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On the Second Sunday of February we mark Racial Justice Sunday – a call for all churches to reflect on the importance of racial justice, to give thanks for the gifts and beauty of human diversity, and to commit to end racism and acts of discrimination.
An American priest once said: There is just enough room in the world for all the peoples in it, but there is no room for the fences which separate them.
Some years later in his book The Cross of Peace Sir Phillip Gibbs wrote: The problem of fences has grown to be one of the most acute that the world must face. Today there are all sorts of zig zag and criss-crossing separating fences running through the races and people of the world. Modern progress has made the world a neighbourhood: God has given us the task of making it a brotherhood. In these day of dividing walls of race and class and creed we must shake the earth anew with the message of the all-inclusive Christ, in whom there is neither bond nor fee, Jew or Greek, but all are one.
Campaigning for racial justice is part of our spiritual pilgrimage as followers of Christ. It should be motivated by the biblical and Gospel values of equality, justice, freedom, dignity and of course LOVE. Christ died to create a single humanity in which all peoples and cultures are found. Those who truly love God and his Christ cannot act unjustly for God calls us to live out the values of the Kingdom.
The message we who profess the name of Christ must carry is that of love – a love which acts to destroy the barriers and fences of this world, a love which strives for justice, peace and equality for all. A love which cares not about creed or colour or religion, but respects the wonderful diversity of humanity. In Christ we see that love – the love of God for ALL his people.
I end with a story – it is not about race but it demonstrates quite simply that love can literally breaks down the barriers between us.
In the years after the First World War, the Quakers worked in Poland distributing food and clothing. One of these workers served a cluster of villages there became ill with typhus and died. In these villages there was only a Roman Catholic Cemetery, and by canon law it was quite impossible to bury one not of the confession in consecrated ground. So they laid their cherished friend in a grave dug just outside the fence of the cemetery. The next morning they discovered in the night the villagers had moved the fence so that it embraced the grave. The love and the respect these people had for that person – transcended all.