How this journey will work itself out, we do not yet fully know. Like our common father Abraham, to some extent we begin a journey into the unknown. Let me however offer three important reasons for doing so...
Firstly, we have begun our Journey of Promise because, whatever our religion, race, background or culture, we are Australian. For, despite the tragic sins of our history, there is something particularly Australian about journeying towards a new promise. Indeed, we begin our Journey of Promise by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians of this land, and their care and stewardship of this land for so many thousands of years. They, in one sense, are the hosts to all of us later ones, as we seek to travel on together into the promise of a new Australia: a journey in which we may find greater hope and healing for us all. And this is why Indigenous stories and Indigenous experience will be a central part of our time together on the Journey of Promise, as we travel towards the promise of God for our land. This is an Australian journey then, arising specifically moreover out of our Australian National Dialogue of Christians, Muslims and Jews (a dialogue taking place through our three national peak bodies: the National Council of Churches in Australia, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry). This has been meeting over the past two years, and was formally launched in March of 2003. The Journey of Promise enables a new step to be taken in broadening that Dialogue, and the relationships it is nurturing, as young Jews, Muslims and Christians take us forward into a deeper path of understanding.
Secondly, we begin this Journey of Promise in the search for greater peace and harmony in our nation and our world. Indeed, perhaps it is appropriate that our first full gathering, at the Eid Ul-Fitr festival, is also the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. For we live in very violent times, don't we? Indeed, I myself work for the NCCA (National Council of Churches in Australia) in developing what the Churches across the world have called the Decade to Overcome Violence. This is an initiative which calls churches, with others, to seek greater peace and reconciliation, and the Journey of Promise is a vital symbol of that. For one of the major causes of violence in our world is religious misunderstanding and the misuse and abuse of religion. Religion we know has frequently been used as a justification for oppressing, and even destroying, others: as in the Christian crusades and pogroms of the past of which the churches today are so ashamed and seek to repent. Each of our religious faiths has been used, and is still sometimes used, as a tool of violence, rather than a means of peace. Yet at the heart of each of our great faiths there is in the vision of, and call to, God's peace. Each of our great religions therefore has something to teach the world about how we may find and nurture that larger peace: not just tolerating, but truly valuing our different religious identities, and celebrating our different positive insights into God.
For, thirdly, finally, and most importantly of all, we begin this Journey of Promise not just because we want to discover what Australia is and can be, and what peace is, or can be. We begin this journey to discover more about ourselves and our beliefs...
25.11.03
