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Why as Christians, should we be hosting a dinner to mark Aboriginal Reconciliation Week? Let me give you two reasons. The first is that the concept of Reconciliation is at the very heart of the Christian gospel. And the second is that it has been an important part of our Australian Christian heritage to seek friendship with and justice for Aboriginal peoples, and Christians should continue to provide leadership in this area.

Christian beliefs about Creation and Redemption lead us to view all people as equal. We are all human beings made in the image of God. At Athens the apostle Paul preached that God “made of one blood all nations of men to live on all the face of the earth...” (Acts 17:26). In Christian theology, European and Aboriginal Australians share a one-blood relationship from Creation. In Christian theology, there is only one race and that is the human race. We may express that humanity in different cultures, but we are all one blood under heaven.

John Dunmore Lang, one of the founding fathers of the Presbyterian Church in Australia, said of aboriginal people in a sermon that he preached in 1838 “They are... bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh - formed originally after the image of God, like ourselves...We may rest assured, therefore, that [they] are especially under the divine protection.””

The tragic reason Lang had to remind his hearers that God’s protection was over Aboriginal people was that many early colonists did not believe it. He preached that sermon after a massacre of aborigines near Moree in northern New South Wales by white men who believed that it was no worse to kill aboriginal men, women and children than it was to shoot kangaroos or crows. Because, although from God’s perspective he sees us as equal, that’s not how people view each other is it? After the Fall, when people spread out and formed tribes and nations, they no longer honoured that “one blood” relationship. Fear, mistrust, hatred and ethnic conflict began, and haven’t stopped since. Conflict has been the common history of all mankind, but this need for human reconciliation is only a symptom of the deeper problem of Reconciliation with God that every human being needs. Thankfully, God took the initiative, sending Christ to reconcile us by his sin-bearing death and the bible says that we “...rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

So reconciliation is at the heart of the gospel. But it doesn’t end with our reconciliation to God. We have a responsibility to seek reconciliation with others. When Zaccheus was reconciled to God, he sought reconciliation with his victims. He paid back those he had robbed (Luke 19). One of the biggest issues in the New Testament is reconciliation. Reconciliation between Jewish and non-Jewish Christians who needed reminding that in Christ those old barriers of race had been broken down. And we still need reminding, and that’s part of the reason for tonight’s exercise. There is no place for racism or prejudice in the church, but only for understanding and Christian love. Reconciliation is something essentially Christian, not something left wing or foreign to Christian belief and practice.

There is a rich heritage of relations between churches and indigenous peoples in our shared history. Today’s Australian Christians are in danger of forgetting this heritage.  Now we must acknowledge the mistakes and sins of churches, and several denominations have made formal apologies for those. There is no room for pride, since many in churches denied their calling and abused and mistreated aboriginal peoples, and racist attitudes persist in churches even today.  But as even secular historians have admitted, there were also many Christians who stood up for Aboriginal rights. Evangelical and Roman Catholic Christians were often the only ones in white society with any motivation to help Aboriginals to preserve their culture and language. There were 19th and 20th century Christians, black and white, who sought reconciliation and justice for Aboriginal peoples. In the 19th century it was Christians more than any other whites who stood beside Aboriginal peoples in their struggles against ruthless white men who saw them as at best slave labour and at worst a pest to be exterminated. As well as the shame of past wrongdoings, we also have a Christian heritage of solidarity with Aboriginal peoples to honour and celebrate and continue. We must acknowledge and bewail the wrongs, but we can also give thanks for the way that the Holy Spirit has worked in positive ways in relations between the churches and Aboriginal peoples.

An Anglican clergyman, as early as 1826, admitted this:: "From us they have suffered inifinite loss...diseases...death...moral corruption in every respect. ...as a nation professing Christianity, we have much to answer for on their account to the judge of all the earth. The utmost we can do for them will only be a small atonement, a trifling return for the permanent injury they have sustained." We would do well to keep that in mind if we are tempted to echo the racism of those Australians who claim that Aboriginal people receive more than their fair share of welfare payments or government assistance and grants.

John Dunmore Lang, whom I quoted earlier, believed that Aboriginal Culture, far from being inferior, was in many ways superior to European culture and brilliantly adapted to living in this land. He preached, as early as the 1830s, that God’s judgement was upon white Australia for their mistreatment of the Aborigines. In 1838, he asked this question. He said “Now, my brethren, ...standing as we are in the immediate presence of God ... let us ask ourselves seriously and in earnest, whether, as the European colonists of this territory, we can lay our hands upon our hearts, and plead not guilty concerning the ... Aboriginal inhabitants of this land? Alas! we are verily guilty concerning these our brethren; for not only have we despoiled them of their land, and given them in exchange European vice and European disease in every foul and fatal form, but the blood of hundreds, nay of thousands of their number, who have fallen from time to time in their native forests, when waging unequal warfare with their civilised aggressors, still stains the hands of many of the inhabitants of the land! [And Lang concluded that he believed God would avenge the blood of those slaughtered] “... on the European inhabitants of this land! ....”

Lang realised even one hundred and seventy years ago that part of reconciliation has to involve the recognition of past wrongs and the resolve to give up our present racist attitudes because they displease God. Do you in the churches feel that way? That God loves Aboriginal people and is concerned for their welfare and justice? That denying them justice and denying them a recognition of past wrongs makes God angry? Or do you simply echo the prejudices of your non-Christian neighbours? If you do, you are denying an important part of our Australian Christian heritage, and more importantly, denying the Word of God which declares that we are equally created in His image and equally offered in Christ reconciliation with Him and the task of being reconciled with others. So I hope you will listen to what Aboriginal people like Aunty Phyllis have to say with an attitude of humility and understanding, and the desire to promote Reconciliation and Justice for all Australians.