfaction by professional advancement. Careerism seeks value, importance, worth and significance not in our creation or redemption or relationships to God or each other, not even in our work or contribution to the welfare of society and humanity, but in our advancement and progress. Without God in their lives it is understandable that people may try to create meaning and significance in personal advancement – but for the Christian this just another idolatry. To go to work to find ourselves is a declaration of just how lost we are!

Going to work to provide for our family does not affect children negatively. Working for our own self-fulfilment is the danger. Children always know careerist parents undervalue them. How precisely they know, I don’t know; but that they know, I have no doubt. Our children just have a better sense of our real values than we do, because they judge not by what we say, but what we do – they are not deceived by our self-deception.

Passage: Acts 1
Series: Acts (00 of 30)

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From the Dean | 27th April 2012

Charles (Chuck) Colson got religion, but those people who haven’t got it, do not get it. They keep missing the point of his imprisonment as they retell his story. Sometimes they even get the chronology wrong – and in this case the chronology is important.

Chuck wasn’t converted in gaol, but beforehand. In fact he was gaoled because he was converted. Not that he was a martyr; persecuted and imprisoned for his faith. He went to gaol as a criminal because he had ‘got religion’. If he had not got religion he most likely would never have gone to gaol.

The Charles Colson story is one worth telling. He was one of the most corrupt politicians of his time who became a leader of the Christian cause in America, in particular, founding and leading the Prison Fellowship. A man who was sentenced to three years gaol for obstructing justice who thirty years later was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal. It is the second highest civic award given to an American who has “performed exemplary deeds or services for his or her country or fellow citizens". He fell from being a chief aid to the President into national public disgrace, and yet went on to be awarded the prestigious Templeton award for Progress in Religion, and no fewer than fifteen honorary doctorates.

Back in the 1970’s Charles Colson, who died last weekend aged 80, was in the centre of the scandals that swirled around President Richard Nixon. He was one of the chief dirty tricksters of one of the dirtiest and trickiest administrations in the history of the White House. The Wall Street Journal of 1971 ran the headline “Nixon Hatchet Man call it what you will, Chuck Colson handles the President’s dirty work”.  In 1974 he was indicted on two charges concerning the Watergate break-in and the burglary of Dr Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.

These charges were dropped, and there is serious doubt that he would have been found guilty on either of them. But Charles Colson pleaded guilty to obstructing justice. For, unknown to the prosecutors, Charles had revealed confidential FBI material to a journalist in order to bring Dr Ellsberg into ill repute and to make it impossible for Dr Ellsberg to receive a fair trial.

At the time when everybody else employed by the White House was trying to cover their tracks, he openly disclosed and confessed a crime of which he was not being accused. It was not a plea bargain to avoid punishment. He had been offered a bargain that he declined because he was sure he was legally innocent of those charges. He made his guilty plea without any deal or strings attached: even though it was not one of the issues, which the prosecutors were accusing him of; even though there was a technical problem over how his behaviour was criminal; even though he faced a possible five years prison sentence and being disbarred as a lawyer.

Why did he confess to a hidden crime? What was the motivation behind this sudden ‘mea culpa’? The reason for Charles Colson’s guilty plea is recorded in his books: Born Again (1976) and The Good Life (2005). He did it simply because of his conversion to Christ. He had become a Christian in 1973 and his discipleship to Christ would not allow him to keep concealed his crime.

In his book Born Again Charles Colson quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “The first step which follows Christ’s call cuts the disciple off from his previous existence. The call to follow at once produces a new situation. To stay in the old situation makes discipleship impossible.”

Colson continued: “It had all looked so simple once, just getting in tune with God, finding out who Christ was and believing in Him. But whether I was ready for discipleship or not, here I was and there was no turning back” (p.234).

Those who do not get religion do not understand the motivation of a man like Chuck Colson. Conversion to atheism or agnosticism doesn’t lead to changes like this. Finding morality or doing an ethics course did not change him so dramatically . Rather it was in finding the forgiveness that Christ alone brings to his disciples. To those who have not found forgiveness in the death of Jesus on their behalf, it seems strange that forgiveness leads to moral change.

But forgiveness is not a recipe for moral irresponsibility, just the reverse it gives a whole new basis and motivation for moral responsibility.

Genuine discipleship involves changed life; changed in reality not just theory. Those who come to Christ will put their house in order. Like the tax collector Zacchaeus, who declared “the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold” (Luke 19:8). It is not by restitution that we find forgiveness but because forgiveness has found us we make restitution.

This is the kind of change of which Jesus was speaking when he said “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).  Jesus was not talking of the good works that make people praise the disciple but the supernatural works that lead them to praise God.

Charles Colson did not go through some rehabilitation programme in prison to make him a better person. Nor did he pull his socks up with a New Year resolution. Nor did he seek some kind of redemption through public service. Charles Colson was met by the living Christ Jesus and could no longer live the way he had been. He had to change because he was changed.

When a man, so given to pride and deceit, becomes so humble and truthful that he confesses his crimes and lives the rest of his life in genuine public service, the credit is not due to him but to our Father in heaven.

From the Dean | 22nd April 2012

Were you disappointed by the Dawkins/Pell debate? You’re not alone – all Christians I know, were unhappy. Not because our ‘gladiator’ lost the contest to the atheist ‘gladiator’, but because he seemed to lose the plot and mangle the gospel.

As debaters go, Cardinal Pell was surprisingly good. Most people considered it a mismatch – for Professor Dawkins is such an experienced media debater and performer and the cardinal is not. However, it was the cardinal who rattled the professor with some classic debating tricks such as referring to precise quotes or page numbers. At some points the professor looked uncomfortable, getting angry with the audience and even confessing to jetlag. Naturally, at the end of the debate, each side claimed victory; the atheist trounced the Christian in the eyes of the atheists and the Christian beat the atheist in the eyes of the Christians. But that’s the trouble with debates; they have the appearance of rational discourse and persuasion but generally do little more than reinforce entrenched prejudices.

TV debates do not allow participants to explain themselves with care and accuracy. Such debates are more like playing cards than writing an essay; you can only play the cards you are dealt. The ABC dealt the cards by choosing the questions and by their compère, Tony Jones, continuing to pressure the debaters by his interventions. At some points, it was not Richard Dawkins that George Pell was debating, but Tony Jones.

However, even taking into account the occasion and difficulty of the situation that Cardinal Pell found himself in, and noting with admiration the firm and clear manner in which he graciously opposed atheism and stood up for God and Jesus, many Christians felt badly let down. He stood so boldly for following Jesus’ words, confronting Professor Dawkins with, “I’d much prefer to listen to him (Jesus) and take his word than yours.” But that was just the problem; he seemed to ignore Jesus’ words.

For most Christians, this became apparent when the cardinal declared with certainty that atheists would go to heaven. Not all atheists, he still believed in a hell for those, like Hitler, whose actions were so evil that to give their victims justice would require some punishment. But he was certain that moral and good atheists will go to heaven. He argued that atheism is not evil, and as God loves all people, he will judge the atheists by their movement “towards goodness and truth and beauty”; for all such movements are “towards God”.

It was not just Christians who were troubled by this, even the atheist Mike Carleton quoted the words of Jesus “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me.'' For the New Testament is replete with the promises such as: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:11); and warnings such as “whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father” (Mark 8:38); and declarations such as “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12); or “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:21-23).

Certainly the Bible speaks against those who profess orthodox belief but whose lives are lived in opposition to the word they proclaim (e.g. Mark 7:1ff, Romans 3:17ff, James 2:14ff). But this does not justify those who reject the words of the gospel, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, his sacrificial death, and the God who created them. It was Jesus who declared that we must be “born again” to see the kingdom of God and that it is by believing in him that we “have eternal life” (John 3:3, 15). The apostle Peter declared that our rebirth to eternal life comes through Jesus’ resurrection, declared to us by the words of the gospel in which we have believed (1Peter 1:3ff). And James wrote about being brought forth by the word of truth, the implanted word that is able to save our souls (James 1:18f).

However, the cardinal’s certainty about atheists going to heaven, was only the tip of the iceberg. From the beginning he did not attack Professor Dawkins parody of the atoning cross of Jesus, but accepted the issue of atheists’ social morality as the basis for acceptability with God. A weakened view of the holiness of God, the goodness of humanity, and the relational nature of sin were all foundational to the eternal acceptability of atheists. The Cross and Repentance were not central because the cardinal believes in “the place of purification” (i.e. purgatory) between heaven and hell.

Evangelicals should not have been disappointed with Cardinal Pell, for they should never have expected him to represent them, or to present the gospel accurately. He is a Roman Catholic, defending and promoting his understanding of Catholicism. We may have a common opponent in the new atheists like Richard Dawkins, but we do not have a common gospel. The ecumenical and irenic spirit of our age must not seduce us into forgetting that we are Protestants. Our protest is against Rome, for as the Anglican Articles declare “the Church of Rome hath erred not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies but also in matters of Faith” (XIX).

Personally, I admire Cardinal Pell as a trustworthy man of great integrity, clarity of thought and courage of conviction. His performance the other night only increases my admiration. But, as he would agree, admiration is not the same as agreement.

Passage: Matthew 5:11-16
Series: Matthew's Gospel: Jesus In His Own Context (11 of 26)

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Passage: Matthew 5:1-12
Series: Matthew's Gospel: Jesus In His Own Context (10 of 26)

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Passage: Matthew 4:18 - 5:1
Series: Matthew's Gospel: Jesus In His Own Context (09 of 26)

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Passage: Matthew 4:12-17
Series: Matthew's Gospel: Jesus In His Own Context (08 of 26)

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From the Dean | 13th April 2012

Last week a journalist came to church. He was covering the compulsory Easter story. He asked one of our staff - “Do you think people have stopped coming to church because they have internalised their faith?” 

It was a strange question to ask as a huge number of people crowded into the Cathedral. Manifestly many people had not internalised their faith in such a fashion as to keep them from coming to church. The Cathedral was full, with people who wanted to sing with others the praises of the risen Lord Jesus. The congregation joined in prayers and listened quietly and attentively to the word of God being read and preached. 

It was one of those questions that fits the journalists’ overarching story line. The journalistic community has a standard line on religion – “numbers are declining” and “people have given up on organised religion”. It is an old story coming out of the 1960’s and recycled annually at Easter and Christmas when the sheer weight of numbers attending on a slow news day forces some acknowledgment that religion still exists in our society.

However, each time journalists come, they look for another angle on the story. When they see the crowds they ask “Is it because of the financial worries of the Global Financial Crisis that so many people are now turning back to church?” Or “Are young people feeling alienated and depressed – is that why so many young people are here?” Or “Is it because Asians are more willing to accept authority structures that there are so many in church with you?” The question is framed differently each time but the assumption and overarching story line is the same: organised religion such as church attendance is in terminal decline. The question always assumes that nobody comes because they believe the gospel is true and want to fellowship with others to hear God’s word, pray to our Father and sing together his praises. Nobody comes because they want to – they are driven to it because of some other social or psychological necessity.

Rarely do journalists place their question in the larger reality of the decline in community involvement across the whole of society. The issue has been well documented and discussed (see for example “Disconnected” by Andrew Leigh). The membership of unions, political parties, sporting clubs, scouts and guides and all manner of voluntary associations have undergone significant decline in the last fifty years. To say nothing of the decline in newspaper publication and reading! This is an issue worth discussing and a context in which to discuss church numbers, but that is not raised.  Rather, church and belief in God alone is in decline and why are there so many people attending church today?

The journalists’ questions come in part because journalists often live in their own separate community - viewing rather than participating in society. Trust is not part of their credo. Suspicion, especially of all authority figures, is their default position. The one group they listen to is fellow journalists where Christians are few and enjoyment of church not spoken of. Over the years I have encountered very few who have the faintest clue about being church members. It is like sending people who have no idea on sport to cover the football or cricket.  Yet each journalist has their own story with God, as to what they believe and why they or their family are not connected to church.

So this year’s question “Do you think people have stopped coming to church because they have internalised their faith?” may reflect a personal truth. It is not so much a question of “Why are these people here?” as “Why am I not here?” The question may have been a silent testimony to his reason for not being part of something, for there are people who believe the truth of the gospel but have not found a way to express their faith in corporate fellowship. They do not deny the truth of the gospel but internalise it, neither expressing it to unbelievers nor sharing the joy of fellowship with believers. They have not worked out how to engage with other believers in their common faith.

It is a matter of great sadness that some Christian families endure: seeing their children unable to connect with the church youth group or continue with church going. As young adults they profess to still believe, but they just don’t feel part of the fellowship and cannot relate to church. Sometimes it is an event that causes a rift – a broken romance or an unkind word. Sometimes it is a failure to identify with a peer group – “none of my friends go to church” or “the youth group are all nerds”. Sometimes the church group is closed and cliquey, only really welcoming of people who can score amazingly good HSC results. Whatever the reason, wandering away from Christian fellowship can be matched by internalizing faith in Jesus.

However, this internalised faith will not stand the test of time, because faith comes from hearing the word of God, and true faith is seen in our loving service of others. Without regular exposure to the word of God the object of faith becomes a faint, fuzzy, alternative Jesus who reflects us more than we reflect him. And without regularly serving other people, we become part of society’s disconnected individuals – no longer loved or loving.

Church life, like family life, may not always be easy but is an essential part of being reconciled to God through our Lord Jesus Christ, for we are welcomed not only into relationship with God but also with God’s people.

From the Dean | 30th March 2012

Once again we have a government in NSW that is moving to undermine public holidays.

The State Government has announced its intention to change the rules concerning shopping on Boxing Day. Instead of tightening the rules to remove the exceptions for city shopping, they are relaxing the rules to allow any, or all, shops to open.

This is an appalling concession to the wealthy; the large shops, the retail chains, the shopping malls, the senior management, the shareholders and investors. But it is no protection to those who have to serve in shops or the transport workers, the security services, the cleaners, the warehouse workers, the truck drivers, the small lease holders in shopping malls, the myriad of ordinary people who make the retail system work. The CEOs and company directors will spend some of their enormous packages on extravagant holidays while their employees will not have time off to spend at home with their children. Even the hard working politicians will enjoy time off with their families on Boxing Day, but not the retail workers.

The arguments of the government: that nobody has to work, many will want the double pay, that the customers want to shop and a buoyant economy keeps retail jobs, are all so much smoke and mirrors.

It is nonsense to say that nobody has to work and that being a public holiday workers will be better off because of their double pay. The pressure to work will be enormous, both in terms of the carrot of double pay and the whip of “not really pulling your weight” – to say nothing of the shop owners in malls, or the workers on Christmas Day who have to work to set up for the sales. It is easy for wealthy people to choose not to work but for those who are only just able to hold on to a job, the choice is a figment of rich men’s self-serving imagination. Guess which applicant will get the job – the one who will not work on public holidays or the one who will? Guess what happens to casual workers who choose not to come in on that day?

Undoubtedly it will be popular amongst customers. We all like the convenience of being able to shop whenever we like. It suits our self-centred individualism. It is the nature of a consumer. And a public holiday devoted to sales – sounds a dream come true to the materialists. But it is not good for our society to feed our self-centred greed. Society is more than an aggregate of individuals held together by a common monetary unit. It is people living in a network of relationships; relationships that need maintenance and nourishment.

To argue that we need to open shops on a public holiday to retain jobs is to indicate how brittle our Triple A economy is. We must be in a dire state on the verge of economic collapse! One wonders how we ever survived those years when shops were closed every weekend of the year - from Saturday at noon till Monday morning. We must have been starving!

Boxing Day is not a day of religious observance. Few, if any, celebrate it as St Stephen’s Day. If it were not for good King Wenceslas, who would know that it is St Stephen’s Day? While it is great that some days, like Christmas and Easter, are set aside for us to celebrate our Lord’s birth, death and resurrection; New Testament Christianity is not into celebrating special religious days. For Christians every day belongs to the Lord and to be lived for him (Romans 14:5-7, Galatians 4:9-11, Colossians 2:16-17).

However, public holidays are part of Christianity. It is an expression of Christian concern for the wellbeing of society, especially the poor and disadvantaged members of society. Public holidays challenge the materialistic assumption that life is no more than wealth and possessions. It reminds us that we work to live not live to work.

So what are we living for? Reducing everything to the economic is to reduce life to work, humans to units of production, citizens to tax-payers, society to ‘working families’ and community to a corporation. Public holidays declare that everybody, especially the poor and disadvantaged, has a chance to enjoy the benefits of our labour. It is an occasion when we can all share with each other as nobody has to work. Insisting that one large sector of the community, i.e. retail workers and the allied industries, have to work, divides families and communities, reducing significantly the quality of life for everybody.

It is not a matter of self-interest. Church attendances are not going to decrease because shops are open on Boxing Day. Christmas offertories are not going to be affected by people saving their money for bargains.

It is not that Christians are opposed to trade or making money. Christians believe in work and wealth. In as much as we able, the production and distribution of goods and services is something we should all be engaged in. The material world is God’s good creation made for our benefit (2 Thessalonians 3:6-12, 1 Timothy 4:1-5, 6:17-19).

Boxing Day is part of the holiday season that gives families an unhurried time to catch up with each other. It is a crucial part of the community ‘quality time’ and because of this ‘quantity time’ we have time to travel and see each other. At end of the busy Christmas build up, not the least for the retail workers, it provides something of a decent break to enjoy life with family and friends.

This article is not a party political comment indicating my support for one party against another. I wrote a fuller and similar article in 2009 under the Labour government (http://phillipjensen.com/articles/shopping-on-public-holidays/). However, the sudden rush of this legislation through the parliament continues to feed public cynicism about the integrity of politicians’ promises or concern for the common good as opposed to self-serving sectional interests.

From the Dean | 23rd March 2012

Two iconic singers of the twentieth century were born a fortnight apart in December 1915. One was American, the other French. Both had lives not only of fame and fortune, but also of notoriety and infamy.

They sang of their lives in two famous songs of the 1960’s. Each was an anthem, speaking of their life and struggles. Both songs became international favourites, sung by many other artists, but always associated with the original two singers. Both were songs dealing with regrets by denial.

One of course was the famous American, Frank Sinatra and his anthem “My Way”. His friend, Paul Anka, wrote the song intentionally for him. It captured the way Sinatra talked and the way in which he lived. It spoke of his regrets as “too few to mention” but then continues to struggle with the mistakes of his life – biting off more than he can chew, of tears and of losing. But as the theme of the song makes abundantly clear, the regrets are of no significance because the choices of life were his and his alone. He was not like one of those who kneel; he was a man who speaks his own mind, takes his own blows and does it his own way.

The other was the famous French singer Edith Piaf and her anthem “Non, je ne regrette rien” (“No, I regret nothing”).  Hers was a more defiant song, rejecting in the strongest terms possible any notion of regret, while manifestly “protesting too much”.  The opening verse declares the message.

“No, absolutely nothing

No, I regret nothing

Neither the good that’s been done to me,

Nor the bad: it is all the same!”

From there we are told that she doesn’t “give a damn about the past!” - her shames or her pleasures. And the reason for this abandonment of all her life is the commencement of a fresh start “with you”.  The song doesn’t spell out who this “you” is, and some Christians hope it is God – but there is no indication it is anything more than yet another lover.

So how do we deal with the regrets of our life? Pride ourselves on our achievements and suppress mentioning the failures?  Sweep up the past by forgetting all about it – don’t give it a damn – but sweep it away by rejecting the difference between good and evil?  It’s one thing to forget about the evil done to us but what about the evil we have done to others. What about the suffering of a fallen world? Are we to have no regrets for them either?

It is an insensitive soul that has no regret for sorrows of the world or their part in contributing to them.  But how can we face the pain we have caused others or the things of which we should rightly be ashamed? How do we deal with the sorrows of life that we have to endure?

We can, and should, own up to our errors, repent of our wrongdoing, apologise to those we have harmed and make reparation wherever possible. But even when we have done all this, there can still be a sense of deep regret about our actions. Often we cannot apologise or make any reparation, there is no possibility of putting things right - we just have to live with the consequences.

In the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, there is a major way through our dilemma of regret. For God, who is himself sorrowed by sinfulness, understands our failings. He has put things right for us. He has paid the penalty for all our sins. Paid a price, far in excess of anything we have ever done. Not the price of silver or gold but the price of the precious blood of his Son (1 Peter 1:18f). This payment does not pretend that our failings have not happened, nor pretend that they do not matter, nor remove them to the dustbin of forgotten history. This payment recognizes the seriousness of our sinfulness and deals with it in full.

As Christians become aware of our sins, we turn our grief into godly repentance and find forgiveness in the death of our Lord and Saviour. Having dealt with the past we press on to live the new life that Christ brings us. We are not left in grief without hope. We do not have to dwell in our mistakes or deal with them by denial (2 Corinthians 7:8-11, Philippians 3:12-14).

Christians can be free of regrets not only in our failures but also in life’s missed opportunities. We do not live as if blind fate has dealt us a bad hand. Nor are we simply the victims of other people’s sinfulness. We are the children of our loving Heavenly Father who is working his purposes out for our good, that we may be conformed to the image of his son and so bring glory to him (Romans 8;28-30). Life is not ultimately about us, but about Him, and our life finds its meaning, satisfaction, joy and love in being transformed into the likeness of our crucified and risen Lord. Whatever pain, sorrow or suffering we may experience – and there is much in this world to experience – is not worth comparing to the glory that awaits us (Romans 8:18).  It is all part of his loving preparation for our share in his holiness, yielding “the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:10f).

Christians neither wallow in their regrets nor repress their sorrows. We can face our failures of the past knowing that they have been dealt with. Unlike Edith Piaf, we do not negate the difference between good and bad in our attempt to leave the past behind. We also do not minimise the failures of the past, or carry the regret, as Frank Sinatra did. Christ has dealt with all our failures and God is ruling over all the events of our life to bring about his good purposes.

Passage: Matthew 4:1-11
Series: Matthew's Gospel: Jesus In His Own Context (07 of 26)

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Passage: Ecclesiastes 11 - 12
Series: Ecclesiastes: Eternity (06 of 6)

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From the Dean | 16th March 2012

What have you planned for Easter? It is only three weeks away now or 21 sleeps – if that is how you anticipate exciting events.

Last year I wrote about the importance of Christians using Easter, especially Good Friday, for Christian purpose (http://phillipjensen.com/articles/whats-so-good-about-good-friday/). Easter gives us public holidays to spend time prayerfully reconsidering our Lord and Saviour’s death and resurrection. This year, again, the Cathedral has a full programme of church gatherings, our Good Friday afternoon Convention on the “What and Why of Easter” and the evening presentation of Handel’s Messiah.

How we spend our discretionary time tells us, and especially our children, about our real priorities in life. Work and housework have to be done, but what we do on holidays and where we spend our time, when we have the choice, reveal what we really think life is about. Sport mad parents raise sport mad children, just as nerds raise bookworms and computer geeks because children judge and imitate what they see us do more than what we say or instruct. And in that, children are not wrong. For what we do, especially when we have a choice, says more about who we are and how to live than anything we may say to the contrary (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).

This weekend the Irish are celebrating St Patrick’s Day. It doesn’t have much to do with the Welshman known as St Patrick, or his missionary evangelisation of Ireland. It is really about being Irish – or of Irish descent. For some people in Australia, that ancestry is such an important part of their identity that they take the time and effort to organise and attend a great parade through the centre of Sydney. Their ‘Irishness’ is more than just a hobby, it is them – who they are and what they hold as important. Not to celebrate with each other would be to lose themselves. Giving time and effort to celebrate like this tells their children who they are.

St Patrick’s Day comes from that strange hangover from Christendom called the Church year. As the community moved away from Christianity the Church year no longer really fits the life of the community. The vast number of feast days and fast days has been left behind. Even the major seasons are not counted ecclesiastically anymore. The University of Sydney used to call its terms: Lent, Trinity and Michaelmas (even my spell check thinks that is a mistake!) but now the University uses the much more mundane: first and second semester. All of the church year that remains in most of society is Christmas and Easter.  

Many holidays have lost their meaning. The general population tends to focus more on having a long weekend than the reason for the holiday. Few people in June seem to think of the Queen, or in October, remember the battle to win better hours and conditions for workers. This says volumes about the lack of significance of these matters to the present community.

Some holidays have been recovered. Of recent years there has been renewed interest in Anzac Day and when the government changed Australia Day from a long weekend to a specific day, and pressured the community to a new sense of nationalism, it became more than a day off. 

The non-Christian Easter celebrations are still dominated by the Northern hemisphere’s climate. Just as Christmas is portrayed as a winter festival, so Easter is a spring festival. The chocolate egg and the Easter bunny speak of the new life that comes after a long northern winter. This is the opposite of our time of year and loses significance – but who is going to refuse the roast and pudding of Christmas or the chocolate of Easter?

For society as a whole, the dominant markers of time and celebration are not contained in the Church Year, but are school holidays and the seasons. So Easter becomes the autumn school holidays. The snow season hasn’t started, but the weather is still warm enough, especially up north, to go to the beach. Down south in the highlands there is the beauty of the changing colours of the leaves. Of course, the Easter show will be in full swing, drawing record crowds. And the house and garden always need a few days of love, clearing away summer and preparing for winter.

However, for many non-Christians, Easter is still a Christian festivity, and strangely many of them celebrate a Christian Easter more than Christians do! Like Christmas, it is the time of the year when visitors come to church in large numbers while the regular congregation members are often absent. Christians are often attending camps and conventions at Easter. Sometimes the absence of Christians from church is for the same reason the visitors are present – namely we are on holidays or interstate catching up with family and friends. However, it is regrettable if Christians are caught up in the world’s celebrations of Easter, especially when the world comes to share in our celebrations. Christians going to the Easter show on Good Friday is as sadly strange as churches giving out chocolate bunnies as the message of Easter.

There is no reason to go to the stake for the church year. It is a man made convention that has no gospel significance. But our Lord did go to the stake for our salvation and that has enormous gospel implications for it is central to the gospel itself. What a privilege to live in a nation that gives us a day off to proclaim and consider that great sacrifice. What a nonsense for gospel people to use the day for anything else. “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:1-2).

If the Irish proclaim and maintain their Irishness by celebrating St Patrick’s Day, how can Christians miss celebrating Good Friday?

From the Dean | 9th March 2012

For some years I have pointed to the awful outcome of atheistic thinking by referring to Professor Peter Singer’s views on euthanasia, bestiality and especially infanticide. He does not accept the basic proposition of humans being created in God’s image, and so finds no special place for humans compared to animals. He critiques his fellow humanists as having “on the whole been unable to free themselves from one of the most central of these Christian dogmas: the prejudice of Speciesism”.

A key point in his argument is his promotion of ‘personism’. Within this philosophy a person is somebody who is "capable of desiring to continue as a subject of experience and other mental states". This enables him to accept abortion, euthanasia and infanticide, while opposing killing animals. Killing, like all ethics, comes down to outcomes. If a mother’s quality of life is improved or preserved by killing a newborn, then there is no inherent reason against it.

Whenever I mention Professor Singer’s views, I am assured that he is an extremist who in no way represents atheism itself. In some ways that is a fair response, because not all atheists believe the same things and atheism itself cannot be blamed for every weird view that an individual atheist holds. Christians know how irritating it is to have media opponents interview some extremist redneck Christian as if they represent all Christians.  However, Professor Singer is a leading ethicist and atheist, holding the chair of Bio-ethics at Princeton University and in 2004 voted as the Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies. His views are those of reasoned atheism. He recognises that if there is no God, humans are not made in God’s image. Therefore, ethics based on being created in God’s image can no longer stand.

His views are not held by him alone. Just last week, the British Journal of Medical Ethics published an article from two Melbourne academics arguing on the Peter Singer line for infanticide. There was so little new in the argument, I’m not even sure that it was worth publishing in such a prestigious journal. There was a new ‘spin’ given by calling infanticide: ‘after-birth abortion’. But the arguments and resultant position were the same as what atheists have advanced before. Basically their point is: If it is all right to kill the unborn foetus for social, economic or psychological reasons, then it is alright to kill the newborn baby for the same reasons. Animals are more ‘persons’ than newborn babies, and therefore, have a greater right to life than human babies.

Most people, who justify abortion, do so on the quite false premise that foetal life is in some significant way different to human life. “A scrap of tissue” or “part of the mother’s body” is the usual emotive and inaccurate language. These are inaccurate because they do not rightly reflect the nature of foetal life. A foetus is much more than a scrap of tissue; even as an embryo its development makes it much more than merely “a scrap of tissue”.  And a foetus is not part of the mother but is always genetically and immunologically distinct from her. It is human, it is living and it is not her. Even the argument based on ‘potential’ life will not save the newborn as neither the foetus nor the newborn can survive on its own.

Professor Singer and his colleagues are quite sanguine about the status of the foetus as a living human; they just don’t think being a living human is sufficient reason to be kept alive. And just as any social, economic or psychological inconvenience to the mother or society is sufficient reason to be killed in the womb, so also such a reason is sufficient for the child to be killed out of the womb.

The logic is simple, but logic alone does not give any answers other than its premises. The argument is not about logic but about the basic premise of ethics. It is just as logical to argue the reverse case: given that killing the newborn is murder, so is killing of the unborn. If infanticide is “after-birth abortion” then abortion is “pre-birth infanticide”. If you find killing a newborn unacceptable, then killing the unborn should be unacceptable as well. The difference in opinion is not a difference of logic, but a difference of basic premise. The atheist has to answer the question: “If God did not create us in his image then what is the basis for our right to life?” Professor Singer and his colleagues say it is not that we are human, but that we are persons.

Teaching children atheistic ethics is not a harmless alternative to teaching scripture. It may be the choice people want to make in a ‘free’ society but it is not harmless.