On
Thursday evening just gone, I attended a Black Lives Matter vigil in Keel
Square. It had been organised at the request of community organisers within the
BAME (Black, Asian and Minority-Ethnic) community in Sunderland. I went as
their guest, and in response to their invitation to stand in solidarity with
them at this time. I went to hear local Black and mixed-heritage speakers share
something of their experience of living here, in the city where I live. About
200 people came to a well-organised and peaceful event, maintaining spatial
distance, most wearing masks. Many local church leaders were present. As part
of the vigil, we were invited to take the knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. A
humble, prayerful posture that connects us to Martin Luther King, Jr, and the
ongoing civil rights movement; and a length of time that remembers the murder
of George Floyd by a police officer who knelt on his neck for that long.
Some
say that it is humiliating for a White man to take the knee; which causes me to
wonder why humbling ourselves should be seen as (is) humiliating by White
people, and White men in particular? Some dismiss it is a token gesture, which
causes me to ponder the difference between symbolic actions and token actions,
and how action can sustain us and empower transformation or sedate us and
disempower transformation. Some will undoubtedly dismiss it as ‘woke,’ which
makes me wonder why alertness to injustice should be something to vilify people
for, and whose interests that serves?
There
was a small but vocal demonstration protesting the vigil. One man waved a Union
flag. Now, to be clear, context is everything. Despite our colonial history, the
flag is not inherently racist. Flanking a member of the Cabinet giving the
daily Coronavirus briefing, not racist. Flying from public buildings, not
racist. Waved at the Olympic Games, not racist. Fluttering as bunting at the
village fete, or adorning tea towels and cushions, not racist. But held aloft
in protest of a Black Lives Matter vigil, the point being made is, “If you
are not White you don’t belong in this country: go back home where your people
come from.”
Again
and again, as Black and mixed-heritage speakers addressed those in the square,
the protestors tried to drown out these not-White voices with chants of ‘All
Lives Matter’. And yes, all lives do matter. But, again, context is everything.
If your first response to Black Lives Matter is not to listen, to hear why it
is that such a statement needs to be made; if your response is the
paternalistic corrective, All lives matter, then what you are actually
saying is, Black people need to get back in their box—and, they need to accept
that it is a far better and more comfortable box than it used to be. And if
your response is to stand on the pavement and attempt to drown out not-White
voices, that reveals a desperate attempt to silence the Other, and, frankly,
demonstrates just why we need to insist that Black Lives Matter. For if all
lives truly matter, then by definition Black lives matter; and if Black lives
matter, then we should listen to them. We should acknowledge the injustice
people experience because of who they are, and, with them, seek to address it.
And yes, if all lives matter, then White lives matter too; but no one in this
nation experiences wearying prejudice on account of being White, just as no one
experiences wearying prejudice on account of being ‘able-bodied’ or ‘straight’.
How
incredibly apposite our readings this Sunday are to the upheavals we are living
through! And what a gift to wrestle with these words, and the story they
unfold, and our place within it.
Paul’s
letter to the Christian community in Rome—Romans—was written to be
circulated around multiple congregations. Some were predominantly of Jewish
background, and others were Gentile-majority churches; and, while they were all
Christians, the Jewish believers looked on the Gentile believers, and treated
them, as second-class citizens in the kingdom of heaven. This was the issue
Paul sought to address. And he did so with brilliant contextual theological
reflection, which has often become problematic when read in other contexts.
Paul
begins his letter by painting as black a picture of the Gentiles as is
imaginable. He quickly focuses on sexual practices that, from a Jewish outlook
were beyond the pale to the point of being unnatural in their desires and
actions. He builds a caricature his Jewish audience would agree with
whole-heartedly, until he springs a trap: the respectable Jewish Christians are
by nature every bit as separated from God as the Gentiles. Indeed, Paul even
ascribes unnatural desire and activity to God, saying that God has cut the
Jewish people from the vine of their heritage, has grafted the Gentiles into
that vine, and will graft Israel back onto the vine from which he had broken
it. Throughout the letter, Paul labours the point that there is one new
humanity, and seeks to deconstruct the divisions that exist in the minds of the
believers, and to foster the construction of something new and mutually
uplifting. A community that will ultimately subvert Roman civilisation not by
revolt, but by a better alternative.
And
in the passage before us today, Paul takes up the imagery of slavery, as an
analogy that his audience would be familiar with. Around 90% of the population
of the Roman Empire were slaves, owned by a master. This was not necessarily
the most abject slavery the world has ever known, but all empires are
built on the backs of slaves, on men, women and children seen as property. For
the Jews, being a slave—certainly, being a slave to a Gentile—was especially
demeaning. Even though they were a nation occupied by a foreign army, and ruled
over by the Roman Empire’s local puppet king, they had won for themselves
certain exemptions, and rejected the notion of being slaves. On one occasion, a
group of Jewish community leaders, confronting Jesus, declared that as a people
they had never been slaves to anyone. This is quite extraordinary, given how
foundational the story of God liberating his people from over four centuries of
slavery in Egypt was to Jewish identity. But then, when we are confronted with
our present, we reframe our past to suit.
In
this passage from Romans 6, Paul employs the language of sin exercising
dominion over us, to make us obey those passions within us that separate us
from God rather than the desire within us to please God. Paul goes on to state
that, according to this analogy, we are all slaves to something, either to
impurity or to righteousness. Recognising ourselves as enslaved to God does not
imply that God is a tyrant, but that we are not masters of our own destiny.
Even if we believed ourselves to be the ones who were free, we were only free
in regard to righteousness: that is, our freedom was built on sin, on the
breakdown of relationship with God and neighbour. A freedom that, pursued, ends
in death, that is, in the very opposite of all that is life-giving in and to
and for the world.
Paul
also points out that the unexamined default of his audience was to present
themselves—both personally, and as a deeply interconnected community—to sin as
instruments of wickedness. That is, their unexamined way of being in the world
was complicit and instrumental in wickedness. Instead, and in marked contrast,
they were to present themselves—both personally, and as a deeply interconnected
community—to God as instruments of righteousness. That is, by ongoing
intentional choices and actions, they were to be instrumental in the mending of
the world, the flourishing of human relationships.
And
while Paul is addressing both Jewish and Gentile believers, the primary
challenge in much of this letter is to the Jewish Christians regarding their
view of their Gentile sisters and brothers—and, indeed, their overly-inflated
view of themselves.
All
this, as I say, feels very apposite, for a predominantly White Church of
England needing to reconsider our relationship to BAME Christians, including
Black Majority churches; and for White British Christians needing to relearn
our history and its impact on the world as it is today, in terms of the sin of
racism. For people needing to de-construct and re-construct our identity. Until
and unless we face these things, we will be slaves of sin. We have nothing to
lose except our chains.
In
closing, let me return to our Gospel reading, those short verses from Matthew
10, the church sent out into the world. Jesus calls us to be prophetic—and to
connect with other prophetic voices in the community—and to embody justice in
our dealings—and to connect with others doing likewise—and not to be
overwhelmed by the enormity of the task or to dismiss the significance of
starting where we are, with even the smallest of actions. It is not enough to
not be racist, we must be anti-racist. We are not only set free from
something, but also for something. This is a matter of our Father’s
kingdom continually breaking into the world, of his will being done on earth as
it is in heaven—and of that will being resisted.
And
perhaps for us the starting-point needs to be that we welcome Jesus come-to-us
in the BAME prophets—whether nurses or students or professors or church (and
other religious tradition) leaders or asylum seekers—whom he has sent to
Sunderland? There is an ongoing work of learning to see people through Jesus’
eyes that needs to be done, of which the recent vigil in Keel Square was a part.
It isn’t easy; and we will get it wrong, as the Church has been getting it
wrong from the beginning. Yet in the hope that, as from the beginning, God is
at work to redeem, I commend it to you.
