‘Where can I see this good news in action?’

Although we can read about it and hear about it, the good news of radical discipleship only makes sense when we see it in action. So many people, in history and in the world today, have chosen to take this path of downward mobility, setting their face against the world’s obsession with success and image, and seeking the image of God in the forgotten and destitute. See Father Damien as he moves to Moloka’i to live among the lepers for 16 years, sharing their joys and hardships, eventually succumbing to leprosy himself. Or Dorothy Day, who fed, clothed and housed the poor of the Depression while speaking out against war and violence.

In Australia and beyond, there are dozens of communities and organisations who have been inspired by Jesus to serve on the margins. These are just some of them:

Catholic Worker

Concern Australia

InnerCHANGE

UNOH

Urban Seed

Waiters’ Union

Youth For Christ Durban

Although this river of justice and compassion comes from one source, it has many branches. Visit some of these places and people and dip your toe in the water.

Part I

Part II

Part III

A couple of weekends ago, I went to hear Paul Roe from Cornerstone speak at an event in Bendigo. He spoke on Jesus’ ‘unpublished life’; the life until Jesus turned 30, of which we know very little. But we also had a conversation about Australia’s Christian history as well. Paul is conspiring to build a museum of Australian Christian history in Canberra, on the site of a planned national cathedral that was never built.

And no wonder – Australians have never had the ‘Manifest Destiny’ mindset of the US, where many believe America has a unique role to play in the salvation of the world, although some Australian Christians of a Zionist persuasion celebrate the charge of the Light Horse as the dominant factor in the establishment of modern Israel. But we do have a Christian history, most clearly seen in the emphatic but sometimes morally ambiguous annals of church agencies who reached out to the poor in the name of Jesus. We have heroes like John Flynn (Flying Doctor Service) and Mary MacKillop, who taught and cared for the most marginal Australians. But the churches were also complicit in the ‘Stolen Generation’ episodes.

Paul Roe’s main point was that Australia is losing a key chunk of its story, and that it needs to be told, without either hagiography or disdain. I agree. His desire for the museum in Canberra, as I see it, is a desire for public storytelling. My question is about whether a public museum, which will always be prone to becoming static, can tell a story. The ‘problem’ with the Jesus story is that it lives in those who follow him, whereas museums do not. They have a tendency to become static without massive & regular injections of money, whereas the community of Jesus survives simply wherever followers are present.

But, to side with Paul for a moment, we are surrounded by architectural and visual storytelling: in skyscrapers, parliament houses, advertising etc. All these put forward a worldview. Try standing under a skyscraper and insisting that money means nothing – the building itself argues against you. In this context, does it not make sense to create an architectural and visual story of the Christian worldview? And there we have the main problem; that phrase the Christian worldview. The best museums express a variety of worldviews in architecture and exhibitions – an authentically Christian public story would need to do the same. Public storytelling is crucial, but it rides on the back of the every day storytelling in the words and lives of followers of Jesus everywhere.