This afternoon I received, via email from the office of the National Council of Churches in Australia, the text of the official Easter messages from Australian church leaders.
The NCCA represents (or seeks to serve, depending on your perspective on ecclesiology) a very broad church. And it would be broader still if my ecclesial tradition, the Baptists, could agree among themselves on the wisdom of formal membership. Which they can’t, and won’t. Sigh.
I should point out that there is no Baptist statement among the Easter messages from the NCCA. This is not because Baptists don’t believe in Easter. Happily I have looked into the matter and the official Baptist Easter message will soon be posted on the website (www.baptist.org.au), and will appear as the next post to this on my blog.
Anyway, enough about Baptists. The point of this blog post is simply to share what I thought was the best of the church leaders’ statements – that by Uniting Church in Australia President Rev. Alistair Macrae, which I publish in full here:
I’ve just arrived back from a Church leaders’ delegation to Christmas Island Detention Centre where all asylum seekers arriving by boat are housed whilst awaiting refugee and security status checks. Many of them carry great anxiety not to mention the trauma that many have experienced before embarking on their journeys of hope.
It’s a fascinating place to reflect on the Easter message. The asylum seekers inhabit a sort of ‘Easter Saturday’ space. Many of them have experienced darkness, persecution, death of family members and friends. All are sustained by the hope that new life awaits them in this country. In the meantime they exist in an anxious, fearful space.
Pray for the asylum seekers, for the staff of the Detention Centre and for our government to implement policies and practices that are humane and hopeful.
And may each of us turn to God for hope, strength, courage and joy – the God who in Jesus lived our human life, shared our suffering and who rose again to reassure us in the words of St Paul: ‘I am certain there is nothing in life or in death, nothing in all of creation, that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’.
Rev Alistair Macrae, President, Uniting Church in Australia
