"I
hate your new moons and your appointed festivals." These are threatening
words from Isaiah. Whenever I read them, they make me uncomfortable, because I find
the ritual of worship and the Christian calendar of seasons and feasts very
meaningful. I understand and appreciate the Christian tradition, how it marks
the year into times of pilgrimage, penitence, remembering and rejoicing. It
encourages us to pursue spiritual transformation on our faith journeys. Our
Sunday worship is hallowed by centuries of practice by faithful people.
While
we no longer offer animal sacrifices, preferring to offer prayers instead,
Isaiah still has a point. Because our hands are still bloody with structural wrongdoing
– and I say structural because Isaiah’s problem is communal worship and lack of
action, not individual in this passage. God would not pleased by worship that
begins and ends with Sunday, because if we aren't also pursuing justice as a
community of faith, our rituals are meaningless. Worse than meaningless,
because they delude us into thinking that attending church means we have
fulfilled all righteousness as Christians even if our world is unjust, and war
and famine and discrimination and the consequences of climate change rage
around us.
I
have always loved liturgy. As a minister, it is part of my work to structure it
and create content in such a way that it hopefully connects spiritually with
people. Through the Christian sacraments and rites of passage, and the ancient
texts of the bible, the hope is we will develop a meaningful relationship with
God. But when I read Isaiah's words, I have a sneaking suspicion that he is right.
Too often faith begins and ends with Sunday worship
Isaiah
was a prophet, and it was the job of the prophets to speak truth to power. In many ways, the prophets were the conscience
of the kings and the rulers. Here, Isaiah is saying don’t think you can rely on
the idea that performing the right sacrifice makes you good with God. Observing
the festivals doesn’t make you a faithful person. God is demanding more than that. God is demanding
justice and right behaviour as a flow on from religious practice. If you aren’t
acting justly, says God, then it doesn't matter at all whether you're doing the
right sacrifices at the right time, or saying the right prayers at the right
feasts or singing the right psalms. It isn’t going to cut the mustard.
No
doubt this statement from Isaiah brought him into conflict with the priests,
whose job it was to oversee the sacrifices and rituals. I can’t imagine they
would be pleased with these words at all. Ancient Jewish priests formed part of
the ruling class that oversaw not only the Temple, but the law and how it
functioned in society. Isaiah’s statement is making it pretty clear he saw the
priests as part of the structural problem of injustice.
We
have neither priests doing sacrifices or official prophets in our world today. But
the words of Isaiah still resonate. What exactly do our rituals mean today? How
do we hear and practice God's call for justice?
For
me, Isaiah's furious words have a lot to say to us. There are many examples of
structural injustice in our world today. One that seems to becoming more
obvious and more frightening is that of structural racism.
How
many of you watched the recent documentary about Adam Goodes, The Final
Quarter? Ian Darling’s documentary follows AFL legend and 2014 Australian of the
Year Adam Goodes, who spent the last three years of his career being booed by
the public and demonised by the right wing media. I am suggesting that it was
because Adam was a proud Aboriginal man.
Adam
Goodes was born in South Australia, to Lisa May and Graham Goodes, His father
is of British ancestry; his mother is an Indigenous Australian (Adnyamathanha
and Narungga) and is one of the Stolen Generation.
Goodes'
parents were separated when he was four; his father moved to Queensland while
Goodes moved between South Australia and Victoria with his mother. It is
probably safe to say that Adam Goodes, though his mother, knew the trauma and
racism of the aboriginal people through policies that led to children being
taken, and the barring of Aboriginal people from participating in social and
civic life.
It
is estimated that between 1883 and 1969 more than 6,200 Aboriginal children
were stolen in NSW alone. Australia-wide numbers are in the tens of thousands.
This had profound effects on individuals and families, causing
intergenerational trauma and a myriad of social and health problems.
The Last
Quarter is a powerful film that holds a mirror to Australia and suggests we
reconsider what happened on and off the football field.
In one
review, it was said that The Final Quarter is “a painful reminder of the racism
beating at the heart of Australia”. Goodes became a lightning rod for an
intense public debate and widespread media commentary that divided the country.
In the last three years of his career, during which Goodes was named Australian
of the Year, he was accused of staging for free kicks, picking on a teenage
girl who called him an ape, incessantly booed, and heavily criticised for
performing an on-field war dance celebration after a goal. When the football
crowds continued to turn on him, the Brownlow medallist left his beloved game.
John and I
watched The Final Quarter on Peter Fitzsimmons’ recommendation. I had never
understood until now just how bad things were for Adam Goodes. It was clear
that Goodes’ words and actions simply did not match up with the way many
conservative pundits and sports commentators displayed them. He was calm,
gracious and sensible under fire.
The most
telling comment came from a panel member of The Drum. He pointed out that we
are fine with Aboriginal players as long as they play by the unspoken white
rules and don’t rock the boat. Adam Goodes simply refused to do that, calling
out racism and acting like a man proud of his culture.
We live in
a nation marred by systemic racism and injustice. Mainstream racism is on the
rise in Australia right now. And the statistics bear this out.
A new
report suggests Aboriginal people are facing enormous pressure to lose their
traditional culture in order to be successful in Australia. Many Aboriginal
people feel they are not wanted by white Australia.
Over 90 per
cent said Aboriginal people were talked to like they did not matter and were
judged by stereotypes.
Many
respondents said they did not feel comfortable going out in public, to
restaurants, or to shopping centres because they were scared of being stared at
and treated differently.
Only 16 per
cent thought non-Indigenous Australians tried to understand Aboriginal culture.
Aboriginal
people also found the criminal justice system and Australia's political system
to be deeply racist because neither acknowledged Aboriginal traditions or lore.
In 2016,
the unemployment rate for Indigenous people of working age was 18.4 per cent,
2.7 times the non-Indigenous unemployment rate (6.8 per cent).
Aboriginal
suicide rate is six time higher than the rest of Australia.
As of 30
June 2018, there were
11,849 prisoners who identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.
Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander prisoners accounted for just over a quarter (27%) of
the total Australian prisoner population, yet they are only constitute 2% of the Australian population
aged 18 years and over.
Aboriginal
people are much more likely to be questioned by police… When questioned they
are more likely to be arrested rather than proceeded against by summons. If
they are arrested, Aboriginal people are much more likely to be remanded in
custody than given bail. Aboriginal people are much more likely to plead guilty
than go to trial,
and if
they go to trial, they are much more likely to be convicted… they are much more
likely to be imprisoned… and at the end of their term of imprisonment they are
much less likely to get parole.
Unpaid
fines, swearing or shouting in public are offenses a white person is very
unlikely to be charged with, let alone jailed for. Dr Brian Steels, restorative
justice researcher at Murdoch University said that “In all my years of research
in criminal justice, I can tell you it would be very difficult to find a white
person charged with shouting or swearing”.
The system
is patently unfair and cannot be understood in any other way except racist.
Australia
is never going to achieve reconciliation or justice for Aboriginal people until
it comes to terms with its history. Not only was the land of the first peoples
taken from them and colonised, they were killed in enormous numbers. The
Killing Times, a Guardian special report using stories told by descendants on
all sides, attempted to count the human cost of more than a century of frontier
bloodshed.
Two
historians, Raymond Evans and Robert Ørsted-Jensen, have concluded that in
Queensland alone – the epicentre of frontier war in the mid-19th century
Australia – at least 65,180 Aboriginal Australians were killed from the 1820s
until the early 1900s. Considering that their research focuses on Queensland
alone, their findings come with the disturbing implication about the number of
Indigenous Australians killed continent-wide is very high.
The written
records where we have them, are chilling, as described in this letter from a
Gippsland squatter, Henry Meyrick, to his family in England in 1846:
The blacks
are very quiet here now, poor wretches. No wild beast of the forest was ever
hunted down with such unsparing perseverance as they are. Men, women and
children are shot whenever they can be met with … I have protested against it
at every station I have been in Gippsland, in the strongest language, but these
things are kept very secret as the penalty would certainly be hanging.
The truth
of Australia’s history has long been hiding in plain sight. White Australia has
the blood on our hands that Isaiah accuses us of.
While it is
true that there is no place on this earth where perfect justice prevails, or
where racism and prejudice are unknown, this is no excuse for Australians to
stick their heads in the sand. The situation isn’t going to get better unless
we do something about it.
White
people are not as likely to be searched, or mistreated by the police. Through
no merit of their own, white people are likely to be treated better than their
non-white friends. No one will glare at them or follow them around in department
stores, assuming automatically that they are there to shoplift.
Isaiah
talked about systemic, endemic, structural communal wrongs, when he ordered
people to “cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, to rescue the
oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow, the implication being that
these things were not happening despite the religious practice of the people.
There is
still a systemic racism endemic to our own time. where dark-skinned people are
persistently suspected, mistreated, disenfranchised, incarcerated, and even
killed.
Isaiah
calls us to turn from evil and do good, and as part of our faith, to seek
justice, not only for people who look like us or sound like us, but for all
people; for everyone created in the image of God. This includes refugees, whose
appalling treatment by the Australian government flies in the face of all
religious teaching,
Isaiah
demands that we create justice for those in need. If we don't, then what does
it matter how meaningful our worship is? If we fail to live by Christianity’s
powerful ethical and moral teachings, then we deserve Isaiah's condemnation.
If we don't
work to change the systemic racism endemic to Australia, then we are no better
than those who were making their sacrifices but didn't worry about the poor
being cheated, or about people in power using that power to disenfranchise and
oppress others.
It's our mission
to work toward a future in which racism and prejudice are eradicated: not just
at an individual level, but on a societal and systemic level.
It's our responsibility
as Christians to make a better world, one that is more just for us and for our
children, because we are all God’s children.
It’s our
calling as disciples to recognise our worship is meaningless unless it compels
us out into the world to take action.
I want to
end with a quote from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who once described racism
as humanity’s gravest threat to humanity and as the maximum of hatred for a
minimum of reason. In a statement that reflects Isaiah, he says:
May
we find the strength and the compassion to challenge what is unjust and to
change what is not right. Amen.
