Over the last week the news has shifted slightly away from COVID-19 to another crisis in America. Last week George Floyd was killed in custody. His tragic death, captured on video, has fanned a flame of protest after a number of African American people have been killed in police custody. Floyd’s death has rightly affected many people around the world.
We are coming to the end of reconciliation week here in Australia. I didn’t realise this until earlier in the week, but reconciliation week can trace its origins back to a Christian movement of prayer for our nation.
The 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody made 339 recommendations to the government, most of which have never been implemented. The final recommendation was this:
Initiate a formal process of reconciliation between Aboriginal people and the wider community.
Interestingly it was a movement of Christians who picked up on this recommendation and in 1993 called for a ‘week of prayer for reconciliation’. Three years later, a wider societal movement began, National Reconciliation Week.
The events in the US this last week have shown us two things. First, and sadly, that racial tension and injustice is a prolific problem across the globe. But secondly, it has put the spotlight on our own nation and the need to tread carefully here. Many people have condemned the crisis in the US without reflecting on the continuing crisis in our own land.
Since 1991, and despite a Royal Commission, another four hundred and thirty Aboriginal people have died in police custody. No police officers have been convicted. In fact, since 1991 things have actually become worse. The rate of incarceration of Aboriginal people has doubled and a 2019 study found Aboriginal Australians are more likely to be imprisoned than African Americans.
The Australian Law Reform Commission reports that ‘Although Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults make up around 2% of the national population, they constitute 27% of the national prison population’. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women it is 34%.
There’s a huge problem in our country. Whatever you think about the reasons for this problem, or what solutions are at our disposal, we need to acknowledge that this is a huge problem.
Since the early days of the church the gospel has been applied vertically (between us and God), and horizontally (between each other). And so Paul wrote to a fractured church in Ephesus:
For he himself (Jesus) is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. (Ephesians 2.14–18)
Our context in Australia is very different. But it’s interesting to note that every time Paul spoke of the new, free, justified stance of the Christians before God he also related this to the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. The vertical gospel must be applied horizontally.
We might disagree about what we can actually do, or what part we play in this problem, but can you imagine if the church had kept leading society in prayer over this? At the very least let us draw near to God in prayer for our nation. Below is a prayer we’ve often used at church written by the Wontulp Bi-Buya Indigenous Theology Working Group:
Holy Father, God of Love,
You are the Creator of all things.
We acknowledge the pain and shame of our history
and the sufferings of Our peoples,
and we ask your forgiveness.
We thank you for the survival of Indigenous cultures
Our hope is in you because you gave your Son Jesus
to reconcile the world to you.
We pray for your strength and grace to forgive, accept and love one another, as you love us and forgive and accept us in the sacrifice of your Son.
Give us the courage to accept the realities of our history so that we may build a better
future for our Nation.
Teach us to respect all cultures.
Teach us to care for our land and waters.
Help us to share justly the resources of this land. Help us to bring about spiritual and social change to improve the quality of life for all groups in our communities, especially the disadvantaged.
Help young people to find true dignity and self-esteem by your Spirit.
May your power and love be the foundations on which we build our families, our communities and our Nation, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
(Wontulp Bi-Buya Indigenous Theology Working Group 13 March 1997 Brisbane, Qld).