Homily for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sunday
7 July 2024
Readings: Ezekiel 2:2-5; Psalm 122; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6
This is the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sunday we have celebrated since the 2023 referendum. The theme for this year’s NAIDOC celebrations is ‘Keep the Fire Burning: Strong in Faith’. During the week, Dr Lisa Buxton, executive officer of the Archdiocese of Sydney’s Aboriginal Catholic Ministry, spoke at a book launch of two books reflecting on the referendum. She told us: ‘In the lead-up to the Referendum there was a sense of hope.…Post-Referendum there is certainly devastation, grief within some communities, a sense of hopelessness—frustration. Not just in our communities, I don’t think. People who were allies voting alongside—there’s devastation in non-Indigenous communities, and especially in our Catholic communities. They don’t seem to see a way forward at this point.’[1] Many Aboriginal people and those of us with Aboriginal friends have had similar thoughts and feelings.
Listen at https://soundcloud.com/frank-brennan-6/homily-for-aboriginal-sunday
In today’s first reading, we hear Yahweh’s commission to the prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel’s ministry took place during the Babylonian exile between 593 and 571BC. He may have remained in Palestine until 587BC when the temple was destroyed in Jerusalem. But wherever he was, he was ministering and prophesying amongst a people suffering the trauma of dispossession and colonisation. The people were rebellious, but Yahweh tells Ezekiel that he must be strong, resolute and clear headed in proclaiming Yahweh’s message of truth and justice. Yahweh says to Ezekiel: ‘But now, I will make you as defiant as they are, and as obstinate as they are; I am going to make your resolution as hard as a diamond and diamond is harder than flint. So do not be afraid of them, do not be overawed by them’. There was a lot of nastiness and bitterness during the referendum campaign. We should not be overawed by the naysayers. Now is the time for us all to reach out to our fellow Australians seeking truth, justice and reconciliation.
Let’s not lose sight of the hope expressed by the Indigenous leaders after they broke their silence a week after the referendum defeat. They wrote to all members of our parliament saying: ‘We have faith that the upswelling of support through this Referendum has ignited a fire for many to walk with us on our journey towards justice. Our truths have been silenced for too long.’[2]
Professor Megan Davis, one of the key Indigenous leaders of the referendum campaign broke her own silence recently and gave us two key take home messages. She spoke about the discussions which had gone on in her own family circle immediately after the referendum and said:[3]
‘[I]n our family we do a deep dive analysis based on the data about what went wrong and you know we don’t want them just running around this world saying well the vote went down because the nation’s racist. I don’t think that’s why the vote went down.’ It would be a mistake to think the country is racist and that no change is possible. Think only of the overwhelming 90 plus % result in the 1967 referendum and the additional genuine delight and pride when it is an Aboriginal athlete like Cathy Freeman or Ash Barty who brings home the prize.
After the 40:60 loss last October, some lamented that constitutional recognition could never happen and that all hope of change should be abandoned. Looking to the future, Megan Davis’s second message is: ‘Well, I hope at one point, we will have some form of constitutional recognition. It’s the only thing we haven’t tried as a nation. The only thing. We want to leave a better Australia, right? And if that means more Australians feeling a part of Aboriginal culture and more Aboriginal people feeling a part of Australian culture, that’s the kind of nation that we want to nurture.’
I was privileged to attend Lowitja O’Donoghue’s funeral in St Peter’s Anglican Cathedral in Adelaide in February. Pat Anderson was a respected elder who worked closely with Megan Davis and Noel Pearson during the Uluru Dialogues. At the funeral, Pat recalled Lowitja’s achievement with the native title negotiations in 1993. Reflecting on that achievement, Lowitja had said: ‘We cannot lose the will to resolve these issues, because they will not go away. But tackling them half-heartedly or high-handedly will be a recipe for continuing failure. I believe that solutions are at hand. But they will require determination and patient effort, negotiation and compromise, imagination and true generosity.’[4]
In his first Boyer Lecture in 2022, Noel Pearson said that at the referendum each of us would vote on the question of whether the nation should build its greatest bridge – a bridge to unite at long last the First Peoples of this country with our British institutional inheritance and our multicultural achievement, under the Constitution.’[5] He spoke of ‘A bridge to join all Australians in common cause, to work together in partnership to make a new settlement that celebrates the rightful place of Indigenous heritage in Australia’s national identity. A constitutional bridge to create an ongoing dialogue between the First Peoples and Australian governments and parliaments, to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.’
It’s for that reason that I titled my book last year during the referendum An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge.[6] It’s why I asked Grace Cossington Smith’s family for permission to use her 1930 painting Bridge in Curve on the cover of my new book Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum[7]. The painting depicts an incomplete Sydney Harbour Bridge. I chose the painting for three reasons. The colour evinces hope. The structure highlights the enormity of the task. And all of us, not just those who live in Sydney, know that it is inconceivable to have Sydney without the Harbour Bridge. So too there is the unfinished business of the Australian Constitution. It is inconceivable that we can have a properly constituted nation until there is due acknowledgment of the First Australians with a completed constitutional bridge.[8] When I explained the choice of the cover to a group of educators, one person observed that the incomplete bridge is buttressed by a set of cables which can be safely taken away when the bridge is complete; so too when we are a reconciled nation.
Doing the deep dive analysis of what went wrong in the referendum, let’s be gentle with each other, recalling Jesus’ words in today’s gospel: ‘A prophet is only despised in his own country among his own relations and in his own house.’ Jesus could calm the rough storm on the lake; he could cure the woman with the haemorrhage; he could raise Jairus’ daughter to life; but he could work no miracle back home, being amazed at their lack of faith.
Like Paul in today’s reading from his second letter to the Corinthians, may we hear the words of the Lord in our post-referendum hurt and loss: ‘My grace is enough for you: my power is at its best in weakness’. True to the theme for this year’s NAIDOC celebrations, let’s ‘Keep the Fire Burning: Strong in Faith’. May Lowitja O’Donoghue’s vision, hope and realism sustain us all as a new generation commits to completing our constitutional bridge. May our faith sustain us with the hope that when we are weak, we are strong.
From the start of 2024, Fr Frank Brennan SJ will serve as part of a Jesuit team of priests working within a new configuration of the Toowong, St Lucia and Indooroopilly parishes in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. Frank Brennan SJ is a former CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia (CSSA). Fr Frank’s latest book is An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge, Garratt Publishing, 2023 and his forthcoming book is ‘Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum’ (Connor Court, 2024).
[1] See https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/acu-voice-referendum-book-launch/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2lT1TbkNYD1P8aZpFwdBeNM53QpUPfMwDQ91Upngrf6CqIVIvYE1L9s30_aem_83ia5rcGrZCvOfOswdiTDg
[2] Open Letter to the Prime Minister and every Member of the House of Representatives and the Senate of the Commonwealth Parliament, 22 October 2023, available at https://ulurustatement.org/statement-for-our-people-and-country/
[3] https://www.ey.com/en_au/podcasts/change-happens/podcast-transcript-ey-change-happens-podcast—megan-davis
[4] Lowitja O’Donoghue, ‘Past Wrongs, Future Rights’, National Press Club Address, 29 January 1997 available at https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/journals/IndigLawB/1997/35.html
[5] https://capeyorkpartnership.org.au/noel-pearson-boyer-lecture-one/
[6] Garratt Publishing, 2023 (3 editions, February 2023, May 2023, July 2023)
[7] Connor Court Publishing, 2024.
[8] See https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/building-constitutional-bridges-in-conversation-with-frank-brennan
