Confessing our Church’s Colonial Captivity
A sermon by Rev. John Bottomley
Phillippians 2: 5-11
Passion Sunday
13 April 2025
Springvale Uniting Church
Francis Ormond (1829-1889) arrived in the Victorian colony in 1840 aged 11 years old. At age 25, he took over his father’s 12,000 plus hectare property, producing the finest merino wool for export to the rapidly growing woollen mills in industrialising England. He later expanded his property holdings in western Victoria, and then made further purchases in the colony of New South Wales. A Scottish Presbyterian, Ormond established a city mansion in Toorak by 1876, and helped found the Toorak Presbyterian Church, where he became an elder.
In 1872, Ormond made his first endowment to a scholarship fund for the theological education of Presbyterian ministers, followed by a 300 pound donation to the proposed Presbyterian college for theological training in the University of Melbourne. He went on to fund the completion of the original building by 1881, contributing over forty thousand pounds to this building, later known as Ormond College.
Ormond’s special interest was the education of working men, and he worked for and contributed twenty thousand, five hundred pounds to the foundation of the Working Men’s College in 1887, later RMIT. Ormond also contributed to the foundation of the Gordon Institute of Technology in Geelong, and twenty thousand pounds to establish the Ormond chair of music at the University of Melbourne. He was active in colonial politics, representing the South-Western province in the Victorian Legislative Council for six years in the 1880’s.
So how does St Paul’s Philippians’ reading for this last Sunday in Lent, Passion Sunday, speak to the storied career of industrialist, philanthropist and churchman, Francis Ormond? By the second century, Lent had taken on a focus for renewing church members by confessing our sins and ‘giving up’ those behaviours which harmed the community because they betrayed the Spirit of Christ. It is this focus that brings Paul’s words to the Philippians into focus in our lectionary for this last Sunday in Lent: ‘Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus’ (v.5)
How do we know the mind that was in Christ Jesus? The Presbyterian Church of the late nineteenth century may have seen the mind of Christ in the generosity of Francis Ormond, electing him to the position of elder at Toorak, and gratefully accepting his donations for the development of the theological education of its ministers through a magnificent college building and financial support for its theological hall. But in contrast to Ormond’s accumulation of wealth, and philanthropy, Paul sees in Christ a drastically different mind. The mind that was in Christ ‘who, though he was in the form of God’, Paul says, ‘did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself’ (vv.6, 7a).
What is it Christ emptied himself of? Paul couldn’t be clearer about what Christ had emptied of himself. The word ‘Christ’ means ‘messiah’ or ‘God’s anointed’. So to come into the world in ‘human form’ (v.7) as Jesus of Nazareth, the messiah emptied himself of the divinity that Paul believed was rightly Christ’s, as God’s anointed. When God wanted to turn around the mess we humans were making of the world and each other, God’s anointed chose to be ‘born in human likeness’ (v.7).
Paul’s point is that the mind that was in Christ Jesus did not grasp after status or power. Christ chose not to cling to his equality with God to live amongst us in ‘human form’. This marks a contrast with Ormond’s life, which was not lived by emptying himself, but by the accumulation of wealth, status and power. After all his philanthropy, when death came in 1879, Francis Ormond’s estate was worth almost two million pounds, his wealth accumulated from his pastoralist investment in livestock and land, land that was never ceded by its First Nations custodians and which Ormond leased from colonial powers, land that was first stolen from the Indigenous Wadawurrung people of Western Victoria, and later from colonial land seizures that dispossessed a number of Indigenous tribes in NSW.
How different the mind of Christ is to the wealth, power and status-accumulating foundations of the Australian Christianity symbolised by the nineteenth century pastoralist, Francis Ormond. Paul then says that in emptying himself to take human form, Christ took ‘the form of a slave…And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross’ (vv.7,8). It can be hard for us to grasp how offensive this statement would have been to Roman ears in Paul’s time. The thought that a roman god would become human was preposterous enough. But to think that a god would come to earth in the form of a slave and then be crucified by the Roman state is beyond belief. Roman citizens were not to be crucified. Crucifixion was a form of punishment reserved primarily for slaves and criminals.
So to proclaim the mind of God’s anointed is a mind that embraces giving up the power of a god, to take on the status of a slave, and to choose death on a cross rather than engage in violent military resistance is an absolute travesty of everything the ideal Roman male stands for. Such a figure in Roman eyes was to be covered in shame, no longer human, indeed, more to be regarded as an animal than human. It runs completely counter to the Roman masculine ideal of what it means to be a ‘real Man’. So, for the Philippians to take on the mind of Christ challenges the beliefs at the core of the identity and security of establishment Roman society. Paul urges his Philippian congregation to be in solidarity with Roman slaves. As Paul himself was. Because while writing to the Philippians, Paul was in prison in Rome, the capital of the empire, in prison for preaching God’s love is for all humankind. The Roman empire was mightily upset with this emerging new faith.
Paul believed God’s love had called him through his encounter with the risen Christ on the Damascus’ road to give up his privileged status in the Jewish elite as a pharisee and to take up Christ’s ministry in solidarity with those dehumanised and enslaved by the Roman imperial project. Contrast this with Francis Ormond’s embodiment of the British empire’s colonial project in his accumulation of wealth from his pastoral enterprise at the cost of dispossessing First Nations people of their country, a pastoral enterprise which rewarded Ormond with a seat in Victoria’s colonial parliament, an estate worth millions, the grandeur of his portrait hanging today in Ormond College, his status at RMIT, his bust at the Gordon Institute, and the suburb of Ormond named after him. There is no public record of Ormond speaking out against the murder, rape and exploitation of Aboriginal labour taking place in the pastoral expropriation of First Nations’ country all around him. Yet he was meticulous in ensuring his philanthropy was publicly recognised. The cross of Christ disappeared into the shadows of Ormond’s life under the glittering bedazzlement of Ormond’s fortune and fame.
For Paul the mind of Christ is to be in solidarity with those enslaved to the dehumanising forces of colonial oppression. If Paul’s prison cell letter is a stark reminder that embracing the suffering of those enslaved by injustice and violence appears rather bleak, his letter also reminds the Philippians of God’s justification of Jesus’ faithfulness. ‘Therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth (vv.9,10).
When Paul shines a light on the story of men like Francis Ormond, it shos us that the Australian church has got it wrong from the very beginning of our arrival on First Nations’ country. Today our Lenten confession may give voice to our shame. We have given ourselves over to the myth of economic progress and placed our security in accumulation of wealth, status and power. The Uniting Church is thoroughly enmeshed in our inheritance as beneficiaries of the Ormond legacy, including our Centre for Theology and Ministry, our theological hall, the site of my own theological education, and the site today of the Synod’s unit for equipping leadership for mission. To our collective shame as church, the shadow of Francis Ormond’s colonial legacy holds all of us captive who are formed by its spirit for grasping security and identity through wealth, power and status. Yet today we may thank God for the mind of Christ that shines its light on the sin of our complicity with the unredeemed bitter fruit of our colonial inheritance.
So this Passion Sunday we thank God for Paul’s witness to the mind of Christ and the joy of his resurrection life as we confess how much our church continues to profit from the historic dispossession of First Nations’ country. Paul’s words from his prison cell still echo God’s promise to all of us to give up all we cling to that is embodied in the colonial history of church and state, and take on the mind of Christ. Paul’s word of promise is uncompromisingly joyful: living in faithfulness to God’s love in the way of Jesus will renew the resurrecting love of God’s faithfulness in our church, then ‘every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ (v 11). Amen.
For all who are able, I invite you to kneel with me before Jesus Christ our Lord to confess our sin and receive again the assurance of his forgiveness.
God of life-giving freedom, for all the times we forget our responsibility to you, forsaking your love for us to follow the false gods of wealth accumulation, status and power.
Lord Have Mercy
Lord Have Mercy.
Lord of our deep an vulnerable humanity, for all the times we judge our own life and being, hiding our frailty and fearful anxiety of our sin from your merciful solidarity.
Christ Have Mercy,
Christ Have Mercy.
God of eternal peace, for all the times we cling to the futile pretence of our self-regarding importance, forgetting that you are our hearts’ rest and that we find our peace in you.
Lord Have Mercy
Lord Have Mercy.
Lord God, in your love for us you neither forsake nor abandon us, but in response to our arrogant superiority, you humble us by pouring out your love in Jesus Christ, who is for our weary church, life and liberation. In the power of your Holy Spirit, cleanse us from sin, protect us from evil, and open our hearts to you, so that in the fullness of joy, we may hear and receive Christ’s Word of Grace to us all: our sin is forgiven!
Thanks be to God!
References
Don Chambers, ‘Ormond, Francis (1829-1889)’, Australian Dictionary Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University,
https://adb.anu.au/biography/ormond-francis-4340/text7045 accessed 3 April 2025
Zoe Laidlaw, ‘Settler-colonial philanthropy and Indigenous dispossession’, (2024) Dhoombak Goobgoowana, A history of Indigenous Australia and the University of Melbourne. Volume 1: Truth. Eds Ross L. Jones, James Waghorned and Marcia Langton. Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Australia. 22-49.
