AP

On Services, superheroes and heroes

(delivered on Speech Night for the Scotch College community, October 2024)

I’m fully aware that exams occupy your minds right now: there’s study week, 2½ weeks of exams … and it ALL LOOMS LARGE. It’s constraining you – demanding focus.

Services

Permit me to extend thoughts beyond mid-November, to reach way past exams and ATARs … to the rest of your life. Above and beyond the immediacy of study scores and university entrance … to connect this with what we at Scotch call Services, the Year 11 Immersion program, things like 24hr hiking, assistance for Tiwi College, cadet service and all the other humanitarian efforts where the reward is not ours … but theirs.

Instead of the immediate pay-off that connects classroom to personal achievement … the Services pays-forward, so others might benefit.

This is an integral part of the holistic program offered at Scotch. It’s a varied program with a vision: to lift our view beyond ourselves, to grow with empathy towards the needs of others, to develop that humanitarian spark that will have impact on people, and make a difference in the world. But HOW? How can we grow in this as school leavers?

I’m suggesting one way to find the spark. I put it to you, as you leave school after 13 years – TAKE HEROES WITH YOU. We need heroes who lift beyond and inspire us to higher thoughts.

Superheroes

Yes, on the one hand, there are superheroes. I’ve watched over the last 20 years as Marvel films brought to life what a former generation hid in their pockets. They were frowned on at Carey … and I suspect here: “Wilson, that’s not proper literature!”

That was the strong voice of my day: comic books belong at the low-culture table – disqualified from genuine cultural conversation. This was hard on my gen, because it deemed the likes of The Avengers, Spider-Man, or X-Men as unworthy literature. It devalued them and drove them underground. Not only in Lit Class at school, but also at home. Mum scowled at such immature things – far preferring me to be reading Dickens or Hardy.

That was then, but for today Marvel Studios and DC Films have brought these stories back to life. Martin Scorsese still holds out “Marvel films are not cinema – more like theme parks” … I think he means that there’s no art in them – nothing to reflect on like real films which offer a slice of the aesthetic, emotional and spiritual side of life. Has Scorsese missed something?

I suspect that there’s heaps to reflect on in this new wave. There are fascinating themes to contemplate: issues of justice and redemption to explore, and fractious superheroes to analyse … each one emerging alternatively both to admire and detest.

Superheroes use their powers to help the world become a better place. They dedicate themselves to protecting the public and fighting crime. They appear (mostly) to act within a moral code—with a few notable exceptions (Deadpool might not be the best role model in that regard). So far so good, but … wait on, are they any help for us?

Not at all. Superheroes are exciting, no doubt. But their powers, whether inherited or the result of a freak accident, often put them beyond the reach of us regular humans.

And here’s the huge disconnect. For the rest of us, reaching out to the needy is tedious and slow, our reaching out to the marginalised is painful and doesn’t always work. The way we stretch out our hand to help is at times clumsy and awkward.

Our Services aren’t swift, slick and furious … ours take time, ours have to be repeated. Real Services bear with failures and disappointments when nothing seems to change … until it does.

Then also, while superheroes do a lot of good—redeeming the bad and rescuing the troubled—they are regularly portrayed as very flawed characters. They’re often seen wrestling with their own egos, driven by personal motivations as much as their desire to help. But what we seek to encourage at Scotch is a different kind of heroism, one marked by something better. A heroism grounded in humility, where the focus is on serving others, rather than seeking out recognition or reward.

But WHERE do we find them?

Heroes

I put it to you, as you leave school after 13 years – TAKE HEROES WITH YOU. We need heroes who lift beyond and inspire us to higher thoughts. Find one:

• Is Medicine your world? See if there is one doctor to inspire you – one who’s achieved the extraordinary, who has broken new ground, or pioneered fresh treatment. Find a real hero who’s made a difference and not necessarily all for personal advancement. Follow their work. Who is the next Professor Graeme Clark?
• Is your field the Law? Is there a skilled lawyer who’s reached out pro bono to the needy and offered fair hearings to those not usually able to see justice done?
• Is your leaning towards Education? Have you read of Malala Yousafzai who won the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17 for human rights advocacy in the area of a child’s right to education?
• Is Brain Research your interest? Go to conferences. See what Melbourne’s Florey Institute is pioneering and how Melbourne leads the world in neuroscience. Align yourself with a leader who is making a difference and brings relief to those suffering from neurological disorders or those marginalised and distressed by their mental health conditions.

Experiences of a Christian Pastor

Now, coming down a little from the dizzying heights of those examples, let me share mine with you: David Livingstone is my hero. I’m a Christian Pastor serving with the Presbyterian Church of Victoria. I hear you ask: “OK, so what’s the role of a Christian Pastor?”

My role is to represent Jesus Christ to the world by word and by practice.

By word? – that’s whenever I speak the message of the Bible – which is the good news that God calls us to turn away from our sin and trust his Son Jesus for forgiveness, a new life now and eternal life to come.

My role is firstly to represent Jesus by speaking that word as often as I’m able in as many places as I’m invited. Then, secondly by practice …

By practice? How do I do that? I have a particular role within both the Presbyterian Church of Victoria and the Presbyterian Church of Australia. I head up, both state-wide and nationally, our Aid and Development department of the church – called PresAID. And, in PresAID, there are no professional services offered, no paid advisers or consultant’s fees, it’s entirely from the head down, all voluntary.

We recruit mission teams and then I personally lead some of them, whereby we:

• offer food relief for a drought-stricken Zambia (do we realise that Zambia is on the brink of starvation right now due to the failed rains of last season?);
• work alongside African teachers in primary schools in Zimbabwe;
• offer relief for the Sudanese now living almost permanently in Ethiopian refugee camps in Gambella;
• construct solar power for a whole village in Vanuatu;
• dig wells for fresh water in Uganda;
• and, right now, we’re raising a team to travel to central Africa in June next year to distribute Bibles in remote villages of Malawi and help develop habits of small group Bible study.

David Livingstone

My hero in all this is Dr Livingstone – who gave himself selflessly and exhaustively to the people of Africa as a Christian medical pastor: doing what’s expected of every Christian pastor: to represent Jesus Christ to the world by word and by practice.

ONLY this: here’s the value-add … Livingstone excelled in this. He used the entirety of his faculties and every personal capacity for this. He gave himself selflessly for the benefit of the African. Didn’t flinch. Left nothing in the field.

In word and in practice – he excelled.

By word, he spoke the message of the Bible – which is the good news that God calls us to turn away from our sin and trust his Son Jesus for forgiveness, a new life now and eternal life to come.

Whenever he brought this message, people believed. For example, Chief Sechele of the Bechuanas believed the good news, turned from sins and warmly embraced Jesus.

In his delight at knowing the Saviour he fired this one complaint back to Livingstone: “Why did you take so long?” Any African, by his very nature feels at one with his ancestors, and Sechele was concerned and rebuked the pastor with: “Why didn’t your grandparents come earlier with this good news to bring it to my grandparents?”

In practice, here is a hero not hard to admire. His 800-page journal, from page 1 to the end, is testimony to:

• his love for the African;
• his fierce protection of them; and
• his provision for their welfare.

Livingstone’s 1857 Journal tells of a brave man standing face to face between the slave traders and his precious friends – ordering the traders to depart. His writings give us the delights of his geographic discoveries and humanitarian aid with a potpourri of flora and fauna insights including such fascinating subjects as: the life cycle of the teste fly, the cannibalism of black soldier ants, the height of the great falls, and even – and here’s a useful tip – how to escape when capsized in a river full of hippos?

There’s never anything but respect for each African tribe he met along the way. Livingstone’s reputation went ahead of him and at times reached the next village before he did.

His reputation is intact, even now: Upon achieving independence in the 1960s … every village of Zambia and Malawi, every creek and mountain range reverted to indigenous names. Every English colonial name disappeared, EXCEPT for two: the Zambian city bearing his name: Livingstone, and the Malawian city that bears the name of his Scottish birth-town: Blantyre.

Jesus Christ

In bringing this to a conclusion … let me admit, that as high a reputation as Dr David Livingstone has, and as much as I admire his humble motive to serve Africa, and as much as I follow in his footsteps (sometimes literally) … there remains a higher reason I follow this man.

Livingstone was as selfish as any of us, he was flawed. Ultimately, I follow Livingstone because he knew, loved and served Jesus. And it’s only Jesus whose motives are pure and selfless. It’s only Jesus who served others in the supreme way when he lived among us as THE perfect man, died a sinner’s death and was raised to life again.

I’m drawn to Livingstone because I’m drawn to Jesus. And I invite you to do likewise.

To close: I circle back to where I began … choose a hero. As you leave school after 13 years, take a hero with you. Take one who lifts you beyond yourself, one who encourages you to serve others, one who inspires you to develop the spark.

We need heroes who lift and inspire.

Oh! One final offering to you: seeing as we’re a rowing school – in fact the premier rowing school in Australia … are you curious …? Not that your boat will ever capsize in the Yarra. But: how do you escape when capsized in a river full of hippos?

“Dive to the bottom of the river and make out that you’re a log. Hold still for as long as you can. The hippos always look for people on the surface – attracted to the splashing. Then, when you’re nearing exhaustion, glide slowly toward the bank … surface and run.”

That, my friends, may save your life one day.

Rev Dr John P Wilson

(Deputy Chairman, Scotch College Council)

October 2024