A Different Country?!

They came in to the little town
A semi-naked band subdued and silent.
All that remained of their tribe.
They came here to the place of their old bora ground
Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.
Notice of estate agent reads: “Rubbish May Be Tipped Here”.
Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring.
They sit and are confused, they cannot say their thoughts:
“We are strangers here now,
but the white tribe are the strangers.
We belong here, we are of the old ways.
We are the corroborree and the bora ground.
We are the old sacred ceremonies, the laws of the elders.
We are the wonder tales of Dreamtime, the tribal legends told.
We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games,
the wandering camp fire.
We are the lightning-bolt over Gaphembah Hill
Quick and terrible,
And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow.
We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon.
We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back
as the camp fires burn low.
We are the nature and the past, all the old ways
Gone now and scattered.
The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone
from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
And we are going.”
(“We are going (For Grannie Coolwell)” by Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal)

The Matthean community, the community to which the Gospel of Matthew speaks and out of which the Gospel of Matthew arises, was a community on the edge of their society. They were being pushed out by the religious leaders, by their social groups, but most of all they were being pushed out by their families.

Kinship was everything in Mediterranean societies at the beginning of the first millenium. It wasn’t what you knew or who you knew, it was whose family you belonged to that counted. If you didn’t have a family support structure you were out on your own. There was no social security, no medicare, no superannuation, no welfare state. If you wanted to defy your family, turn your back on your tradition, or simply not do the right thing, you could find yourself in a pretty tough position without family support.

But it was probably never the intention of the Matthean community to put themselves in that position. They were so sure that they were part of the continuing tradition of the keeping and carrying of God’s law. They were so sure that they were part of the continuing movement towards the promised realm of God. That’s why it’s nearly four chapters or 82 verses into the Gospel of Matthew before we actually hear about the proclaimed message of Jesus. The first 81 verses have been establishing who Jesus is, how much he fits the tradition, and how well he fits into the spirit of the law of God—81 verses establishing Jesus’ credentials.

Now it’s always encumbent on a speaker to establish a rapport with their hearers before the meat of their speech is delivered, but 81 verses seems a little excessive even in Gospel terms. Mark has a very cursory introduction of 14 verses before we get to the all important message; John’s not so much interested in words as signs so in the very first chapter we get a run down on the signs which point to Jesus’ significance. Only Luke takes as much time on the introduction as Matthew, and you have to wonder whether it’s an historian’s love of story that’s playing a bit of a role there, or perhaps like Matthew, Luke is also speaking to an audience that needs to be wooed first. Yes, Matthew has very clearly and carefully set up the character of Jesus before his first real proclamation is made: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."

And significantly, immediately following this one sentence account of Jesus’ message, we are greeted by stories that assure the hearer that Jesus was not alone. He was not a lone messenger of this proclamation from God. He was part of a larger community, part of a greater family, surrounded by appropriate social support structures, albeit not necessarily by blood relatives. He was not alone. The collator of the stories of Matthew’s Gospel is very careful to show that the new community of Christ, like the Matthean community as part of that wider community, was a good family social support structure. They had what it took to belong to each other and, therefore, to their world.

Nevertheless, the Matthean community was fast becoming labelled by their surrounding culture as “deviant”. And in every culture, in every time and place, people who are labelled as deviant are always the target for attack. No wonder they are so concerned with arguing the case for Jesus and the community of Christ being in line with the truth of the tradition. This issue was a life and death matter in terms of identity, in terms of acceptance in their society, in terms of social and economic support, and perhaps even in terms of specifically targeted attacks against their presence in their region.

We may go home, but we cannot relive our childhoods. We may reunite with our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, communities, but we cannot relive the 20, 30, 40 years that we spent without their love and care, and they cannot undo the grief and mourning they felt when we were separated from them. We can go home to ourselves as Aboriginals, but this does not erase the attacks inflicted on our hearts, minds, bodies and souls, by caretakers who thought their mission was to eliminate us as Aboriginals. (Link-Up NSW).

That’s part of the submission to the National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families by Link-Up NSW, an organisation which assists separated and displaced people in finding their families again.

Separation from community is not a matter to be taken lightly, even though many of us treat it as such in our increasingly mobile society. More and more people move house, job and community through choice and compulsion with very little thought for the actual disruption which that that creates in people’s lives. Even when we move from one similar community to another with all our family ties intact, the move can cause considerable stress and strain on individuals. Moving communities is right up on the stress scale just below the death of a spouse, because moving involves the loss of key support structures and entails the need to re-build them. People forcibly removed physically, politically, economically or socially and those who move between communities which are quite different, and may even speak different languages are confronted by yet greater loss of support.

So when we hear the story of the disciples who left their boats to follow Jesus, we are not hearing about an individual choice, we are hearing about a shift in communities and social support structures. Take their boats, that was never an option, they belonged to the family. For whatever reasons people left their familial situations to become part of the emerging Christian community, they were taking an enormous social step. And to leave a father, that was tantamount to blasphemy itself. You have to wonder what really was going on in that society at that time, and in Matthew’s Gospel we can only read between the lines.

Those who came to form part of the emerging Christian community would more than likely not have come alone. While they may have left more important or powerful connections, they would have brought with them those family members that had more connection with the leavers than the stayers. That’s part of the significance of the stories of the baptism of whole households in Acts. Households, extended families, which included servants as well in richer establishments, stuck together. The group was more important than the individual. There was no sense that someone should do what’s right for them. It was always about family obligations and family ties.

So what happens when those family ties are severed or damaged? You have to re-build. You have to create a new support structure for yourself and those for whom you have responsibility. The early Christian communities were not only building a new community for themselves, they were re-building their lives, re-making social networks, re-structuring family supports. This time those supports were not necessarily based on blood relationships. This time those supports were connected to the desire to follow what they believed was the authentic law of God, revealed in Jesus.

What made them leave their original support base? Perhaps they were already outcasts for a variety of reasons. Certainly, it is in Matthew that we hear about the acceptance of the kinds of people that might have faced ostracism in their society simply because they were who they were: Gentiles, women, the ill and diseased. Perhaps in their ostracism, they discovered the acceptance of Jesus, and perhaps when they heard the message of Jesus “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near”, they heard the promise of a new beginning and a new community.

When each person is reunited with their family, it’s the beginning of a slow process of getting to know their family and learning about their community. Support and counselling of the many underlying issues is normally required as an ongoing process for many years. (Link-Up Qld)

That’s part of the submission from Link-Up in Qld to the National Inquiry on the stolen generations.

Somehow, the early Christian communities were able to re-build themselves, to re-create the social support they needed to survive. For them, the message of repentance was a message of acceptance. It proclaimed the need to re-evaluate their lives, to see them in connection with a new community rather than the support structures which they had been denied.

The Greek word for “repentance” literally means a change of mind. Centuries of overlay has made us hear that word only in terms of personal guilt, but perhaps in its early context it meant something more like, “Don’t despair, change your attitude, change your understanding, the community of God is always with you. You are always part of it. It’s okay to leave your boats behind because there is safety with the people of God.” And perhaps it was also a call to the wider society to re-evaluate their tendency to ostracise those who did not fit certain criteria, to see the community of humanity as a community which could encompass all, and to understand the eternal law of God as a call to that kind of inclusive community.

Our story is in the land...
It is written in those sacred places.
My children will look after those places,
that’s the law.
Dreaming place...
you can’t change it,
no matter who you are.
No matter you rich man,
no matter you king.
You can’t change it.
My children go to hang onto this story.
This important story.
I hang onto this story all my life.
My father tell me this story.
My children can’t lose it.
When that law started?
I don’t know how many thousand years.
European say 40,000 years,
but I reckon myself probably was more because it is sacred.
(“Australia’s Kakaduman” by Bill Neidjie)

The community of Matthew is carving out a new country for itself, spinning a new story of identity—a country born out of the margins; a country steeped in the law and the tradition; a country that offered new hope, a new society, a new family; a country that the Matthean community understood to belong to God: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This new country is God’s sacred realm and Jesus is at its heart.