Back in September…

when construction workers, anti-vaxxers, and some far-right troublemakers…

engaged in violent protests in Melbourne against Victoria’s Covid-vaccine mandates…

videos of those clashes were widely shared in the United States…

and led to all sorts of rumours and conspiracy theories.

Scenes of riot police marching towards demonstrators were described as…

“grocery shoppers under attack in suburban Melbourne”.

There were reports that “secret government authorities” were trying to unplug the internet in Victoria…

accompanied by the plea:

“There are things about to happen that they don’t want the world to see. Pray for Australia”.

Not long after all of that began… 

hundreds of Americans gathered outside the Australian Consulate in New York…

to protest…

chanting, “Save Australia”.

But, unfortunately, it didn’t stop there.

It began to filter into the American “mainstream”––

well, to the extent that the ‘Right’ in the United States is “mainstream”.

The Republican governor of Florida––

Ron DeSantis––

suggested that the United States ought to cut diplomatic ties with Australia.

Reacting to reports of the Northern Territory’s vaccine mandate…

the Republican Senator––

Ted Cruz––

described the “Covid-tyranny” of its government as “disgraceful and sad”…

adding “liberty matters”…

and “I stand with the people of Australia”.

Tucker Carlson––

one of the stars of the “Fox News” television network––

told his audience… 
“When Americans think of Australia, they imagine a freer, tougher version of themselves…”

but…

“In Australia, the government has implemented total lockdowns nationwide and imposed martial law to enforce them”.

Other right-wing media commentators described the monitoring of people in home quarantine, here, as “Orwellian”…

and suggested that we live in “a police state”.

In fact, one conservative commentator––

Candace Owens–– 

compared Australia’s government to the Taliban…

and asked, “When do we invade Australia and free an oppressed people who are suffering under a totalitarian regime?”

 

It’s hard not to laugh!

Except, they really seem to believe it––

notwithstanding some degree of “virtue signalling”.

From our perspective, of course, it’s all rather idiotic.

While there are some illogicalities and inconsistencies…

in the covid-safe restrictions that we live under…

on the whole…

most of us support such measures to keep us safe;

and most of us support vaccine mandates, too.

And while we may not like the governments that we live under…

we would hardly describe them as “tyrannical”…

or compare them to the Taliban…

unless, of course, they do succeed in ramming through the proposed “Religious Discrimination Bill”.

But the American right-wing reaction to our Covid-safe practices is a distortion.

And, of course, it’s a distortion born of peculiarly American right-wing values and perspectives.

They’re interpreting it from their own worldview…

imposing their own values and beliefs…

to suit their own socio-cultural contexts…

and their own political agendas.

And that sort of socio-cultural distortion is described by anthropologists as “ethnocentrism”…

that is…

interpreting and judging an aspect of another culture in terms of my own culture;

where we impose our values onto what other people think or do.

Think about, for example, the early white settlers in Australia…

who assumed that they could take the land for themselves…

because they observed no system of ownership…

or no markings indicating boundaries…

with which they were familiar.

And we humans have been doing that sort of imposing throughout history.

We have tried to understand foreign people––

people not our own––

according to our beliefs, values, and practices…

dismissing as ‘primitive’, beliefs and explanations that were different;

or rejecting practices and values that didn’t conform to our own.

And, of course…

it almost goes without saying…

that we have done that, as well, in the whole area of religion.

We have judged and dismissed religious beliefs…

values…

customs…

and practices…

that are different from our own.

 

In recent weeks, we have been working our way through the book of Hebrews.

And, I’ll be the first to admit, it’s been fairly hard work.

The material is very repetitive.

That reflects a certain cultural and linguistic style.

But it also operates out of a cultural and religious worldview…

that we don’t share.

The intricacies of the operation of the Jerusalem Temple…

are not something that informs our religious worldview.

So the author’s fascination with them should…

quite rightly…

produce something of a “ho-hum” response.

And, of course, his image of Jesus as a High Priest who intercedes with God…

for us…

is not something that probably sits well for many of us…

metaphysically or theologically.

And, while I understand why the author does it––

after all, I am a New Testament scholar––

I don’t find it personally edifying.

And, then, of course, there’s his huge fascination with the whole issue of sacrifice.

I know some of you are struggling with that too.

Don’t worry, so am I.

And, in a sense… 

that frustration and that struggle…

seem to reach a peak with this morning’s reading.

Here…

in our reading…

perhaps more so than in any other piece in the New Testament…

we do seem to find support for what––

for many of us––

is the “traditional” understanding of the death of Jesus;

namely, that he died a sacrificial death…

so that our sin could be forgiven:

“He has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself”;

or… 

that Christ was “offered once to bear the sins of many”. 

 

And yet…

as I mentioned in my last sermon on Hebrews…

his whole discussion about sacrifice…

to this point…

is actually concessional.

It’s seeking to meet his readers where they are in their beliefs…

and move them somewhere else.

Because the bottom line–– 

for this author––

is his powerful statement in the next chapter… 

that God does not want nor need sacrifice;

that God does not want nor need sacrifice in order to forgive us…

or to cleanse us from sin.

Period.

The fact that we think that God does;

the fact that we have constructed whole liturgical and dogmatic systems towards that end…

is…

ultimately…

a distortion.

It’s a distortion of the nature of God.

It’s us imposing our socio-cultural beliefs and values onto God.

It’s us creating a God in our own image…

and imputing to God our most base and ignoble tendencies.

We have imagined that God requires sacrifices in order to forgive…

because forgiveness for us––

like love––

is so often seen as conditional, not un-conditional.

We struggle to comprehend a God who would love––

and who would forgive––

without strings attached…

because…

for most of us…

throughout history…

that has not been our experience––

either individually or collectively.

So, in a sense, the author is suggesting that Jesus had to die…

in order to save us from the belief that we needed a sacrifice…

so that we could be forgiven and saved.

 

And, only now––

with that out of the way––

can God actually save us.

It’s only once we get rid of the notion that we have to do something––

or even believe or accept something––

in order to be forgiven, loved, and set free…

that we’re actually in a position to know true forgiveness…

love…

and freedom.

Jesus bears our sin and takes it away––

and opens forgiveness for us––

not by dying…

but…

by showing us… 

that a sacrificial death was never needed to do that in the first place.