Hearts in the right place during NAIDOC Week
Homily for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sunday, 6 July 2014, as The Reconciliation Church, La Perouse, Sydney (readings: Zechariah 9:9-10, Mt 11:25-30)
Jesus blesses his Father for hiding things that matter from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. During the week our Prime Minister, a Rhodes scholar, was addressing some very learned and clever people at the Economic and Social Outlook Conference. He was reflecting on the fact that Australia was unimaginable without foreign investment.
He went on to say, 'I guess our country owes its existence to a form of foreign investment by the British government in the then unsettled or, um scarcely settled, Great South Land.' Perhaps it was the disbelieving look on some of the learned and clever faces in the room that made him change course mid-sentence. Maybe it was his own internal radar which sent out the warning message.
You could make a party political point about this, but that is not our purpose here in church on Aboriginal Sunday. That which was not self-evident to our learned and clever prime minister is the clear lived reality for every Aboriginal person here in this Church today, and for most Aboriginal children who live in this Great South Land. They have not needed to attend university to gain this learning and this insight, though happily there are now some at university earning their PhDs deepening this learning for themselves and for the nation.
They live the reality that this land was settled for tens of thousands of years before the British arrived and that much of this land was taken forcibly from their ancestors producing adverse consequences to this day. Pope Francis says he wants 'a Church which is poor and for the poor'. It’s in our poverty and in our childlike humility in the face of unalterable realities of our lives that we come to understand the deepest mysteries of life, handing them on from generation to generation.
Warren Mundine, who has joined us for mass here in this Church in times past, was prompt in his defence and understanding of our prime minister.
He said, 'We could all do with a bit more education on this but I know his heart is in the right place.'
With hearts in the right place, we can all forgive and be forgiven. Those of us who labour and are overburdened can come to the table of the Lord’s