The Lutheran November 2012

NOVEMBER 2012

Print Post Approved PP536155/00031 VOL 46 NO 10

NATIONAL MAGAZINE OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA

For we walk by faith, not by sight [2 Cor 5:7] The Lutheran November 2012

1

EDITOR/ADVERTISING phone 08 8339 5178 email linda.macqueen@lca.org.au

SUBSCRIPTIONS phone 08 8360 7270 email lutheran.subs@lca.org.au

www.thelutheran.com.au We Love The Lutheran!

As the magazine of the Lutheran Church of Australia (incorporating the Lutheran Church of New Zealand), The Lutheran informs the members of the LCA about the church’s teaching, life, mission and people, helping them to grow in faith and commitment to Jesus Christ. The Lutheran also provides a forum for a range of opinions, which do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editor or the policies of the Lutheran Church of Australia. The Lutheran is a member of the Australasian Religious Press Association and as such subscribes to its journalistic and editorial codes of conduct.

LUTHERAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA

CONTACTS

LOVE ME, LOVE MY LUTHERAN After a long and hectic day, it’s so good to relax and enjoy the love of your life.

(Editor of The Lutheran Linda Macqueen and Mark Christian were married on 22 September at Concordia College chapel, Highgate, South Australia.)

Photo: Ivan Christian

Editor Linda Macqueen PO Box 664, Stirling SA 5152, Australia phone (+61) 08 8339 5178 email linda.macqueen@lca.org.au

Send us a photograph featuring a recent copy of The Lutheran and you might see it here on page 2.

We Love The Lutheran!

National Magazine Committee Wayne Gehling (chair), Greg Hassold, Sarah Hoff-Zweck, Pastor Richard Schwedes, Heidi Smith

People like you are salt in your world [ Matt 5:13 ]

Design and layout Comissa Fischer Printer Openbook Howden

ADVERTISEMENTS and MANUSCRIPTS Should be directed to the editor. Manuscripts are published at the discretion of the editor. Those that are published may be cut or edited. Advertisements are accepted for publication on a date-received basis.

Acceptance of advertisements does not imply endorsement by The Lutheran or the Lutheran Church of Australia of advertiser, product or service.

Copy deadline: 1st of preceding month Rates: general notices and small advertisements, $18.00 per cm; for display, contract and inserted advertisements, contact the editor.

SUBSCRIPTIONS and CHANGES of ADDRESS LCA Subscriptions PO Box 731, North Adelaide SA 5006 phone 08 8360 7270 email lutheran.subs@lca.org.au www.thelutheran.com.au 11 issues per year— Australia $40 New Zealand $42 Asia/Pacific $51 Rest of the World $60

Roslyn Hartwig

Natalie Klitscher

Brian Weier

Zion, Trungley Hall, NSW Retired high-school teacher Enjoys family and area histories and tennis Fav text: Romans 8

Trinity, Bordertown SA Office manager Enjoys singing and reading Fav text: John 4:13

Redeemer, Macalister Qld Maintenance officer Enjoys photography and making things Fav text: Isaiah 41:10

Surprise someone you know with their photo in The Lutheran. Send us a good-quality photo, their name and details (congregation, occupation, what they enjoy doing, favourite text) and your contact details.

Issued every month except in January Vol 46 No10 P334

Four weeks ago to the day I stood at the altar in Concordia College chapel and promised to stick by Mark ‘for better for worse, for richer for poorer’.

That‘s a promise of titanic proportions. But it was far less nerve-racking than the decision Mark and I will make today.

FEATURES

05

05 By faith, not sight 09 Honest atheists 22 For the children’s sake 24 Fresh air

09

COLUMNS

We’ve signed a contract for a house, and today’s the last day we can pull out of it without nasty consequences. It’s not the house we’re concerned about; it’s the finance. If we get this wrong, our lives could indeed be ‘worse’ and ‘poorer’.

04 From the President 08 Reel Life

We need more information! If God can do anything, why doesn’t he tell us what we need to know, so our decision can be an informed one? But he’s not going to budge, at least, not by the time we need to make our decision. I’m a bit grumpy at God about all this. He could make this easy for us ... but he won’t. Pout!

At the same time as I’m wrestling with this decision, I’m pulling together this edition of The Lutheran. The cover picture was an obvious choice: our own Kieran Modra winning yet another gold medal at the Paralympics.

But I wriggled a bit when the text ‘by faith, not sight’ came to me as this edition’s cover verse. It’s a bit too close to home right now. Kieran is visually impaired and used to spending his life walking (or more likely, cycling) by faith not sight. But it’s not so fine for me! Funny how it’s so much easier to applaud someone else’s faith than to get out there for a few laps on life’s velodrome yourself.

If I can take any comfort from my anxiety today, I know I’m not alone as I experience this ‘not knowing, not seeing’ frustration. St Paul put it nicely: ‘For now we see in a mirror, dimly, 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 Cor 13:12).

Not knowing, not seeing—it’s life, it’s the human condition.

It’s irreparable this side of heaven, so we have to learn to live with it, just as we learn to live with the God who promises never to fail or forsake us (Deut 31:6).

Okay, deep breath! It’s time to jump in the deep end. I do know God will get us through this. He does know how to swim ... doesn’t he?

Vol 46 No10 335

12 Little Church 13 Inside Story 17 Letters /Directory

22

18 Stepping Stones 20 Notices

24

26 Heart and Home 28 World in Brief 30 Coffee Break

The old word ‘kingdom’ describes God’s gracious rule over us in making us new.

‘Your kingdom come.’ In praying this petition of the Lord’s Prayer, we do not have in mind that God’s kingdom is a geographical location. Neither is the church the kingdom.

The old word ‘kingdom’ describes God’s gracious rule over us in making us new.

God’s kingdom is not something we see, but in some ways it does show itself.

Most clearly it is there in baptism. What a time to celebrate, as we witness and sponsor a child brought into the saving arms of our heavenly Father. The kingdom-maker, the Holy Spirit, calls faith into being in just an infant.

A struggle also begins at this point, as our ‘old self’ fights the new person that is generated in us in baptism. That is a battle for all of our life on earth.

The prayer taught to us by our Lord himself looks to a final new day when all struggles will be past and only God’s reign will be enjoyed and celebrated.

God continues to make us new. That is why we are encouraged to remember our baptism each day.

Keep up to date with news, prayer points and call information by visiting http://www.lca.org.au/ presidents-page-archive.html or by subscribing to the president’s electronic newsletter. To receive the newsletter, send an email to itofficer@lca.org.au giving the email address you would like included.

LCA pastors and layworkers are automatically included in this list.

Rev Dr Mike Semmler President Lutheran Church of Australia

On our doorstep in the Lutheran Church of Australia, more and more people who speak Mandarin and Cantonese are praying the same prayer and looking to our church with its resources to walk with them. In congregations in Auckland and Perth and through to Brisbane the emerging story is the same.

Now there is more. The great challenge of God’s reign continues for us in the lives of those who are migrating from South Sudan, the Republic of Congo and Burundi, and who seek our support and partnership in worship. This is an opportunity the like of which may not have been experienced for some time in our church.

Our observation of people seeking the Lutheran Church puts other matters claiming our attention and energy into perspective. The need is great.

Disenfranchised, abused people, segregated from loved ones, fleeing for their lives are reaching out for help. Our pastors, their families and under-resourced congregations involved in such ministries are stressed, stretched and often tired.

We have prayed for it, but perhaps never envisaged the reign of God in the lives of such diversified groups of people reaching out to us to share our blessings on our own shores.

Youth wanting gatherings; a man separated from his family, under pressure from parents to return to the family’s Islamic faith, stating clearly he would sooner go to jail than leave the Lutheran Church … that is powerful.

You and I are called into this kingdom where the name of our Lord Jesus Christ is invoked as Saviour in the face of glittering western cultural temptations which, given the opportunity, would lure our newly arrived brothers and sisters in Christ away from the Father’s eternal kingdom.

The world is small and time may be short.

Our Father in heaven, come and reign over us.

4

The Lutheran November 2012

Vol 46 No10 P336

Photo: Theo Modra

It wasn’t only in the velodrome that

faith was pushed to the max

for Paralympian cyclist Kieran Modra.

by faith, not sight

by Rosie Schefe

Imagine hurtling around a wooden track at 55 kilometres an hour, being whipped around the corners as though you were on a sideshow ride. What little you can see is a complete blur, while the noises of the velodrome beneath and the crowd around you combine into one deafening roar.

Imagine that the only communication you have with your pilot, seated centimetres in front of you, is through Vol 46 No10 P337

the pedals of the bike. You have to trust his eyes and skills completely and go for it, even while the back wheel flexes and strains, seemingly contradicting what the pressure on your pedals is telling you.

Faith and fear are two words that Paralympian cyclist and world-recordholder Kieran Modra uses a lot as he describes his fight back from a serious accident to retirement at the top of the podium.

Back at the end of last year, things seemed to be well on track for visionimpaired Kieran Modra. He and his new sighted pilot, 20-year-old Scott McPhee, were building their partnership nicely and had announced their London 2012 intentions by setting a new world record at the 2011 World Championships.

This would be Kieran’s seventh Paralympics and Scott’s first, competing in four tandem cycling The Lutheran November 2012

5

Photo: Theo Modra

Photo: Theo Modra

Above: Kieran in London with proud parents Theo and Sylvia Right: Kieran with wife Kerry and daughters Holly (back), Makala and Janae Below: The medal ceremony in London

Photo: Theo Modra

events for vision-impaired athletes: the four-kilometre individual pursuit, the one-kilometre time trial, the road time trial and the 110-kilometre road race.

Then, while cycling to work in peakhour traffic one December morning, Kieran collided with a parked car.

The car was a write-off. Kieran was admitted to Adelaide’s Flinders Medical Centre with two broken vertebrae in his neck and one in his lower back, and suspected brain damage.

‘For a week I was unable to move’, Kieran says. ‘I began to fear the nights, dealing with the pain and waiting for the morning to arrive.

‘Did I pray? I was struggling a lot with faith, so I was questioning where I was, asking God for a speedy recovery, asking him how this happened. There were more questions than answers; I didn’t get a lot of answers.

‘What am I going to be like?’ Kieran wondered, as he heard that others in similar accidents had become paralysed or had died.

‘I had to still be positive. I latched onto family [wife Kerry and three daughters] and onto being a husband and father to them. I thought about the others in hospital with me and what they were going through. I tried to relate to them, encourage them.

how long would it take? The longer I was there, the worse it seemed to get’, he said.

Kieran was transferred from Flinders Medical Centre to the Repatriation General Hospital in the suburb of Daw Park, where he was allowed to begin to move around slowly.

‘And London was always there!

‘I was able to get back onto a stationary bike. I’d use a walking frame to get over to it because I couldn’t balance properly yet, and I’d do some weights and leg-strengthening exercises. It felt good just to be on the bike and rolling my legs over’, he said.

‘It wasn’t desperation, but I needed to get better and get back on the bike …

That was the beginning of the long fight back. In March Kieran was able to visit

6

The Lutheran November 2012

the South Australian Sports Institute, where he was carefully checked over before getting an all-clear to get back on his bike.

But Kieran’s doctors at Flinders Medical Centre were not recommending that he do that, a problem that was finally resolved when Kieran went to the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) in Canberra and was again minutely and carefully assessed. The AIS wrote up a plan which his doctors accepted.

Finally Kieran had his way forward.

But it wouldn’t be easy for the elite athlete. ‘It was all about easing back, looking at my body’, he said. ‘But I took more steps forward than I took Vol 46 No10 P338

Photo: Theo Modra

It’s also given me a closer connection to God, a different sense

of appreciation of him, looking for symbols, sensing how he’s working. back. I learnt patience; I had to listen to the people around me and take notice.

‘Another thing: it completely changed my training approach. I was forced to scrap the old regime and start a new one, focused around recovery’, he said.

Kieran’s relationship with Scott also changed, as they began to spend the hours and hours needed together on the bike, building that crucial communication through the pedals.

With an age difference of 20 years between Scott and him, and a gulf of Paralympics experience just as wide, Kieran found he had to forge a new relationship with his pilot.

‘I had to put the age difference aside and see Scott as an equal’, Kieran said. ‘Everything he did was about the here and now, the current situation.

My experience was all in the past. The accident changed it all; I had to work out what was happening here and now.’

Kieran’s favourite event is the fourkilometre individual pursuit, in which he won gold at Atlanta in 2004 and in Beijing in 2008. It is one of the first events on the Paralympics cycling schedule, with qualifying on the morning after the opening ceremony and the final that same afternoon, Thursday, 30 August.

With no competition results at all in 2012, Kieran and Scott were first on the track in qualifying, not a position Kieran is used to occupying.

‘We had no idea what the others would do, so we had no other choice but to put our best time down’, he said.

Kieran and Scott qualified fastest.

Vol 46 No10 P339

About five hours later they raced the final, this time with another team on the opposite side of the track.

‘But it still becomes your own race; you have to make sure you cross the line before the other bike’, Kieran said. They crossed first in a new world-record time of 4 minutes, 17.756 seconds—about five seconds faster than the silver medallists, fellow Australians Bryce Lindores and pilot Sean Finning.

Kieran is pleased and grateful to have defended his pursuit title so successfully, although the remainder of the competition was not quite so golden. The pair were 0.001 seconds behind the bronze medal time in the one-kilometre time trial, broke a chain and did not finish their road time trial, and then had to retire when Scott became ill during the road race.

‘But just to win all the time is not so much fun, either’, Kieran says.

‘There were so many different emotions generated, but you just can’t beat standing on top of the podium for Australia. It’s an awe-inspiring feeling!’

Kieran says that after a race he spends some time in prayer.

‘Afterwards I can piece it all together and acknowledge God’s help in the process of training. There are more battles in getting there than there are in winning a race. Looking back now, I think there are a lot of positive elements in what happened. I asked God, “Why?” I had to accept help from others and I was inspired by others. That was a trait that I didn’t have before.

‘A lot of it was about developing the characteristic of looking more into myself but still being aware of what’s going on around me. It’s also given me a closer connection to God, a different sense of appreciation of him, looking for symbols, sensing how he’s working.

‘For me, to just get back on my feet and recover is to see God’s working.’

Now back in Adelaide, the retired Paralympian is hoping that his story will help to inspire and motivate others, including the vision-impaired students he works with at the South Australian School for Vision Impairment and Seaview High School.

‘Hopefully, my story is an avenue to show them what is possible, and to motivate them and other students as well, right across the board.’

Kieran Modra and his family worship at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Hallett Cove, Adelaide. He is a former student at Immanuel College and grew up at Port Lincoln, where his parents Theo and Sylvia Modra are still active members of the Lutheran congregation.

Rosie Schefe is editor of the SA/NT District’s Together newspaper and part-time journalist with LCA Connect.

The Lutheran November 2012

7

The Master A new think-piece by the writerdirector who brought us There Will Be Blood, Magnolia and Boogie Nights challenges the need for faith. The Master asks audiences to consider: do we really need someone to save us?

Joaquin Phoenix stars as Freddie Quell, an American sailor who hails from a home troubled by substance abuse and mental illness. When he returns traumatised from World War II, he ends up undergoing treatment in a military hospital. A doctor tells Freddie’s ward, ‘You men are blessed with the rejuvenating power of youth.

The question is, what will you do with the rest of your life?’ This becomes the film’s quest.

THE MASTER Rating: M Distributor: Roadshow Release date: 8 November 2012

Comments on contemporary culture

by Mark Hadley 88

The TheLutheran LutheranSeptember November2012 2012

Freddie seeks to fit back in, but every job he tackles falls victim to his alcoholism. Viewers should be prepared for self-destructive sex scenes that reflect his sad plight.

Quell finally stows away on a pleasure yacht and meets with Dr Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the charismatic leader of a self-improvement society.

‘The Cause’ is a movement based on Dodd’s ‘discoveries’—a collection of amateurish psychoanalysis and hypnosis wedded to a reincarnation mythology.

‘Man is not an animal’, Dodd explains.

‘We sit far above the animal kingdom, perched as spirits. You are not ruled by your emotions. It is not only possible, it is easily achievable to remove every negative impetus.’ But can this triumphalist humanism make any practical difference to Freddie?

Through Freddie, director Paul Thomas Anderson investigates whether we save ourselves by handing the responsibility for our healing over to

someone else. Hoffman plays the archetypical guru, whose road to recovery depends on strict adherence to a list of wise-sounding secrets. He is surrounded by weak-minded women, men in need of a crutch and a variety of charlatans. It’s hard not to see him as some form of 1950s stand-in for every spiritual leader who has claimed to possess the keys to eternal life.

Gradually, Freddie begins to realise that his blind submission to Dodd has only enslaved him.

This is the real target at which Anderson takes aim. As Freddie toys with turning away from Dodd’s cult, the leader asks him, ‘If you know a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let us know, because you would be the very first in all of history’.

Christians could agree. It sounds very similar to Jesus’ warning that humans only have sin and God, or God and money (Matthew 6:24) to choose from. He tells the Jews challenging him, ‘Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin’ (John 8:34).

Watch closely and you’ll see the story concluding with Freddie breaking free of submission and becoming his own master. But although Freddie might be happier now, he is no closer to solving the problems that have dogged his existence.

Dodd and Freddie have this much in common: they are both trying to save themselves, just in different ways.

In the end, both fail. On the other hand, Jesus never asked anyone to save themselves. Where Freddie first struggled under an increasing load of spiritual exercises and then under his own broken humanity, Jesus offers a salvation that rests completely on his own shoulders.

Vol 46 No10 P340

Not all atheists choose not to believe.

Some want to, but can’t.

honest atheists

by Linards Jansons ‘The fool says in his heart: “There is no God”.’ At first glance, this opening verse from Psalm 14 might seem to settle the issue: atheists deny the existence of God, therefore they are fools, therefore it’s a waste of time even listening to them.

But is the modern phenomenon of atheism so quickly and easily diagnosed? Can a settled conviction, often arrived at after years of thoughtful struggle, simply be attributed to wilful rebellion or intellectual dishonesty?

Are all atheists foolish and corrupt?

Vol 46 No10 P341

Before these questions receive a response, I’ll slow up a bit and consider the importance that personal stories play in the convictions of those who have lost, or never had, faith. In the previous articles we touched on the opinions held by the new atheists (on issues such as science, morality and Scripture), but in this final article we will take a moment to consider the human journeys that have led to these opinions.

Personal stories While Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are (or were) two of the The Lutheran November 2012

9

higher-profile new atheists, their personal stories, by their own account, are relatively uneventful. From an early age, Dawkins’ parents satisfied his curiosity about the world with natural, rather than religious, explanations. So, despite his confirmation in the Church of England, by mid-teens his belief in a cosmic Designer had given way to Darwinism, for him a much better explanation for the complexity of life.

… these individuals who now disbelieve with enough passion to write about it once

believed with the very same passion.

For Hitchens, early adolescence was also the time when his faith was overtaken by objections, despite how much he enjoyed (and excelled) in his ‘Search the Scriptures’ lessons. Yet there was nothing traumatic or malign about his departure from faith: ‘I am not one of those whose chance at a wholesome belief was destroyed by child abuse or brutish indoctrination’.

For many others, however, the journey away from faith has been far more dramatic. This is especially the case for those atheists who once served the church as part of their vocation.

Colette Livermore, for example, writes of her story in Hope endures: leaving Mother Teresa, losing faith, and 10

The Lutheran November 2012

searching for meaning. In The Australian Book of Atheism she summarises her story: ‘I was a believer and member of Mother Teresa’s order for eleven years. In 2004, after a long struggle, I finally had to admit that my faith had left me. It is not an easy thing to leave the convictions of a lifetime, and it can put some friendships under strain, with hostile questions and disparaging remarks, but there was nowhere else to stand, nothing else to say.’

One of the most comprehensive accounts of an ordained minister adopting atheism is John Loftus’ Why I became an atheist: a former preacher rejects Christianity. While the main topic of this book outlines his reasons for rejecting the faith, a large opening section traces his personal story—his conversion to Christianity as a teen and then his later departure from the faith, centred on ‘three things that changed [his] thinking: a major crisis, plus new information that caused [him] to see things differently, minus a sense of a loving, caring, Christian community’.

Yet another ex-clergy de-conversion story is Charles Templeton’s Farewell to God. While he too offers the standard arguments against belief, his story is of particular interest, as he was one of Billy Graham’s closest colleagues in the early years of his crusades. For Templeton, the struggle with doubt took place over many years. Despite earnest prayer, intense study of the word of God, and seeking the gift of faith, his doubts would not go away: ‘I would cover them over with prayer and activity but soon there would be a wisp of smoke and a flicker of flame and then a firestorm of doubt’.

The mystery of unbelief The lesson for us is that loss of faith cannot always be reduced to an act of adolescent rebellion, or to some kind of casual disinterest or uninformed dismissal. On the contrary, these individuals who now disbelieve with enough passion to write about it once believed with the very same passion. In many cases it was only

after plumbing the depths of their own hearts in a desperate quest to salvage their faith that they faced up to the reality of their unbelief.

This is what Ruth Tucker stresses in her helpful book, Walking away from faith: unravelling the mystery of belief and unbelief. Tucker is a Christian, but one for whom the words ‘I believe, help my unbelief!’ (Mark 9:24) resonate loudly. After reviewing many conversion stories (to and away from faith) she writes: ‘That people who struggle with doubts or walk away from faith are rebellious or dishonest simply does not correspond with the testimonies.

Yet these charges persist.’

It seems, then, that in some situations the loss of faith is as mysterious as the gift of faith. On the one hand, stories of unbelief can reveal some interesting patterns. The ex-clergy atheists, to take a specific case, typically came from deeply conservative and fervently evangelistic communities. They were often teenage converts, and their conversion often led directly into ministry, with little time for spiritual, personal or theological maturation.

On the other hand, no single reason can fully account for why one person leaves the faith and another stays.

Tucker concludes that ‘from a human perspective, no logical explanations for this mystery can be discerned, although the disciplines of psychology and sociology offer us theories. There are no easy answers to the question of why one person finds believing as natural as breathing and another person finds belief an intellectual and emotional struggle that in the end is not worth the effort.’

And so, as tempting as it is to fill the gaps of these stories (‘this person lost faith because …’), it may be better to conclude that we are faced with a mystery—a mystery before which we can only listen, pray, and offer the reason for the hope that we have (1 Peter 3:15). This is not to deny the role of ‘apologetics’, the task of making a well-constructed argument Vol 46 No10 P342

One bite isn’t enough, is it?

Here’s how to get the whole apple.

Subscribe to The Lutheran.

11 issues per year; each issue 36-40 pages Australia $40 New Zealand $42 Asia/Pacific $51 Rest of the World $60

Stress-free European River Cruise and Luther Tour In September next year, enjoy a 22-day special Lutheran tour to Germany, visiting Luther sites and Hermannsburg, plus overnight visits with German Lutherans. Then join a luxury river cruise from Holland to the Black Forest, via the Moselle and Rhine rivers, including canals and Belgian cities. Unpack once on the cruise and enjoy fellowship and laughter with like-minded Lutherans all the way. Take advantage of the “partner fly free” airfare which expires soon!

Subscribe online at www.thelutheran.com.au

or contact LCA Subscriptions: lutheran.subs@lca.org.au For details contact Ann Blake at Harvey World Travel Phone (in Australia) 08 8360 7270 Norwood on 08 8332 9933, or tour leaders Margaret Phone (outside Australia) +618 8360 7270and Irwin Traeger on 08 8336 1141.

The Lutheran November 2012

11