An Advent sermon. Aboriginal land and the Uniting Church’s covenanting process.

An Advent sermon presented to the West End Uniting Church, December 15 2013.

(The original sermon included a commentary on James 5:7:11 in accord with the church lectionary readings for the week but it is of only tangential relevance to the substance of the sermon so I have left it out)

Advent is the time when we prepare to celebrate the festival of the birth of Jesus and a time when we prepare for the incoming of God’s kingdom in all its glory.

Jesus is the liberator who brings good news to the poor, release for the captive and liberation for the oppressed.

Advent is a season of expectantly waiting, let us expect Jesus the liberator and in terms our covenanting process, let us expect liberation and justice for Aboriginal people.

The epistle of John Tracey to the Christian Anarchist congregation of the Brisbane Anarchist Summer School 2013

Christian anarchism and the religion of Caesar: Transcending the Roman religion and rediscovering the tribal indigenous Jesus

read it – here

Pell vs. Dawkins

A post-match analysis from the U.T.P. sports desk.

I would like to join the commentary about the battle between George Pell and Richard Dawkins on the ABC’s Q&A program on 9/5/12. A copy of the show is – here

While I have never had any previous reason to critique Richard Dawkins’ opinions and I have had many reason’s to critique George Pell’s theology and church administration, I found myself being much more attracted to Pell’s position than Dawkins.

The historical context of the new testament.

The time of the stories of the new testament lies between two major events in the Middle East, the Maccabees revolt of the second century BC and the Roman-Jewish wars of the first and second centuries AD.

Australian folklore, biblical exegesis, Christian non-violence and a man with a big hat and a tricycle.

An open letter to the Australian Christian non-violence movement.

Once a Jolly protester
camped by a helicopter
under the shade of total surveillance

And he spruiked and rode
and smashed his mattock on the Helicopter
Who’l come a tricycling Matilda with me

So this is Christmas?

Isaiah 9:6 For to us a child is born, 
   to us a son is given, 
   and the government will be on his shoulders. 
And he will be called 
   Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, 
   Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

What is this Christmas thing that the Christian church holds as so important? There is no Christmas in the bible. There is however Hanukah – the festival of light – that celebrates the rededication of the Jerusalem temple after its defilement by invading Hellenist imperial forces. The festival of light occurs at various times in December, depending on the year as the Hebrew calendar is lunar as opposed to Rome’s solar matrix.

John 10 tells us that Jesus participated in the festival of light, indeed that is where he declared himself as Messiah before the skeptical temple authorities.

The Roman Christmas festival is a re-branding of various Hellenist festivals including the (virgin) birth of deities such as Mithra and Sol Invictus that occurred on December 25 in pre-christian Rome.

The irony of the Christian church’s embrace of Christmas is that its roots lie in the same Hellenic culture and tradition as the invaders of Judea that defiled the Jerusalem temple and whose eviction from Israel is celebrated in the festival of light.

The birth of Jesus is recorded in the bible – the nativity story. Jesus was born in the context of rule under King Herod the Great, a fraudulent and corrupt king of the Jews who operated a puppet regime of Rome and redeveloped the Jerusalem temple with Rome’s loot. The baby Jesus is born a king by way of his authentic descent from King David, a terrible threat to the sovereignty of Herod and for which the massacre of the innocents was ordered.

The nativity story, just like the festival of light, is a story of indigenous sovereignty and its assertion under imperial domination. This has somehow been white-washed from Christendom’s retelling of the story.

The Holy Trinity

The Faith – The Dreaming
by Bejam Kunmunara Jarlow Nunukel Kabool, son of Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal, Custodian of the land Minjerribah

The Conscious State – BAIAME
God the Father: the absolute truth of all matters; the ego state which takes up ten percent of the mind [Einstein said that] the other ninety percent you are not using, is the bright heavenly bliss, the prior condition, prior to all else, the prior state of being, through the eyes of the unborn, where you reside with the absolute truth of God the Father in that bright heavenly bliss having sacrificed your ego up to the Father through the Spirit, through the eyes of the Ancestors, Jesus Christ.

Without that sacrifice of the ego up to the Father, which is the conscious state, you deal directly from the ego state which is likened to screwing your teddy bear, you are bullshitting, you are popping gum and that is the everlasting hell of it all!!! It will continue until you sacrifice your ego up to that conscious state of being with the absolute truth of God the Father by residing in that ninety percent of the mind which is the bright heavenly bliss beyond and prior to all else, a state of no mind, and emptying of the mind, beyond all desire with true hearing and seeing and total freedom made by way of and thru the realisation of…

The Spiritual State – The Unconditional Love of it ALL! – Through the eyes of the Ancestors – Jesus Christ. ( Rainbow Serpent Moving!)
God the Holy Ghost, which is the Oneness, there is no Other, there is ONLY ONE, which is the spirit, which is the Natural Law/Lore personified by the Elders in Council bloodlines back to territory/ies. Sacrifice is made here by bending the knee, tithing, to those Elders in Council bloodlines back to territory/ies in order to maintain those natural balances, which are the spiritual paths revealed by the Holy Ghost or Spirit upon proper and full considerations with God the Father in that bright heavenly bliss of that prior condition and state of being conscious and manifesting in the eternal and infinite NOW which is the Only Reality, moment by moment, step by step in the material/ego realm. This material realm is illusionary because of its constantly changing condition and lack of perception, necessitating the moment to moment, step by step manifestation or remanifestation in the material NOW which is expressed laterally and three dimensionally, which is the recognition and realisation of heaven on earth by doing God’s will on earth in His name and His creation which is the Garden of Eden and achieved by proper manifestation moment by moment, step by step, here and NOW by way of…

The Ego State – The Material Realm
God the Son which is the manifestation, the reincarnation, the second coming, having made the sacrifice of the ego, which is the source of the dis-ease, the everlasting hell. WITHOUT that sacrifice and the transcendence up through the Holy Ghost up to the Father giving proper considerations of His absolute truth in that bright heavenly bliss descending back down thru the Holy Ghost on those spiritual paths, remanifesting, reincarnating in the second coming to do God’s will on earth, righteously stepping on those spiritual paths to create His heaven on earth.

God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.

Forever and Ever, Amen

The FAITH without action is blasphemy! ACTION without the FAITH is foolhardy.
I confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh not to change or challenge the law but to fulfill it in particular.
Leviticus: The Restoration

1 John 4: 2-6 Mathew 5: 17-20
Leviticus: The Restoration: Chapter 25 verse 10 1 Kings 21

more info see – Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal, Custodian of the land Minjerribah, Peace Prosperity and Healing, Sacred Treaty Circles

How to read the bible.

The first thing to understand about the bible is that it is not a Christian book, it is written by and for the ancient tribal indigenous Hebrew people. Jesus was not a Christian, he was a Jew.

The second thing to understand is that the Christian church since the fourth century has been the state religion of the Roman empire and Holy Roman empire. The church itself was created as an agency of the imperial state and at times has itself been the imperial state.

So the bible we have today is a tribal indigenous story of the land of the covenant of Abraham that has been interpreted through the cultural and religious consciousness of the empire of Rome. It began as an indigenous oral tradition, in the Old Testament as song and poetry and the New Testament as the oral stories of Jesus that were unwritten until decades after his crucifixion. From the oral tradition it has been written in various languages including ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek and then into modern languages of Europe which have then been translated into many languages.

By the time “the word” reaches our ears it has been reconstructed by the culture of European empire into something very different from its original tribal meaning.

The basic challenge for the modern bible reader is to distinguish between the essential meaning of the story and the cultural baggage of empire.

A Supernatural God?

It is often said that atheists and christians agree on what “god” is, they just disagree as to whether it exists or not. However, what if “God” was something outside of the understanding of atheist and christian alike, something that does not conform to the cultural assumptions of what “supernatural” actually is?

Jesus, the church and mission

This essay is based on two assumptions, 1/that mission is central to responding to the call of Jesus and 2/ That the institutional church has neglected the centrality of Jesus’ call to mission and constructed modes of social engagement that have no resemblance to the mission of Jesus as presented in the bible.

Rev. Graham Paulson, a respected elder, pastor and theologian, has written an essay entitled “Towards an Aboriginal Theology” that urges Aboriginal Christians to approach the bible from the perspective of their own culture and spirituality instead of the perspective of the European missionaries. Apart from a traditional protestant approach to biblical authority, Rev. Paulsen argues, the European missionaries’ context of Pacific colonialism needs to be taken into account when understanding the theology of the white Australian church.

Rev. Paulson’s essay uncritically accepts European Christianity to be appropriate and proper for European Christians and he focuses on the agenda of Aboriginal Christianity.

However in this essay I challenge the appropriateness and properness of the historical forms of the European Church, especially in Australia, as an agency to manifest the mission of Jesus. I propose a different framework for mission.