Seeking justice, disrupting the peace - A reflection for Black History Month
Jennie Johnson, Racial Justice Officer for the Church of England Diocese of Liverpool and Liverpool Cathedral.
AS BLACK HISTORY MONTH comes to an end for another year, we’re delighted to share this reflection from our Open Table Liverpool community on why racial justice matters all year round, not just for this month, and why it’s everyone’s business.
Jennie Johnson, Racial Justice Officer for the Church of England Diocese of Liverpool and Liverpool Cathedral, shared this reflection on the parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8).
My role is to help the church to turn its recommendations on racial justice into commitment and action. I think when I first took this role, others in the diocese mistakenly thought that my job was one of two things:
Telling everyone that they are racist and that the institution is racist and generally working to ensure that people felt appropriate levels of guilt and shame, or
Finding ways to fix all racial injustices in the Church of England by myself in five years or less.
To be clear, neither of those are my role. The first one lacks love, grace and kindness and so it can’t genuinely be considered justice. The second is impossible. If it were that easy to dismantle racialised systems of oppression, clearly we would have done that by now!
My role is to call people into beloved community. To share a vision for the church that mirrors the vision we read about in Revelation 7:9 where people of every nation, language and people group worship before God’s throne together. My role is to help people in our many different communities add their perspectives, skills, talent and knowledge to the beautiful tapestry we are creating that invites all of God’s children to belong.
“Working for justice, championing the belief that all people are made in the image of a loving God, and worthy or respect and dignity is the work of all God’s people for all people.”
As we celebrate Black History Month, I’m going to reflect on what the parable Jesus taught about the persistent widow might teach us as we continue to work for racial justice in the church. My hope is that you will be emboldened to continue to seek justice and be a little disruptive along the way.
Seeking justice is everybody's business
It’s hard to grow up as a Black person in the UK and not care about the injustices that are experienced by your community. They seem like they are everywhere and at times they can be overwhelming. I grew up in a church that very rarely spoke about the reality of my life, instead it spoke about the need for justice as something far off that impacted those ‘less fortunate’ than us. I didn’t understand, because by any reasonable metric, my family were definitely those ‘less fortunate’ but we didn’t seem to be included.
It didn’t take long for me to realise that when my church talked about the poor - it meant the white poor. When it talked about supporting those suffering from family breakdown, unemployment, poor health and housing - the unspoken qualifier was that those people needed to be white in order to qualify for the gracious benevolence of Christian charity.
Unless you were a Black African, in an African country suffering from the effects of war or drought. Then we could help you.
I come from a faith legacy family. My grandparents faithfully prayed for our family and our community and took steps to see justice done in a system that seems intent on keeping us in chains. In our community they fed the poor, housed the homeless, took in children from families that were experiencing division and trauma and supported those with mental health challenges.
My experience of justice in church jarred with both my experiences in my Christian community and what I read about the life of Jesus and his followers. Throughout the gospels Jesus seems to go out of his way to break down barriers and include all those in need as part of his message.
In the same chapter as this parable about the persistent widow we see Jesus' blessing children, definitely an over-looked population within his culture. He then engages with a rich young man struggling with the demands of following Christ while trying to maintain his own status and on his way to Jericho (located in the West Bank, Palestine), Jesus heals a blind man begging by the road. Jesus seeks justice and restoration for all people - do we?
Working for justice, championing the belief that all people are made in the image of a loving God, and worthy or respect and dignity is the work of all God’s people for all people. As God’s people in the world, seeking justice is our business and we don’t have to be a victim of injustice to take part. Jesus invites the rich man to follow him, just as he invites the fishermen. And he invites us too.
Risk taking is a requirement
Seeking justice is rarely a quite pastime. It tends to cause disruption to those who want to maintain the status quo. Early in my role I remember a conversation with my line manager about the challenges I was likely to face and was a little surprised when she told me that the biggest challenge to the work was likely to be me! She pointed out that placing a Black British Jamaican woman in a White British institution to encourage and empower cultural change was probably going to create some disruption. Risk is a requirement of change and when that change is to increase racial justice in church communities that risk can at times seem very big and very daunting.
In this parable, the widow takes a huge risk. I’m sure she was told many times to go away, be quiet, behave properly. She might also have been physically removed from the space. A judge can grant justice, but they can also throw you in prison for contempt of court when you make a nuisance of yourself or don’t behave in the expected ways. Judges have the power to make changes for the better but sometimes, fighting for justice is a risk to our own liberty.
In this parable we begin to see the impact of justice-focussed disruption. The judge doesn’t grant justice because of a change of mind, an excellent argument or to maintain their status but because the disruption becomes so uncomfortable that granting justice is the only way to relieve the external strain.
Seeking justice risks our own peace too. It challenges us as individuals and communities to do the difficult work of self-reflection and action. We risk reframing our world view as we listen to the stories of others. We risk dismantling systems that serve us but harm others. We risk reckoning with our complicity in upholding systems of power. We risk the isolation of standing apart and being the only loud voice in the room.
Following in the footsteps of Christ, justice seekers are people willing to risk themselves. Standing up for the marginalised and the oppressed is to disrupt peace for yourself and others. If you listen to the stories of the Black trailblazers who came before us, you’ll realise that you have joined a long line of impactful risk-takers. People who seek justice, disrupt the peace and create hope.
Solidarity is our superpower
So how do we stay persistent when it seems like our call to justice is failing to create impact? What happens when we get tired or overwhelmed?
Luke 18:7 reads:
‘And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’
One of our responses to the persistent call for racial justice is to get together and pray. To be those people who cry out to God for justice day and night, shaped by our faith that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly more than we can ask or think (Eph 3:20).
I don’t think this is something for us to do on our own. In a culture that prides itself on individuality, there is something important we can learn from Black theologians and community activists. Solidarity is our superpower.
It is in unity that we can combat the despondency that comes when our ideas don’t work and it looks like all is lost. It’s in unity that we can encourage each other and support each other when one of us is tired and the other still has energy for another step. Justice is the work of community solidarity, it is not a solo sport.
Seeking racial justice is a slow journey and it cannot take place without trusted relationships. Without them, our justice easily becomes charity as we seek to help those we consider less fortunate or lacking in power and capacity. Trusted relationships require difficult, honest conversations, a willingness to recognise and dismantle power structures and a deep respect based on our shared humanity. It is not fast.
I don’t know about you, but I often find that my idea of ‘quickly’ and ‘soon’ and what the Bible refers to as ‘quickly’ and ‘soon’ don’t quite align. It’s a continued frustration of mine but I’m trying to walk faithfully, learning to live with the tension that this work is both slower than I would like and constantly impacting our culture to create change.
We have a saying in my culture: ‘soon come’. Say you invite a friend to your house to a party and a couple of hours into the celebration they are not there so you phone them to find out when they will arrive and they say, ‘soon come’. That doesn’t mean they are actively on their way to you. I would translate it as ‘I have every intention of meeting you, and I will meet you, and when I meet you, it will be at the right time.’
That’s how I think about the persistence needed for seeking racial justice. I am actively seeking justice; it is both my future intention and my current activity. Its impact is past, present and future. Holding that tension between the now and the not yet is where our faith in Christ is active.
This Black History Month I’d like to share the story of Black activist, Mavis Best.
A portrait of Mavis Best. SOURCE: Black History Month.
Mavis Best was a grass roots leader who refused to stay silent in the face of injustice. Born in Jamaica she came to Britain as part of the Windrush generation and settled in south London. By the 1970s she had seen too many young Black men stopped, searched and even arrested by police without evidence. These humiliating encounters were carried out under an old law called ‘the sus law’ which gave police sweeping powers based only on suspicion. Mavis Best decided this had to change. She brought together mothers, families and neighbours creating a powerful movement known as ‘Scrap the Sus’. They organised meetings, handed out leaflets, lobbied politicians and stood outside police stations demanding justice. Her campaign lasted 3 years, and against all odds Parliament was forced to repeal the law. Her victory proved that ordinary people, united in purpose, could change the system itself.
Mavis Best later worked in local politics and community development, but she will always be remembered as the woman who showed how grassroots power could dismantle systemic racism in Britain.
You don’t need to be a Racial Justice Officer to seek justice and disrupt the peace. In our context you just need to be someone who loves Christ’s church enough to make seeking justice your business. You need to be someone with the faith to take a few risks and trust God to hold you; and you need to love God’s people enough to invite them to join you in solidarity.
I invite you now to sit with me in the stillness, to listen to Holy Spirit, reflecting on what you have read, to consider these two questions:
What might God be saying to you?
How will you respond?
