Gordon Linney
Some time ago in a shopping centre car park an elderly woman approached. Do you like your new car, she asked, pointing to the new registration plate. To avoid explaining that it was on loan I said that I did. She told me that she and her husband had just changed their car but that he had since taken ill and was facing surgery. It became clear that she had no interest in anybody’s car; she was lonely and needed to talk to someone, anyone. Hers is a common experience as was shown in a recent article in this newspaper which told the story of Barbara (83) who lives alone. Barbara explained that she lights candles because “It’s just the movement. They just make me feel like somebody is here.” The support given her by the Alone organisation underlines the importance of home visiting by clergy and others.
Walter Rauschenbusch, an American Baptist theologian in the early 20th century, writing at a time when there was much emphasis on personal conversion, urged his readers not to forget that they were social beings too. “We are social beings, and all elements of our life come to their full development only through social interchange and co-operation. Our pleasures, our affections, our moral aspirations are all lifted to higher power and scope by sharing them with others.” He stressed the Jesus saying that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is in the midst of them. Christianity is a social religion.
Tomorrow’s reading from the Letter of James is scathing about religious people preoccupied with self. “For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind . . . Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.”
The Gospel reading develops the theme. The disciples are arguing privately about which of them was the greatest – a problem not unknown today in church circles and even between churches. Jesus challenges them and taking a little child in his arms says: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
In that statement Jesus challenges the modern tendency to promote self. He taught that mature personhood is measured by one’s ability to participate responsibly in the personhood of others. That is why he was always open to people, especially those on the fringes of society. Any child, we are told, is a representation of the divine presence which brings to mind the limp, lifeless body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi in a Turkish policeman’s arms. He was drowned along with his mother and five-year-old brother when the boat they were using to escape the war in Syria capsized
There has been a huge wave of sympathy and concern following publication of the photographs of that grim scene but we have known about these poor people for years. For example, in an ecumenical statement in June 2014 the German churches asked the public not to forget the suffering and hardship of the needy people in the Middle East: “More than 150,000 people have lost their lives in fighting in Syria, and about nine million people are fleeing. Every second Syrian is meanwhile dependent on humanitarian aid. The situation in the region is exacerbated by the fact that in Iraq an estimated 500,000 people are fleeing from the advance of militant Islamists.” Others like Peter Sutherland have told the same story.
What is it about us human beings that we can be so selfishly indifferent to suffering? How is it that we were only touched when the body of a tiny child landed on the doorsteps of our consciences? And how quickly and easily will we forget?