Skip to main content

Act justly, love mercy

Today, as part of the ministers' conference I am attending, Juliet Kilpin gave a presentation about the refugee crisis, specifically the situation of the Calais migrants.  She explained that we were seeing the biggest movement of people since the Second World War.  Calais was where migrants ended up when they were trying to cross into the UK.  Just 23 miles away from us, across the Channel, people were living in terrible conditions.  Juliet travels there every 7 to 10 days to meet with people and hear their stories.  She shared with us some of what she had experienced.

Accommodation was basic, crowded and cold.  The ground was muddy - and it wasn't just mud people were wading through.  The local police frequently used tear gas to make life uncomfortable for the migrants, and to encourage them to move on.  The situation was so desperate that people took huge risks hiding in trucks and jumping on to trains, because if they were going to die, they wanted to die trying.  Today the residents of the 'Jungle' in Calais were waiting to hear if a huge area of the camp was going to be bulldozed by the French authorities.  These were people who had fallen through the cracks: unable to stay in their home countries because of war or oppression; unwanted in France; unwelcome in the UK.  The situation was bleak and heartbreaking.  However, there were lots of small charities and passionate volunteers trying to make a difference in this desperate place.

I remember attending a book group meeting several years ago, when we were reading 'Three Cups of Tea' by Greg Mortenson.  This book tells the story of a guy who used to sleep in his car in order to save as much money as possible to take back to Pakistan to build schools in poor communities.  I was incredibly challenged by the story and I remember saying to the group that I felt bad about it.  I might be working as an evangelist, but what was I really doing to help the poorest in society?  One of my friends replied that, as an evangelist, I was doing the most important job of all.  This was a kind thing to say, but it didn't take away my uneasy feeling.

Now, several years later, I realise that I was right to feel uncomfortable about this story.  Telling people about Jesus Christ is a wonderful thing, but it surely has to be accompanied by showing mercy to the poorest in society, as Christ did.  To proclaim Christ fully is to proclaim justice for the poor, and to take part in fulfilling that proclamation.  I, like many others, listened to Juliet's stories from Calais while asking myself, Is God calling me to do more to practise the gospel as well as to tell it?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Halloween

It's that magical time of year again - that one night when my small neighbours knock on my door asking for sweeties.  This year, I'm properly prepared: I have two pumpkins (I wanted five, but decided to be thrifty), a big tub of sweets and a tube of 100 glow sticks.  The sweets are my concession to popular demand; the glow sticks are an attempt to represent light in darkness (a symbolism which will doubtless be lost on the kids).  I'm seeing the pumpkin as my main opportunity to communicate something of my Christian faith to my neighbours. One year, while I was at theological college, Halloween fell on a Sunday.  The new housing estate church I was assigned to met in a church hall on Sunday afternoons and many of the congregation were unaccompanied children.  I googled 'Christian pumpkin carvings' and guess what - there are a lot of ideas out there, America being a country which is big on Halloween and big on Christianity too.  I decided to carve a simple f...

Only connect

Last year on Ash Wednesday I attended an ashing service at St Paul's Cathedral.  The service focused on confessing our sins and asking God's forgiveness.  During the service a berobed priest made the sign of the cross in ash on my forehead.  I thought this was pretty cool and refused my husband's request that I rub it off for the train journey home.  Then we ran into an old work colleague of mine and I felt rather stupid. Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, is all about sin and repentance - 'sackcloth and ashes' and all that.  But I wonder how many people in the UK today identify with the idea that they are sinners in need of forgiveness?  My final year dissertation at theological college focused on the dilemma of how to call to repentance people who do not think they have anything of which to repent.  I certainly didn't think of myself as a sinner when I first started exploring Christianity.  I knew I wasn't perfect, but hey, who is? I have hea...

Broken at the altar

A new drama series by Jimmy McGovern finished a couple of weeks ago on the BBC. Broken  tells the story of Roman Catholic priest Father Michael Kerrigan, a broken person ministering to other broken people in an unnamed northern city. It's still available on BBC iPlayer and I would encourage you to watch it - only be prepared for a few grim hours. I'll try to avoid spoilers here. Michael has a problem: whenever he celebrates Mass (which I think in the Roman Catholic Church is every day), he has flashbacks. At the moment of consecration - the point at which, Catholics believe, the bread and wine physically become for us the body and blood of Christ - he remembers every shameful thing he's ever done, and every shameful thing that has been done to him. We see his mother screaming at him that he's a dirty, filthy little boy; young women crying because he has treated them badly; mistakes he has made as a priest; people he has let down. His voice falters and he struggles ...