Today is Racial Justice Sunday. This year is an important one for racial justice on these shores as it marks the 30th anniversary of Racial Justice Sunday (RJS). RJS was established by the Methodist Church in 1995 following the tragic racist murder of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence in southeast London in April 1993. Stephen Lawrence (13 September 1974 – 22 April 1993) was an 18-year-old black British citizen from Plumstead, southeast London, who was murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus on Well Hall Road, Eltham, on the evening of 22 April 1993. The case became a cause célèbre: its fallout included changes of attitudes on racism and the police, and to the law and police practice. It also led to the partial revocation of the rule against double jeopardy. Two of the perpetrators were convicted of murder on 3 January 2012.
The Lawrence family attended a local Methodist Church in that part of the capital, and the Methodist Church agreed to support the family’s justice campaign to find young Stephen’s killers. A few years later, the Churches’ Commission for Racial Justice (CCRJ), a Churches Together in Britain and Ireland programme, agreed to mainstream the special Sunday so that all the churches could engage with it.
Our theme this year is ‘Coat of Many Colours’, reflecting the increasing diversity that exists in the churches in Britain and Ireland.
Every year 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.
It’s a call for EVERYONE to engage in ending the evils of racism and to celebrate racial diversity throughout society and the church. On this day we are invited to take stock, not just of the sins of our fathers and mothers but of our world today. We are also invited to understand afresh the gift we have in the racial diversity in the church and wider society.
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.
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