A manuscript version of a sermon  preached by the Rev Dr Barry Brown at Saint Margaret’s Uniting Church, Mooroolbark, Sunday 8 October 2023.

I am looking forward to visiting Wesley Church Melbourne on the 18^th and 22^nd of this month. I have not been there for a few years and during this time a new high-rise building has been constructed on the site, and the church has been renovated. I’ll be interested to see what changes have been made to the inside of the church. For 10 years from 1978 I was the morning preacher at Wesley Church. Just before I took up this role the large central pulpit had been removed and an extensive platform had been built to provide for moveable furniture. In fact, my induction took place on a rather bare and temporary platform. For years the large pulpit had partly hidden the back of the sanctuary which is the site of two large tablets representing the Ten Commandments. For ten years, while I preached on Sunday mornings, these tablets remained behind me, more visible than for the past century. I don’t recall having preached on the Ten Commandments specifically. However, I am confident that in many ways they were there in the background – a sort of ‘given’ in Biblical understanding.

Today is the seventh of nine Sundays our Lectionary has including readings from the sacred Exodus Story, and the Ten Commandments are featured. We shall attend to this, and also hear two related readings from the New Testament which focus on love as the key to these Commands.

The Ten Commandments (The Decalogue) appear in both the Book of Exodus and the Book of Deuteronomy, and it is expanded and applied throughout the rest of the Torah (The Books of the Law). While the Decalogue has similarities to other ancient legal codes, in the Torah they stands apart in that they are not a code of human devising and decree. They are, profoundly, of divine initiative that are revealed and ‘given.’ They are also inextricable linked to ‘Covenant’.  The ‘Sinai Tradition’ includes “Remember you were slaves in Egypt; Remember your deliverance; Remember the Covenant and the Commandments.” These central tenets are at the heart of Judaism’s life. They are told, sung and re-enacted again and again and again. And our worship, especially our celebration of the Lord’s Supper, is deeply rooted in this sacred story.

Various Jewish and Christian traditions have slightly different ways of numbering the commandments. However, they all have in common the following: The first and primary focus is upon God (the LORD – Yahweh); then there is the integrity of the family; and then the commands are extended to the wider community – to “your neighbours”.  Religion is God-centred, but not private. It has to do with relationship with God, with our intimate own, and with the others around us in the world. And we know what Jesus understood by ‘your neighbour! In this sense religion and politics are bonded in obedience to our relation to the Living God.

I have been helped in my preparation by two of my much-relied-upon authors, William Neil (1909-1979) and Walter Brueggemann (1933 – ). I quote these two, with minor re-wording:

William Neil (The Bible Story. p40):

The words of the Ten Commandments are as relevant today as they were three thousand years ago. They proclaim the supremacy of the Creator and show us to be bound by laws that are not of our own making. They make us realise the need for worship, for a healthy family life, for respect of our neighbour’s rights, for integrity and self-discipline. They keep us on the right lines in times of uncertainty.

In a sermon at Swarthmore Presbyterian Church, Pennsylvania in 2006, Old Testament Scholar, Walter Brueggemann, declared (Sermon, pp311-2):

… the commandments are not simple little moral rules. They are, rather, God’s abiding markers against all distortions of life that are sure to occur when the holy reality of God is displaced from the centre of our existence. When we depart from the commands of God we are sure to get a distorted life. The summons of Sinai is that the people called by God are to live a faithful life as an alternative to these distortions… we must ever think afresh what such a faithful life would look like, because it is God’s call to the church to live according to God’s purposes in the midst of a deeply distorted society

The Ten Commandments cannot be fully understood part from the Covenant initiated by God. The Biblical God is not user-friendly. The Ten Commandments voice the holy, sovereign God of the Bible who both saves and commands.

It was the 20^th century theologian Karl Barth who said that when a preacher is preparing a sermon, he/she should have in one hand the Bible, and in the other hand the newspaper – and to interpret the newspaper by the Bible.  In today’s world we must broaden our understanding of newspaper to the modern news media; and our reading of the Bible with understanding.

Of the many big issues that face us at this time, the Referendum that is being held next Saturday is at the forefront of our Australian thinking. It has certainly, and for some time now, been a subject of my own prayer life, reading, listening and deep reflection.

It is not my place to tell others how they should vote; yet I am perfectly happy to acknowledge my own voting to those who can’t guess it (I voted early, during the past week). I have listened to and watch countless speeches on either side of the Yes/No debate. I have read a great deal. Among my reading material has been some material new to me – and I thank a member of this congregation for introducing me to a series of books that is presently still being released. They come under the general title, ‘First Knowledges’ and most of the nine volumes are now available.  I have purchased five and have so far only dipped into two of them – one about ‘Songlines’ and the other about ‘Law: The Way of the Ancestors’. The main thing I have learned so far is how ignorant I am concerning indigenous culture and law, and how much our wider culture might be both informed and enriched by such knowledge and understanding.

When I was growing up in Echuca in the 1950s the local aboriginal people mainly lived in humpies on the flood-prone outskirts of our town. Their older people had been part of a large number of Yorta Yorta people who had, in 1939, made an ‘exodus-like Walk-Off’ from the Cummeragunja Mission Station near Barmah. Over time some had moved into town. One family lived across the road from our family home in Premier Street. My brother and I became friends with the children of our own ages; and today the only friend from my schooldays that I have any ongoing contact with is from that aborigine family. This family has been very much in my mind and prayers in recent times. My early association with this family plays an important part in my appreciation and growing respect for the Indigenous peoples of our land.

In 1963 a group of indigenous leaders, representing 13 clans living at the Yirrkala Methodist Mission in East Arnhem, wrote a series of four Bark Petitions to the Commonwealth Parliament. These included grievances triggered by the Government excising land for mining on what is today known as the Gove Peninsular – then part of the Yirrkala Reserve. The Bark Petitions were not specifically about the mining, but the lack of respect for the Indigenous people’s law, land and culture, and the dismissive ways the Government had treated their early appeals. They were about being listened to, heard. Eventually the Bark Petitions were introduced to the Parliament by the Opposition, and this lead to the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the grievances of the Yirrkala people.  This representation played an important step in the path to the Referendum on the VOICE.

In on 26 January 1972 the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was establish outside the Old Parliament House in Canberra, as a living symbol of the voices of indigenous peoples seeking to be heard. When the New Parliament House was opened in May 1988, to celebrate the bicentenary of British colonial settlement (and the beginning of indigenous displacement), the Tent Embassy moved to a new site outside the present ‘House of the People’ with a continuing cry to be heard. The Referendum for a Voice this week is a continuation of this cry – but in the form of a gracious invitation to walk together. It is not an invitation primarily to the politicians or the Parliament; but an invitation to the people of Australia, to walk together in a movement of the Australian people for a better future (Uluru Statement from the heart).

Out front of the entrance to Parliament House in Canberra is an expansive forecourt with an oval-shaped pool. Inside this pool, accessible by a walking bridge, is an island representing the Australian Continent. On that island is a beautiful mosaic, spaning 196 square metres and comprising 90,000 hand-crafted pieces of coloured granite. This mosaic is an authorised reproduction of a painting by Warlpiri artist Kumantye Jakamara – the Possum and Wallaby Dreaming.  This artwork depicts the coming together of the peoples from all corners of the land for ritual, purification, story-telling and dancing, and laying aside of enmity.

My prayer for our Nation, our Commonwealth, this week, is that the dreaming depicted in this work of art in the forefront of our Capitol might become to reality as Australians walk together – the First Peoples of this ancient land; the Descendants of the Colonists; and the many waves of multicultural newcomers of this wonderful land of Australia.