N A TIO N A L M A G A ZIN E O F THE L U THE R A N C HU RC H O F A U STRA LIA
JUNE 2016
WHERE ARE YOU, GOD?
The
PA IN
REFORMATION:
that won't GO AWAY T H E PAT H OF
JOB
Why have you
FORSAKEN ME? VOL 50 NO5
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Hitting the heights
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EDITORIAL Editor Lisa McIntosh p 08 8267 7300 m 0409 281 703 e lisa.mcintosh@lca.org.au
Peter Thiele, from Victor Harbor Lutheran Church Centre SA, took some uplifting reading with him on a recent trip to the USA. Here he’s pictured standing atop Glacier Point, overlooking Half Dome, in Yosemite National Park, California.
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JUNE
Special features EDITOR'S
Letter
5
When my step-brother and sister-in-law named their son Job, I was surprised. For a start, many people unfamiliar with the biblical character of the same name would mispronounce it. But, in any case, why would you name your child after a man who lost everything, whose life was wracked with pain, devastation and desolation?
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The answer was simple but striking. Because through it all Job remained faithful to God. No matter what extreme suffering Satan threw at him, Job stayed true.
We know that suffering came into the world with sin. But we also know that our suffering is not a punishment for our sin. In John 9, Jesus’ disciples asked him about a man born blind. ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned’, said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.’ Of course, Jesus was speaking about the miracle he would perform in restoring the man’s sight. But he could just as well have been referring to the powerful witness those who suffer most can offer. How do they muster the strength to go on after the death of a child or partner to illness, accident, suicide or murder? How do they endure being trapped in a violent relationship? How do they retain hope when they have been left severely disabled and in constant pain because of disease or disaster? How do they remain faithful? It is an inspiration when people in pain cling to God’s allencompassing love and his promise in Revelation 21:4: ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain’. And you have a chance to ‘listen’ to a few such people in the following pages. I pray that their words will be a great encouragement, both to us and those we share them with.
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The Reformation: It’s all about Jesus
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Pain that won’t go away
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Regulars
Reading of Job’s torment, a familiar question arises: Why do bad things happen to good people? We see it in our own families, among our friends, workplaces, church, and in the wider world. Why do the kindest, most loving, least selfish people face the most unbearable tragedies? Why doesn’t God shield his servants from such harm?
Where are you, God?
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15
Heartland
4
Reel life
13
World in brief
14
Go and Grow
15
Inside story
23
Little church
28
Directory
30
Letters
31
Notices
32
Coffee break
34
23
28
For those of us who don’t feel so strong or godly when things get tough, there is good news. God, in Jesus, promises to be faithful to me … in the good and the bad. His is a future promise but also a current gift in the person of Jesus, who ‘never will leave us or forsake us’ (Hebrews 13:5). And when I can’t hold on to him any longer, he holds on to me and says nothing and no-one can snatch me away.
Lisa
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JES U S I S G OD'S LOVE. HE G IVES U S NE W HE ARTS TO L AY AS IDE O UR OL D WAYS, TO B EL IE VE AND FOL LOW HIM, TO L IVE WI T H HIM E VERY DAY.
heartland
REV JOHN HENDERSON
Bishop Lutheran Church of Australia
OUR GOD ENDS THE SE ARCH ‘What does it mean to have a god? … a god is whatever a person looks to for all good things and runs to for help in trouble … it’s only the trust and faith in your heart which make them both what they are – God and an idol’ (Martin Luther, Large Catechism, the First Commandment, translated by F. Hebart). ‘You shall have no other gods’ is the first commandment God gave Moses (Exodus 20). It comes first because it tells us that God is at the centre of life. Human nature, however, resists God’s claim. It is constantly on the search for something or someone else it can trust and turn to for help. Before we know it, we have moved God aside and taken centre stage for ourselves. We replace God with other things, filling the space with options that we think will give purpose and meaning to life.
A society with such high levels of drug and alcohol use, problem gambling, sexual infidelity, abuse, and consumption of products which promise to make us more appealing, is a society desperately hungry and thirsty to fill an inexplicable absence. The search for a god goes on. There are so many delicious gods from which to choose! They are sweet at first, but their aftertaste is bitter. They continually fail and disappoint us, yet they remain popular. These ‘gods-for-a-day’ will never surprise us with grace, never truly set The Lutheran JUNE 2016
You’d like to think that Christians are exempt from this mistake, since they believe in Jesus. But we aren’t.
This God is the CENTRE OF LIFE, our all in all.
Politicians will make empty promises to win our votes. Financial advisors will guarantee wealth in our retirement. A new job will deliver satisfaction. A new house will provide comfort and security. An overseas holiday will fix everything. An illicit sexual relationship will bring true love.
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us free, never fill us with joy, and never keep their promises. They wither and end in the sorry mess of death.
The temptation to replace God and do it ourselves is strong. The Christian life is one of daily repentance and renewal. Saint Augustine taught that if you think you can comprehend something you can be sure it’s not God. Christians can never comprehend the God who comes to us in Jesus Christ.
We can never wrap our heads around his birth, death and resurrection. That the infinite and almighty God comes to us as a baby, a human being, a crucified Saviour! That God loves us that much! That God saves lost humankind! That God turns the world on its head and makes the first last and the last first! That God freely welcomes the sinner, the outcast, the lonely and the destitute! That God always stays with us until the end of creation. This God is the centre of life, our all in all. We are truly free from the burden of needing to be in charge, to create our own gods. We don’t need them. God has taken care of everything, and so we can fear, love, and trust in our God above all things (Luther’s Small Catechism, First Commandment).
Judy surveys some of the results of rockfall on the road where the Calders live.
Repair work goes on along their damaged road.
Earthquakes have taken their toll on their neighbour’s house.
Doubled-up shipping containers help protect roads and lives from rockfall.
by JUDY CALDER
WH E R E A R E YO U , GO D? Judy and Bernie Calder live in Mt Pleasant, an eastern suburb of Christchurch, New Zealand, which was badly hit by the devastating earthquakes the city has endured over the past six years. Judy recalls what it has been like to live through the fear, the destruction and the uncertainty of these disasters, at times wondering where God is in all of this. 4.35 AM SAT URDAY 4 SEPT EMBER 2010 – 7.1 MAGNIT UDE It begins with a low rumbling sound and builds up to a roaring crescendo within a few seconds. The wall behind our bed wobbles. We are awake in an instant, unsure if a truck has hit our house. Our suitcases are packed, ready to fly to Wellington to attend my brother's special birthday. It is pitch dark and the lights won't work. We grope around for torches. No! We’ve packed them. We feel our way down the hallway to our garage. ‘Get in the car’, says Bernie. ‘It might be safer there.’ But the garage and the car seem very cold and unsafe. We could be trapped here. We pad our way back to the bedroom, wide awake now and wait for morning to arrive, so we can see what's happened. Two more massive quakes hit in quick succession. It’s terrifying.
Daylight arrives pathetically slowly. Once the sun is up, we walk around the bay to nearby Redcliffs. The shop is frantically busy – people stock up with bread and milk while the service station has queues of people. Bernie's sister lives nearby, so we walk there and have a welcome cup of tea. They have electricity. The earthquakes continue. ‘Expect three days of them’, say the experts. I go to our bed fully clothed for 10 nights. We've worked out our safe place – on the deck outside our bedroom door, but away from the house. I rush outside often as the house shakes. How I hate the nights. My daughter texts from Europe. She and her husband are on a belated honeymoon. ‘R U OK? How is my house?’ I answer the first question, but leave the second. It takes us days to get to her house at Bexley, to the north. We see it drunkenly leaning towards the ground. The lawns are covered in liquefaction, as the soil has become saturated. The Lutheran JUNE 2016
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A nd s t i l l th e qua kes c ont inue … wh ere a re y o u , God? 12.51 PM 22 FEBRUARY 2011 – 6.3 MAGNIT UDE We're minding our two-year-old granddaughter Eva while her parents are at work. All hell breaks loose. The house jerks violently and, like a mother hen, I gather Eva up and put her under my body. The mirror on the wall crashes to the floor. She had been playing just inches from it! I grab blankets and we head outside to our ‘safe place’. This is scary. I look at the back lawn and see a sand volcano being born! Its sides rise and form a perfect cone. A spout forms and water pours out for several hours, meeting the liquefaction that now covers much of our land. We wait for news. No phones, no radio, no TV – no connections anywhere. Eva's parents, Darin and Anita, arrive. ‘Where's Eva?’, they ask in panic. They smother her with love. My daughter looks at me with tears in her eyes. ‘Oh Mum, the city! It's in chaos. People are killed, the buildings are down and the roads are full of holes.’ She tells me how she hid under her desk and got out down the stairwell as the threestorey carpark beside her collapsed.
The lan d he aves an d g roan s … w he re are you, God? We are staying on the other side of the city and we flee town every few months to Ashburton, Wellington (where I cover my head, so I can't see the tall buildings), Brisbane (where I take a shopping trip but run away when I see a three-storey mall), and Blenheim. For the next five years I don't go higher than two storeys in any building.
Stop it, God! WHERE ARE YOU, anyway?
We are all hungry, so Bernie bravely enters the intermittently shaking house and grabs a loaf of bread from the freezer, some cheese and a knife. We sit outside and enjoy the food, thankful we are alive. We decide to head to Darin and Anita’s house, thinking it may be safer on the rocky hills.
The sand for the foolish man and the rocks for the wise man was different. Here, neither sand nor rocks are safe. The ground continues to shift violently and their house shakes. We decide the whole city is unsafe. We head south to Ashburton, a rural town 100 km away, where Darin's family has a farm. They are kindness in action when they see our distressed state and watch with horror the news on television.
One day at home I feel brave enough to clean the pantry. Sauces, pickles, broken jars and crockery litter the floor. I reach in the corner, saying a quick prayer, as I wipe up. But another big one hits and my head is stuck for a few seconds. It takes me three weeks to even look at the mess of my book collection.
There are no toilets but we cope. Eventually a portaloo appears in our street, but it’s half a kilometre away! The whole country has run out of portaloos. Thank goodness for China! They make us 900 within a few months and one is placed on our front lawn. We share it with six other houses. A strong wind blows across the bay and the portaloos on the hill fall over. We smile – it's our first joke for a while. We go to the local school every two days to collect water. They give out hand sanitiser and face masks. I wonder about the masks, but we soon know. That strong, warm wind dries out the water in the bay at low tide and that's where all the raw sewage is going. We gather in church in silence, giving support and prayer for each other.
Bernie and Judy in front of the badly damaged Anglican cathedral in Christchurch.
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Then God sends help. An email arrives and it's from David Stolz – here is a man of God, a former district president of the LCA whom I knew vaguely, who comes in my hour of need and for two long years walks beside me. He teaches me to hang on, he prays for me and my family, he shares our long journey with his family, friends and congregations he preaches at – often reading out sections of my emails. He helps me to share and to laugh and have fun – even when the odds were very, very long.
An d st ill the g roun d rumb les an d roars … w he re are you, God? The city has been cordoned off for months but one day is reopened. We join others in having a look. No one speaks as we walk past a deserted restaurant. Tables and chairs, cutlery, plates and food litter the floor. It feels like Pompeii. We return home in silence and don't go back to the CBD for a couple of years. Big trucks, earth moving machines and cars add to The Lutheran JUNE 2016
ever-increasing cracks. I look at our bedroom ceiling and hope it doesn't fall on me. Already we lean towards the sea.
Bernie works to clean up the liquefaction on the Calders’ land
Many Anglican brick churches have come down. Others have suffered, too. We share our building, run services throughout Sundays, open spare rooms and make new friends. The quakes roll on. Sometimes they're like gentle waves, rocking our house like a cradle. Others come with the sound of a car starting and build to a resounding crescendo. But it's the gigantic sudden lurches that scare me most.
Oh G o d, o u r help in a ges pa st … wh e re a re y ou? 1.00 PM 13 JUNE 2011 – 5.8 MAGNIT UDE This is another big, shallow one. I grab Eva and we go outside. We wait hours until the earth seems to settle. We walk along the road. But as we round the corner, it comes again. Shopkeepers run outside with customers. I'm thrown to the ground, Bernie's on the road and Eva's down, just beyond my reach. (I couldn't reach her – that's forever in my mind as tears form remembering this.) A rock as big as a car falls off the hillside and stops two lampposts away. But we help each other – the doctors, the hairdresser, the customers and the chefs. We set off for home but our street is covered in liquefaction. We don't know where the next sink hole is. Bernie picks up Eva, throws her over his shoulder and I follow, thinking that if he sinks down, I'll be able to help. Unrealistic, I know.
S to p i t, G o d! W h ere a re y ou, a ny way? My 'missed birthday brother' arrives with his wife for a few days. They want to go for a coffee in the city. ‘What city?’, I ask in pretend jest. We head to the shops made of shipping containers and climb upstairs for a view. It’s noisy and there is machinery as far as the eye can see. A rebuild is beginning.
1 7 , 000 qu a kes l a t er … where a re y ou, God? And the reply comes back, ‘Here I am. I sent David to walk beside you. Your family is safe. Your neighbours and community have learned to help one another. People pray for you and support you. Your house has been repaired. Your church has re-opened. Your city is beginning again. Don't worry about possessions. You know what I mean when I tell you to love and serve one another. This is what really matters. Do you hear me?’ ‘Yes, Lord’, I answer. And, after reliving the pain through sleepless nights to write this account, at 5 in the morning I begin to understand.
Judy Calder is a member at St Paul’s Lutheran Church, at Burwood in suburban Christchurch. Their church building, like many in the greater city, was damaged by the quakes but the congregation continued to meet in a broken building for several years. Last year renovations began and, after worshipping with All Saints Anglican Church, Burwood, for 10 months, at Easter this year the congregation moved back into its renovated home.
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The REFORMATION: It 's all about Jesus
by FRASER PEARCE
As part of the lead-up to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017, an ecumenical working party of Lutherans and Catholics has been planning a program of projects and events in order to jointly commemorate the occasion. One project is a series of articles about the significance of the Reformation, written by Lutheran and Catholic authors from around Australia, to be published in both Lutheran and Catholic publications. The first in our series of six is by Pastor Fraser Pearce, a member of the LCA’s Commission on Theology and Inter-Church Relations, and the parish senior pastor at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Adelaide.
Luther wrote and spoke powerfully because he wrote and spoke about Jesus. He wrote and spoke about Jesus not simply as a guide or an example for us, but as the Saviour, who rescues us from death, from sin, and from hell itself. And it’s because Jesus, who died to take away the sin of the world, now lives that the Reformation message about Jesus still has ‘ ... my God has power in our world.
given me in Christ
Early in his career (in 1520) Luther wrote a short book all the riches of called The Freedom of a righteousness and Christian. In this book, he explained the joy that comes salvation, without through trusting in Jesus as our Saviour: ‘The Christian any merit on my ought to think, “Although I am part, out of pure, an unworthy and condemned person, my God has given me in Christ all the riches of free mercy. ’ righteousness and salvation, without any merit on my part, out of pure, free mercy, so that from now on I need nothing except faith which believes it is true”.’ Luther could write these words joyfully, because he knew that God gives us the gift of faith through his gracious word, winning our trust in Jesus, and freeing us from self-centred living. Because we have Jesus as our Saviour, we no longer need to focus inwardly and become anxious about what we lack, whether
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The Lutheran JUNE 2016
that is goodness, peace or strength for daily life. Instead we are free to look to Jesus, to trust that, in him, God gives us all that we need. And we are free to respond with simple gratitude. This is how Luther put it: ‘Why should I not therefore freely, joyfully, and with all my heart, and with an eager will do all things which I know are pleasing and acceptable to such a Father who has overwhelmed me with his inestimable riches?’ This response of gratitude is one that overflows in love for our neighbour. Since in Christ we freely have all good gifts from God, in thankfulness we can share the gifts Christ gives us with the people God brings into our lives. Luther wrote boldly, ‘I will therefore give myself as a Christ to my neighbour, just as Christ offered himself to me. I will do nothing in this life except what I see is necessary, profitable, and salutary to my neighbour, since through faith I have an abundance of all good things in Christ’. Faith in Jesus gives us freedom to love our neighbour: It’s in Jesus that love comes to life. Luther wrote and spoke about Jesus the Saviour, about Jesus who loves us and who frees us to love each other. This is the message of the Reformation – it’s r Pas to all about Jesus. rc e a e r Pe Fras
CHANCE TO TELL YOUR
congregation’s story Lutheran Archives is inviting young people to research and record their congregation’s story since church union in 1966. Cash prizes will be awarded for senior (13-16 years) and junior (12 years and under) students in two categories: written report and multimedia presentation. The competition is being championed by Ev Leske, son of the late Pastor Ev Leske, who wrote the ‘textbook’ about Lutherans in Australia since 1838, For Faith and Freedom. The title of the book was the inspiration for the tagline for the 50.500 initiative, faith.freedom.future.
‘The 50th anniversary of the union of the ELCA and UELCA – the birthday of the LCA – is a wonderful opportunity to ENGAGE OUR YOUNG PEOPLE in the life of our church.’
‘The 50th anniversary of the union of the ELCA and UELCA – the birthday of the LCA – is a wonderful opportunity to engage our young people in the life of our church’, says Mr Leske, chairperson of the Committee of Lutheran Archives. ‘This year we can look back with thanks to God for his faithfulness and guidance as we have journeyed together as one church these past 50 years. At the same time we can look forward with our children and grandchildren to the LCA God is building for them and through them.’
The Lutheran Archives competition is challenging young people to submit entries under the heading ‘My congregation – past, present and future’. Their reports or multimedia presentations will document the changes in their congregation over the past 50 years, and what it might look like in the future. They will gain extra merit for using material collected from interviews and for contacting Lutheran Archives for research assistance.
Incentive to ‘have a go’ Congregations, schools and ministry groups have an incentive to dust off shelved plans for local mission. Under the 50.500 faith.freedom.future initiative approved by General Synod last year, they could receive a grant of up to $25,000 from the new ‘Have a Go’ Fund for their project or activity. The purpose of the fund is to encourage and equip grassroots communities of the LCA/NZ to ‘have a go’ at local mission and ministry. It will provide grants for initiatives likely to start during this synodical term, 2015–2018. Eligible projects will need to align with the LCA’s strategic priorities (outlined in LCA Strategic Direction 2013–2018) and the group’s own mission and ministry goals. There will also be a focus on ‘going and growing’ as God’s people. The 50.500 panel will look favourably on projects that are innovative, future-focused and sustainable in the mid to long-term.
www.50500.lca.org.au
Pastor Neville Otto, Secretary of the Church, encourages all congregations to ‘have a go’ at something new in local mission and ministry. ‘While we recognise all the good things God has done over our 50 years together, this synodical term of celebration and commemoration is also the perfect time to seek God’s guidance for what he wants to do in the next 50 years – and then to ‘have a go’!
www.50500.lca.org.au
During this synodical term, 2015–2018, the LCA/NZ reaches two significant milestones: in 2016 the LCA’s 50th birthday; and in 2017 the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. 50.500 faith.freedom.future invites us to celebrate and commemorate these special anniversaries – with thanks to God for his past blessings, and in the sure hope and confidence that he is building the LCA/NZ for the future.
Mr Leske stresses, too, that Lutheran Archives' records are available to all congregation members for research at any time, not just this competition. Young people from all LCA congregations may enter, including those from congregations established after church union. Entries close on 25 September 2016. Full details are available on the 50.500 website