This year marks twenty years since I first walked on to Sydney University as a first year student. While much remains familiar about the campus, the university also feels vastly different to the one which is nostalgically imprinted in memory from the early 2000s. The Quadrangle is still here of course. But gone are many of my old haunts – Stephen Roberts Lecture Theatre, Wentworth Terrace Cafe, the Transient Building. In their place has sprung up shiny edifices of glass and steel. Nestled between the jacarandas and the sandstone, they give Australia’s oldest university a modern, sleek feel. Even the Carslaw Building, having arguably one of the ugliest facades on campus, is now shielded from the gaze of public traversing City Road by one of the university’s latest constructions.

Recently I was walking through the university with a postgraduate student, reflecting on what we had learnt earlier this year at the EU’s Annual Conference (AnCon). The topic at AnCon this year had been on eschatology – the study of the last things. As we wandered through campus, he couldn’t help but comment on the beauty of the new buildings and that related to AnCon this year: ‘it’s almost as if they’ve been designed to be photographed and shared on instagram – glittering towers of crystal, like the heavenly city the bible points us forward too’. What the student saw before us was a meticulously groomed campus, that wasn’t just pleasant to be in, but almost idyllic. In this world of high achievement, the campus grounds present the university as an oasis. 

It doesn’t take much to realise that this is far from true. Despite the pretence of perfection in the campus grounds, the lives of the 70,000 souls who work and live in the university are marked by sadness, sorrow, and sin. Mingled with achievement and success are all the troubles and malaise which plague humanity. Which is why, no matter all the changes the last two decades have wrought, the university remains very familiar to me. The facades we place over our lives fail to hide the deep, abiding need we have to be rescued by God from sin and death. 

Which makes Christmas good news. Virgin births and angelic appearances are not the usual topics of conversation in bastions of sceptical rationalism like the university. But Christmas smashes through all the pretence of our lives. Jesus came into the world because, on our own, we were so utterly lost without him. Jesus took on flesh, and dwelt among us, taking on also our sin and our shame, our sorrow and our sadness, so that those who believe in his name can become, as John 1 reminds, children of God. Our world was so broken and hopeless that God’s own son came into our mess to bring forgiveness of sins and a hope more real than stone and glass. Even at Sydney University, there is only one who can deal with the shadows and stains of sin in our lives. The message of Christmas frees you from striving for achievement or success; it’s not about how idyllic or perfect your life looks, but whether you have placed your trust in God’s son. 

At this time of year the afternoon sun gleams and glistens in the sandstone and glass. The campus flora bursts with colour and life. And in the evening breeze the shadows dance across flesh and brick alike. As incredible as all this looks, our hope is in something far more substantial and real. For ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it’ (John 1.5)

– Matthew Moffit, EU Senior Staff