Habitat for Spirituality - Ethnic Rivalry Vs God's Love

Ethnic Rivalry Vs God's Love

Earlier this week as many as 150 Croatian and Serbian supporters were ejected

from the Melbourne Tennis Open.

The young men who were ejected, carried within them powerful and ancient stories

of revenge, of oppression and of blood.

Earlier the week before, a small group of Sudanese men were engaged in a minor brawl in the City of Dandenong, they too carry within them ancient stories,

And they (unlike their Croatian and Serbian peers most of whom were brought up in the relative peace of Australia) know, from their own experience, the power of those stories as a lived reality. They know from, their own eyes

that the colour of blood is dark and rich and red.

It has long been understood that one of the ‘dangers’ of immigration

is that the politics of one country may end up being played out in the new home

and that this can happen thru the presence and agency of migrants and descendants.

At the Cronulla riots last year the media highlighted the proud claims of some of the Anglo-Saxon boys that ‘we grew here, you flew here’

the implication being that

somehow

those who were born elsewhere were an inferior people.

Today we heard about Christ entering the temple after wandering around in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, we here about him entering, looking, we can imagine

wildly scruffy and of how he picked up an ancient scroll and began to proclaim.

The scroll contains the words of the prophet Isaiah and it speaks of

‘good news and freedom and recovery and release’

The scroll declares the inclusiveness of God’s mercy and radically goes on to announce that God will not just bless and release the Hebrew people

but will bless

all the poor, all the captives all the broken hearted.

As theologian Alan Culpepper writes such an announcement

was shocking in the extreme because

‘the people of Jesus home town had read the Scriptures

as promises of God’s exclusive covenant with them.

Jesus came announcing deliverance but it was not national deliverance

but was instead God’s promise of liberation for

all the poor and oppressed

regardless of nationality, gender or race.

When the radical inclusiveness of Jesus announcement became clear to those gathered in the synagogue in Nazareth their commitment to their community boundaries took precedence over their joy that God had sent a prophet among them’

So.

We have a young man, many years ago,

coming and telling his people that God’s love is inclusive,

that what matters is not tribal boundaries or racial differences

and then we have young men in Australia (and the rest of the world)

in 2006 /2007 holding up their national flags and declaring war over blood and borders and bloody history.

Uniting Church theologian William Loader writes that in this passage from Luke we hear the ‘original words of a prophet who came announcing Israel’s liberation from exile in Babylon in the late 6^th century

become a self description of Jesus role and calling

and by extension a ‘mission statement for the church’

A mission statement for the church.

Who is the church?
Big question.

Who is the church?

Well, ultimately, it’s us isn’t it?

It’s you and me, gathering together with all our own funny tribal prejudices

and internal whisperings.

It’s you and me, getting anxious when we see 5 tall Sudanese men walking together down the street.

‘It’s a gang’ we think.

‘I’m not safe’ we think.

Whereas in the Sudanese culture to walk by yourself is unheard of:

‘Why would you walk like that’?

One young Sudanese man was quoted as saying in The Age last week:

‘Why would you walk by yourself, we would be lonely’

Research shows that one of the ways to prevent Diaspora groups of any culture

from carrying conflict forward into their new home is by implementing sound institutional policy’s with appropriate funding for infrastructure and support systems

to be put in place.

In the specific case of the newly arrived Sudanese families

demographer Bob Birrell writes:

‘We are not doing nearly enough for these people,

it’s a failure of state and federal governments’

And as Multicultural worker with 40 years experience Maggie Lynch writes:

I have never encountered a group so lacking in (what we would call) life skills.

(These are people who may not know how to turn on a fridge,

cross at a light or fill in a form.)

and the bulk of the youth have never known life outside of refugee camps’.

Some families have been living in camps of up to 90,000 people for 15 or 20 years.

The Uniting Church, like most churches,