‘Bearing noble witness’

Andrew Collis
Ordinary Sunday 15, Year B
Amos 7:7-15; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29

Standing up for what’s right and compassionate is to risk/live your life. Paranoid powers – gluttons and abusers like Herod – deeply resent social and political criticism, and prophets like John the Baptiser are undermined, ridiculed, imprisoned.

In the context of Mark’s gospel, the execution of John foreshadows the crucifixion, which will see Jesus the prophet in agony, abandoned by the Twelve, buried by a stranger. How noble, then, that John’s disciples “came and took [John’s] body away and laid it in a tomb”.

The icon of Amos depicts a prophet from the time of the divided kingdoms (800 years before Christ). Amos was a shepherd and farmer, unschooled and not one of the professional prophets of his day. He lived in the southern kingdom of Judea, in a town south of Jerusalem, where he experienced a call to go north. The king of the northern kingdom of Israel was Jeroboam, and Amos prophesied against the impiety and injustice of Jeroboam’s rule.

The prophet predicted (rightly as it turned out) that it would all end badly for the greedy and the violent. He was beaten and tortured for his troubles, struck on the head by an angry priest, before making his way back home where he succumbed to his injuries.

This is all hard to look at. And hard to bear. Scripture, writing, icon-writing, is one way to bear it. Which also means bearing witness.

In 1998 Paul Kelly penned a song called “Little Kings”: “I’m so afraid for my country/ …Every day I hear the warning bells/ They’re so busy building palaces/ They don’t see the poison in the wells/ In the land of the little kings/ Profit is the only thing/ And everywhere the little kings/ Are getting away with murder …”

It’s a song about Australia. In the context of a gospel about dancing, I think of the Bangarra company – bearing noble witness to love of country, kinship, survival.

In her review of Bangarra’s recent production Horizon, the South Sydney Herald’s theatre editor Catherine Skipper writes:

“Horizon is a fresh, exciting and invigorating performance from Bangarra. The company’s greatest achievement is its dancers, whose deep respect for the stories they are telling is impressive in this age of so-whatness.”

And so, we lament. We write, sing and dance – review, protest, create. Aware that every strong and hopeful word (including the Word of God, of course) is hard won (words become flesh become words become flesh), we celebrate together what is good and noble. Amen.