Scotch College

Faithing the Future

This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood.

1 John 5:6

John wants to convey to his readers how fully God is with us. He uses the image of water and blood.

This is a kind of shorthand.

He means that in the water of his baptism and the blood of his cross Jesus is with us. He fully identified with the brokenness of humanity.

We are implicated in the terrible and complex issues that call for justice and righteousness. Our appeal must be for forgiveness. Jesus stands with us in our need of forgiveness. At the beginning of his ministry this is seen in his baptism by John the Baptist. He is our champion.

The blood of his cross takes us to the end of Jesus' ministry and one of the best attested facts of the ancient world. He died on a bloodied cross. What does it mean? A tortured and broken body is what we might fear to see on a television programme such as Changi, but we easily forget that a broken man has become the symbol of the Christian church.

David, a colleague recommended the film Lantana. Before I could mention this to my wife she told me the film had been recommended to her. It is, says reviewer Kevin Courrier, a 'tangled drama about how false assumptions get built on mistrust… the labyrinthine structure of the story is unraveled by the deeply absorbing performances of the actors'.

We saw it recently. It was deeply moving. The climax of the film presents the viewer with Leon (Anthony LaPaglia) as an anguished and weeping man. Depictions of male anguish and grief are not common and the apparent emotional inadequacy of the men in the film leaves one unprepared for this climax. My wife turned away from the intensity of this moment.

Earlier, my initial response to an image of a weeping man had been similar to hers. It was the photograph of a weeping man on page one of the Age on October 22. I turned over quickly.

You may remember the horrendous loss of life widely reported in the media. There were many women and even children among the 450 who drowned when their overcrowded vessel sank en route to Australia. After years apart, Hazam Al Rowaimi waited to be reunited with his family. Instead his wife and all his children drowned. I was drawn back to the front page and allowed my gaze to linger on the image of this broken man. I looked into the photos he was holding. These were his children. I began to cry.

In the film, Leon is forced to confront himself and his actions in a grief that is temporary, even therapeutic. It is a grief vastly different from Hazam's, which, like the explosion of the Big Bang, will echo in his universe forever. Nevertheless, in the instant they recognise their new realities we see the same heart-wrenching image, the image of a broken man.

In our churches, the cross, domesticated and sanitized, insulates us from reality of the horror it represents as potently as neatly packaged meat in the supermarket refrigerator separates us from the reality of the abattoir. John does not want us to miss the point. The blood bears its silent witness. It testifies that God is with us.

Grief has been seen unexpectedly in public places this year. It has suddenly exploded into the homes, and the hearts of many people.

A new anxiety guards every parental decision. Each flight is more carefully considered.

The source of each letter checked.

There is an old message that encourages us to face the horror and grief that we cannot, ultimately, avoid, and to see, in the water and the blood, that God has not forgotten us or abandoned us to the brokenness we have created. Instead he is with us to redeem us.

As the celebration of the birth of Jesus draws near let us recall the hope filled annunciation and respond humbly in our shared humanity.

Rev Graham Bradbeer
Chaplain

Which way you going Scotch?

Christopher Hey, Captain of the Junior School, prayed at the opening of a 150th Anniversary Service of Thanksgiving:

'We pray for your continued blessing on our families - through your love may the Scotch Family continue to grow as one, extending beyond the boundaries of the school gates into the world that you created for us.'

It was Sunday 21 October and we were gathered in the Memorial Hall. The Principal, Dr Gordon Donaldson AM welcomed those gathered and invited them to join with him in worship.

The first lesson, read by the School Captain, Brendan Ferguson was all about worship.

The kind of worship I want is this, remove the chains of oppression and injustice. Share your food with the hungry and open your homes to the homeless poor, give clothes to those who have nothing to wear.' Get real God we thought. Who would commit to that!

'The spirit of the Lord is upon me' read Mrs Lorna Luke, Scotch Parent and Past President, Scotch Family Association, 'he has anointed me to bring good news, to proclaim liberty, recovery of sight, to set free the oppressed'. Who said that we wondered?

It fits the old prophecy like a glove. Chairman of the School Council, Mr Michael Robinson, then read of the one 'who thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but humbled himself.'

Jesus Christ.

The guest speaker was the Principal of the Presbyterian Theological College, and former Moderator General of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, Allan M Harman, father of two Old Scotch Collegians and former member of the Scotch College Council. Dr Harman brought the point home to us all in the homespun words of an old black man he encountered years ago in North Carolina on an occasion when he was lost. The old man gave him directions. He then asked 'Which way you going son?'

Allan had to repeat the travel directions exactly correctly before he was allowed to drive away. Exactly 'which way you going' Scotch?

Conducted by the Director of Choral Music, Mr Andrew Hunter, the Chamber Choir, sang exquisitely, as we have come to expect, Rutter's arrangement of the lovely hymn 'For the Beauty of the Earth/for the beauty of the skies/for the love which from our birth/over and around us lies/ O Lord our God, to thee we raise/this our sacrifice of praise'.

The chaplains played their part, and the congregation's enthusiastic singing concluded the service with the words of Isaac Watts' great hymn, 'love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all'. If only.

Rev Graham Bradbeer
Chaplain