Mourning Sunday: The People who Walk in Darkness

Please note this reflection contains refernece to First Nations people who are now deceased.

Isaiah 9:1-4

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

How does it change us when the kingdom of heaven comes close? What does it mean to repent? And how do we demonstrate repentance through our decisions and our actions?

In the first week of January, I met with Austin and Malcolm to discuss the directions that we might take in sharing a message together on Mourning Sunday.

We were collectively drawn to the passage from Isaiah. It is often also used in Advent. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” As Christian people we hear the words of Isaiah’s prophecy as one’s which point to the coming of the light of life, the eternal Word, Jesus coming into the world.

But as we discussed the passage we also struggled with the idea that the people had walked in darkness. This is what stood out and was poignant in Austin’s ears. For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people this has been and continues to be their experience. They have walked in darkness and continue to do so.

The journey of reconciliation in our country is a journey that we believe should lead us to celebrate the prophet’s words “there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish”.

But how do we get there? In the early 1990s when I was teaching in Eidsvold, we visited Cherbourg and an Elder shared a piece of wisdom that has stuck with me since. “We have two ears and one mouth. We should listen twice and speak once.” As people who share the burden of a common history, the packs we carry as Australians, repenting means listening and listening deeply for the stories around us.

In his book Disarming Scripture Derek Flood he reminds us that “history is normally told from the perspective of the victors, demonizing and dehumanizing the vanquished. In that narrative, those who suffer are evil and deserving of their suffering.” Disarming Scripture 45 I find these as confronting and difficult words given my knowledge of Australian history and the angst that I hear at this time of year as we approach Australia Day.

Flood goes on to describe how Jesus interpreted scripture favouring people over the text. He goes on to say, “If we wish to read our Bibles like Jesus, then we will need to learn to hear the minority voices, and adopt his way of reading from the margins.” Disarming Scripture 53

In recent years I have been engaging with listening to the voice of Aboriginal people as we have approached Australia Day. This year I have been reading the biography of Dr Lowitja O’Donoughue. She has been one of the most prominent Aboriginal voices in our history and was intimately involved in the processes that led to the apology on the 13^th of February in 2008.

There are many stories which I could share from her biography, but I will share just two stories for the moment. The first story is not of Dr O’Donoughue but of the re-enactment of the raising of the British flag on January 26 in 1938. The book relays how local Aboriginal people in Sydney refused to take part.

The people arranging the re-enactment went to Menindee 1000 km to the west of Syndney and forced a group of Aboriginal men to come to Syndey on a mission truck. They were locked in police barracks during their stay in Syndey and when they found out what they were being forced to do and refused were threatened that their rations and those of their families would be cut off. The men performed as required in fear for themselves and their families.

 As this was all unfolding The Aborigines Progressive Association published a pamphlet highlighting 150 years of callous treatment and appealing to raise Aboriginal people to full citizenship. For 88 years now Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been challenging the use of January 26 as day of National celebration, which incidentally was only formally approved in 1994. For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, January 26 marks the beginning of invasion, violence and dispossession.

“We have two ears and one mouth.” What does it mean to repent? What does it mean for Aboriginal people to say that there will be no gloom?

For those who do not know Dr O’Donoughue’s story she was stolen from her mother when she was 2 years old.  In the biography there is a recount of the reunion with her mother which takes places 33 years after she was taken. As she recounts Lowtija says, “My mother was a broken woman living in appalling conditions and it was obvious the hurt which she suffered from the removal of five of her children.” P.146

In these moments Dr O’Donoghue recognised the importance of family and kinship for her people and the deep impact that the policies of removing children had in her mother and on some many First Nations families.

Let us hear a personal story from a member of our Night Church congregation, Austin about his experience as an Aboriginal man.

“Forgiving and Forgetting”

Many of you will notice that Austin was out of focus in the video. After seeing that this had occurred in the filming process Austin and I chose to leave the video this way. The blurred image is a reminder of how parts of Australia's story, and the people and histories that story contains, can remain blurred or kept at a distance.

It invites us to think about what we haven't been seeing clearly, and to take seriously the different packs we carry as Australians. Packs that are shaped by our history, packs that are carried unequally, and packs we're called to notice and help carry, rather than ignore them.

Austin invites us tor reconciliation with honesty and forgiveness without forgetting. What does repentance and reconciliation look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like?

This morning, we have heard Malcolm playing the Yidaki or digeridoo. Mal is going to share some his experience of reconciliation.  

Malcolm

“While I have a very small trace of First Nation heritage from an ancestor going back about 7 generations I stand here today more as an ally. Someone who supports reconciliation and has been invited into relationship.

The person who made this instrument, the Yidaki, a “custodian” of the Yidaki, was a senior elder and Christian leader of the Yolnu people of North East Arnhem Land.

He knew the long and sometimes painful history between First Nation peoples and other nations who came to live here. But he also believed that reconciliation wasn’t just an idea. It was something that had to be lived, practiced, and heard.

He encouraged me to learn to play and if I ever played in public, to do so in a spirit of reconciliation and thankfulness for the gift of this instrument and the culture First Nation people have given the world.

It’s become clear to me that this isn’t about me borrowing something interesting from another culture. It is about connection. About breath. About spirit. About a small but real joining between peoples who share this land, even while carrying very different histories.

The sound of the yidaki can speak in many ways, and people hear it differently.

For some, it carries a sense of awe. It reminds us that Aboriginal culture is ancient, deep, and enduring. For others, it carries lament. A low, honest sound that seems to hold grief and injustice.

But the meaning that has stayed with me most strongly is this: the yidaki is a calling sound. It gathers people. It invites attention. It asks us to stop talking for a moment and simply listen.

For me personally, the yidaki has changed the way I think about breath and spirit. Sound only happens when breath moves through the instrument. Without breath, there is nothing.

Across cultures and languages, breath has always carried meaning. Breath as life. Breath as connection. Breath as something shared. I’ve come to love the idea that when the yidaki sounds, breath is moving through something that once lived, something shaped by human hands, something offered freely. It feels like a reminder that we are more connected than we often remember.

Reconciliation, as I’ve come to understand it, isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s not about smoothing over difference. It’s about learning to value one another. About holding both what we share and what makes us different. About listening carefully, especially when it’s uncomfortable or unfamiliar.

Playing the yidaki has taught me that in a very unexpected way. It has slowed me down. It has made me more attentive. It has reminded me that sometimes the most faithful response is not to speak, but to listen.

Today is called Mourning Sunday. And mourning matters. We don’t honour the past by rushing past it. This land carries deep beauty, but it also carries deep pain. Both are real.

But mourning, in the Christian tradition, is never empty. It makes space for hope. Not a shallow hope, but a patient one. A hope that grows through honesty, humility, and relationships.

When the yidaki is played today, my hope is not that it opens a space for quiet attention. A space for respect. A space where we can listen more deeply to First Nations voices and allow those voices to shape how we walk together into the future.

I’m grateful for the trust that was placed in me by the custodian of the Yidaki, and for the permission I’ve been given to share this sound in public. I offer it today with respect, with gratitude, and with a genuine desire for reconciliation that is lived and not just spoken.”

Peter

I want to thank both Austin and Malcolm for their input into today’s message. In reading Dr O’Donoghue’s biography, the book shared again the words of the apology read by Kevin Rudd. It begins with words of recognition for the wrongs done, an act of confession and then looks to a “a future that embraces all Australians … A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.”

Whenever I hear a Welcome to Country shared, I am humbled by what a generous and inclusive act this is given our history as a nation. Despite all that has occurred - the dispossession, the massacres, the taking of children from their families, the policies that discriminated against Aboriginal and Islander Peoples - we are extended a word of welcome. Here are an act and example of grace which might teach us something about reconciliation. The words come to us as Jesus words came from the cross, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.

We have two ears and one mouth. Listen twice, speak once. And live your life from this invitation, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” So that the people who walk in darkness will see the great light of love.

What do you want?

John 1:29-42

Imagine John standing teaching his disciples and another man, Jesus, walks past and John declares “Look, here is the lamb of God.” I mean this is not the way people normally talk and obviously the words trigger great interest in the two of John’s devotees who follow Jesus.

When Jesus notices that he is being followed he turns and asks them, “What are you looking for?” The weight of this question could be lost on us because Jesus’s question is an existential one. Some translations read “What do you want?”

The weight of the question is that it is a question which lies at the heart of every person’s life. What are you looking for in life? What gives you meaning and purpose? What do you want to know and understand? 

The disciple’s respond by naming Jesus with an honorific title “Rabbi” which we general translate as simply teacher but can be translated as great one. It is a title of respect and a recognition by the disciples of Jesus’s importance. But rather than got to the heart of the matter, which was their curiosity about John’s statement about Jesus being the Lamb of God they simply ask, “Where are you staying?”

Maybe they simply did not know how to articulate their question. Maybe they were embarrassed. Maybe they were now ready to go deeper into the relationship yet. We are left to ponder.

Nevertheless, Jesus responds with an invitation not an address. “Come and see.” And so, these two disciples of John take their first steps in growing as lifelong disciples of Christ. “Come and see.”

I wonder whether the question that Jesus asked the disciples resonates with why you came to church this morning. “What do you want?”

What is it that you want to understand about what it means to be a person? What is the purpose of life? What answers and questions are you curious about and want to learn more about?

By coming into this space, I wonder if you are responding to that invitation of Jesus to “come and see”. Come and see Jesus, come and listen for his teaching, come and find that you already belong in God’s family and God’s kingdom. “Come and see”. Last year we had a consultation with the presbytery and through that process of discernment we answered the question “What do you want?” or “What are your looking for?” We said, “the congregation requires renewal and growth in members.”

The growth in members here should be understood in a twofold way. Growth in the spiritual maturity and the meaningful relationships of the members of the congregation. And a growth in numbers – new memberships. Both concepts involve change which brings me to the word renewal which is one of those jargon terms which does need to be unpacked.

During the week I read a helpful article about renewal written by a colleague in South Australia Rev Dr Tim Hein. He uses a helpful analogy to unpack for us how something can be new again.

“Next to our church on Cambridge Terrace in Malvern is a century-old home that had fallen into disrepair, barely habitable. The owners had three options:

1. They could demolish it and build a new home.

2. They could do a restoration.

3. They could do a renewal.

What is the difference between options 2 and 3, I hear you ask? Well, a restoration would mean taking it back to the way it was when it was built. You may think that sounds great – until you had to live in it. Consider the kitchen, and the cooling, and the electrical wiring. A restored home would be for nostalgic value only – like those perfectly preserved 1960s houses, with orange and green cupboards. You don’t really want a literal restoration.

The owners instead did a renewal. They restored the best of the old stonework and floorboards but also introduced new appliances, wiring, plumbing plus a massive new pool. It’s an old house, but also a new house – again!

[Hein goes on to say] God is in the renewal business. The entire trajectory of God’s plans is the re-creation, re-demption, and re-conciliation of all things – renewal for individual people, and for the whole cosmos. Indeed, the Basis of Union says it is the “end in view for the whole creation”. God’s plan is renewal… 

[Hein remarks of congregations in terms of renewal that] too often, we say we want renewal, when in our hearts, we’re hoping for a restoration – to take us back to how it was when we first fell in love with it. But God wants to do something new with old things.”

Renewal in this case is not taking back to how it was in the past but drawing us forward to reconciliation and renewal of all things in Christ and Hein is very clear about the origins for us in terms of renewal. Renewal in our context is not about what we are doing.

Hein reminds us of what is says in the Basis of Union. “Jesus Christ who renews the church, in “his own strange way” … “through the

news of his completed work”. As Hein says “Jesus renews the church through the gospel. It’s strange because new life comes through death. It is Christ who ‘acquits the guilty, gives life to the dead and who brings into being what otherwise could not exist’.” 

I have leaned into Hein’s words heavily here because they take us to the centre of our faith. It is Christ who renews us personally and communally. In answer to the question, “What do you want?” this congregation has said renewal and growth. Are we ready for the work that Christ will do within us and among us?

Just as we have responded to the question of Jesus as a community so too, we are invited to respond to Jesus’s question personally. I wonder what worries and concerns you might have in your life at the moment. What are circumstances? What is the context that is shaping your answer to Jesus’ question? “What are you looking for?”

The answer to the question is shaped by our age and stage in life. It is shaped by our vision of our personal and global context. As we meet today some of you may be carrying anxiety and worry about what is occurring or has occurred in the world: in Palestine, in Bondi, in Iran, in Ukraine, in Venezuela, in the bushfires in Victoria, in the cyclone in North Queensland, in the USA and the list goes on. But for some of you the world issues are beyond your personal care because of your own health concerns or worries about your own situation in life or of the ones that you love. “What are you looking for?” Whatever your answer might be, Jesus says to you and me “Come and see.” “Come and see”

(Sermon Song Break - "Refresh my heart")

The response of curiosity in faith to “come and see” as we come to church reflects our steps on the journey of faith but as many of you will have heard “God’s mercies are new every morning” and we are growing as lifelong disciples of Christ. When we come into this space we open ourselves up to the possibility of change but in being committed to growing the expectation is that we may indeed encounter new people in our midst and be invited to share with them why we “come and see” and seek Jesus in this place. 

In thinking about this it is important in out personal renewal of faith to learn to speak openly and clearly about our own response of discipleship. So, when exploring that central question of what people are looking for, we might be able to have a response that makes sense.

People may not initially answer that they are looking for Jesus but here are some answers they might give. 

1. Meaning & purpose. A sense that their life matters—that what they do has value beyond just getting through the day.

2. Connection & love. To be seen, understood, and accepted. This includes friendships, family, romantic love, and belonging to a community.

3. Happiness or peace. Not constant pleasure, but a stable sense of well-being, contentment, or inner calm.

4. Security. Physical safety, financial stability, and emotional safety—the feeling that life won’t collapse at any moment.

5. Growth & self-expression. To become more fully themselves: learning, creating, improving, and expressing who they are.

6. Freedom & autonomy. The ability to make choices about their own life and live in alignment with their values.

7. Recognition & dignity. To feel respected and that their efforts are acknowledged.

8. Hope. Something to look forward to—a belief that the future can be better than the present.

These ideas were given to me by Artificial Intelligence and of course there are others, but I felt that many of these would resonate with you as they do with me.

We are going to do that thing where we choose what I say next because I want to briefly add a little bit to each of these ideas which might enable you to have conversation that help people see Jesus in the context of those topics. One person from each section can choose one of the topics. I will be brief.

1. Meaning & purpose. A sense that their life matters—that what they do has value beyond just getting through the day.

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10

Your life isn’t random. You were made with intention, and what you do can genuinely make a difference. There is a sense that your life is meant to contribute something good to the world, not just get through each day.

2. Connection & love. To be seen, understood, and accepted. This includes friendships, family, romantic love, and belonging to a community.

“Nothing… will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39

There is a kind of love that doesn’t disappear when you fail, change, or struggle. It isn’t fragile or conditional. You are fully seen and still held onto.

3. Happiness or peace. Not constant pleasure, but a stable sense of well-being, contentment, or inner calm.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Phil 7:7-8

Even when life feels overwhelming, it’s possible to experience a deep calm that isn’t based on having everything sorted out. It’s a steadiness that protects you inside, even when things outside are unsettled.

4. Security. Physical safety, financial stability, and emotional safety—the feeling that life won’t collapse at any moment.

“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” Psalm 91:1–2

There is a sense of safety that goes beyond money, health, or circumstances—a feeling of being held and protected, even when life feels uncertain or fragile.

5. Growth & self-expression. To become more fully themselves: learning, creating, improving, and expressing who they are.

“He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.” Philippians 1:6

You are a work in progress, and that’s okay. The growth happening in your life isn’t wasted or unfinished—it’s part of something still unfolding, even when you can’t yet see the end result.

6. Freedom & autonomy. The ability to make choices about their own life and live in alignment with their values.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Galatians 5:1

True freedom isn’t just doing whatever you want. It’s being released from what traps or controls you, so you can live honestly, make real choices, and become who you’re meant to be.

7. Recognition & dignity. To feel respected and that their efforts are acknowledged.

“What are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honour.” Psalm 8:4-5

Human life has deep value. Even though we’re small in a vast universe, each person carries dignity and worth. You matter—not because of what you achieve, but because of who you are.

8. Hope. Something to look forward to—a belief that the future can be better than the present.

“For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12

Right now, we don’t see the full picture. Life can feel confusing or incomplete. But there’s reason to believe that understanding, clarity, and wholeness lie ahead—that this isn’t the end of the story.

As people seeking renewal and seeking to be lifelong disciples we are not meant to have all the answers but to live deeply into the mystery of God’s love with a sense of wonder. There is great wisdom in the lyrics of the U2 song which should help shape our sense of renewal, “I Still haven’t found what I am looking for”. These words express humility before the mystery and beauty of God’s love for us as we hear Jesus’ question resonating in the lives around “What are you looking for?” and as we invite others like Andrew did with Peter to “come and see”.