Welcome
The Faith Nurture Forum of the Church of Scotland has encouraged all churches to set aside this Sunday as Racial Justice Sunday. We are all encouraged to firstly remember the importance of racial justice, to reflect on human diversity and lastly to respond by working to end this grave injustice that continues to plague our planet. I pray we will all be challenged by the question: What’s it got to do with me?
Call to Worship (based on Psalm 133) It is truly wonderful when relatives live together in peace. It is like the dew falling on mountains, where the LORD has promised to bless his people with life forevermore. How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity! It is as if the dew were falling on God's mountain. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore. How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! It is like the dew of which falls on the mountains, for there the LORD ordained his blessing, life forevermore.
HYMN 132: Immortal, invisible, God only wise
Prayer:
Let us pray
God of all, You alone are worthy of praise,
from every mouth in every nation and time.
You created the world in Your infinite grace,
and by Your everlasting love redeemed it.
Merciful God, You made us in Your image,
We are all Your children, bearing Your divine image,
shaped by Your imagination and breath.
You have gifted us with the beauty of difference
the blessing of diversity, the pleasure of individuality
and the bond of love and peace.
You have created us with minds to know You,
with hearts to love you, with wills to serve and obey You.
But our knowledge of You and your ways are so imperfect and,
our love mostly inconstant, immature and self -seeking.
Our obedience is incomplete and often self-serving, You know
all this and yet You love us and continue to work in our lives.
Help us day by day to grow in Your likeness,
which is so widely displayed in the diversity of creation.
Help us to understand our own prejudices and narrow mindedness.
Help us to love our neighbour as we are loved by You.
Help us to serve others with humility and gratitude.
Do not hold our sin against us,
but help us to repent of outdated and inappropriate world views
which continue to direct our attitudes and actions.
Help us to mature in our thinking, loving and serving.
Hold us to the shared task of loving one another
as You have loved us.
May what we proclaim and confess about you be truly
reflected in the way we treat one another.
We ask all these things to your glory and praise alone.
Amen
Scriptures:
Isaiah 11:1-9
11 A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
2 The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
3 His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
6 The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
9 They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Acts 10:9-20
9 About noon the next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. 10 He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11 He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. 12 In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. 13 Then he heard a voice saying, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ 14 But Peter said, ‘By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.’ 15 The voice said to him again, a second time, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ 16 This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.
17 Now while Peter was greatly puzzled about what to make of the vision that he had seen, suddenly the men sent by Cornelius appeared. They were asking for Simon’s house and were standing by the gate. 18 They called out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was staying there. 19 While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, ‘Look, three[a] men are searching for you. 20 Now get up, go down, and go with them without hesitation; for I have sent them.’
HYMN 123: God is Love: let heaven adore him
Reflection:
I was born in the sixties, and raised in the seventies and eighties in South Africa, not Australia. I do not tell you this so that you can try and figure out how old I am. I tell this so that you may consider not judging me or my parents for what I am about to confess. When I grew-up we had a domestic worker every day of the week and a gardener on a Saturday both native to Africa, Xhosa speaking. They did not use the toilet inside they used the one in the outbuildings and yes, they were given meals but they had their own plate, cup, knife and fork. No one said they were inferior but they were treated as different. This was South Africa under the National Party, where “Apartheid”, separation, discrimination and racial injustice was legal. The strangest of things after 1990, the release of Nelson Mandela and 1994, the first democratic election where everyone got to vote is you cannot find anyone who voted for the National Party.
Today, is Racial Justice Sunday, and we are encouraged to remember, reflect and respond to the injustice that is still happening all around the world based on ethnicity and race, the pigment in our skin. As we know there can be no peace without justice. Two weeks ago, we looked at Luke 4, Jesus declaring his mission statement, open eyes, freedom and the favour of God not for a select few but for all and the crowd responded by trying to kill him because they wanted it for themselves. Greed will always lead to hate and division, to keep and protect what we conceive as ours and ours alone.
In Isaiah 11, the prophet predicts, foretells of a time when peace and harmony will be the order of the day. “6 The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6). The picture painted is one that is beyond the natural, animals behaving contrary to their nature, contrary even to their own survival instincts. When I read a vision like this it seems impossible, not even probable, this must only exist in the realm of heaven. Surely, racial justice and equality is not possible, not something we need to remember, reflect on or respond to, yet we pray that prayer regularly “Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”. Is heaven for you a place of equality, a place of diversity, where all will live in harmony, in peace?
Both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu proposed that we’re not born “a racist” and if we have been taught something we can learn a different way. Something that has been mentioned in the reflections by Alex and I over the past few weeks is that our attitudes, our thoughts profoundly influence our actions. The next question we need to ask is:
what has influenced our beliefs and thoughts? We may have been taught in words, in our church context that God created us all uniquely in His image and therefore everyone is special. But what if our home environment, the school playground and the news report taught you something else – to fear those who are different and defend what you have, survival of the fittest, some deserve and others don’t. Desmond Tutu once said racism is blasphemy because we are created in the image of God. I could not find that quote but I found this one “One of the most blasphemous consequences of injustice, especially racist injustice, is that it can make a child of God doubt that he or she is a child of God.”
Last week Peter was taking small steps and as he did so he came to see Jesus for who He is and himself as he truly was. The New Testament text today is the longest narrative in the book of Acts as it includes chapters 10 and 11. I encourage you to go and read it. The story of Cornelius’s conversion and to a large extent Peter’s conversion to God’s bigger plan. Jesus had shown his disciples by example the new thing he had come to do. Jesus had crossed all the traditional prejudices, he had spoken to a Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), He touched a leper (Mark 1), He healed the servant of a Roman soldier (Luke 7). Yet Peter and the other disciples still did not get it, because they had been taught, they had experienced and lived something other. Jews lived by strict clean and unclean laws, many of those laws are still lived out today. A Jew cannot drink milk if the hands responsible for the milking were not Jewish; thank goodness for milking machines but that’s a different sermon. Jews did not associate at all with gentiles. Cornelius is a God-fearing gentile which means he was following the Jewish God and ways but he had not been circumcised; he was still on the outside. God speaks to him and asks him to send for Peter. And while his men are on the way God has to do a bigger work in Peter and he does it in the form of a vision/dream during his prayer time. I don’t know what your prayer time is like but when last have you reflected on racism, social injustice in your prayer time.
Acts 10:11,12 “He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. 12 In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air.” No matter how hungry Peter was this would have put him completely off any thought of eating. This would have been repulsive to him, an unclean animal even touching a clean animal would have made it defiled. Acts 10:13-14
“Then he heard a voice saying, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ 14 But Peter said, ‘By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.’” Peter would have heard get up and defile yourself, do what you have avoided doing your whole life, make yourself unclean. Can you imagine his identity was being challenged, all he has believed and lived? His faith, where his trust is placed is being challenged. And Peter says “Surely not, Lord” or basically: “No, God”. It begs the question, can we say: No, LORD? It would depend on our definition of Lord right. At this junction which Peter only got to because he perceived the vision and heard the instruction; there are a few options right? It is not the LORD or at least not the one I worship or I have heard wrong, there must be further explanation.
The text says this happens three times. Acts 10:15-16 15 “The voice said to him again, a second time, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ 16 This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.” This could portray a process of reflection. Three times “Kill and eat”, three times “No, Lord” and three times “do not call anything impure which God has made clean”. Do your worship times, corporately and individually allow for a wrestling, a challenge and reflection? Are we capable of hearing a message that would initially so challenge our core beliefs and are we willing to stay engaged to hear it again and again? We are asked today to Remember, Reflect and Respond on Racial Injustice.
God is so gracious with Peter, this same Peter, who had denied him three times is now still denying the new thing Jesus came to do. Acts 10:17 “Now, while Peter was greatly puzzled about what to make of the vision that he had seen, suddenly the men sent by Cornelius appeared. They were asking for Simon’s house and were standing by the gate.” The New Revised Standard version translates Peter’s state as “Greatly Puzzled”, it could be translated, perplexed in other words “in turmoil and hesitating greatly”. His mind is blown as he tries to keep in tension the request from God and his lived religious experience to this day. And just as God, in Christ took the initiative, to get into Peter’s boat he again takes the initiative as men from Cornelius arrive. How does Peter respond? He takes little steps, he invites them in, it’s actually a huge step for Peter, most probably the first time he has invited gentiles in. Peter then takes a lot of other little, huge steps, he goes with them to Cornelius’s house, he goes inside a house full of gentiles and then he experiences what God had proclaimed in the vision as the Holy Spirit fills those that he saw as unclean. Peter did not really understand but he took steps, he responded positively, even while he was still reflecting.
The world seems to be in a really worrying space as walls go up that were beginning to come down, as greed and fear raise their ugly heads in the controlling structures of society, will you be open to hear God’s message. Did God create us all, in His image, unique, different and yet perfectly divine? Did God come in Christ to redeem that image? The vision in Isaiah of all living in peace and harmony, is that not what we should be living out now?
I was perplexed when I left school and went to university, because in a moment I was faced with the horrendous possibility that I had been living in a skewed reality. How could I have not realised something was wrong? Why had I not questioned the status quo or wondered who had decided the worth of God’s creation based on a pigment? It is even harder to comprehend that in many ways the bible was used, religion was used to keep the status quo. I pray and I hope that you will pray with me that the church would become the redeemed community that celebrates difference and tirelessly works for equality for all. But I know this will only happen if we take time to remember, reflect and respond. Amen
HYMN 198: Let us build a house where love can dwell
Prayers:
Maker of all, You painted into being all of heaven and earth.
Creatures too and all living things with such depth of diversity –
shape, size, colour, uniqueness and giftedness.
Help us to recognise Your Divine Image in stranger and friend,
to see Christ in the displaced and dehumanised,
that we might recognise their dignity and act with Your passion and zeal
to see justice, equity and love abound.
We pray for all this morning who have and continue to
bear the brunt of our greed and fear, sometimes manifested in brutal ways.
Remind us, again and again Lord of your vision for all and empower
us to respond to your Love by loving all.
Lord Jesus Christ, who crossed boundaries and borders,
Help us to cross boundaries and borders too.
Help us not only to remember the past and all the hatred and hurt
that has been perpetuated through history but help us to reflect on your
desire and plan for all to live in harmony.
Help us not to stop our reflecting when we are deeply challenged
but may our wrestling lead to a definitive response of change in
our hearts and through our hands.
Help us to love our neighbours, both near and far no matter who
they are so barriers come down in our communities.
Wounded Healer, who made blind eyes see and deaf ears hear,
enable us to perceive the reality of racism,
bigotry and racial injustice in ourselves and our society.
Heal both the oppressed and the oppressor.
Prince of Peace, inspire us to celebrate difference and reconcile division
and help re-imagine this world as a place where justice and peace are
experienced by all and freedom is not just the dream of some.
We unite in prayer as we pray as our saviour Jesus, taught, saying
Our Father in heaven,hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen.
HYMN 528 Prayer of St Francis (Channel of Peace)
Benediction
May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ Amen.
Acknowledgements:
Bible Quotations taken from: New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
English translations of The Lord’s Prayer, © 1998, English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC), and used by permission. www.englishtexts.org
Prayers and final blessing adapted from Church of Scotland Weekly Worship for 13th February 2022.
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