Under the Southern Cross

I was a nine-year-old boy in 1973, when ‘Advance Australia Fair’ was adopted as our new national anthem, to replace ‘God save the Queen’. It had been part of a nationwide conversation about which song should be the new anthem, along with two other contenders, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘The Song of Australia’. Being young and silly, I thought ‘Waltzing Matilda’, such a good footy song, should have been picked. Alas, my youthful astuteness did not win through. It wasn’t until 1984 that ‘Advance Australia Fair’ definitively became our national anthem.

As I’m sure you know, the first verse of ‘Advance Australia Fair’. It begins:

Australians all let us rejoice,
For we are one and free …

The second verse, not so well known, commences:

Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
We’ll toil with hearts and hands …

Both of these lyrics convey a similar sentiment: that Australia is to be seen as a unified nation, made up of diverse parts. We are ‘one’ nation, yet ‘many’ peoples; we come together under the same sky, but labour in a variety of ways. To borrow a musical image, we are to be a unified orchestra, comprising many instruments working together. Or better, we are to be one Body, of many parts, as St Paul wrote.

Australia is an ancient land, with a long and deep history. The light in the sky is different here, and the flora and fauna unique to us. We are a people of peoples—Indigenous, migrant, multicultural—a mix of age-old sovereignty with modern nationhood, at times uncomfortably lived, but also strongly yearned-for and chosen. I have travelled to most parts of the world and lived in a number of other nations, but I always wish to return to these shores. For all our struggles and disagreements, I am glad to call Australia home.

As Jesus came home to Nazareth in the early part of his mission, to speak with his own people, he, too, carried that sense of belonging to a people and a history. That people, the Jewish nation, who—as we heard in the first reading—had come back to their land from exile, first needed to listen to their story. Ezra read from the Law, Jesus from the Prophet.

In both cases, the people were given a taste of the story of their nation, formed under and with God; they were given the story that made them God’s Chosen People. And in both cases, the people were brought into this story so as to see themselves as belonging to it—they listened to get a sense of its meaning, and their eyes were fixed on the One who gave to them its meaning.

These people needed to hear of their mixed story, and to understand it under God’s embrace. We need to do the same. In hearing from Christ, who comes to speak with us in our place, our home, we can hear an account of all that he has done for us. Our corresponding task is to become witnesses to this, bringing the people home.

We live, in radiant privilege, under the sign of the Southern Cross. God, in Christ, shines upon us. It is with God that we can move ahead as the People of this ancient land and newish nation. We need a guiding light to do this. Let me say, that light is already before us, symbolically, in the sky above. If we are willing to fix our eyes on him who made of that cross a glorious hope for all, he will provide us with a true compass to point for us the way.