Elections and princes

Well, it’s election eve! The corflutes are sagging, P&CS everywhere are parboiling democracy sausages, and if you listen carefully, you can almost hear the collective sigh of a city that’s been campaign-adjacent for too long.

Canberra, of course, does elections like no other place in Australia. Caretaker mode for our city’s 70,000 APS workers looks like spending a few weeks penning an elaborate Choose Your Own Adventure novel (Will the teals force a minority government, and so we need to toughen up the NACC legislation? Turn to page 64. Will the Coalition take Bennelong, Gilmore, Lingiari, Lyons and Paterson, and so now we’re going Nuclear? Turn to page 34.)

For many of us the outcome is not just a game—it’s your boss, your project, your inbox next week. And for many in our church community, there’s a real and good sense of investment in what happens next.

But as the ballots are prepped and the pencils sharpened, it’s worth pausing for a curious little line from Psalm 146:

“Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save.”

Now, let’s be honest: I don’t think we’re in any real danger of idolising our modern “princes.” No one’s penning love poems to this year’s crop of candidates. There’s a distinct lack of soaring rhetoric or spine-tingling vision. If anything, it feels like most of us are going to the polls with all the emotional energy of someone renewing their driver’s licence.

But that’s exactly why this verse is still worth hearing.
The temptation to put our trust in princes doesn’t always look like uncritical hero-worship. Sometimes it’s just the low-key belief that if the right people win, then everything will be okay—and if the wrong ones do, then all hope is lost.

Which is where the gospel gently but firmly unhooks our hearts. We follow a risen King who wasn’t voted in and won’t be voted out. He’s not up for re-election. His throne isn’t under threat. And because of that, we’re free, not to disengage, but to engage without anxiety.

We can vote thoughtfully, serve diligently, advocate justly—and then sleep soundly. We can be politically active without being spiritually panicked. We can care, without clutching.
This is especially important in a place like Canberra, where the gears of government touch so many of our daily lives. Your work might be shaped by the outcome. You might feel elated or frustrated on Sunday morning. That’s all part of what it means to live in the world God made.

But whatever happens, our church remains a community gathered not by policy but by grace. We are a people who belong not to a party but to a kingdom. And that kingdom is unshakeable, even when the swing seats swing and the votes are counted.

So vote. Pray. Care. And then come on Sunday with all your post-election emotions in tow—hopeful, tired, maybe even grumpy. Jesus will still be Lord. And we’ll still be his people united in him.

grace and peace,

Steve

Francis and what follows

Catholics around the world have been mourning the death of Pope Francis and are watching the lead-up to the conclave that will elect his successor. Moments like this bring about a global consciousness of Catholicism (I’ll bet Amazon Prime were pleased they secured the rights to the movie Conclave!)

You might not think of it like this, but Canberra has, in the past, been a pretty Catholic town. Because of their church’s emphasis on service, many Catholics entered the APS and so we’ve had a catholic population above the national average. Even today, more than 1:5 Canberrans identified with the Catholic church in the most recent census and, no doubt, there are plenty of people who have grown up with Catholicism being the air they breathed, even as they no longer identify with the church.

All of this means there are going to be opportunities as we find ourselves talking about what’s going on in the world with our friends and colleagues to talk about the things raised by this global cultural moment, and from there to talk about the gospel. Let me suggest a few ways to have fruitful conversations (you might have more, and I’d love to hear them):  

1. Because our media landscape finds it difficult to categorise people on anything other than a political scale at the moment, lots of people have observed Francis’s passion for justice, the poor, and interfaith dialogue and assumed, therefore, that he’s woke or something. He’s a contrast to some gruffer, less empathic, equally legalistic strands of Christianity coming out of the US.

The gospel, of course, transcends our left-right distinctions. It is a whole other plane of existence. Paul writes to Titus:

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope – the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

The same gospel that offers you salvation teaches us to live self-controlled and upright lives (i.e conservative virtues) as well as to be redeemed and eager to do good (elsewhere equated with care for the poor) (i.e. progressive virtues). What this means is that, connected to Jesus, we hold our political preferences lighter than we hold our allegiance to Jesus.
 
2. I've already had a conversation in the last two days where someone has asked me the difference between Catholics and Protestants. The question was coming from a place of genuine curiosity, and so it's helpful to have that resource at hand to explain the difference. I really like this tiny little book called Freedom Movement (here’s a link to the full PDF), it’s a coffee-table book-sized explainer, which explains the difference and why it matters in a way that’s also joyful and hopeful.  

3. We can expect the process of selecting a successor to be fairly quick once the meeting starts. Part of the reason the process doesn't take so long anymore is because of a papal election that started way back in 1268 and didn’t finish until 1271. There was so much arguing, and the process was so gruelling that the cardinals were eventually locked in a room, their rations were reduced to bread and water, and the roof was removed, lest the Holy Spirit find it difficult to communicate to them through it!

I'm praying over the next few weeks that the catholic roof will be removed once more, and that they will wrestle with the beauty and freedom and freeness of the gospel and turn in faith to him.
 

grace and peace,

Steve

The spy at the table

So how about the head of ASIO saying that one of our former politicians was a foreign government asset? It was one of those announcements, in an otherwise routine speech that landed like a dead possum onto a picnic table – it had to be disposed of, but even when it’s gone its presence at all still puts you off your meal.
 
The whole thing has felt very last supper-y. Very, very quickly after the declaration, “one of you has betrayed us” former politicians fell over themselves,  from Joe Hockey down, to front the press and declare essentially “Surely not I Lord!”
  
There were high-minded explanations offered as to why the ASIO boss should come clean and just tell us who it was. “This person is still out in the open doing business, shouldn’t we be protected?” But Hockey was the most honest when he said, “The ASIO boss should name the culprit, lest all former politicians be smeared by association.” It’s a naked admission: “I have a legacy to protect. I don’t want to be besmirched by a blanket accusation!”
 
As we move towards Easter, I’ve been rereading some of the bits of the gospel stories that lead up to Jesus’ arrest. I am struck that after Jesus’ declaration, ‘Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.’ (Matthew 26:21) the disciples’ first move was to sure up their place at the table. None of them said “That’s terrible Jesus! How can we help you? How can we watch and pray so that we don’t fall into temptation?” Instead, they imagined a Guess Who board with every other disciple on it. They ranked the chances of each other disciple being the spy (with them at the end of the list, obvs). They became puffed up. They fell into the pride and self-confidence that meant they ran in the garden when the sight of swords and clubs saw their confidence punctured.
 
I’d like to think that the best that can come from something like this is that everyone with power in our city would hear the ASIO boss and think, “it could be me.” And watch. And pray.      
 

grace and peace,

Steve

Unplug

You might’ve heard this week that the Federal Government has landed a deal on new industrial relations laws which will entitle employees to be able to ignore texts and calls from their bosses outside of work hours.
 
Unions are annoyed that the bill won’t include penalties for employers who do reach out off-the-clock, while employer groups are concerned that this will impact on “flexible working.”
 
I’m struck that this legislation is being called “the right to disconnect” or “unplug laws.” I don’t know what kind of mental picture you get when you hear those titles, but it makes me think of the Matrix. It assumes that to work is to become tethered to our job, not so that it can give us life, but so that life can be drained from us to power the machine.
 
Rest, then, becomes a way to recharge ourselves, so that we have just enough energy to give to our jobs the next day. The argument, then, for these new laws is that 11pm work emails make us like our phones: constantly ripped off the charger before we’re off low-power mode.
 
The Bible gives us a much bigger picture of rest. Rest is not just instrumental – making it possible to do more work in the long run. Rest, at its best, exposes the whole image of being plugged as a fantasy.
 
All of us are haunted by the ‘work under the work’ —that deep need to prove and save ourselves, to gain a sense of worth and identity. This work under the work – the desire to gain power, approval, comfort or control through our work is why we’ve seen a steady chipping away of the work/non-work distinction over the last 50 years (and especially since the invention of the smart phone).
 
But the very fact of our need to sleep teaches us that the world will keep spinning on its axis whether we are toiling or not. Rest humbles us. Doubly so when our rest is paired with the gospel.
 
When the gospel and our rest meet, they show us that our attempts to do the work under the work are futile and that we can be free from the need to earn our salvation through our work. That on the cross Jesus worked and then finished his work. His finished work gifts us a deep reservoir of refreshment that continually rejuvenates us, restores our perspective, and renews our passion.
 
So I’m glad this legislation is going through. I hope it gifts us all a bit of brain-space to notice our smallness, and the Lord who lifts us up.

grace and peace,

Steve

Join in prayer

As we mentioned on Sunday, Renew is partnering with other churches around the City and around Australia in a national effort to introduce more people to Jesus called, helpfully, Meet Jesus.

We'll have more to say about what we're planning for that push in the next few weeks, but there's something you could be getting on with right now.

We are asking everyone in Renew to choose two friends and to pray for those two people for two minutes every day that they would come to know the Lord.

For some of us, that will sound like an easy ask, for others of us we're going to need some help with a project like that.

When to pray

How are you going to remember to pray like this? You know what will work best. For some it'll mean putting a repeating reminder in your phone to stop what you're doing and pray for those two minutes. For others, you might use habit-stacking (two minutes is, conveniently, the same amount of time you're meant to brush your teeth). Choose a strategy now and do what you need to do to remind yourself to start the habit.

What to pray

We've created a resource to give you different things to pray. It's a calendar of 31 topics you might like to pray through. It's not rigid, and there's plenty of other things you could pray for - but these are here to get you started if you're stuck. Click on the image below to download a printable PDF you can use.

You'll be joining with thousands of other Christians who are all praying the same thing for their two friends. I'm praying that tens of thousands of people would come to know the Lord across Australia this year and that the Lord would be pleased to use Renew to introduce our friends to Jesus in 2024.

grace and peace,

Steve