Phil Inglis - June 14, 2020
Which God Do You Serve?
Last Sunday I attended the Black Lives Matter protest in Wollongong. I thought I would see and hear what an actual protest was like and to add my voice to the call for justice. It wasn’t like the protests I see on TV. No shop windows were broken, no bricks thrown, no tear gas or water cannons. Instead there were a few thousand people who gathered together to express our anger at the way in which disadvantaged people have been treated, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are being imprisoned at a disproportionately higher rate, and despite 434 Indigenous deaths in custody since the Royal Commission in 1991, no one has ever been convicted. I am uncomfortable living in a society where people suffer injustice. One chant I particularly resonated with was, “No Justice. No Peace.” I don’t pretend to have a solution but I acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been treated unjustly and very poorly over the last 230 years, starting with the invasion of their land. It has also been interesting to see that in the US and UK in particular, they have been tearing down statues of people who owned slaves or who supported the slave trade. The sheer idea that someone could own someone else is so abhorrent to us today, that we don’t even want to see statues of people who owned slaves. The statues themselves are not the problem, rather it’s the values held by the people they represent that is so unacceptable that we want to throw them in the river. This Sunday we look at the story of Elijah confronting the prophets of Ba’al on the top of Mount Carmel. It’s a pretty popular story for kids in Sunday School, but I’m not sure we fully understand what’s happening when Elijah confronts the king. When we understand something more of the world of Elijah we see that what Elijah is doing in 1 Kings 17 and 18 is similar to what protesters were doing on Sunday. He is calling his national leaders back to God’s values, values of love and justice.
Scripture References: 1 Kings 18:17-39
From Series: "Elijah"
An angry king, devastating drought, epic opposition and one man who overcomes it all. Join us over the next 4 weeks as we delve into the life of Elijah and see how a 2,500 year old prophet is crazy relevant to us today.
