These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Matthias, Simon, Jude,  apostles

Matthias filled the place left vacant by Judas Iscariot after his betrayal of Jesus subsequent demise (Acts 1:23-26). Peter depicts his death as foreshadowed in scripture and then points to the need to replace him as apostle with someone who had been with them throughout Jesus’ ministry. “So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias” (Acts 1:23). Having prayed, they cast lots, and Matthias was chosen. The author, Luke, assumes that praying and doing the equivalent of tossing a coin would achieve the desired outcome. We hear nothing more of Matthias. Luke’s story of Matthias reflects his view that there were (and needed to be) twelve apostles, almost certainly as symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel. Limiting who could be called an apostle to the twelve stands in some tension with Paul’s view, who claimed also to be an apostle (1 Cor 9:1). In his day some denied his right to be so, possibly because they understood “apostle” as Luke or Luke’s source had done, although Luke also knew stories which called Paul and Barnabas “apostles” (14:14). Otherwise we know nothing of Mattias except for sayings attributed to him as part of a Gospel or Tradition of Matthias believed to have been composed early in the second century.

Simon, named as one of the twelve disciples, is sometimes called the “Cananean”, an Aramaic word (Matt 10:4; Mark 3:18), which Luke translates as “Zealot” (Luke 6:13; Acts 1:13). A group called “Zealots” were part of the uprising against Rome in Jerusalem which Rome crushed in 70 CE, but the term could also be used for zealous devout Jews, although readers of the gospels which appeared after 70 CE may well have understood him to have been a sympathiser with those who resisted Rome. He is not to be confused with Simon Peter, Simon the brother of Jesus (Mark 6:3), Simon of Cyrene (Mark 15:21), Simon the magician (Acts 8:9), or Simon the tanner (Acts 9:43).

Jude (also called Judas) was one of Jesus’ brothers along with James (Jacob), Joses (Joseph), and Simon (Simeon, not “the Zealot”). He is not to be confused with the two disciples with that name among the twelve: Judas Iscariot and “Judas, son of James” (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13; John 14:22), nor with Judas of Damascus (Acts 9:11), nor with “Judas called Barsabbas” (Acts 15:22). Mark tells us that he and his family once wanted to take Jesus home because they thought he was beside himself (3:20-21) and that his family did not accept him (6:4). The image of Jesus’ family in Matthew and Luke is more positive. Eventually we find his brother James running the church in Jerusalem, but also Jude being attributed with leadership and penning the Letter of Jude. He may have done so, although many conclude that it was more likely written in his name much later like the Letter attributed to James.

William Loader

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Dorothy Soelle, Christian thinker

“God, your Spirit renews the face of the earth.
Renew our hearts also
And give us your spirit of lucidity and courage.
For the law of the Spirit
Who makes us alive in Christ
Has set us free from the law of resignation.
Teach us how to live
With the power of the wind and of the sun
And to let other creatures live.”
~ Dorothee Soelle

Dorothee Soelle was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1929.  As a child she played no personal role in the rise and fall of the Third Reich; she was fifteen when the war ended.  But as revelations unfolded about the full extent of the Nazi crimes she was filled with an “ineradicable shame”: the shame of “belonging to this people, speaking the language of the concentration camp guards, singing the songs that were also sung in the Hitler Youth.”  Her young adulthood was spent reflecting on the great question of her generation: How could this have happened?  The hollow answer of the older generation, that “we didn’t know what was happening,” impressed on her the duty to question authority, to rebel, and to remember “the lessons of the dead.”

The moral and existential challenge of her times led Soelle to study philosophy and, later, theology.  She was one of the principal authors of the so-called “political theology” – an effort to counter the privatized and spiritualized character of “bourgeois” religion through the subversive memory of Jesus and his social message.  In light of the Holocaust she was particularly critical of a “superficial understanding of sin” largely confined to personal morality.  “Sin,” she wrote, “has to do not just with what we do, but with what we allow to happen.”  Her initial challenge was to develop a “post-Auschwitz theology,” an understanding of God who does not float above history and its trauma but who shares intimately in the suffering of the victims.  Such an understanding of God defined, in turn, a new meaning of Christian discipleship.

A true prophet, Soelle did not simply denounce the way things were, but looked forward to a “new heaven and a new earth.”  Her theology was inflected with poetry and drew on her wide reading of literature and her love of music and art.  She bore four children from a first marriage.  The experience of motherhood strengthened her hope for the future, while reminding her that pain and joy are inextricably combined in the struggle for new life.  She met her second husband, at the time a Benedictine monk, when they collaborated as organizers of a “Political Evensong” in Cologne.  Beginning in 1968, this ecumenical gathering of Christians joined to worship and reflect on scripture in light of the political challenges of the day – whether the Vietnam War, human rights, or the campaign for social justice.

It became a hugely popular event, regularly drawing up to a thousand participants.  The gatherings were controversial, however.  Their notoriety was among the factors that prevented Soelle – despite her thirty books – from ever receiving a full professorship in a German university.

Nevertheless, from 1975 to 1987 she spent six months each year as a professor of systematic theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York.  It was a particularly fruitful time for her, as she broadened her theological perspective in dialogue with feminism, ecological consciousness, and third-world liberation theologies.  She also continued to translate her theology into political activism – in solidarity with embattled Christians in Central and South America, in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and in particular in resisting the nuclear arms race.

The decision of NATO in 1979 to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Europe made her decide “to spend the rest of my life in the service of peace.”  She was arrested several times for civil disobedience and was tireless in challenging the churches to take action against what she saw as preparations for a new global holocaust.  In an address to the Geneva Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1983 she began, “Dear sisters and brothers, I speak to you as a woman from one of the richest countries of the earth.  A country with a bloody history that reeks of gas, a history some of us Germans have not been able to forget.”  It was this experience that impelled her to raise a cry of alarm.  Never again should a generation of Christians employ the excuse that “we didn’t know” about plans and preparations for mass murder.

In her later writings she increasingly spoke of the need to join mysticism and political commitment.  She defined mysticism not as a new vision of God, “but a different relationship with the world – one that has borrowed the eyes of God.”  Soelle died on April 17, 2003, at the age of seventy-three

Robert Ellsberg

These weekly “People to Commemorate” posts are a kind of calendar for the commemoration of the saints, reproduced here from a Uniting Church Assembly document which can be found in full here. They are intended for copying and pasting into congregational pew sheets on the Sunday closest to the nominated date.

Images (where provided) are of icons by Peter Blackwood; click on the image to download a high resolution copy of the image.

Fred McKay, faithful servant

Fred McKay was a great Australian with a record of achievement and service, both within the life of the Church and across the wider Australian community, that would be difficult to surpass.  Like Rev John Flynn before him, Fred became a legend in the inland for breaking down the vast ‘tyranny of distance’ for people living in isolation. Whereas Flynn became known for creating a “Mantle of Safety” across the inland, McKay became known for creating a “Mantle of Caring”.

When Flynn died in 1951, Fred succeeded his old boss as Superintendent of the Australian Inland Mission of the Presbyterian Church (AIM), and served in that role for 23 years. His achievements in that time were incredible! Among them included the personal supervision of the building of the three main Uniting Church facilities in Alice Springs – the John Flynn Memorial Church, St Philip’s College and the initial building of the Old Timers Aged Care Home. There were nine new hospitals opened throughout these years, as well as pre- schools and hostels, and he played a major role in the planning and developing of Karratha in Western Australia, as the AIM sought to find creative ways of ministering to the burgeoning mining communities of the Pilbara.

He was Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in NSW and in 1970 began a three year term as Moderator General of the Presbyterian Church of Australia. When the Uniting Church came into being in 1977 he played a critical role in resolving some of the thorny property issues in NSW and with the division of assets of the AIM. Together with a team of negotiators he travelled to many locations in the state helping to determine which property would become part of the Uniting Church and which would be part of the Continuing Presbyterian Church. It was a tough time and called on all of Fred’s considerable negotiating skills.

Throughout his long life Fred McKay was regarded as a friend and confidante by thousands of Australians from all walks of life. He died aged 92 in March, 2000, in Richmond, NSW, and at his funeral service, and at subsequent memorial services held across the country, he was honoured by Prime Ministers and Governors General, parliamentarians, corporate and ecclesiastical leaders, battlers from the Outback, as well as members of the Australian Armed Forces who served overseas in World War 2. All regarded Fred as a personal friend, and he was their friend too, for he had genuine love of people and the great gift of making a person feel like the most important person in the world.

A great Australian he might have been, but he first and foremost a ‘man of God’. Born in 1907, one of nine surviving children, he grew up on a sugar cane and dairy farm near Walkerston in North Queensland. Throughout his life he had a strong sense of destiny and a powerful awareness of the Call of God on his life. When he was six years old he suffered a ruptured appendix and developed peritonitis which the doctor said was inoperable. His mother begged the doctor to operate and leaning over the bed said, “God, if you let my boy live, I will make him a minister for you”. Fred survived the complicated surgery and never wavered in carrying out his part in the covenant his mother made with God.

He attended Thornburgh College in Charters Towers, becoming school captain, and then attended Emmanuel College within the University of Queensland in Brisbane, graduating in 1932 with a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Divinity. He had the opportunity of studying for his Doctorate at the University of Edinburgh, but his destiny took a dramatic turn after meeting John Flynn. While working as a Home Missionary at Southport on the Gold Coast in 1933 he was visited by Flynn, and while sitting on the beach sifting sand through his fingers and talking about the Flying Doctor, Flynn famously said: “You know, Fred, the sand out at Birdsville is a lot lovelier than this!”

After much soul searching, he agreed, thus beginning one of the great stories of Christian ministry in inland Australia. He was ordained in December, 1935, and appointed to the vast Western Queensland Patrol centred on the Flying Doctor Base at Cloncurry, a patrol area of 452,000 square kilometres, and covering some of the toughest and most inhospitable country in Australia. Fred cut his teeth in ministry here!  He arrived in Cloncurry in April 1936 and on his first patrol conducted an informal Church service to 17 perspiring shearers in a woolshed on Devoncourt Station. Fred would later say that he had no church, no home and no set program, but if someone died, or needed help with their children’s lessons, he would get a call on the radio and respond. He came to love the people!

Fred married Margaret Robertson in 1938 and together they forged one of the great ministry partnerships, with ‘Meg’, as she became known, bringing her own gifts and abilities as a nursing sister whenever they went out on patrol. They stayed five years before the war intervened and Fred joined the Armed Forces, becoming a revered RAAF chaplain in the Middle East and Europe. Fred had two brothers who also became ministers, and his brother Les would later take up the Western Queensland patrol for the AIM. After the war Fred was minister at Toowong for four years having the opportunity to spend time with Meg and their growing family. Together they raised four children: Margaret, Ruth, Bruce and Elizabeth. He was nominated as John Flynn’s successor in 1950 and became the second Superintendent of the AIM in November 1951, following Flynn’s death in May. Upon retiring from the AIM in January, 1974, he spent seven years as assistant minister at St Stephen’s in Sydney.

At the General Assembly of 1973, as he prepared to retire both as Moderator General and as Superintendent of the AIM, the new chairman of the AIM Board, Rev Colin McKeith, said of Fred:

“…a fortunate man in that he was blessed with so many talents: – a very effective witness for Christ, a leader among men, a business man of the highest calibre, a Public Relations expert with very few peers. And this had been all placed at the disposal of the AIM, so the Church owed him a great deal”.

Fred McKay was honoured on three separate occasions by Her majesty the Queen, with an MBE in 1953, an OBE in 1965, and the CMG in 1972. He received an AC in 1999.

Reference: “Outback Achiever” Fred McKay, Successor to Flynn of The Inland, by Maisie McKenzie, Boolarong Press, Moorooka, Qld, 1997

 John Lamont