Harvest Festivals in the shadow of Covid-19 and #BlackLivesMatter

Today is our harvest festival. Harvest festivals have been around for as long as humanity has been growing food. They are important times as communities give thanks for the harvest that will sustain them for another year. We give thanks to God for the harvest, and for those who work in this land and overseas providing the food we eat. We are reminded of God’s ongoing generosity and of the invitation to be as generous with what God has provided.

It is also Matariki. In Tauranga Moana this is a time for preparing the soil for the next crop. There is no harvest without the earth. Harvest festivals remind us of the need to cherish and protect the land and water we need to grow the crop.

This week a number of Anglican bishops from around the world published an international response to the Black Lives Matter movement entitled ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM – WHEN #BLACKLIVESDON’T MATTER. As we give thanks for our harvest let us keep these wider issues in mind.

“Black lives are disproportionately affected by police brutality; COVID-19 sweeps through crowded vulnerable communities unable to  socially distance; toxic dump sites are placed next to poor communities of Black people; indigenous people are forced off their land.

The world is slow to respond to climate change, hanging on to an increasingly precarious and unjust economic system. It is predominantly  Black lives that are being impacted by drought, flooding, storms and sea level rise. The delayed global response to climate injustice gives the impression that #blacklivesdontmatter. Without urgent action Black lives will continue to be the most impacted, being dispossessed from their lands and becoming climate refugees.

We stand at a Kairos moment - in order to fight environmental injustice , we must also fight racial injustice.

In the words of Archbishop Tutu  “If you are neutral in times of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”