There
are sometimes odd phrases in a Bible passage which leap out at you as you read
them. You suddenly notice something you hadn’t seen before, something that
makes you wonder.
That
happened to me as I read today’s Gospel story earlier this week. Jesus sends
out his disciples to spread his message in word and deed, casting out demons,
cleansing lepers, curing the sick, even raising the dead – all this will
proclaim that God’s Kingdom has come near. But where does he send them? “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter
no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel”. That was the bit I noticed. I mean, what’s he got against
Samaritans and Gentiles – non Jewish people - that these disciples can’t go to
them? The answer is, nothing, of course. We know that Jesus loved, healed and
mixed with Gentiles and Samaritans in his own ministry, but for some reason he
tells his disciples not to begin by going there.
At
first I thought he was just being kind to them, figuring it would be easier for
them to start in a culture they were familiar with, but then I thought a bit
deeper, and wondered if I’d got that the wrong way round. Often the hardest
issues to see and to tackle are the ones that are all around us, like the air
we breathe, because we’ve never really noticed them. Jesus talks elsewhere
about the need to take the log out of our own eyes before we start pointing out
the speck of dust in someone else’s. Perhaps he knew that they had to start in
their own communities, the cultures that had shaped them, if they were ever to
be ready to go anywhere else. Maybe starting
where we are is the toughest challenge of all.
The
crowds who came to Jesus were made up of the same kinds of people these disciples had grown up amongst,
the ones they’d probably seen every day of their lives; the lepers forced to
the edges of their villages and towns, the beggars they’d stepped over and skirted
around, the widows and orphans who’d probably irritated them with their
inconvenient cries for help. They were a part of the backdrop to everyday life,
yet probably often not noticed as individuals with hopes and dream of their
own, stories to tell that were worth hearing. But Jesus, sees these
people, we’re told, and has compassion for them – a word that doesn’t just
imply a vague sense of pity, but a deep identification, allowing himself to
feel what they feel. He sees them as fellow human beings but, “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a
shepherd”. And having seen them, he does something to help, not just by
healing them, but by challenging those who’d created a culture which
marginalised them, often blaming them for their suffering, as if they’d brought
it on themselves. Proclaiming God’s Kingdom meant saying that it couldn’t be
like this, It was this unflinching support for the marginalised which led him
into conflict with the authorities, and to the cross. As the Brazilian Catholic Archbishop Helder
Camara said "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why
they are poor, they call me a communist.”
Maybe
Jesus sends his disciples into their own culture first because he knows they
need to see what they’ve closed their eyes and their hearts to first. It has to
start with them.
Over
the last couple of weeks, speaking as a white woman, I have been acutely aware
of that same challenge in our own time, as protests have spread around the
world in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a policeman who callously
knelt on his neck as Mr Floyd pleaded for his life. “Black Lives Matter” is the
simple cry of those who’ve protested. Amen, Amen. Black Lives Matter. Some
people have countered that “All Lives Matter” which is, of course true, but it’s
black lives which have, again and again, been cut short by racist murders,
black people who’ve been disproportionately stopped and searched, imprisoned,
denied jobs and housing over the years, black voices which are often silenced
or discounted. White people like me may not have noticed that, but that’s
because we’re white; we’re not the ones who are suffering.
Black
people, along with those from other Ethnic minorities, have died
disproportionately from Covid19, and the main reason seems to be that a larger
proportion are poor, working in insecure jobs they can’t do from home, without
the financial cushions that would enable them to take time off, living in
overcrowded, densely populated areas where it’s harder to keep a safe distance.
People
have sometimes said that we’re all in the same boat in this epidemic, but that’s
not true. We may all be in the same storm, but some of us are weathering it in
comfortable, luxury cruisers, while others are in rubber dinghies or barely
clinging to driftwood rafts, always at risk of being overwhelmed by the next
wave. Coronavirus hits the poorest
hardest, and black people are disproportionately poor.
Why
is that? In large part it’s a legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. Although
it ended 200 years ago we’re still living with its aftermath. It was a trade that gave those who profited
from it - individuals and nations - an economic and political advantage not
just in their own time but for generations afterwards. Sugar, tobacco and cotton industries, and
those who invested in them, including the Church of England - were bound to
succeed when the major expense – labour – came free. That advantage spilled
over to everyone who was linked to the trade – shipping companies, dock owners
and many other ancillary businesses, and the institutions, schools, hospitals, museums
that were funded by their profits. Wealth breeds wealth. Power breeds power. If
you have it, you are likely to find you can get more of it, and pass it on to
your heirs.
The
reverse is just as true. Even when freed, ex-slaves were locked into poverty,
trodden back down into the dirt by discrimination every time they tried to rise
from it. That discrimination fed into colonialism, segregation, apartheid, and
all the unrest and inequality that has come in the wake of those things, right
up to our own day.
Our
history, for good or ill, is part of what makes us who we are. That’s why it
matters that we all – white and black - revisit it together, and debate it
afresh, listening for the voices that haven’t been heard, seeing the people who
aren’t on the pedestals, honouring the stories that aren’t on the plaques.
Jesus
called his disciples to learn to see people as he did, every one as beloved and
important as any other - “God’s people and the sheep of his pasture” - and to
challenge any situation where that equality was denied. The colour of your skin
wasn’t an issue in his time, but the principle was the same. It meant declaring
loud and long that lepers’ lives mattered. Beggars’ lives mattered. Widows’
lives mattered. Today he’d be joining in the affirmation that Black Lives
Matter. Wherever people are overlooked and silenced, that’s where we’ll find
him, listening, seeing, honouring those at the back of the queue.
There
are no simple ways to untangle the mess of racism, and many different views
about how to protest and what to do with all those statues, but God still calls
us first into the places where we are, our own communities, our own hearts,
because if we can’t proclaim and live the kingdom there, we can’t proclaim and
live it anywhere. Amen
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