Faith & Mission

MANY VOICES ONE COMMUNITY 

This reflection builds around the challenges presented to our College community by our Year 12 students. What a wonderfully rich theme they have chosen for 2023. ‘Many voices, one community’. At the surface level, deceptively simple. At a deeper level, so many challenges.

The challenge that I want to set myself, is to find as many gospel passages as I can that speak to the complexities of this theme. If you are a reader of these reflections, you might need to spray a little WD40 onto your brain cells to track the twists and turns of my interpretations.

Let me start with the gospel for the second Sunday in Lent. It is the story of the Transfiguration. Jesus takes three disciples to a high mountain and they are witness to the power of his transcendence. The gospel relates that ‘His face shone like the sun and His clothes became white as light’.

For modern readers, the story contains a powerful symbol of the continuity and connectedness of the Jewish and Christian faiths. Moses and Elijah appear conversing with Jesus.

The disciples want to capture the moment and memorialise it with the building of three tents. In response to their proposal, a cloud casts a shadow over them and a voice declares ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him."

The story ends with an example of what scripture scholars call the Messianic secret. As they descend the mountain, Jesus charges them to not tell anyone of what they have seen.

How does this story speak to our theme of ‘Many voices, one community’.

This story would have been preserved in the oral traditions of the early Christian community before being written down by the gospel writer. It seems to me that there were two reasons why early Christians considered it worthy of retelling. The first is that it affirmed their faith in the divine nature of Jesus and their Trinitarian understanding of God. 

The second reason could well have been a recognition of the divisiveness and tyranny that can arise when men and women claim to control Truth. At the time of Jesus, there were any number of examples of the tyranny and injustices that occur when humans declare themselves as gods.

In contrast, the voice from heaven invites the disciples into an encounter with Jesus. ‘Listen to him’. Listen to the truth that he speaks and the truth that he lives.

In our College, there are many voices. Intellectually, politically, sociologically and religiously these voices can be very divergent. Our Year 12 students are challenging us to find ways to build common unity in all this diversity. 

I feel that this story points to one way that this can be achieved. Recognise that there is a deep Truth to which we can all aspire. As well, recognise that the human ‘edifices’ we can be tempted to build to capture this truth as our own, can lead to divisiveness and injustice. 

I believe one explanation of the Messianic secret is that Jesus was inviting us to listen out for the truth from wherever it may come. To be open to see the truth in action from whomever is living it out. In the Gospel stories this might mean the Samaritan traveller, the Roman centurion, the crucified thief or the Phoenician woman. 

It is not easy to see unity with the ‘Samaritans’ in our lives, the oppressors, the criminal or the different. But that is exactly what our Year 12s are calling us to do.

Mr Mark Hyland

Director of Faith and Mission