The Roman church, the official religion of empire since the fourth century, has severed the ancestral connection between Jesus and his country – the land of the covenant of Abraham between the Euphrates and Nile Rivers. We cannot understand Jesus’ mission to Jerusalem unless we understand that the temple mount is the burial place of David. We cannot understand Jesus’ attitude to Samaritans or the conversion of the Samaritans in Acts unless we understand the politics of migrant colonial societies in the land of Jesus’ ancestors David and Abraham (and all the others listed in the genealogies of Matthew and Luke).

Luke 4:18″The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jesus proclaimed the Jubilee year. Leviticus 25 describes the Jubilee as a time when all land is returned to traditional owners and all debt is extinguished. This is why Jesus was such a threat to Rome, because the proclamation of the Jubilee was a direct challenge to the foreign empire’s claim to the land and people of Abraham.

Where do we find Jesus in Australia today? In the same place we find him in the bible – amongst the poor and dispossessed traditional owners of a land occupied by a foreign empire. Jesus is proclaiming the Jubilee here and now, to return land to traditional owners and eliminate debt, slavery and ill-health.

I, for one, cannot see even a shadow of the biblical Jesus in the Creeds of the Roman state-church as they have been regurgitated in the lifeless rhetoric of modern church doctrine. Those in the church who rely on the creeds to dismiss an authentic experience of God in this country display their obsession for legalism that has made them blind to the spirit. They display their captivity to a European world view and their blindness to God’s revelations here and now.

The simple act of truth telling, as Rev. Macraae explains it, should not be such a controversial thing.

Another truth that needs to be told is the corruption, dishonesty and violence that has been the nature of Christendom. the small “c” catholic church has a history of state Tyranny, from Constantine onwards. The most atrocious imperial and genocidal wars against people have been justified by the church’s endorsement of state agendas and the economic plans of the rich. The church that crowned Charlamaigne has nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

This history and tradition of imperialism and colonisation, and the religious Creeds that have come from it including the Apostles’ and Nicene Creed, have nothing to do with the mission and spirituality of the indigenous tribal Jesus of the bible.

We have much more to learn about the Jesus of the bible from the tribal indigenous experience of God in this country than we can learn from the Creeds of the Roman empire, the same political and economic process that crucified the indigenous in the land of Abraham.