Dear Friends,

As a Church we have agreed on an official covenant between the Uniting Church in Australia and the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress. This is our legal position but what does it mean in practice for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal members of the Church at the grass-roots?

I am trying to develop a relationship type of covenant. I am trying to challenge people to be friends with Aboriginal people. This is a lot more challenging than just talking about the Covenant.

So what does friendship mean? When we are friends with someone, we love and respect each other even if we are quite different and we don’t understand each other. We are still friends even though we don’t agree with what each other says or believes. We need to journey into friendship – accepting people for who they are.

Jesus commanded us to be friends, to love one another as God loves us. We need to imitate Christ in this respect.

However, this is something we often struggle with. We find it difficult to step out of our comfort zone to become friends with people who are different. So where do we start?

We need to get inside ourselves and change our attitudes to people who are different, whether they are Aboriginal or refugees even if there are no such people in your local area.

Your relationship with God as expressed through the Trinity is the key to building loving relationships with those who are different. The love we are able share comes from God’s love for us and we have Christ’s example to follow, but we need the Spirit to guide us on our way.

Loving one another means forgiving..., trusting..., sacrificing...; it means opening our hearts to others; it means transforming your attitudes toward others. This can happen even if you never have the privilege of meeting an Aboriginal person. Not having Aboriginal people living near you is no excuse for not building loving relationships with Aboriginal people. You can inform yourself of the truth rather than media spin, and what you read in the papers is mostly that, spin. It’s what inside your heart that counts.

Often, as Christians, we choose who we want to love and be part of our lives. The challenge is to love everybody unconditionally. On Reconciliation Sunday we think of how we might express our love for our Aboriginal brothers and sisters in Christ, especially members of the Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress.

Grace and Peace,

Ken