Archbishop Jensen’s sermon for National Day of Mourning Service in St Andrew’s Cathedral
The Tsunami
A Day of Reflection and Mourning
Our special service this morning is the result of the call to the nation by our Prime Minister to a day of reflection and mourning following the catastrophe of the tsunami on Boxing Day. I am glad to welcome the Governor and Sir Nicholas Shehadie as well as the Prime Minister and Mrs Howard to the Cathedral, along with other leaders of the community. Mr Howard has rightly reminded us that, as well as the vast immediate needs, there are other significant requirements of the human spirit which we must address. We seek for meaning; we ask, "is there hope?' We want a formal opportunity to express our sorrow and solidarity with those who suffer.
As a result, all around the country, in many different ways, our people are observing this moment, expressing both their grief and their hopes. For our part, we are met here in this Christian setting to hear the word of the Lord, to bring to him our sorrows and the sorrows of others, and to ask him for his aid. We believe that we can turn only to him for meaning and hope in such dark days.
There have been other great moments in Australian history in which the whole nation has united to offer its best on behalf of others. At the outbreak of European war in 1914 and again in 1939, there was no hesitation. Britain and its Empire was under threat, and we paid an immense cost to sustain freedom.
In the last weeks, the response of our nation to the disaster of the Indian Ocean Tsunami has been notable: united, dramatic, instant, generous, practical. Politics, religion and race have been transcended. On this occasion we have not been moved by bonds of empire and kinship, but by something deeper and truer. These are our neighbours, and we knew at once that we had to care for them.
Jesus taught us, in his parable of the Good Samaritan, that the neighbour is the other person we find in need. In the parable Jesus specifically made the main characters racial and cultural enemies. The Samaritan is good, because he did not allow that enmity to control him; indeed he did not allow any fear or disdain to distance him from the victim. He did not tolerate his enemy; he loved his enemy.
Of course, in this disaster we are not dealing with our enemies; far from it. But sometimes we hesitate to help because people are culturally different and geographically removed. Jesus taught us to be neighbourly, to recognise that others in need have a special claim on us. In this case, the afflicted are our neighbours because of their proximity; more than that, they are neighbours because they are in desperate need; more than that, they are our neighbours because they are human - they, too, are made in the image of God.
The recognition of the neighbour is the first stage of looking for hope and for meaning in all this. We are accepting God's own view of who we are: that we are one race, not many, and that we have been put on earth as his image-bearers to care for it, and to bear one another's burdens.
Of course, we all know how far short we are from this ideal. This is a divided world. Created in the image of God though we are, set here to do his work though we are, we have betrayed his trust. We are flawed and selfish creatures. We are aware of cultural, ethnic, religious, national and tribal conflict. We all know " because we all feel it within ourselves " the pull of my people, my tribe, my religion, my nation, my race. Such feelings too often create bloodshed and hatred. At the least, they may involve having a cool, distant attitude to the misfortunes of others.
So far, thank God, this has not been the case here. Divisions and tensions have been transcended as we have responded to the humanity of the sufferers. It may even be that out of the pain and misery of this catastrophe, some good may come. National neighbours may be more understanding of each other and brought closer together. At least we have been reminded to adhere to this basic principle: that all who bear the human face are our neighbours - indeed, our kin, our family.
But the real test of love lies ahead. We have been dramatically summoned to love our neighbour; our instant response has been to do so; we are now challenged to keep on doing so, since the effects of this tsunami are going to be with us for so long. There are hard times ahead, in which human selfishness will reassert itself. We live in a dangerous and uncertain world, and we do not live in harmony with it. The Bible tells us that, and experience confirms it. For all its horror the tsunami is not the worst natural disaster in history; and it is nowhere near as bad as what human beings have done to one another even in the recent past. The reality of our love will be tested to the full in the months and years before us.
Some commentators have spoken with undue haste about the challenge that events such as this pose to belief in God. At one level, so they do. We need to understand, however, that the Bible sees each event as part of a flow of history, as part of a design or pattern. The reader of the Bible cannot be caught off- guard by the wars and plagues and earthquakes which afflict human-kind. They are the presuppositions of the Bible, not contradictions to it. The Bible traces all these things to the ancient quarrel between man and God, in which the human race chose to live in a world of affliction and pain. Humanity is out of joint with both God and the world; in such a circumstance all of us, innocent and guilty, young and old, believer and unbeliever suffer together. But before we charge God with lack of compassion or justice, remember what he did through Jesus Christ.
The Bible records the entry of Jesus, the Son of God into the world. It portrays an innocent one undergoing suffering for us. It speaks of Jesus as "the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief'. In short, it tells us that God does not stand back from human affliction but enters into the very essence of it himself, so that we may have the great hope of redemption. Furthermore Jesus taught us to pray that the kingdom of God would come, when all will be put to rights. In Jesus Christ we have been given a great hope.
But what of our day of mourning here and now? We have watched in dismay pictures of the wave as it pounded the beaches, islands and buildings. We have seen people sucked up by its immense and arbitrary power. We have been horrified by sights of mass destruction and many, many human bodies. Now we are appalled by the stories of what happened and by the faces of the ones left behind; it is heartbreaking to hear of the mass destruction of whole families and especially of the death of babies and children, or the death of parents and the plight of orphans. We have seen the faces of little children utterly alone and lost and we have been in anguish for them.
Naturally, our chief sense is that of sympathy and compassion for the vast numbers of the bereaved in Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and elsewhere in the nations of the Indian ocean. Sydney Anglicans have partners in these regions through the Archbishop's Overseas Aid and Relief Fund, and they have written to us of the harrowing experience of terrible loss. We include in our sympathy visitors to these regions from lands such as Germany, Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom amongst many others. We have set aside time today as a mark of respect. We honour those who suffer and their dead; we enter into their pain as best we can.
Amongst the 160,000 who have lost their lives, however, there are some from our own community and some are still missing. We grieve for them and those whose love has been put to such a test. Especially we pray for and care for any who remain uncertain about the fate of family or friends, for whom the word "missing' is ominous and yet inconclusive. We join also to them, those of our beloved fellow-citizens whose near ones have perished in bush fires in these last days.
But even if we are not close to such loss, we too feel grief and sadness today. We too are bewildered by this event. We too are reminded by it of our own fragility and for what we have lost in the loss of so many lives. Furthermore, in the Bible the idea of mourning includes the shame we feel for our own contribution to evil in the world and our longing for a better world of righteousness. And thus we ask again, is there a word from the Lord? Has he anything to say to us at such a time?
In Ecclesiastes 3, the first passage that we read this morning, we see that time has us in its grip. There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to live and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot; a time to weep and a time to dance. We cannot control time, we cannot reverse time, we can only live inside it and let time pass. We are the victims not the masters of time. But, in the midst of this flux of time, unlike the animals, we aware that time is not the only reality: "God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.' (Eccles 3:11).
Eternity lives in your heart. That is, each of us has some hint, some appreciation of the fact that the remorseless grip of time is not the final word; that God has created time; that God is working within time to create a new heavens and a new earth. The eternity in our hearts causes us to question, to yearn for meaning and purpose; it creates in us a sense that there is more than this life, and there is more than what is merely visible and tangible. If we do not attend to these questions, we and our children become spiritually stunted. Likewise, the passage reminds us of the limits of human understanding. We cannot penetrate the secrets of God; we can only know what he reveals. We cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
In fact, God has revealed many of his secrets to us. We certainly know enough about his character and his purposes to trust in him even when we do not understand the specifics of a situation or a calamity. We know enough not to turn away from him, but to turn to him for consolation and help.
Thus this same passage tells us that life itself is a gift from God, and that "everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing can be taken from it.' In short, God remains in charge. He cannot be shaken or rocked and his purposes for us cannot be frustrated, even by the difficulties and catastrophes of life. We can bring all our cares to him with great confidence.
The second Bible reading is also interested in time. It is addressed to those who are undergoing the suffering of persecution, with no easy end in sight. What are they to do? "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God that he may lift you up in due time.' They are to see that God is in charge, and that his purposes will be fulfilled without fail. The time through which they are passing is tough; the right attitude is humble trust in God who will triumph in the end.
In the meantime they receive this great general invitation which is also extended to us: "Cast all your anxiety upon him because he cares for you' (1 Peter 5:7). As we enter into a day of mourning, therefore, we hear especially this word of the Lord for us: "Cast all your anxiety upon him, for he cares for you'. Do not run away from him; do not try to escape him; do not become his enemy: centre your life, your hopes, your fears, your ambitions, on God. Bring him all your failures, all your plans, all the evil you have done and all the evil that has been done against you. It is a serious invitation to sum up all our anxieties, all our cares, all our failings, all our grief and to bring them to the Lord.
Awful things happen in this world. Often they are personal; sometimes they afflict hundreds of thousands of people; in the case of the great flu epidemic of 1918-9 between 20 and 40 million people perished. It is right for us to be filled with pain and grief; to mourn the state of the world; to do something to improve it; to yearn for a far better time. After all, God has put eternity in our hearts. But we do not have to mourn alone and with no hope. There is one who the Bible calls "the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles' (2 Corinthians 1: 3,4). His word to us today, then, is this: "Cast all your anxiety on me because I care for you'.
