|
Emly Deanery Evensong 10th June 2007 Tobit 4.5-11, Acts 9.26-31 Pat Jones, Partnership Development Officer, Guildford Diocese Department for Social Responsibility |
| For anyone who has teenagers or young adults in the family, today’s reading from Tobit must surely prompt admiration. This is a father giving advice to his son, Tobias, before sending him on a long and perilous journey; be faithful; do good deeds; act truthfully and you will be successful; give alms; never turn your face from the poor. |
| Could we give such advice today to our young people? And if we did, would they listen? What makes Tobit’s words powerful is that they reflect how he has lived his life. The Book of Tobit tells us about how he was exiled to Nineveh with all his tribe; about how he helps his fellow Jews, feeding the hungry, caring for the widows and orphans, and risking his own life to bury those murdered by an unjust king, and how he sends his son to find people in need to share their feast day family meal. He remains faithful even when his good deeds result in him becoming blind. He still trusts in God’s purposes even though God tests him. As the story unfolds (and what happens to his son on the journey is compelling and heartwarming) we see how his faithfulness is rewarded, as his son returns well and with a wife, and Tobit’s blindness is cured with some help from an angel and a fish. |
| Tobit’s story invites reflection at a number of levels. First, we may think about whether we could give any advice like this to young people today. Our words to them are crowded by so many other messages; giving to charity, for example, is so linked to celebrities that there often seems to be doubt about whether people will give without a celebrity connection. But the deeper question is about the messages we give by how we live our lives, both as families and as communities. What do we say to our sons and daughters about what it means to live a good life? Can it be seen from our lives that we never turn our faces from the poor, that we measure the alms we give from what we have, and if we have much, give more? |
| It would be easy at this point to move into suggesting we all need to give more generously, whether to the current emergency appeal for Chad and Darfur (where our church aid agencies, CAFOD and Christian Aid, are feeding 325,000 people a day), or to local causes, indeed even the Bishop of Guildford’s Foundation, which it is part of my job to promote. But whilst this is obviously worthwhile as a response to hearing God’s word to us today, there’s something deeper still in the story of Tobit that I’d like to explore. |
| There is a short poem by R S Thomas, the Welsh Anglican priest and poet, that reads as follows: |
|
And one came to your back door all bones and in rags, asking the kiss that would have transformed both you and him; and you would not, slamming it in his face, only to find him waiting at your bed’s side. |
| It is a powerful and disturbing poem. It echoes many themes; about whom we welcome and whom we refuse; about us all being bound together ultimately. Most of all it is about what happens when we give the kiss that is asked of us, by welcoming or including people or responding to their needs, when we live as Tobit did. Tobit did not just do good deeds because he was a just and faithful person; the doing of those deeds, the living of that life, transformed him and moved him ever more deeply into God’s purposes. |
| I wonder if the same is true for us today, even in milder ways. The full significance when we give alms or do good deeds is not simply about the benefit to others. It is about what we gain, who we become, how we are transformed, as a result. And this is true of us as churches as much as it is true of individuals and families. Jon Sobrino, the Salvadorean theologian expresses this very well in one of his essays about solidarity. He speaks about what happens when one church helps another church that is in need because of its response to people who are poor or excluded. He says that when this happens, those helping churches find that they not only give but also receive from the church they aid. What they receive is of a different and higher value; it is new inspiration in faith and new awareness of their own identity and relationship to God. In other words, we are enriched when we give, enriched in our faith and in who we are. |
| I have often found myself testing this insight. Last week-end I went to the rally organised by CAFOD, Christian Aid, Tearfund, Oxfam and others to tell the G8 leaders that they must keep their promises to Africa. I stood with thousands of others, mainly from the churches, ringing bells and whistles on Lambeth Bridge, and chanting ‘G8: the world can’t wait’. I stood with a priest who had brought the bells he uses to announce that Mass is starting, and broke one of the clappers through ringing too energetically! Afterwards I talked to some of the veterans of human chains and debt campaigns and ‘Make Poverty History’. They spoke of how much richer their lives are because of their involvement in this cause. They have become neighbours to people in Africa whom they don’t know. And they feel caught up into God’s desire, which Tobit also knew, that no-one should go hungry, that widows and orphans should be cared for, that justice should be done. Their willingness to march and protest is a way of giving that transforming kiss. |
| Jon Sobrino also talks about how the place of the Church is with the wounded one lying in the ditch along the roadside, of the need for the Church to set off down the road where the wounded lie, if we want to resemble Jesus. He proposes that we become a Samaritan Church, structured by mercy. |
| So Tobit’s story is really about how our faith moves us to compassion or solidarity or to raise our voices for justice for those who are excluded or vulnerable or oppressed. And how our experience of doing so transforms us; and how that then becomes a message to others, including our children and young people. |
| Since taking up a post within the diocesan Department for Social Responsibility, I have been pondering what this means in our context here of Surrey and North East Hampshire. We live in a prosperous county in a wealthy country; but that very wealth can make it difficult for us to see the hidden realities of need and vulnerability around us. I have to admit that even in just these first couple of months, my eyes have been opened. There are pockets of deprivation not very far from any of us; there are prisons where visiting families and those who are released need support; there is exclusion, especially of BME communities and of the 10,000 strong gypsy and traveller community; there are housing estates where young people hang around with no facilities and nowhere to go and where young single mothers struggle with depression; there are families who cannot pay their rent and who struggle with debt; and there are people who are isolated, because they are elderly, or live deep in rural villages, or because they are carers or perhaps because they do not speak English. One of the realities of living in a wealthy county is that it can be harder to be poor. The services available to provide support are less well funded, because the Government’s policies take into account the overall wealth more than the pockets of need. Inequality makes poverty much more scandalous and compels us to ask broader questions. |
| And even where communities are relatively well off, there are other needs. If one in four of us will have a mental health problem at some point in our lives, there will be people in need of support in all our communities. |
| There is scope therefore, for us to become a Samaritan Church; for us to respond, as Tobit did, and in doing so, be transformed in faith. Indeed, there are already many ways in which this is happening. I have seen it in a drop in centre for homeless people in a church in Aldershot run by faith inspired volunteers; in two young Zimbabwean mothers, refugees living far from their home communities, finding practical help at a clothing exchange run by a parish in Farnborough; in a group for people with mental health needs run by a parish in Epsom. There are, I hope, many other examples. |
| And even if the needs are less urgent in a particular parish, they can follow Tobit’s advice to those who have more, and give more by aiding projects or parishes elsewhere that meet local needs. The Bishop of Guildford’s Foundation is in fact a practical vehicle for enabling this kind of solidarity to happen. Yesterday I was in the parish of Pyrford and Wisley, which provides funding support for the community development work of the Good Shepherd parish in Farnborough. It is a form of solidarity of which St Barnabas, whose feast we celebrate tomorrow, would have approved, as he worked with St Paul to raise a collection in Antioch to bring to the church in Jerusalem, which was in need of help. Sharing of wealth between churches has been a mark of the Christian community since it began. |
| Let us be open to how our giving may transform us, binding us more deeply into God’s purposes, enriching us and enabling our lives to give a stronger message to our young people. And let us pray, today, to be open to God’s word in the examples of Tobit and Barnabas; that we may become a Samaritan church, structured by mercy. |
|
|