Family Forever

I love this photo of Alwyn and Trevor baptising Jake - it is a preview of heaven for me - barriers breaking down and joy breaking out.

In the last two weeks at my church, some members of our church family told a shockingly different story - of their experiences of racism. With extraordinary grace, Nisha described growing up with racist abuse and her neighbours throwing things on fire over their wall. Esme, one of Britain’s first black women judges, spoke of how sometimes people didn’t see her as a person, just as a colour. One judge initially did not believe that she could be a judge. Prabhath described being beaten up at a Kingston bus-stop, the blows accompanied by a tirade of filth. I found myself weeping as I listened. 

So without apology, I am writing on this, even though you may have read lots about racism recently, because this is not just the latest topic of discussion - for too many people, it is their life experience. I have heard people dismiss the slogan “Black Lives Matter” because all lives matter. All lives do matter but let us not pretend that all lives have mattered equally. Some of the anger may be disturbing or misdirected but it is acutely important not to dismiss the pain behind it. Patrick Hutchison, the black grandfather who famously carried a white racist protester to safety in the Black Lives protests, challenges us - “It’s not about black versus white”. It’s about actively standing against racism.

If I’m honest, I have discovered a surprising defensiveness in me about this. Surely I am not racist! But as I have started to listen tand to read more, I begin to see that I have barely understood the cost of racism to those on the wrong end of it. I have never been judged for my skin colour, let alone carried the weight of generations of being devalued, abused and even enslaved. I am just starting to register the bucketload of privilege that I was born with. And although I like to imagine that I would have been on the right side of the slavery debates in centuries gone by, sadly I have too often passively accepted the status quo.

I deeply believe that Jesus offers the way forward. God gives us a new way of seeing one another. Those of you linked with Gift of Blessing Trust will know that I have been writing on “Living for Eternity” for the last year. I have been challenged to see that God is not only my father for eternity, God is our Father for eternity and his infinite arms stretch across every race divide. It changes how we act towards Christians from different backgrounds when we see that we will be siblings forever. If we want heaven to come to earth, that means loving one another as brothers and sisters here and now.

Here is just a snippet from the new book, “God’s Church is designed to be a glorious display of unity that reaches across class and race and denomination; it is to be the place where everyone prefers one another in love because we are family forever. When heaven comes down, being white and western will no longer carry any weight or privilege. Our heavenly dad is neither white nor black nor British nor any other race. Can we let that truth plumb the deep places of our hearts where unconscious prejudice still grips us? Can we allow it to dismantle the pride in “my way of doing things”? Can we let the vision of being one family, children of the same Heavenly Father, disturb us and inspire us until we refuse to be satisfied with bland, uniform churches that refuse to make the effort of crossing boundaries?”

I long for God to revive his church and am convinced that our true unity in Christ (not just lipservice) is key for that to happen. God withdraws when we act unjustly and unlovingly but our unity is a magnet for blessing. It is noteworthy that the great East African revival saw African and European leaders working together with great love for one another. Joe Church, a leading figure in the revival, visited South Africa in 1944 while apartheid still ruled and wrote, “We said plainly revival could not come if they had no (apparent) intention of getting down the colour-bar.”

As we kneel together before the Cross, we find a glorious unity that is not controlled uniformity . It is the unity we glimpse in Revelation where different races and languages come together to worship, all beloved, all loving. Here I discover that without you, I am less.

At the heart of that East African revival was repentance and grace. Both are costly. But this is God’s way to unity. When we walk it, heaven comes down.

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