A reflection give at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Wednesday 19th May 2021 Bread for the World by Jim Sikorski
Readings of address: Luke 4. 16-30
I’ve been struck recently by two pieces of news and a personal account of suffering.
The first piece of news was in the Guardian newspaper two weeks ago where I read the following:
The British Government is cutting its funding to the United Nations population fund in a move described as devastating for women and girls. The UN said the £130M withheld would have helped prevent 250,000 child and maternal deaths, 14.6 m unintended pregnancies and 4.3m unsafe abortions.
The second item was on April 26th, the Global Day of Action on Military Spending, when I received an email from the group Campaign Against the Arms Trade who have just been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their work to stop the UK government’s sales of arms to Saudi Arabia.
The email informed me that the UK now has the 5th largest military budget in the world. Worse still, it pointed out, the government has committed to huge increases in military spending over the next four years into new areas of warfare such as space, cyber, unmanned drones, and the widely reported 44% increase in nuclear warheads.
The account of suffering occurred unexpectedly while I was one of the 5,400 people attending the online Mayoral Assembly organized by the community organizing group London Citizens just prior to the London Mayoral elections. The most memorable part of the event for me wasn’t the candidates’ responses but the testimony of Sara, an Albanian mother living in London.
In tears she described the terrible state of the temporary accommodation in which she and her family lived. She spoke of how she struggled to protect her daughter from the harsh reality of cockroaches and mould by weaving a reassuring story re-imagining the contours of the damp on the ceiling as different countries of the world which they might one day visit.
Recounted together this is a rather somber three – fold litany of bad news – and we each might choose to add other events – not least the current agony in Palestine/Israel. It’s a litany which seems to reflect a world which was characterized a few weeks ago by Julian Filochowski who, preaching at this service said:
‘We Christians are struggling to follow Jesus in a world, dare I suggest it, of unresponsive structural injustice which is breeding inequality and destitution’.
But tonight we have listened in our Gospel to a different kind of litany
Good News to the Poor
Release to captives
Sight to the blind
Freedom for the oppressed
It’s an uplifting, multi-dimensional litany which showcases the breathtaking holiness of the living God who had come among us anew in the person of Jesus Christ.
But it’s not a new God. It is the same God who told Moses at the burning bush: “I have seen the misery of my people who are in Egypt. I know well what they are suffering”
It’s helpful to understand that the verb ‘to know’ in this description of divine compassion is the same verb used for Adam and Eve making love in the Book of Genesis. It’s not an intellectual kind of knowing but a deep empathy for the enslaved people of Israel – and indeed that means for all people enslaved in any way before or since.
And throughout the Old Testament there are reminders of the truth that God’s heart is set on justice for the oppressed – so much so that the American theologian Elizabeth Johnson has written:
‘justice can be called the love language of the Bible’.
And it’s the same Spirit – anointed Christ who, following the proclamation of this litany of Good News, concretely embodies that love in the life he leads particularly with those on the edge – and in so doing he destabilizes prevailing norms of who is first and who is last.
And there is a foretaste of what the result of this destabilizing will be in today’s reading. There’s a sinister change in tone which is so similar to the change which takes place between the crowd’s approval of Jesus on Palm Sunday and it’s condemnation of Him on Good Friday.
Three years earlier the synagogue congregation in our reading are first astonished by the words of grace and then when Jesus points out God’s option for the outsider – the widow in the enemy country of Sidon and the Syrian leper Naaman– this astonishment turns to murderous rejection.
Why was there such a violent reaction?
Was it due to a deep seated fear of ‘the other’?
Was it because a manifesto establishing a preference for the outsider would diminish existing privileges?
Was it because people refused to acknowledge their role in past injustice?
Almost certainly all these would have played a part and might play a part for all of us to a greater or lesser extent when we are challenged with questions of inequality today.
I’m a member of our community’s Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation or JPIC group and some of the prayers this evening will be offered by group members. We meet to think, study, pray and reflect together on scripture in a search for greater faithfulness to the litany of Good News announced by Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth and then try to act on our conclusions.
As part of this work we have also formed an Eco Church Group to examine more carefully how as a church we respond to the challenges of the Climate Emergency. As Greta Thunberg has said ‘Climate Justice is Social Justice’. And it is also a matter of racial justice since its consequences so disproportionately affect the global South.
As a group we are very aware of the many Spirit inspired initiatives and movements dealing with issues of justice which have started from this church or been supported by it – including the Connection, Amnesty International, the Samaritans, and the Sunday International Group – in the words of one of our group:
‘There is within St Martin’s an extraordinary capacity to not turn away and rather to courageously remember those who are suffering or have died.’
However, our group is also aware of the need to constantly reaffirm the Good News of justice for the oppressed. To shine a light on those areas where the status quo creates that ‘unresponsive structural injustice’ described by Julian Filochowski. To not be afraid to look beyond the immediate symptoms to their root causes.
This may not be easy territory – the famous Latin American Bishop, Dom Helder Camara once said, ‘If I give bread to the hungry they call me a saint but if I ask why the poor are hungry they call me a communist.’
Underpinning this thirst for justice there must always be a deep desire for reconciliation in the human family – but we also see in our reading this evening that Christ’s message in the synagogue of a reconciliation which brings the outsider centre stage was rejected. As his disciples we need to be prepared for similar experiences.
We’re grateful to have been invited to share in this Bread for the World service this evening. Members of the JPIC group will be joining the listening groups and hope to learn from this part of the St Martin’s community what you understand by proclaiming liberty to captives. Please do stay for the online groups if you are able.
Finally an invitation – our small group meets roughly once a month and is open to all members of the community so you would be very welcome to join us on our journey.
