Taking off the Marigolds

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields for Homelessness Sunday on 26 January 2025 by Jolley Gosnold

Reading for address: 1 Corinthians 12.12-31_a

I’m from Yorkshire; if you know me but didn’t know that, I’m impressed, because, like all good Yorkshiremen, I mention it all the time. For a long time, if you’d asked what the word home meant to me, I would have said Yorkshire. It is where I was raised. It is what I know. And I’m very proud of it. But, at the risk of being exiled from God’s Own Country forever, I have a confession to make. It happened in 2016 while I was a student in London. I had been up north for Christmas and spent a week with my family. Every time I visited Yorkshire during those first two years at university, it felt like I was coming home, but this time was different. I didn’t experience that same sensation. Instead, when my week there was over, and my train from York pulled into London Kings Cross, a weight lifted off me. As I arrived in this city I had fallen in love with, I realised I was home.

That was the moment I recognised that home is so much more than the house you live in, the village where you were raised, or the county you’re from (even if it is objectively the best in the country). London was my home now. I felt at home here because I felt safe, safe to be entirely myself. I felt at home here because this is where my community is, where my true friends are, where I belong.

I wonder what the word “home” means to you?

On Sundays, homeless asylum seekers, refugees, migrants, and those with no recourse to public funds come together each week at The Connection to share an afternoon of hot food, deep friendship, genuine community, and the opportunity to do their laundry and have a shower. This group represents so much more than the practical and material support we can provide; it serves as a space for mutual flourishing where we all grow together, learn from one another, take the chance to connect with those different from ourselves, and be vulnerable enough to allow ourselves to be known in return. A home, perhaps. In recent months, in preparation for this service, I have been sitting down with members of our International Group, I’ve asked them that simple question: What does the word ‘home’ mean for you?

And it’s remarkable to discover how much one can learn about what home means from those we call homeless. What a strange word—homeless—a word used to define someone based on what society presumes a person lacks.

In St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he illustrates a community as one body with many members. A reminder that we are not alone in this life and that we cannot simply disregard other members with a dismissive “I have no need of you,” preferring instead to go our own way and avoid feeling the pain of another’s suffering, assuming they have nothing worth sharing with us. He reminds us that it’s those we think we do not need, those who are weaker, those who are less respectable that we should give more attention to so that we might have the same care for one another.

So as I sat down to hear the stories of men and women who have faced or are currently facing the profoundly complex, isolating, and at times traumatic experience of homelessness, I promised to give my attention, listen, and learn – because I knew from experience that the conversation would enrich my life, and that every person is worth so much more than the worst thing that has happened to them, filled with so much more than what I’m told they lack.

And while in these conversations I heard about the struggles, the difficulties, the lack, it was not the defining narrative of their lives. I want to share some of their responses with you—not in my words or through the filter of my carefully structured sermon, but their own real experiences in their own words. Listen because we are all members of one body.

Verbatim testimonies from members of the International Group:

Story 1: The first time I become homeless. I had a bus pass, my bus pass still. Okay. So I took the bus. I was in Victoria and I went to sleep in the church at Victoria Station. I went there, put cardboard and I was sleeping rough. It was… that’s my first night and I’m telling you, I was crying.

I was praying, God, I said, please help me, Please help me, please help me. Now I was… And one guy came. One other homeless guy came and put his cardboard. We start talking, but I’m telling you how God is unbelievable… when this guy that came, he’s the one to show me The Connection. Where to get food, where to shower, stuff like that.

And you know what really saved me is my faith. Because I know inside me sometimes, you know, sometimes I’m in my tent. I swear to God, I’m crying and crying and ask Help from God sometimes is good to cry and like just seeking help from God.

You know it’s not only about food. It’s not only about shower. It’s not only about stuff, you know, homeless as I tell people, the most important for a homeless person is feeling love. Stop him, talk to him. How are you? How was your day? Talk to him for a bit. Because when you’re homeless, you don’t have someone to talk to unless you share a friend, you don’t have no one.

So when we come here and we chat, we interact. This is… this… I don’t know how to say to you, this is 1 million times better than eating food or showers. No really! Those are basic needs. You need that. But this is what a homeless person need.

Story 2: Home means the place where I’m safe. Well, place where I can meet the truly friends. Because my country is my home, where I was born, I missed some time. But because of the politics and what’s happened there and the poverty, yes, I can say London is my second home.

Since last year or I don’t know, maybe because it was after the pandemic time or or the, how’s it called, recession. I lost all my job, everything. And of course, if I couldn’t pay, I was on the street and I was sleeping rough and it was, bad situation.

I’m 55 years old next Sunday, so and I, you know, it’s very painful. My my knee, my bones. I would like to first of all, I try to restore my addiction. It’s hard. I’m not saying that I… I quit… Sorry… I quit straightaway. No, I cannot. Hard, my addiction, but it’s not impossible

I’m looking to for free time or when I have free times to spend time like a volunteer because it’s keep me away from the friends. Bad friends… not… they are not friends. I can’t say they are friends. Friends are the guy that help you, not guy that ask you to go to drink and smoke weed. This is not friend. And this is it. Nothing else.  Getting involved in to those social and spiritual things.

I can say in my life I am right now. I am rich. Speaking about, inner, not financial. Today you have money. Tomorrow you can lose everything.

Story 3: For me, home is where I’m appreciated and welcomed and treated for who I am, really. Since becoming homeless, homeless, it’s been very different because there are some quarters where you’re welcomed and some places where you’re not. Originally I’m from Uganda, and I came here in 1989 at the age of 19. When I was given indefinite leave to remain I was not allowed to work for one year, but after that I was given a permit to work and then my… before I started working, I volunteered for Mildmay Mission. It’s a hospice where AIDS people, where… basically it was their last… the place where they went to die. I was very surprised by the way how the patients were treated because of, you know, everyone was wearing marigold gloves, this and that. I said, this is not necessary. I’ve dealt with AIDS patients in my family. I lost four family members, so I knew how to look after them.

I lived with my partner. And when he died, I lived in the flat for another two years after his death. And the family became a bit… they wanted to restrict my movement and whom I saw. I said, If that is what you want, I don’t think it’s good for me to continue to stay here. And then the amount, the money he left me, I went and rented accommodation. So it was until 2017 when I couldn’t secure a job. I really never got the chance to mourn him properly.

I had commitments in Uganda because I’ve got a sister who is blind. I totally support her and she’s got a son. So most of the time I was giving money to her to really build her up to send her to university. Although I was homeless, I said, okay, I’ll get food on the street, but if I don’t help her in Uganda, no one is going to. At least here I can get free food. But she has got nothing. So most of my salary went to rehabilitate her and I put her through first degree university and then she did her Master’s, although she was blind, but she did it in Braille.

Now she works and looks after herself, feeds her son, now is educating her son.

Story 4: For me… is much like a place then that’s comfortable for everyone. You have protection, you have respect with each other person. And that’s a place you. You, you know, you. You. You can make your life with. That that’s a home for me. I start to be in London at 1^st August something like that. To seek asylum for… in reality… it’s, it’s for that. And to…to have a place to… to live with the… with the… some protection and security too.

The hard way is the first step, after that is the luck is way to meet good people in the street. Like, they tell us to not sleep at some zone, because that’s a zone at night that’s not a good zone to sleep.

I make my time to to come to The Connection because I want to, to know the people in the street. They are separate, they are individual, but they are good. When they know that someone needs help, he go to help them. I like that.

The real happiness, when I looked up to other person, when I look about two lovers, when they take their hands, something like that, you know, the small thing… that’s make me happiness.

Story 5: It was status… a status issue. Yeah. I found I didn’t have any status in this country, so… and that’s when I became… because you can’t work, you can’t access social services, you can’t access many things. You can’t get. You can’t rent because you don’t have documentation and because now they require you to… you can’t have a bank account.

And, you know, for a few years I thought I could not use the National Health either.

Yeah, I slept in the forest maybe for… for more than eight months. Yeah, it was… It was tough because I didn’t know how to… I did not know how to sleep out. I was… the first thing was embarrassment. You know, it’s like, you know, I can’t tell anybody I’m homeless. I felt like I was the only one who was homeless. I mean, for me, homeless meant, you know, drug addicts, a tramp or something like that. Not me. I’m not homeless. I’m just, you know, not gonna have a house for now, but not homeless.

So it was very difficult for me, especially the first… the first seven months, because I didn’t know where to eat. I had… I wasn’t interacting with people. I did not know the right people to talk to. It got better when somebody spotted me. He was also homeless. He could see the signs when I was in the library. It took me to another day centre. And then for the first time, I think in six months, I, you know, I, I knew there were more people in my situation than just myself. And after six months, it was nice to get a cup of tea. Yeah. So six months I didn’t have a cup of tea at all. So…

How do you deal with an illness like cancer, you know, being told you have cancer and you on the streets and not only are you on the street, you’re stateless, so you have to deal with your homelessness. You have to deal with your illness. You have to deal with documentation and a lot of things.

It’s kind of very strange because sometimes you find like humanity where you don’t expect. Some of the people who are actually sort of, you know, showed me a lot of things were people probably in a much worse situation than me, because some of them were either mental illness or disabled or something much worse than me who was just… did not have a place to stay. But you see, they do not have a place to stay. And they had also other issues. Maybe some of them are still there or maybe some of them are not alive. But the reason why I’m alive is because of them, you know, because some of them guided me to a place like here, like the International Group.

So you know… that, this you know… that’s why I say, you know, sometimes, you know, you find humanity where you don’t expect.

I can’t get those words out of my head – “Sometimes you find humanity where you don’t expect it.” It’s tempting on Homelessness Sunday, to take it as an opportunity to give ourselves a big pat on the back for all the work we do at St Martin’s to support people experiencing homelessness. And don’t get me wrong, I am so proud of that ministry, and it is a profound privilege to be a part of it. But if there is one thing I’ve learned from these conversations, it’s that the real support, the real connection, the real sense of home is found within the homeless community itself. The real heroes of the stories today are those who bravely faced adversity with humility, kindness, and generosity. So communities like the International Group and services like The Connection become homes, vital to hold space for that sense of belonging to flourish. Because sometimes you find humanity where you don’t expect it, you find the abundance of God’s love on the margins, you find richness in poverty, you find home in the presence of those the world calls homeless. You discover that, as St Paul reminded us in today’s Epistle, ‘those that seem to be weaker are indispensable.’

So, what does home mean to you?

To me, Home is about love, a love that knows no borders. It is found in community, in solidarity, in the kind of care for one another that reminds us we are not forgotten, not abandoned, not untouchable or dispensable, but cherished and known.

And that is the Gospel. The Gospel is all about home. About returning home to God. About God making his home with us, here on earth and then again in our hearts. Scripture says, ‘Those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.’  Living in love is a way of seeing the world – a way of seeing one another. Just now you heard my friend share his disbelief at how patients with AIDS were treated when he started volunteering here, how they approached a fellow human being with fear and revulsion, wearing marigold gloves. But he saw them for who they were and, like Christ, was prepared to reach out and offer the gentle touch of love.

For those in this room who have experienced homelessness, thank you. Thank you for your love, compassion, kindness, and care. And for those of us who have not experienced homelessness, we must remember not to treat our homeless siblings as problems to be solved or dangers to be avoided, but as indispensable members of the body of Christ. Christ has not given us a marigold glove gospel. He calls us to take off those gloves of self-protection and fear, to reach out our hands in service, in love and solidarity. Because in each of our homeless siblings is Christ. Christ who pulls out his cardboard to sit down beside us. Christ who spots us in the library and calls us to walk with him into community. Christ who is our true friend. So, when we look for humanity, when we look for God’s divinity – let’s look where we don’t expect it because it’s there we find Christ waiting for us, waiting to welcome us home.