Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
July 13, 2025
Luke 10: 25-37
A lot of attention has focused on the eight-week trial and last week’s jury verdict of the triple murder ‘mushroom trial’. On the same day Erin Patterson was found guilty, the Northern Territory coroner, Justice Armitage, delivered findings into the coronial inquest into the death of Kuminjayi Walker.
The above cartoon offers a confronting mirror to society’s responses to two announcements from our justice systems, the frenzy of interest in the mushroom murders in comparison with the almost total silence with the Northern Territory’s Coroner’ finding.
Coroner Elisabeth Armitage concluded the country’s longest-running coronial inquest last week, finding that former NT police officer Zachary Rolfe is a racist and that the NT Police Force displayed “significant hallmarks of institutional racism.”
Mr Walker, a 19 year old Warlpiri-Luritja man, was shot three times during a failed arrest attempt in Yuendumu. Mr Rolfe was later acquitted of murder and manslaughter by a jury in 2022.
The cartoon notices the silence, a mirror to society – that gets into a lather over the mushroom murders, but gives scant attention to 697 Aboriginal deaths in custody since the handing down of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991.
You might remember a much more recent tragedy. Walker’s cousin, 24 year-old disabled man Kumanjayi White also from Yuendumu was killed by police in the confectionary aisle in Coles in Alice Springs after a scuffle with a security guard.
These young men were left for dead by brutal use of force by the very people who are supposed to protect citizens.
In the parable told by Jesus, the man was attacked by robbers and left for dead. We never get to hear if the bandits were ever caught, but we might wonder who today’s robbers are.
Young Aboriginal people are not the only ones being left for dead.
Gaza,
Women and girls in Afghanistan,
Children enslaved to manufacture textiles
USA use of force rounding up immigrants like criminals,
Asylum seekers imprisoned illegally
and creation itself, mined, poisoned, over fished, plasticated, submerged by climate induced sea level rises – leaving entire communities without means of survival, left for dead.
Where are the neighbours, stopping to heal the wounds, demanding liberation, rising against unjust structures which see a disabled young man killed by police?
Why does the world look away? Or pass by on the other side?
We heard last week, the harvest is enormous but the labourers are few.
So what is being asked of us? And what is God up to?
Through the prompting of the Spirit, our justice team regularly works on our behalf, writing letters, requesting politicians to consider the needs of people living in poverty, people who are homeless, and so forth. We write to bank executives demanding their banks divest of coal and oil, we write to shipping companies requesting they not transport arms to the Middle East. We have also made a delegation to the local member’s office regarding provision of public housing.
Our discipleship of Christ Jesus sees many of us donate to organisations providing aid directly in places of conflict, MSF, UN World Food Bank, some support justice organisations such as Amnesty International.
As a church our loose change projects have supported Uniting World market gardens to combat poverty in East Timor, and last year we supported gender education in Pacific Island churches which has led to better health outcomes for women, better leadership opportunities, and hence more robust communities. Closer to home our current loose change project includes Uniting Agewell’s Music for David which sees music therapy bring new life to residents with dementia.
Most of us contribute to the Share Appeal, Act for Peace, others Leprosy mission, All Out, Fred Hollows, World Vision, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and much more.
Further afield others are stepping up too, encouragingly, in the millions!
Millions gathered in peaceful protest against the Trump military parade – not prepared to buy into the exaggerated excuses of so-called riots in Los Angeles, but peaceful force of millions across the country. The people united in peaceful protest demanding better of their government.
Most of us well aware of the many many ways people in our societies are left for dead. Our world has the resources to turn this around, but it requires people being prepared to look reflect on our living, our societal structures, and demand change.
Jesus draws our attention to people left for dead. He helps us see with the eyes of God where God’s love and compassion are most needed. Luke reminds his readers, and us today, to be neighbours to our fellow humans, and to creation itself.
May it be so.