I was on holidays recently and attended a church that met in an old sixties style school auditorium.

My eyes wandered from the man giving the announcements to the words of the school song on the front wall to the left of the stage. It was all about pride and endeavour and discipline and eternal optimism.

Then I glanced across to the wall on the right side of the stage. There they were, emblazoned in gold lettering across the walnut brown board, the first two verses of ‘Advance Australia Fair.’

My mind wandered, as the notices droned on, and I began, almost unconsciously, to recompose that embarrassing fourth line of the first verse:

      Our land is girt by sea

Who came up with that word? How hard is it to find an alternative? Surely it would not be unpatriotic to consider a one-word change? Isn’t it time we gave all the hard-working Gertrude’s of this great country a break?

What about lapped, bound or bordered?

I know that last one is a syllable too long but it does resonate nicely with our ‘border protection’ rhetoric.

Three pretty credible alternatives, I thought, and I’ve never written the lyrics for a song in my life!

The announcements are still rattling on.

So my eye drifted down to the second verse and it hit me like a wrecking ball:

      For those who’ve come across the seas,

     we’ve boundless plains to share.

I’ve been contending for some time now that if there was one issue that has and will vex and polarize, trouble and divide the collective Australian conscience, it is the issue of the most recent bunch of people who have come to this country across the seas.

‘We’ welcomed them in the fifties and sixties when they were white-skinned and from Europe. ‘We’ tolerated them in the seventies and eighties when they light-skinned and from Asia.

But now the fifty shades of brown people fleeing terror and uncertainty, created largely by the events of early last decade, have sent too many of us into a spin of moral outrage.

And it’s not just the Australian community that’s divided. Or perhaps united, against a minority of social lefties.

This issue is simmering away beneath the surface of Christian communities all over the country.

Anglican Aid is partnering and helping to resource some of our local churches as they reach out to befriend and help refugees and asylum seekers being released into various communities all over Sydney.

Our initiative also focuses on our partner in Cairo, Refuge Egypt, as they respond to the humanitarian crisis there.  Two million refugees from Syria are flooding into surrounding countries and as far south as Egypt. Working out of the Anglican cathedral compound in Cairo, Refuge Egypt also helps Sudanese refugees to their west. They are drowning in this desperate sea of humanity.

As I have talked about these initiatives at churches over the last few weeks most people have been enthusiastic in their support for what Anglican Aid is doing, and for a more compassionate response to the issues by Australian policy makers.

But some responses have been too frightening to repeat in print – even electronic print.

One man confronted me after a church meeting recently where I had preached. He commented on my sermon by saying I had just given Kevin Rudd a free thirty-minute political advertisement and stormed away refusing to hear my dumbfounded riposte. I know that’s an oxymoron but I was seriously struggling, fumbling and mumbling some kind of comeback.

A quick analysis of my sermon would reveal that one of my applications to love, as Jesus loved, was a more compassionate response to the current asylum seeker crisis, including, but not exclusively, those who have recently arrived by boat. It was anything but a free kick for Kevin. It was more like a punt somewhere else.

It has been well argued in other places that our mainstream politicians have appealed to our baser instincts in this election. They have been playing on our individualistic bottom lines, our economic fears, our security fears and our fear of fears.

We have bought into the rhetoric of ‘queue jumpers’, ‘dangerous sea voyages’, ‘unsafe boats’ and ‘wealthy economic refugees’. There is truth in all these slogans. A case can be made out that these people have acted despicably and we are right to despise them for buying passage to Indonesia, destroying papers, jumping the queue and placing the lives of their children at risk in dodgy boats. Despicable them!

Were those despicable tax-payers, Matthew and Zacchaeus, any better?

Was that despicable adulteress at a Sychar well in the baking hot sun any better?

Were those despicable women, Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Suzanna, once scary and untouchable disease ridden demoniacs, any better?

Was the sinful woman (sex-worker?) who had gate-crashed Simon’s high-end dinner party any less despicable?

Was the stone-hearted, law-abiding ‘moral high-ground’ Simon the Pharisee any less despicable?

Despicable them!

But these are the very people Jesus came to seek and save. People like despicable them and people like despicable me!

And now thousands of fellow despicable people are washing up on our shores and wandering aimlessly in our streets.

How did Jesus respond to us? How will we respond to them?

To my fellow Australians, change our anthem, or change our attitude:

      To those who’ve come across the seas,

      we’ve boundless plains to share . . . .

To my fellow followers of Jesus, change our anthems or change our attitude,

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

that saved a (despicable person) like me . .

A new commandment, I give unto you,   

that you love one another as I have loved  you . . . .

Feature photo: Craig Carson