I wish I had more hopeful words to share with you, but as I have done since the first Sunday that I took that sacred space behind the pulpit at our church, I need to share my heart with you. And my heart has been deeply sad. Once again the stories filling our papers and social media tell the tragedy of yet another life being taken in circumstances that show us the depth of the brokenness of mankind, and the desperate need that we have for healing in our world, from the little communities to the towns to the cities to the nations. So, please, let me tell you a story that you may have heard me sharing before.
In 2016 we were part of a wonderful church in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. We had been with them from the very beginning, as three struggling congregations joined in this amazing project to be one new congregation- new building, new leaders, new location. And the results were amazing! The congregation grew to have a couple of hundred people coming every Sunday for worship and a long morning tea, and that congregation was as multicultural and multigenerational as they come! I loved looking at our new church and seeing the beautiful sunlight coming from the big glass doors and windows, illuminating the people coming to worship and seeing so many cultures represented. We had the first nations, we had Anglos, we had Europeans, Africans, Pacific Islanders, Asians… and thanks to us, beautiful Latinos! We felt at home and so did our Australian born and raised children. This church had a great place for toddlers from where parents could watch and hear the service, so often I will be there with Santiago watching him play with other children while Fernanda and Isabella enjoyed the service. Isabella is naturally shy, so she was reluctant to attend Sunday School classes with other kids her age, but she became friends with another Bella, the pastor’s daughter, and off they went to attend classes, the PK and the MK together. I was often asked to preach and to teach, and the church council gave me their support to do a Period of Discernment and attend Bible School in order to prepare for ministry in the Uniting Church. We felt safe, welcomed and at home.
Maybe that’s why the events of a particular Sunday hurt so much and were so hard to understand. After a long morning tea we started to collect our things and children to go home, and Bella wasn’t playing with the other children. When I went to their room looking for her I realized the children were more quiet than usual, but I thought that when you have a face like mine that is usual the effect you cause on children. But then I found Bella seated quietly on a corner, with the other Bella comforting her. The eyes of my child were red and it was clear that she had been crying. I approached her and asked if she was Ok. She just told me no with her eyes and started crying again. Now, please understand this: Bella doesn’t cry often, especially in a public space. She internalizes everything and we have to use extra patience and wisdom to help her talk and share her feelings. The other Bella told me, also almost crying: “The other girls told her that she couldn’t play with us because she is too dark.” Those words hit me like a wave of pain, like a punch in the guts.
Can you try, if just for a second, to put yourself on my shoes? The anger that I felt at that moment was more intense than any other feeling I had ever felt- I’ve been in my fair share of arguments and fights, even physical altercations in my misguided youth, and still I don’t remember my blood boiling like that, ever. This is my daughter! I saw her being born, my hands received her into this world, I was the one that cut her umbilical cord and gave her the first bath. I held her against my chest and I prayed a blessing over her life, consecrating her to be a blessing to the world in the hands of her Creator, God and Heavenly Father. I saw her walk her first steps and I have seen her grow into an amazing child that is loving, caring, compassionated and filled with God’s love. Every night she prays for the homeless and the poor and the lost of this world. She is a child that when our base welcomed a new family with 4 children that had to leave most of their belongings in a different country to come to Australia, gave them her savings to buy toys because she didn’t want to see her new friends missing out. She is a child with so much compassion that I had to be careful about taking her to our outreach programs because she felt the pain of the people so much that it hurt her. She was fighting her way through a new school while dealing with her dyslexia and never gave up being kind to others. And then there she was, heartbroken and rejected, not because of her personality or any mistake she could have committed, but because of the colour of her skin.
I gave her a hug and held my tears, I told her she was beautiful and that those children were wrong. She saw my anger and my hurt, and we cried together. When Fernanda found us I was past the tears and I was just angry. Thankfully the other Bella called her mum that came to meet us and head the story and was appalled by it. I’m grateful that she immediately saw the pain in Bella’s face and in our words and told us that they were going to deal with this issue. Her husband came to us and he was beyond hurt as well, apologizing to Bella and to us, acknowledging our pain and promising us to deal with it. I’m grateful because if the first person to come had said anything different I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be here sharing this words as your minister. I wanted to confront, not the child that said the words, but her parents and ask them what kind of upbringing and teaching this girl was having that she would say something like that, and I can’t guarantee what kind of reaction I would have had if they tried to dismiss or minimize what happened, as so often occurs. No, this wasn’t just child saying something inappropriate or wrong, this is not something can be easily forgotten or brushed aside- the consequences are still felt in Isabella’s heart. The family of that child apologized to the Pastor but never had the courage to apologize to us.
Racism and prejudice don’t happen in a vacuum. They are the result of the education we receive from the state, from our families and from our culture. They are the result of the attitudes we see at schools, on the streets, on our TV series and movies. They are the result of the attitudes we learn by seeing our parents and relatives talking about those issues and the words they use and the behaviour they model. They are the product of the kind of beauty we promote in advertisements, the heroes and villains that are represented in our stories and sometimes they are the product of the theology that is preached and promoted in our churches and organizations.
Please hear my heart here: when racism prevails, we are all victims. The people created at the image of God that are oppressed and the people created at the image of God who are taught to oppress. The abused and the abuser. We are all broken by the systemic racism that distorts in our eyes the image of God on the other, and separate us from our brothers and sisters creating an atmosphere of hatred, fear, abuse, violence and segregation. And we, as the church, cannot stay silenced or apathetic before this problem, or we will be risking becoming part of the problem instead of being a voice of healing.
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.
“I have seen the misery of my people… I have heard them crying… I have come down to rescue them… the cry of my people has reached me… I have seen the way they are oppressing them…” If there is one thing that defines our God in Exodus, this is it: God always hears the cry of the oppressed! When God is speaking to the people of Israel after they leave Egypt and are free after 430 years of slavery, this is how he introduces himself to them: “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt.” Not the creator, the omnipotent, the shaper of the Universe or giver of life… the God who rescued you! Our God is a freedom fighter, a rescuer, someone who breaks the power of oppression and brings freedom and life to the people being oppressed!
You may not have experienced slavery in your life or in your family, but maybe some of you have the memory of coming from a family with convicts in your bloodline. Maybe you have a story in your family of overcoming poverty or conflict. Maybe your relatives came to this land in shackles, or running away from starvation or poverty, war or disease. And even if you can’t find anything like that in your history, this is something we all share: we were all sinners, condemned by our own mistakes and rebellion, fallen short of the grace of God and depending solemnly on his grace for salvation. No one of us can claim innocence or ignorance- we were condemned and didn’t deserve his love or his forgiveness, and yet both were freely offered to us. As Christian, we don’t have the right to look down on anybody because of their faith or their lack of faith, their beliefs or lack of beliefs, the way the look or the way they sound or their background, and not even because of their past and mistakes. As Christians we declare that we have been saved by grace, a gift we didn’t deserve, that we come to God acknowledging our brokenness, admitting how lost we were, and we found in God the power of forgiveness, of new life, of new opportunities, of a destiny. As Christians, the one thing that we cannot become is entitled to the blessings we have received and the new life that was offered to us- because we didn’t do anything to deserve it and because we proclaim that salvation is a gift, not a result of our efforts and works.
That’s why a very important part of the way to live that God shared with Israel in the desert, the commandments that are our blueprint of humanity, very often come with these words: “I will hear”.
21 “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. 22 “Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. 23 If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. If you take your neighbour’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, 27 because that cloak is the only covering your neighbour has. What else can they sleep in? When they cry out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.” (Exodus 22.21,22,26)
To be a follower of Jesus means to remember where we came from, the forgiveness we received, the gift that we were given, and to share his heart with the world. And to share his heart means to stand for the things that God is passionate about, and in my opinion that includes to stand against any form of oppression, of abuse and injustice. Because if we become silent in the face of evil we are part of the problem. So we remember he who said “Blessed are the peace makers” and we engage with the brokenness of this world to bring his peace, even knowing that it won’t be simple, that it will certainly cost us something, and that it won’t make our lives easier. Because we will see the hurt, we will feel the pain, we will see the roots of injustice, we will see evil being passed to another generation, we will see hate shaping the destiny of another generation and we will feel the broken heart of the Father over his children, calling them to repentance and redemption, calling them to the gift that was paid by Jesus on the cross so we may all find forgiveness and everlasting life.
I’m heartbroken for the lives lost to racism, hate, fear and prejudice. I’m heartbroken for the lives twisted by racism, hate, fear and prejudice. I’m afraid that our efforts may not be enough and that my children, descendants of Spanish, Portuguese, Jews, Italian, South American Natives, Eastern European, English and Africans will have to suffer the effects of this disease that once again is showing its ugly face. I’m afraid they will be hurt again by it and that once again we will have to deal with the hurt that it brings to all of us. I’m tired of remembering persecution, inquisition, slavery, abuse, rejection and prejudice… so I commit to fight it with all my heart, strength and passion, because I can’t surrender to fear. I believe my faith calls me to action, to engagement, to commitment. I will listen to their cry, acknowledge their pain, and respond to the challenge of “turning this world upside down” (Acts 17.6) with the love of my Saviour. May God bless you, keep you, inspire you and move you to be a voice for healing, wherever you are, wherever you go!