In February I was able to inspect two properties in the Spring Creek area of the parish of Muswellbrook. It was a salutary experience.

Along with the clergy of Muswellbrook and at the gracious invitation of two property owners I experienced first-hand the acute devastation of the drought. 

The paddocks are absolutely bare.  There was no grass at all. The monotonous brown dirt was depressing in itself. But worse still were the destocked paddocks.

Creek beds had a slither of grass growing across them.  Both the farmers told me that they had never seen this before.  This is a destructive drought that will have very harsh continuing consequences.

If the drought breaks – farmers talk of when the drought breaks- properties will have to be restocked.  Prices will doubtless be sky-high because of demand and supply. So the immediate future, even when there is substantial rain, has a costly outlook.

I saw trees whose branches had been chain-sawed to feed any remaining cattle. This branch-lopping is itself a dangerous exercise.

As I rode around with the farmers we discussed what the Church might do for such farming communities. Clearly supportive prayer is high on the agenda as must be our attention to the environment.

We Australians have been careless of and indifferent to the environment and now we are paying the price, as are other parts of the world.

We, however, begin with disadvantage because of the natural dryness of this continent. The abuse of our rivers is appalling; they require long-term rehabilitation.

We must also express solidarity with our farmers as they suffer daily with the sight of the effects of the drought upon their properties. It would be expected that farmers are affected by depression and high levels of anxiety.

Of course, when we do get the first rains we must not be naïve and think that everything is now fixed. It will take substantial good rains to replenish the very dry earth.

For instance, the storms around Merriwa filled empty farm dams, but mostly with mud!  The creeks and rivers are just so dry that the first rain mixes mud and flushes mud through the systems.

Our farmers are very stoic. But they need significant assistance. They need a supportive public who will take the effort to understand their issues.  They need governments who are serious about agricultural reconstruction and who do not dabble in band-aid solutions.

We must support our rural parishes with suburban parishes forming relationships and offering, if required, financial support. Such responses will indicate whether we take seriously that we are the body of Christ and members one of another.

Those who have read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales may remember the oath printed above. Swearing by God’s bones, God’s blood and most of the other bits of God was common profanity for centuries.

One of the benefits of secularisation has been a reduction in this verbal abuse of the divine anatomy.  Lately, however, God’s bones have come back as a subject for public discussion.

A team of archaeologists claims to have uncovered the remains of a deceased person from the first century who happened to be called Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary.

We are expected to find this news quite shocking and are being encouraged to conclude that, at the very least, the resurrection of Christ did not include his skeleton.

In fact, the intended implication is that either there was no resurrection at all or that the origins of Christianity are just a matter of suspicious spiritual psychology.

Inevitably, the Discovery Channel has aired a documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”, suggesting that a cell of underground archaeologists has got the second person of the Trinity safely confined in a box.  Alas for our publicity hungry diggers, identifying the dead is not so simple.

The three members of the holy family all had names that were far more common in first century Palestine than Smith, Jones or Brown.

The inscriptions on the box only indicate that somebody has unearthed the remains of a very ordinary Jewish guy. He might have been a Jesus, but he was not the Saviour of the world.

We should not be astonished by this latest discovery. In 2002 the archaeological industry got all excited about the bones of St James of Jerusalem. The ossuary (bone box) turned out to be a fake.

Doubtless, we will eventually be entertained by the unearthing of the rib cages of all twelve apostles, the Virgin Mary, Elijah, Harold Holt, and the Beast of Revelation.

The media feed off celebrity and scandal. A juicy story, properly marketed, will make somebody rich. Jesus Christ remains the greatest celebrity of all time.

It is hardly surprising that popular culture regularly finds ways to make a buck from him.

The Da Vinci Code, and now this business of the bones, are just the latest examples of a prominent person being given the tabloid treatment.

One week we are told that Jesus has been reduced to a relic. Next week, we might learn that Elvis never really died and has been abducted by aliens. Sensational stories do not have much of a shelf-life.

I once knew a carpenter in Argentina named Jesus (pronounced Hey-soos). This is not an uncommon name in Latin America.

His parents were Jose and Maria (that is Joseph and Mary). The neighbours never confused him with the Messiah. When he died, no one expressed any interest in his bones. He did not rise again on the third day. Family and friends mourned his passing.

The following Sunday they went to church, as they did every week, to celebrate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. It was not a bad example to follow.

Fr Bruce Perry.