Sermon for Social Justice Sunday: Boat People (2)

Sermon for Romsey and Lancefield Uniting Churches

September 25, 2011; Social Justice Sunday

In September, as I said last time I was here, we’re given the option to turn aside from the lectionary for a few weeks and celebrate the Season of Creation. This Season recognises that God didn’t just create humanity, and that the world Jesus entered includes more than just us. Man and woman may be at the heart of creation, but we’re not the whole of creation. We’re one part of it, and we depend upon it. So today we’re invited to think about rivers, and for most of this service that’s what we’ll do. But today is also Social Justice Sunday and the first Sunday after the 2011 meeting of the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania, and for both those reasons in this sermon I’m going to turn our attention from the non-human creation back to humanity. The World Student Christian Federation, which had a huge influence on my formation through the Australian Student Christian Movement, says that Christians need to approach the world with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, and that’s definitely what I want to do today. I want to talk about boat people.