Anglican Diocese of Perth

Northern Region

Bishop Farran's Sermons 2004

A sermon preached at Yokine and Yanchep parishes
on Pentecost 10 2004
(Based on Luke 12:32-40)

I have just returned to Perth after ten days intensive Grandfather experience with my fourteen month old grandson, Oscar. Oscar lives in Central Queensland in the small town of Theodore, population 500. Theodore is about two and a half hours drive, west of Rockhampton.

Oscar’s father, Steve, is a mining engineer who is working on the re-opening of an old gold mine at Cracow, about 50 kms from Theodore. Cracow once had a population of 3,000 people; now there are 25 in a ghost town without sewage and running water.

My daughter Elizabeth is Oscar’s mother. Oscar is our only grandchild although he will have a brother or sister in early December. You can imagine that staying in a small Queenslander house in a very small town provided me with much uninterrupted time to be a grandfather. It was a wondrous experience, especially at nappy-changing times when I felt that full responsibility lay with Oscar’s mother!

The additional joy of those ten days that ended on Friday last was observing the wonderful love that my daughter gave as a mother to her very active, inquisitive and delightful son. Elizabeth had endless patience, sustained attentiveness, loving care and great delight in her offspring. It was truly awe-inspiring to be with her and to experience once again the degree of self-giving in love that I am now once more aware that Robin gave to our three children.

Of course, this self-giving love was reciprocated in charmingly innocent and delightful ways by young Oscar himself. His zest for living, his joy in discovery and exploration, his imitation of others, his new skills were life-giving to his observers, especially to me as I looked on him in wonder that he was indeed my grandson. The simplicity of the child’s giving was infectious and captivating. It brought joy to my heart, and that in itself stimulated further self-giving on my part and raised my delight in life too.

I probably am not telling anything new to any of you who are grandparents, especially if you are grandparents of long-standing. You have to forgive my intoxication with my reverie, yet it has made me all the more aware of the power of giving. Giving of love, of presence, of attention, of care, of interest seem all the more essential when you experience first-hand the sustained company of an infant who throws himself at life.

Now I had this intense experience living with Oscar and his parents for ten uninterrupted days, totally sharing their daily lives. This experience although in a small town and although in a house on stilts that resembled a rectangular shoe-box was an experience of affluent self-giving. Whilst I was enjoying this grand experience, I was reading the biography of a famous Chinese ballet dancer who grew up in China but defected to the West and as it turned out, his second marriage is to a woman who grew up in Rockhampton.

The caption on the cover of the autobiography, Mao’s Last Dancer, reads “from bitter poverty to the stardom of the West -this is the extraordinary true story of one boy’s great courage and determination”. Li Cunxin narrates the sacrificial self-giving of his mother who was the pivot around which his large family of seven boys clustered for their well-being.

AMealtimes in my family were always sad for my [mother]. There was often nothing for her to cook. We would look at what little food there was on the wooden tray and, out of respect for our elders, always wait for our [father] to start. One day when my [mother] served dinner, it was clear that there was not enough food for everyone.

‘I don’t feel hungry’, our [father] said casually. ‘I had rather a big lunch today. You go ahead.’


Each of us had our chopsticks in hand, ready to swarm on the food. But we hesitated. Our [mother] gave my [father] an annoyed look and said, “Don’t you dare not eat! Your health is our entire family’s security. We will only be drinking water if you starve yourself to death!’

The two experiences of self-giving by mothers in two very different cultures and circumstances affected me deeply and put me in touch again with the central characteristic of Christian faith - giving. Giving distinguishes the Christian understanding of God from all others. For the disclosure by Jesus is that God gives sacrificially of Godself to us. Indeed, Jesus himself is the incontestable evidence of this divine self-giving.

Other religions emphasise what human beings are required to give to God; Christianity discloses and is centred upon what God gives to humankind. Think of the central tenet of Islam -submission to God, hence, the Muslim prayer posture of physical submission. Islam teaches that God requires your submission, the giving of yourself absolutely. There is no indication that God gives to humankind in relationship or that God submits to humankind, as is the evidence from the life and suffering of Jesus.

Popular folk religion that is the religion of most Australians thinks of us giving to God, bargaining with God (especially in crises), wanting to extract from God (protection or welfare or our own desires). There is no concomitant suggestion that God gives to us in a relationship of love or friendship, as Jesus indicated and embodied.

Giving creates life and liveliness. This we observe from the interaction between loving mothers and their children. I am emphasising mothers because of the constancy of time that mothers usually spend with their infants, although in today’s culture fathers are likely to be house-husbands and thus the primary carer of infants. The self-giving of the primary carer generates life and liveliness.

Why is it then that giving is not characteristic of everyone? Why is it that hoarding or self-protection seems on the increase, and our culture is more intolerant, more aggressive, less altruistic, more isolationist?

What is it that enables self-giving rather than self-defensive behaviour, behaviour that is against others rather than for others? Indeed, do you detect in your own behaviour a lessening of self-giving and an increase in self-protection or isolation or indifference to others?

Please do not think me judgmental in posing these questions, for I put them to myself as well. However, I notice the level of road-rage or rage of any kind (apparently even amongst surf-board riders now despite the idyllic ocean), and I wonder whether we are experiencing a drought in self-giving. And if we are experiencing such a drought, what is the cause?

Let me suggest a possible cause for the onset of this drought of self-giving.

We know from social research the tight influence of a parent’s behaviour upon the children. Thus we know that if an adult has been abused as a child it is more than possible that such an adult will abuse his or her own children, even though they know first-hand the terrible pain of such abuse. This seems perverse and absurd, yet it is simply an indicator of the power of socialisation within families.

Families provide us with the context in which we learn how to be human; indeed, the process seems more powerful than that, it seems as if we absorb or soak up (much like a blotter) what it is to be human from our parents. So destructive behaviours or attitudes can be perpetuated within families unless there is early intervention and the family engages in therapy that enables each member to behave more appropriately to the others.


You are more than likely familiar with this information. Yet, if you are like me, you continue poor or bad behaviour, especially when you are stressed or tired. So words or actions that usually do not irritate you do so when you are stressed or tired. These are the times when arguments develop, self-giving shrivels, and domestic world wars break out!

Good behaviour is possible when our attraction to another who models good behaviour is strong. So wild men are tamed by women who are for those former wild men sources of love and grace. I know that my attitudes have been raised to more loving levels by influential loving others, especially at critical developmental times in my life. Even more than human others has been the influence of the love of Jesus upon my attitudes.

My experience is that when I am mindful of Jesus, especially his social behaviour and teaching, I am the more likely to be self-giving, more generous in understanding, more compassionate than when I ruminate on what has gone wrong for me. The trick or skill is to remember to reflect on Jesus and not simply to become enmeshed in rehearsing or holding onto my own personal miseries!

My piece of personal disclosure may provoke your own introspection to detect when and what shrivels up your self-giving. I think that I need constant socialisation into the life of Jesus, into the self-giving of God, in order to become fully who I am and not to be psychologically short-circuited and impoverished into being a complainer or a withholder. Hence, my need for worship (for exposure to God), and for the reinforcement of the love in the Christian community.

Giving is at the heart of God. Giving is what Jesus (as the fullest disclosure of God that we have) is all about. Life too is about giving, especially about self-giving. This is a nice coalescence of the natural and the revealed.

However, withholding (not giving) diminishes us as persons, and leads to all kinds of unhappinesses that erode quality of life. Yet we lurch into withholding as a default position, mostly because we are not sufficiently socialised into the real nature of being human that Jesus has revealed.

So the text at the heart of the gospel piece from Luke, “Little flock, it is my Father’s pleasure to give you the Kingdom”. And Jesus is the substance of that Kingdom and of that giving.

If we fail to understand and to identify with this self-giving we live with another view of life that understands life as something requiring our aggression as a defence-mechanism and that demands our self-protection. In other words, our bad behaviour is a direct consequence of our bad understanding of the essential nature of being human, that is, that we are beings whose fulfilment lies in self-giving in imitation of the Creator God who is all self-giving.

However, if we disbelieve that God is all self-giving, then we imitate that alternative perception and so live out our version of God’s character. This version might be a vengeful or disinterested or whatever we think it to be God. But the version most likely will not be as moral or as loving as the revelation of God in Jesus’ own behaviour and living.

I think that the rage and coarse behaviour that is enveloping our culture is due to our realization that life is harsh and brutal and merciless. Indeed, we are saturated each night with television pictures of that degree of brutality.

What we must remember constantly is that such images are not the final reality, although they do press upon us. The final reality is God’s reality, and that is not a violent brutalising reality.

Let me propose that the writer, Andrew Elphinstone, has it right when he suggests that through Jesus “God is making an atonement towards [humankind] for all that God’s desired creation costs [humankind] in the making: that God was making love’s amends to all those who feel, and have felt, that they cannot forgive God for all the pains which life has foisted, unwanted, upon them?”

Andrew Elphinstone thought of God as the ultimate beneficent giver - the One who never needing forgiveness stooped to invite our forgiveness so that we might the more easily be drawn into God’s love and life. If we were more mindful of such graciousness, we could live more graciously, and be the more giving.

And by our giving evoke self-giving from others, just as a young infant simply enjoying being alive evokes further self-giving from those who observe the infant and are fascinated by the sheer joy they encounter.

Therefore, as Jesus says, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s pleasure to give you the Kingdom”. For the truth is that God is all self-giving, and we can be socialised into this generous life-style too and thus express even partially now the behaviours of the Kingdom, mercy, justice, compassion and self-giving.