“I can’t breathe!”

Three simple, haunting, and powerful words…

words that are, probably, indelibly etched in our minds––

especially if we have seen the video of George Floyd…

lying in a Minneapolis street…

dying…

with a white police officer’s knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Three simple, haunting, and powerful words…

repeated over and over again––

words that sparked some violent riots…

but weeks and weeks of largely peaceful protests across the United States…

which were, in turn, met with more flagrant and brazen police brutality.

Those protests then spread across the world…

with statues of former colonialists, racists, and slave-traders defaced…

or pulled down.

And we saw thousands take to the streets all around Australia…

even amid the risks of the COVID pandemic…

as people wanted to say…

unequivocally…

that “Black Lives Matter”.

Some of our political leaders called those protestors irresponsible––

even though, it’s clear, that the protests played no role in the recent surge in cases…

as confirmed by Victorian Health Authorities…

over against the baseless claims of the Murdoch-media.

Some of our political leaders tried to claim that this was an American issue;

one that shouldn’t be imported to this country.

But, those three simple, haunting, and powerful words were also spoken… 

here…

some five years ago…

by David Dungay…

an Aboriginal man who was pinned down by five guards at Long Bay Gaol…

words that he repeated twelve times before he died.

I doubt few of us have heard or recognise his name…

unlike that of George Floyd.

But there have been four hundred and thirty-four Aboriginal deaths in custody…

since the Royal Commission twenty-nine years ago.

That’s fifteen Aboriginal people each year––

more than one per month––

every year, for twenty-nine years.

And the recommendations of that Royal Commission still haven’t been implemented.

“I can’t breathe” was also the title of an episode of ‘Four Corners’, this week…

hosted by Stan Grant…

looking at the Black Lives Matter movement and what it means to Indigenous Australians.

“This is not something we import from America”,

he said…

“It is a struggle we share with black America”.

George Floyd is “every person in chains. Every person who lived under the whip…

Every nameless faceless person who was told their lives did not matter…

in a society where you’re not heard.

This is not a story for me, it is my life”. 

But, Grant suggested, maybe anger over the George Floyd incident has shaken our apathy.

“Black and white are marching together…

maybe there’s enough room to dream”.

 

In his own way––

and within the context of a very different world…

and a very different worldview––

Paul was trying to say something similar…

in our reading, this morning, from his Letter to the Romans.

Here, Paul acknowledges that the world is a mess…

and that we do suffer…

which, he claims, is not what God ultimately intends.

Sure, he describes it overtly as a result of being “subjected to futility”…

because within his worldview––

a worldview that had no concept of ‘impersonal causality’–– 

God was in control…

and, as a result, God must have allowed it to happen.

And he struggles to try to come to grips with that.

But we no longer share that worldview.

We cannot conceive of…

nor have faith in…

such a ‘God’.

But that’s not really the significant point here.

Rather, Paul’s expectation is that nothing will change until we humans change.

Nothing will change, until there is “the revealing” or full disclosure “of the children of God”––

until we become… 

together… 

who God intends us to be.

Continuing the argument that he’s been following for some time…

he addresses those who were not Israelites…

and assures them that, they too, belong.

Through the faithfulness of Jesus––

made real to them, personally, through the Spirit’s “possession” or “in-dwelling”––

they, along with the people of Israel, are truly children of God.

Paul may envisage this as a sort of ethnic unification––

in a way, again, that we would not find helpful today––

but his point is that, until we realise our identity as children of God…

together…

inseparably…

nothing is going to change.

Until we reclaim our identity as children of God––

until we live out our identity as children of God––

completely… 

and comprehensively…

nothing is going to change.

Until we truly reflect the nature of God––

in the way that Jesus did;

until we love unconditionally;

until we welcome and accept uninhibitedly;

until we forgive unreservedly;

until we strive for justice, equality, and freedom for all unselfishly…

nothing is going to change.

As Martin Luther King jr once wrote: 

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”.

Without love…

acceptance…

forgiveness…

justice, equality, and freedom––

for all––

there can be no peace for any of us…

and the world will never be other than it is now.

The world needs us––

each one of us––

to embrace and to live out our identity as children of God.

 

And yet, Paul actually goes much further than that.

Note, he doesn’t just talk about the world––

and its suffering and pain…

and its desire and need to be free––

as if we humans were the sum total of what constitutes ‘the world’.

Rather, Paul speaks throughout of “creation”.

Indeed, the term that he uses here––

in the original Greek––

refers specifically to the non-human creation.

It’s not just that we humans suffer and groan…

and long for things to be different.

He suggests that the whole created order––

nature…

the environment…

indeed, the earth itself––

similarly suffers, and groans, and longs for the freedom to be as it was intended to be.

In a clear allusion to the Genesis myth of “The Fall”…

Paul blames humanity for the travail of the earth.

And, he suggests, the earth can only be free––

the earth can only be what it was meant to be…

the earth can only function as it was meant to function––

when we humans embrace and fully live out our identity as children of God.

Perhaps, in a prescient way, Paul realised that the suffering of the earth––

in terms of pollution and the damage to fragile ecosystems…

global warming and climate change––

are a result of human ‘sin’.

It is the direct result of human action and inaction––

something that virtually every reputable scientist now acknowledges.

It is through our carelessness…

our greed…

our rapaciousness…

our selfish desire for comfort and security and ease at any cost…

that the whole creation has suffered…

and continues to suffer.

And, it is only when we discover true freedom––

when we truly embrace what it means to be the children of God…

and to live as the children of God…

as Jesus did––

that the whole creation will be freed from exploitation and ruin.

We cannot be saved apart from creation.

 

That is Paul’s vision. 
And that is Paul’s hope.

 

And Paul reminds us––

indeed, he exhorts us––

that it’s not too late.

We can turn it around.

But it begins with each one of us. 

Now!