Interfaith Sunday: A Report from Crows Nest Uniting Church

Over the last couple of years, Crows Nest church has organised an annual multicultural lunch. It has been a congregational event and members of the church brought along a wonderful and tempting array of dishes from different cultural backgrounds.

This year we decided to expand it. Following a visit to the Auburn Gallipoli mosque last year, we thought it appropriate to return the hospitality. (The visit to the mosque grew out of an Inter-faith month we held at Crows Nest in 2009; on one of the Sundays, Mehmet Saral from the mosque came and spoke to us about Islam.)

Earlier this year, we issued an invitation to our Muslim friends from Auburn and started to contemplate the practicalities of preparing halal food. Also, some weeks before the scheduled event, I had started to explore some possibilities of supporting refugees and migrants in our local area, through liaising with the local community centre. I thought it would be good to invite them to the multicultural lunch, as well.

So, on the day, we had about 15 friends from Auburn mosque and 15 from the local area. Our gathering that day included people from Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt and Peru. What a wonderful mix! One of our guests had fled an anguishing experience at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan. (He had come by boat and spent some time on Christmas Island.)

Mehmet	Emi

The morning began with a special multicultural service. We had interviews with 2 people from different cultures, who both spoke about their experience of travelling to and settling in Australia. Emi, a Japanese member of our congregation, spoke of the relief of moving away from an earthquake zone and of the delight in Australia of having wide-open spaces. Mehmet, born in Turkey, spoke about the difficulty of people treating him and his family disrespectfully on Anzac Day, in the 70’s & 80’s, (that has now changed) but also of enjoying football and sports generally in Australia. The congregation learnt some words of greeting in Turkish and Japanese. (‘Merhaba’, ‘hello’ in Turkish; ‘konnichiwa’, ‘hello’ in Japanese.)

We were privileged to enjoy a moving experience of the Muslim Call to Prayer, ‘azan’. We reflected on the story of Jesus meeting the Canaanite woman, described in Matthew ch. 15. We viewed it as a template, describing a meeting of two cultures, resulting initially in misunderstanding and disregard, and slowly moving to resolution; and of the courage, persistence and grace needed to reach this moment. And we prayed for peacebetween cultures and religions, and for greater understanding.

The photo to the left is of Suhail, the young man who offered 'azan' during worship.

After the service, when people had moved to the upstairs hall for lunch, everyone was invited to place a star on a world map, indicating where they came from. When concluded, every continent in the world was covered! The children had drawn flags of the nations represented in our gathering, which were displayed prominently.

After a Christian grace and Muslim prayer, we shared together in a feast of foods from many different places. (The food was provided by members of Crows Nest church and by our friends from the Gallipoli mosque.) There was lots of conversation and laughter and new connections were made. We met a Peruvian family, who live in a garage and cannot afford to send their 3 children to school. (Under the conditions of their visa, they have to pay around $5,000 to send their children to a local public school. I was distressed and ashamed, as an Australian, to hear of this.) We were able to give them a large amount of food and a member of our congregation has since offered to give them some furniture. An Afghani young man who has no family here and no relations was invited to share a meal with another Afghani family, whom he met for the first time at the lunch.

The multicultural team of our church organised an excellent quiz, based on countries represented at the World Cup Soccer final, and because of our guests, we added Turkey and Afghanistan. We were quizzed about flags, national anthems and what each country had contributed to the world. The competition was keen and the noise loud.

Throughout the day there was a sense of new communities forming, and of developing networks across disparate cultures, traditions and religions.

I have recently received the following message from my contact at the community centre, ‘Thanks for Sunday’s multicultural lunch, my clients are happy and asking when is the next one?   A young Afghani man, John, said to me atthe end of the lunch, ‘That was fantastic!’

A member of our church said, ‘I thought Sunday was absolutely wonderful. I'm so proud to be part of this church.  Sunday was why I AM part of it.

I think having the call to prayer in worship was inspired.   It was so moving.   I spoke with Suhail afterwards and he was surprised that I picked up that the call began and ended with 'God is great'. Hearing those words in a worship setting, used reverentially - was just magic.’

For the Crows Nest church community, this lunch represented a significant move, from enjoying our own life together, to reaching out as a community to the wider community beyond. And we discovered that while doing do is challenging and initially anxiety provoking, it is also lots of fun and enriching. It was a memorable day.

Somewhat like Jesus in the gospel story, we were able to move from some misgivings to meeting joyfully with many ‘Canaanite’ women, and men!

Now we are planning for our next event when we will invite the wider community.

- Rev Michael Barnes, 10.8.’10