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Shelter the homeless. Leviticus 25: 35-38; Luke 10: 25-37. The Chaplain, 8^th March 2015

‘Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has no where to lay his head.’

Where is home for you? Is it where you live now? Is it the place where you were born or grew up? Is it the place in which you no longer live, but is still home in your heart? Is it a place that you have left temporarily to come and live in Oxford, perhaps even to live in Worcester College?

There are few things quite as important as a sense of home. Somewhere we feel at rest, where we can be ourselves. For some, that place may be somewhere that is yet to be found or has been, for whatever reason, lost. Like the Son of Man, many on our streets have nowhere to lay their head. Here are just three short and true stories:

Seven years ago, just a few days after we had moved into Garsington Rectory and still had boxes unopened on the floor, the doorbell rang and there, on the doorstep, was a young couple and a baby. Their car had, apparently, run out of petrol and they had nowhere to stay. We invited them in and did what we could. It was a striking and startling way to begin parish life and we wondered if every night would be like this. The couple told us their story as we gave them food and drink, but unsure of what to do in the longer term, I rang my old training vicar, Ian Cohen (who preached here last week), who I felt sure would know all the numbers and contacts to help find this couple more permanent shelter. He did. And this is where things, as they often do with the homeless, became more complicated. The social services told us that this couple were wanted by the police and before we knew it there were two police constables on the doorstep and the couple had fled, their car miraculously now replenished with petrol. We never saw them again or heard of what happened.

Story two: a month ago, when the nights were still freezing cold, as Emma walked to lock the church, she found a middle-aged woman curled up in a sleeping bag in the porch. Julie was travelling west she told us over some food. We knew not why, except that she had fled from Zimbabwe and did not want her past to be known. As I drove her into Oxford the next day in order to find shelter in one of the many hostels, she became anxious that they would ask her questions. I suspect that she did not stay in an Oxford hostel but carried on walking. Her secrets were not to be shared.

Story three: Last week, as I came in for morning prayer, Romana, who is the scout who cleans this chapel, told me that she had been speaking to a homeless man in Gloucester Green. Patrick had a tale of family breakdown, low self-esteem and a sense of hopelessness, he told Romana as he sipped his vodka and coke at eight o’clock in the morning. When I went over to find him, he had gone: moved on by shopkeepers or police, I do not know. We may see him again. He may become like one of the regulars of the square, or Speedwell Street or the big issue sellers on the Broad or the High.

The fact is that the problems are complicated and when we multiply these stories by the number of homeless people we may get a sense of hopelessness ourselves. Or, like the Bishops of the Church of England, start writing open letters on the need for more social justice, entitled ‘Who is my neighbour?’ The number of homeless in the UK has risen 14% in the last year, the fifth annual rise. Behind each case may be a narrative of family problems, addiction, debt or other factors. And beyond our shores there are thousands more being displaced from their homes and trying to find new ones. Even Christ mused that the poor will always be with us.

And yet. And yet. If we give up on mercy, we not only give up on our faith in humanity to do good and not only do we de-humanise others, we fail something divine within us as well.

In his new book entitled ‘In God’s Hands’, which was commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury for Lent this year, Desmond Tutu states that the Bible is ‘more revolutionary, more subversive of injustice and oppression than any political manifesto or ideology. How so? The Bible asserts … that each one of us, without exception, is created in the image of God (the Imago Dei). Whether you are rich or poor, white or black, educated or illiterate, male or female – each one of us, exhilaratingly, wonderfully, is created in the image of God.’ This, says Tutu, makes each one of us a ‘God-carrier’.

He goes on: ‘If we really believe this assertion, then we would be appalled at any ill-treatment of another human being, because it is not simply unjust but also, shockingly, blasphemous. It is really like spitting in the face of God.’

This is why the book of Leviticus demands that if someone is homeless, displaced and in need, they should be supported by the Israelites, remembering that God brought them out of the land of Egypt and home to the land of Canaan. And when the lawyer, in St. Luke’s Gospel asks, ‘who is my neighbour’, Jesus replied with the story of the good Samaritan. The priest and the levite passing by, it is the Samaritan, traditionally an enemy of the Jews, who bandaged the victim’s wounds, soothed them with wine and oil, gave him an animal to carry him to an inn, and gave him money until he was well. Who was this man’s neighbour, Christ asks: the one who showed him mercy.

The story embodies what it means to obey the two basic commands of the faith: to love God and to love our neighbour. If we take the essence of the Christian faith seriously, that we are created in God’s image and that God became human, a homeless human at that, we would know that we are not called upon to face the agonies and injustices of this world alone, but with the presence of the living God and by his strength and grace. As God-carriers we are bidden to work for the cause of mercy and the kingdom of God on earth now, knowing that Christ’s redeeming work was for everyone and for all time.

It has been a fascinating term of sermons on the works of mercy and I have been struck by the stories and theology of each of our speakers. Each one of the works of mercy seems to relate to another and in turn they all relate to a sense of home. Whether it is feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty, or clothing the naked, visiting the sick or the imprisoned, each one of these relates to our fundamental need for shelter and a sense of belonging: home, be it permanent or temporary, is where we often eat, drink, clothe ourselves, recover from illness. Prison is a deliberate displacement from home for the purposes of punishment and the prisoner longs to return home. Even burying the dead is strongly related to home, in fact in the most profound way of all. ‘In my father’s house are many mansions’, says the Lord, ‘If it were not so I would not have told you. I go there to prepare a place for you.’ Our true dwelling place will be when we fulfil that destiny to live in God’s presence and in his loving embrace.

So where is home for you? Well wherever it is, or will be, in this life, it is inevitably temporary. As God-carriers we may not be able to solve all hunger, or thirst, or sickness, or nakedness, or imprisonment or homelessness, or even death. But we are able, surely, to show mercy in the way we live our lives, spend our money, govern our time, and to show mercy to those in need, in this college, in your school, in the workplace, in the city and, through our giving, in the wider country and to those in need in other parts of the world. And let us not attempt these works of mercy because we wish to earn some heavenly reward, but for their own sake, as human beings made in the image of God, recognizing the divine spark in each other that deserves our respect and honour, our care and our love. Let us act in response to the merciful God who is the author of all life. As Isaac Watts penned:

Were the whole realm of nature mine

It were an offering far too small.

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Amen.

Of the seven works or acts of Mercy for reflection,

this evening mine is that of visiting those imprisoned.

From our second reading this evening:

Remember those who are in prison,

                   as though you were in prison with them;

                   those who are being tortured,

                   as though you yourselves were being tortured.

 

The Flemish Artist Pieter Brueghel the Younger depicted this in his painting “The Acts of Mercy” – of which a number of variations were painted.

For those unacquainted with this painting

he paints a sort of “Where’s Wally?” picture.

Lots of little characters busy about their activities of goodwill.

There in the top left hand corner is a man with his legs shackled in stocks, being comforted by well-to-do visitors.

 

 

The jailer sits wearily alongside,

whilst behind, faces peer out through a lattice-work of bars.

We might look at it and we can be intrigued like a bystander.

But Christians do not believe they are called to be bystanders,

but to live connected to the lives and circumstances of others,

all those with whom we share our lives, indeed everyone.

So we are invited beyond just proclaiming interdependence

as our view of living, to acting upon it.

We live interdependently and so, as regards acts of mercy

we are summoned to demonstrate personal goodwill.

Now, getting access to visit a prisoner, going through security there,

is not unlike airport security, but you have to leave things behind,

like keys and phones.

Life goes out of one’s own control as one enters, generally,

what is a strange place, but it is a territory from which one will surely return.

It is a place in which an outsider,

uncomfortably longs for the comfortable outside, and to be a bystander.

So the feeling of walking out, after a visit to a prison,

is one which becomes a real moment of relief.

This relief can be deeper recognized when later on it is shared

when the one who was visited in prison, is released back into the community, back home, and visits me at my home.

His relief takes the form of him smiling with embarrassment

when I am discretely shown the “early release” ankle tag.

 

Brueghel’s depiction of visiting those in prison leaves us as bystanders,

and there is much in all acts of mercy –

all acts of charity – which can be too limited.

 

 

The late Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit,

imagined a story of the time God gave a party to all the virtues.

Great and small, humble and heroic,

they gathered together in a splendidly decorated hall in heaven.

They soon began to enjoy themselves

because they were well acquainted with each other.

Indeed some were even closely related.

But then God spotted two virtues who seemed not to know each other and were ill at ease in each other’s company.

So God formally introduced them to each other.

“Gratitude,” God said, “this is Charity.”

But God had hardly turned round when they were again parted.  And so the story got round that even God cannot bring Gratitude to be where Charity is.

There is no guarantee that any works of mercy,

and especially that of visiting those imprisoned, will bring gratitude.

And this is above all, because the approach is often of a bystander

who comes to observe the prisoner.

Etty Hillesum, a young jewish woman, lived in Nazi occupied Holland.

She was inspired by writers such as Rilke and his mysticism.

On 30 July 1942 she moved into the transit camp for Jews and others at Westerbork.

She wrote in her diary two days before she moved into the camp:

“At this moment I know, more certainly than ever,

 that I have a task in this life, a small project specially for me. 

And I shall have to live through everything.”

How reminiscent of the refrain of the psalmists, quoted by the writer to the Hebrews:

“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”

 

 

Etty was able to move in and out of this transit camp, at times,

and with permission, even go home.

She worked hard to bring relief and comfort to those imprisoned

who were in transit – ultimately to their destination in the death camps.

She had the opportunity to stay free, to hide,

to not go back to her imprisonment.

But to choose that would mean that she was a bystander.

She made the profound moral choice – to truly live interdependently,

offering charity, and remarkably receiving much gratitude,

because she refused to just observe.

 

 

She continued to write in her exercise book diary:

“Sometimes, when I least expect it, someone suddenly kneels down in some corner of my being, when I’m out walking or just talking to people.  And that someone, the one who kneels down, is myself.”

Etty’s identification with those in prison, grew deeper

as she became less detached,

which had been her stance before she entered the prison.

She wrote of her conversation with, her prayer before, God:

“How great are the needs of your creatures on this earth, O God. 

I thank you for letting so many people come to me with their inner needs.  They sit there, talking quietly and quite unsuspectingly,

and suddenly their need erupts in all its nakedness. 

Then, there they are, bundles of human misery,

desperate and unable to face life….And that’s when my task begins. 

It is not enough simply to proclaim you, God, to commend you to the hearts of others.  One must also clear the path toward you in them.”

 

 

Etty Hillesum left the camp on 7 September 1943, on the daily transport to Auschwitz.

She died there on 30 November 1943.

 

Acts of mercy, and especially that act of visiting those in prison,

can not be carried out by bystanders.

They are carried out by those who know their own need,

their own selves kneeling down inside themselves, perhaps in despair,

and total human misery.

And yet who then find the path to God cleared within them.

 

Now not everyone is called to practice this act of charity, this work of mercy,

of visiting those in prison, behind physical bars.

Perhaps more may find themselves,

drawn to be present with those who experience something imprisoning in their own living.

But all, for health’s sake, can find themselves drawn to visit themselves in their own imprisonments.

We can recognize this particularly when we dangerously opt to be bystanders of our own living, and find something lacking.

For it is then that we need to sit within ourselves and clear God’s path within.

And strangely, it can often be when we are visiting another’s imprisonment with them in conversation, or just presence, that we are freed up as Etty was.

 

Like her we can rediscover our interdependence through acts of mercy,

not expecting gratitude,

but finding the gift for others of simple personal goodwill.

Worcester College Oxford Clothe the Naked

Ezekiel 16: 8-14; James 2: 14-18

The exposed and humiliated figure of a man hanging from a Cross is a common Christian symbol. There are of course others, but this one stands centre stage. Whether Jesus was crucified naked upon The Cross we just don’t know, but there is sufficient evidence from antiquity to suggest that most victims were. However, we do know that Jesus was stretched out on The Cross stripped of his dignity, and exposed to the taunting and jeering crowds who gathered to watch Him die. It was a shocking and cruel experience from which some may well have eventually averted their gaze in order to spare themselves the mental and emotional distress that witnessing such a scene might cause them. Crucifixion was a slow, agonising and suffocating death. It would seem that his blessed Mother did not look away, but gazed, heartbroken upon the broken form of her Son, supported in her sadness by the Beloved disciple, Mary Magdalene and those other loyal women. As a consequence of what He knew to be the right thing both to say and to do throughout His ministry Jesus was beaten, humiliated, stripped, spat upon and killed.

In his Four Quartets T S Elliot writes that, “mankind cannot bear very much reality.” How very true these words are. I find it very interesting that there are some people who can quite easily sit down and watch very frightening films of fantasy, but find it impossible to watch a film like Schindler’s List. Many of you will be familiar with it. Amongst its many harrowing scenes there’s one of particular insanity in which men and women are rounded up in a Nazi concentration camp, stripped of their clothing and forced to run around in circles stark naked, as Wagner’s booms out over loudspeakers. Over the years organisations such as Prisoners of Conscience have exposed numerous images of men and women naked and manacled, undergoing torture, that shock us to the core in the same way.

Of course nakedness is not a physical state alone, and the naked of our own time that ought to trouble our consciences come in many different guises. We see them in the accused, the victim, the mentally ill; the perpetrator of violence who is naked of compassion and driven by naked aggression; men and women who behead and burn alive. There are those who are nakedly proud and arrogant, devoid of the garments of decency and compassion; naked of any concern save of that for themselves. We see the naked in the person who has no voice be it religious or political and who for conscience sake are stripped of their freedom; the Cross or the Burkha. Then there are the odd; you know, those who simply don’t fit in, and who appear strange maybe. There are others too, whose clothes of confidence, dignity, self worth and self belief, society has metaphorically stripped bare from them; leaving them purposeless and devoid of meaning in their lives. And then I guess there are us as well. We too can feel exposed from time to time can we not when our work is being scrutinised, when we make mistakes or when we feel that we are being judged; when perhaps we feel very alone.

The apparently simple question, “I wonder what Jesus would do” is not for the faint hearted to ask as our reading from the epistle of St James this evening makes very clear. The profession of Christianity is not an invitation to esoteric naval gazing, but a clarion call to action that effects change and makes a difference. Belief is a dead thing if it fails to outwork in the service and benefit of mankind. It’s not sufficient to bang on about the love of God if we don’t match our words with our deeds. And it really is so simple. We extend a hand of friendship, we offer a listening ear, we provide a kindly thought, we may put our hand in our pocket and support financially where we can; we may champion the need for our society to be more forgiving, more tolerant, less punitive, less punishment driven. We may be bothered to give our time (and how easy is it to convince ourselves that we don’t have time) to someone who needs a word of comfort or the reassurance that they are not on their own. We may go through our wardrobe and quite literally give away our coat or our gloves or an old hoodie to a person living on the streets.

Lent is the time to realise how difficult the evidently simple is. Christianity, unlike films of fantasy, is no fairy tale. Those who buy into it are called, metaphorically and actually, to clothe the naked. We are commanded to speak and to act in accordance with our consciences in the light of the gospel imperative; and if we do that we will in all probability find ourselves somewhat unpopular from time to time; and thought even odd!!

The bare figure of Jesus on The Cross is a bold statement of sacrifice and love. It is a reminder to all of us, whatever our belief may be, of our common obligation of service to our fellow men and women and to see in the eyes of the naked and the suffering the very face of Jesus Himself. As He Himself has taught us, “Forasmuch as you did it for the least of these my brethren you did it also for me”.

 

 

Worcester College, Oxford 15 February 2015

Corporal works of mercy – Visit the Sick. James 5:15-20  Mark 6:7-13

Ely Cathedral, where it’s my joy to work and where I have the privilege of being the Head of the Foundation, has, you will not be surprised to know, a long history, It would not be appropriate to relate it all now, suffice to say that for a significant part of its history it was a monastery – first of all a double monastery for men and women founded by St Etheldreda in the year 673. Etheldreda’s monastery flourished for 200 years before being destroyed by the Danes, It was then refounded as a Benedictine monastery in 970 – at the heart of the new monastery was the shrine of St. Etheldreda. She had died in the year 680 from a tumour of the neck, reputedly as a divine punishment for having worn necklaces in her younger days – in reality it was the result of the plague that killed several nuns at the time. 17 years after her death her body was found to be incorrupt = the tumour on her neck healed – and the linen clothes in which she was buried as fresh as the day she had been buried. Her body was place in a stone sarcophagus and reburied. When later placed in the monastic cathedral it became focus for vast numbers of medieval pilgrims until the shrine was destroyed in 1541 at the dissolution of the monasteries. We now have a simple slate slab marking the place where her great shrine was.

Though the shrine was destroyed, the vision of St Etheldreda and of St Benedict lives on as we continue in words of our mission statement “to joyfully respond to the love of God in worship outreach, welcome and care.” Although not bound by the Rule of St Benedict, we remember the rock from which we were hewn as each day, at Morning Prayer, we read a short extract from his Rule: so much of it has an enduring relevance ….this is what Benedict says about ‘The Sick’

“Before and above all, care must be taken of the sick, that they may be served in very truth as Christ is served, because he has said ‘I was sick and you visited me’ and ’as long as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren you did it to me (Mtt25:40) But let the sick themselves consider that they are served for the honour of God and let them not grieve their brothers who serve them by making unnecessary demands. These must, however, be patiently borne with, because from such as these a more beautiful reward is gained. Let the Abbot’s concern be that they suffer no neglect.”

“Before and above all care must be taken of the sick”. The corporal acts of mercy  that are the subject of your sermons this term, of which visiting the sick is one, are all in their different ways, responses to the fact that the God who we worship, the God who made us, is merciful. If we’re not careful we can get caught up in that old debate about justification by faith or by works – Martin Luther has a great deal to answer for in mistranslating letter to the Romans and talking about justification by faith ‘alone’ (the word ‘alone’ does not appear in the original text) – but that’s another sermon. Faith and works are two sides of a coin – one cannot be a reality without the other – and neither of them earn us anything in respect of God – rather they are both a response to the complete mercy of God shown to us in Jesus Christ. Put very prosaically – if we have been shown mercy then we cannot really help ourselves in being merciful also; “Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful”.

The reality also is that, most of the time, this stuff isn’t easy – not least because, as Benedict hinted at, the sick can be really difficult and demanding – very often understandably so, but that doesn’t stop caring for them being jolly hard work. There are those one visits who never seem to complain, who bear their suffering with great grace and are a particular joy to be with– and there are those who seem positively to relish ill health, who when one visits perhaps are using you as a someone on whom to overload a vast amount of anger and frustration – probably a good thing, better dumped on the visitor than on the person who may be alongside them many more hours of the day – but nevertheless, they can be very stressful to visit.

Mercy received must become mercy given if it is to have any value. And given because that is where the kingdom of God breaks in – our two readings this evening referred to the anointing and healing of the sick as something that disciples of Jesus were particularly sent out to do – and his Church still does so today. When I visit the sick I always carry holy oil with me, it sits on the mantelpiece in my study alongside my stole and sick communion set, I regularly anoint and pray with them using the words prescribed that say “I anoint you in the name of God who gives you life. Receive Christ’s forgiveness, his healing and his love. May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ grant you the riches of his grace, his wholeness and his peace.” The kingdom breaks in because, as St Benedict reflected from St Matthew’s gospel “I was sick and you visited me”. Mother Teresa frequently emphasised the sublime dignity we have in serving Jesus in others – and a profound dignity it is indeed. She once said “we should not serve the poor like they were Jesus, we should serve the poor because they are Jesus”.

That’s why Benedict says ‘before and above all care must be taken of the sick….the sick must not be neglected’ – because in them we’re serving Jesus.

This priority given by Benedict to the poor also caused me to reflect on behaviours beyond the personal and individual to the corporate, because the way we behave corporately, as a community, as a society as a nation matters too. On a large scale as well as on a small one, those who are and are not considered a priority says a massive amount about our underlying priorities and values.

There is a certain amount of public debate around at the moment about ‘values’ – British values – Christian values – are they one and the same thing?  what does it mean, if anything, to say that we are a Christian country? Are there values shared by all irrespective of faith or religious practice? I guess values like respect, honesty and integrity are going to be common to all – whereas self-sacrificing love is possibly particularly Christian – very particularly so. The difficulty with the debate is that Christianity at its heart isn’t a values system ..As the Archbishop of Canterbury has recently pointed out, Christianity’s not first of all about being nice to people – at its heart it’s a relationship with God, through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit – we’re hopefully nice to people in response again to the mercy of God.

So that personal relationship has knock-ons….and particularly in the realm of the sick, not just individually but corporately.

In what is going to be an extremely long run in into the next General Election the National Health Service will be a political football that gets kicked around with a great deal of energy and no small amount of hot air will be expended upon it.

How we treat the sick, the priority we do or don’t give them says a great deal about us as a society – and where we find ourselves in the debate says a great deal too about where we see God and where we see Jesus. This time five years ago I was staying for three weeks at the National Cathedral in Washington DC at the time that President Obama was struggling to get his health reforms through….it was real challenge for me, and remains one, to see how anyone who calls themselves a Christian could object to those reforms. If access to basic health care and provision is first of all about the size of your bank balance then things are skewed – at least they are from a perspective that wants to call itself Christian.

As individuals Christians are encouraged and lauded for the care they take of those in need – Christian communities were at the forefront of the hospice movement to take but on obvious example – but the wider questions about corporate responsibility must not be shied away from.

A famous Brazilian RC Archbishop Helder Camara once said  “when I care for the poor they call me a saint – when I ask, why are they poor, they call me a communist”.

So I finish with those words of St Benedict that we heard earlier – and suggest that they are a corporate instruction as well as an individual one:

“Before and above all, care must be taken of the sick, that they may be served in very truth as Christ is served, because he has said ‘I was sick and you visited me’ and ’as long as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren you did it to me (Mtt25:40)”

To the one and only merciful God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be all honour and Glory. Amen.