Many Australians recall with shame the Cronulla racial riots twenty years ago this week.
The Other Cheek points to two great reads, a memory from Christian Journo, Graeme Cole, and a contemporary sermon from a local minister, Richard Humphrey.
Cole, a Sutherland Shire boy through and through, has written a memoir for the Zadok Papers magazine special edition on the riots. He recalls the efforts local Christians made at reconciliation, including beach manager Brad Whittaker and high-profile NRL player Jason Stevens
“Brad remembers balancing his job as Beach Manager while bringing his Christian faith and worldview to the context. Not everyone was ready for an apology. ‘It was difficult,’ Brad said. ‘The way of moving forward was some sort of apology … ‘and I was asked to do that… as a Christian, I could see the hurt. I knew that apologising was the best way for both communities to move forward.’
“Criticism came from conservative politicians. ‘I took a lot of heat from that (the apology) from elected officials. It was the most impactful thing I was asked to do – not just an employee of Council, but as a Christian. It was required even though everyone wasn’t ready for it. I had to step out in faith, willingly.'”
The Zadok special edition is available for free here.
A sermon from the Sunday after the riot from a local minister has stood the test of time.
Something Has To Be Done: a sermon preached on the Sunday after the riot
The revenge attacks swirled around St Andrews Anglican Church, Cronulla. Richard Humphrey, now the Dean of Hobart, had no choice but to preach about the riot. He boldly asked his congregation, “Is there racism in your heart?”
Readings: 2 Samuel 7:11b -16; Romans 16:25–27; Luke 1:26–38
What a difference a week makes. It would have seemed inconceivable this time
last week that we would now be meeting under such circumstances with Police road
blocks right outside our church, locked down beaches, and helicopters hovering
overhead till the early hours of the morning. Cronulla, once world famous for its
wonderful beaches, is now world famous, or infamous, due to the disturbances of
Sunday afternoon and Monday night.
I wonder how all this made you feel? I have tried to talk to as many people as
possible, and there have certainly been a wide variety of opinions and emotions. I would like to share with you some of my thoughts as I have tried to reflect biblically on the events of the past week.
I would like to speak of anger, of sadness and of hope. I want
to issue a call for righteousness, a call for repentance and a call for reconciliation because I have a strong belief that something has to be done.
ANGER: A CALL TO RIGHTEOUSNESS
Perhaps the most natural reaction to the recent events is anger: anger over the
senseless mob mentality of Sunday and the pointless violence of Monday night, anger over what has happened in our suburb, anger over what has become of our suburb.
This anger is not just a natural human reaction; it is part of the biblical desire for
righteousness, the desire for things to be put right. The Psalms are full of cries to God to do what is right, to establish righteousness and justice.
But true righteousness will always be based on truth and having all things
exposed and open. This means that as we call for righteousness and we need to ensure we are thinking clearly and truthfully.
As those of us who live here know, the trouble of last weekend did not appear out
of a vacuum. It has been brewing for years, caused by antisocial behaviour, we could
even say bullying, by some at the beach. About this, something must be done.
But we also need to be clear that this, something must be done by the appropriate
authorities. This is what Paul argues in Romans 13. God has ordained authorities to
maintain law and order; that is their job and God given responsibility. Something has to be done about the behaviour of some at North Cronulla beach, and our politicians and police have to do it.
When a mob tries to take justice into its own hands, you get the appalling scenes of last weekend when a demonstration over an attack on two lifeguards ends up in an attack on an ambulance, a slight moral ambiguity in the sober light of day.
This also leads to recognising the part that alcohol played in last weekend’s
disturbance, a cry for justice, needs to consider the place of alcohol in the Australian
culture.
We could also rightly express anger at the media’s role in dramatising the events
leading up to last week and its sensational reporting of the disturbance which I believe
contributed to the response on Monday night.
About these things, there is an appropriate level of anger and a recognition that
something must be done, and we should do our level best to support the appropriate
authorities, especially the police, as they do their work. We need to support a call for
righteousness.
SADNESS: A CALL TO REPENTANCE
But for me, not only was there anger, but there was sadness. Not just sadness at
the effect on our suburb, but a more existential sadness at the state of the human heart.
On Sunday, some truly appalling opinions were expressed and aired on the media,
messages of hate, discrimination, violence and racism. There was great irony that we
had a Jewish representative with us last Sunday night, perhaps the most persecuted
people of the last century, as dreadful and hateful opinions very close to those of the Third Reich were being expressed at our beach.
On Monday, as windows were smashed around the Rectory and rocks from the church garden were thrown, there was so much hate and anger and reverse racism that it almost made me weep. What has become of our community and our society that people could act like this?
Then I realised this is just what the Bible says about the human heart, it is wicked,
and we saw some of the outworking of that last weekend. But if we are honest, we will see that it is true in our own hearts as well.
This is perhaps the most difficult part of this sermon, but I believe we all need to
look to our own hearts and see if we need to repent. I have certainly heard some good upright residents of the Shire utter some very unchristian, discriminatory and frankly racist comments. As Christians, we are to be clothed in compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Colossians 3), but other outfits have been paraded around in the past week.
There should be no place in the Christian heart for such thoughts. Whilst we all
have our own communities, and we gain much of our identity and strength from our
similarities and shared cultural norms, this does not mean we have the right to hate or look down on those from other communities.
The Bible makes it clear, in Acts 17, for instance, that God is the God of all people;
he is their maker, creator, and he is in charge of all nations, and as John 3:16 famously teaches us, God loves the world, the whole world, not just the Shire.
We may know it as God’s own country, but it is not God’s only country. And when God sent his son to the world, he came as a young man of Middle Eastern appearance. It is simply wrong to judge someone because of their appearance; it is certainly
not how God acts. When God surprisingly chose David to be the King of Israel, he said, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks to the heart.” (1Samuel 16:7). Can I urge you to take a good, long look at your own heart? Is there hate, fear, racism there? Then ask God to forgive you and change you. If we are to move forward, not only does something have to be done out there, something has to be done in here, in our hearts.
HOPE: A CALL TO RECONCILIATION
As the week went on, as I met with other Christian leaders, talked with people on
the streets, and heard of moves by various community leaders to restore peace and
harmony, I saw signs of hope. For it is in reconciliation that there is hope.
Yet true reconciliation can only come through forgiveness. It has been good that
there have been expressions of sorrow, which need to come from both sides, but
forgiveness is also necessary. Forgiveness is a very difficult thing to define, as I heard
on a recent Oprah show on the subject, which was full of self-empowering psychobabble, but I once heard it described as giving up the right to be angry. That is a thought that is well worth considering.
We have the right to be angry, as we have already considered, but to move
forward, we need to give up that right. It is difficult, but that is how God has treated us. In Jesus, he has acted in forgiveness; he has given up his right to be angry with us for the state of our hearts, and we need to express this same forgiveness in all our relationships.
This is the true way of hope and reconciliation.
Something has to be done, and may it be done by each of us here as we
look to bring healing to our tarnished and traumatised suburb and shire.
SOMETHING HAS BEEN/ IS BEING/ WILL BE DONE.
For many, there has also been the sense of irony that all these events can happen
around Christmas time, a period often marked with the logo “Peace on Earth.” But the
more that I pondered the Christmas message, the more I realised that here we see that something has been done, something is being done, and something will be done, and it does issue a call for righteousness, a call for repentance, and a call for reconciliation.
Something has been done
Angel Gabriel announces to Mary that the child she is to bear will fulfil
all the prophecies of the Old Testament. This is a child born to be king who, according to Isaiah 9:6, will be a “prince of peace”, who will “establish and uphold justice and righteousness”. In Jesus, this king has come who one day will establish a kingdom where righteousness, justice and peace will reign. The resurrection of Jesus shows that this is not just a pious fantasy but will become a reality. This certainty encourages us to work towards that righteousness, justice and peace now, knowing that ultimately it will triumph. As we pray the Lord’s Prayer for God’s kingdom to come, we are looking forward to the day when our desire for righteousness will find its fulfilment.
In the birth of Jesus, something has been done.
Something is being done.
More than that, something is being done. Jesus calls us to join his kingdom. We
enter not by being worthy, we have already considered the wickedness of the human
heart, but recognising that we need to be saved, we need to repent, and perhaps this
week above all others reminds us of our need of salvation and repentance.
As we do so, we are reconciled with God, and we are called to live out this
reconciliation with each other. To live out the forgiveness we have experienced from
God in our dealings with others. In people turning to Christ and following him, something is being done in our lives.
Something will be done.
Finally, something will be done. There is in the book of Revelation 7 a wonderful
view of heaven, of what the kingdom of God will look like. John the seer says “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no-one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.
They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And
they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
It is hard to imagine a more multiracial image; every nation, tribe, people and language are represented, and true racial harmony exists. But it exists not in acceptance of each other but rather in mutual acceptance of God, of who he is, and in what he has done for us in Jesus, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
True harmony is to be found in worship of the God who loved us, all of us, all of
us sinners in this building, in this shire, in our city, in the country and world. This is not a multi-racial dream, but it is something which the church lives out as it gathers with its different nation tribes, peoples and languages of which we are only a small part here today, and will become a reality when the King whose birth we are soon to celebrate
returns. Come, Lord Jesus, come.
May the peace of Christ rule in our hearts and in our suburb in the next week.
Image Credit: Warren Hudson / Flickr
Powerful !