Rise to Life: Thoughts from Caribbean region

scheme to share vaccine equitably) halted all vaccine exports from April-October 2021 as the pandemic raged across India. Vaccine booster campaigns in high income countries have absorbed doses whilst low income 3nations await first injections.

Cruelty could be as small as the choices made in the aisles of supermarkets. As the fear mounted, we saw a rush by some shoppers to hoard things. Suddenly the shelves were emptying. I remember there was no more toilet paper, flour, yeast. It got so bad so fast that we needed the innovation of security guards to police checkouts and rationing. We needed special opening hours for the elderly and front-line workers just so that they might get some essentials before the hoards plucked everything away. What is it about fear that turns us in upon ourselves rather than outwards in solidarity? Why did panic buying, a supremely selfish act, sweep the UK? Our mission falters where injustice festers. Naming it within and amongst ourselves, we must be equally ready to unearth and combat it in the world. Cruelty denies shared humanity and affronts the God who cherishes all.

Mission must make us constantly vigilant to cruelty. We need to know ourselves and our communities, including our congregations, with the clear sight to see cruelty lurking. The scriptures attend to this so many times. David, the greatest of Israel’s kings, abuses all his power to first take Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, and then have her husband killed to hide his adultery and her pregnancy. Nathan brings God’s judgement to the palace. He spins a story of a rich man seizing a poor man’s only lamb to provide hospitality for a visitor. David is outraged: “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” “You are the man!” Nathan proclaims (2 Samuel 12: 1-25). CONTEMPT

A strange moment unfolded in December 2021 when the UK Prime Minister’s adviser, Allegra Stratton, was forced to resign having been filmed laughingly talking of parties in Downing Street in a mock press conference. We know now that she was simply hinting at a terrible truth; at secrets and lies we weren’t ever meant to know. Slowly and with mounting damage, truth has been dragged out. Police and other investigations tell us that the heart of our government was probably the most law-breaking, lockdown-abusing, address in the country. The police have now issued 126 fines for illegal gatherings that were held on 8 different dates. Our Prime Minister and our Chancellor have been fined.

I have been deeply affected by it. I am enraged by it. Insult is added to injury when many in the Conservative Party, including plenty of government ministers, tell me to get over it. Why am I as angry as I am?

It is because I am being treated with utter contempt by the powerful. The contempt has many layers. It begins with people involved in setting strict rules choosing, many times, to bend them and break them to meet their own desires. Meanwhile, millions of us did not. We obeyed because we believed this was a shared battle and our individual actions contributed to a greater and shared good. I know a little bit of the staggering sacrifices made by those around me and with whom I ministered. I think of my own losses.

Having been treated with contempt in the initial acts, we found our intelligence treated with contempt in the efforts at distraction. Now, being told to “move on,” further contempt poisons our public life. It is as if I am a fool to think this matters. But the ethics and conduct of those with power always matter; supremely. We’re back with Nathan and David. We’re guided by the whole arc of scripture; its leaning towards justice and integrity.