Introduction
This Postscript will be available just before General Election Day and any sermons which reflect it will be preached at the beginning of Christian Aid Week. Are Christ’s words in this passage a justification for letting charity at this time concentrate at home? Typically Christian Aid Week asks us to turn loving attention towards distant neighbours and their needs.
This week's news
During the Election Campaign some parties have suggested we vote for policies favouring the home nations: cuts to the overseas aid budget and tighter restrictions on all kinds of migration. And in last Sunday’s Observer an editorial drew attention to child poverty in the UK and suggested such children’s needs may be very similar to those of children in the Third World. ‘Delivering Hope' but where?
Reflection
- Is it fair to suspect that attacks on overseas aid are bred less by concerns about the plight of the under-resourced at home, than by hope that the response will be an unthinking, ‘Less for them, more for us; good!’? If we are really concerned about the poor and excluded at home, what is the most loving way to direct more funds in their direction? Can it include taking from those whose plight, though not extraordinary in a generally very poor society, is still far beyond the experience of any child here, meaning no clean water, health care, or security of life?
- Or are comfortable congregations in the ‘first world’, who do not see real need close up, cynical and too ready to point the finger at poorer churches looking to tend principally to their own communities? Is there a danger that we forget to care for those closest to us because caring for strangers seems nobler? There are stories of missionary societies in the nineteenth century expecting their foreign missionaries to discount even pressing family needs. How do we get the balance right?
- How do we best look inwards and outwards at once, avoiding both self-regard and complacency? How should we translate into modern terms the historical ‘you’ to whom Jesus talks? Should a gathered church community take the reference to itself and think in terms of creating a loving fellowship, spreading love by gathering more members in? Should it refer to the Church worldwide, seeking ever greater understanding and unity between its parts, and speaking to the world through organisations like Cafod and Christian Aid? How inter-related are the two models? And where does wider society’s love fit in?
- Remembering the Good Samaritan (Luke 11.36-37), is willingness to receive from, as well as give to, the wider community important for the growth of love? Are we willing, as we collect for Christian Aid, to be humbled by the generosity of those who have not, to our knowledge, yet met Christ? Are we ready to receive from them hope and love with the money they put in the envelopes?
Prayer
A meditation on the nature of love. It could be incorporated into prayers of intercession and petition.
Lord, you are all love, all-loving. The human heart finds it hard to conceive of limitless love. Practicalities get in the way. The five pounds given to Christian Aid, however lovingly, cannot also be given to MSF to help the migrants fleeing Libya, or to disaster relief for Nepal. Or indeed, to the local food bank or the appeal to keep the family centre open. But somehow, the same restrictions do not apply to love. Love is something you can give away and still have more.
But we can’t believe it. Jesus fed five thousand with the loaves and fishes of a small boy. Our love can be like that. Maybe what happened, as a long-ago sermon suggested, was that the crowd, who had been hoping to receive, were moved to give and share like that little boy. And so it can be for us. If we give loving time to turn attention to all the causes competing for our help, more and more people will be inspired to give their love, their money and their time and the needs of the world will be met.
Love will find the needs at home as well as those overseas; the particular projects proposed by Christian Aid and the local projects dear to us; the long-term needs of Syria and Libya as well as the immediate needs of Nepal. Love will also find and fill the deep yearnings for recognition, for inclusion, for love, in the hearts of refugees and the dispossessed, the hurt, the neglected, and the powerless. Perhaps that is what Christian Aid Week is about as much as the money we collect. We set the example in love and in faith. By loving we create more love to share. By loving we turn people towards Christ and the Kingdom.
Amen
Questions
What kind of fruit should our love be producing? Joy, light, peace in the world? More disciples/members? Both?
Action
This week do whatever you can to help Christian Aid Week, collecting, giving or supporting the witness of Christian Aid services.
Young people
Try a debate on the topic, ‘Giving generously to overseas aid is just a way of excusing neglect at home’. Make certain you get people to really think about the case on both sides.
Brenda Vance is a retired university teacher and a URC Elder.
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