Giles Goddard | March 2, 2010
Tonight is the second meeting of the Isaiah Community. Having a second meeting is a sign of hope, because in my experience of the Anglican way (and I acknowledge this is an ecumenical community) - if you do something twice it becomes a tradition.
So now we’re properly launched. I’ve also been rereading the Molesworth books – Down with Skool and Back in the Jug Agane – Molesworth reminded me when he’s talking about geom, alg and maths that a line drawn from one point through another will stretch out to infinity. So here we go on our journey to infinity.
But even as we start, there are many questions around. Many people have asked me – what do you have in mind? To which my answer has been – I don’t have anything in mind except the hope that this can be a source of nourishment and inspiration for people concerned about justice. Ideally, a sort of steering group will emerge which enables us to focus, eventually, on some particular aspects of love and justice as they are played out in London – but what form that might take I don’t know – it’s up to you.
I also reflect on the wonderfully apposite readings we have today – “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Bishop David last week challenged us to be witnesses to the radical love of Jesus here in the city, and here we have Jesus himself challenging the people of Jerusalem to live out the promises of Isaiah “The oppressed shall speedily be released; they shall not die and go down to the Pit, nor shall they lack bread.”
But behind these questions of what we may do and where we are heading – of how we may live out the radical love of Jesus both individually (and I know how much many of us are doing in different ways already) and collectively - is an even more fundamental question. I mentioned last week that when I visited the Sant’Egidio Community in Rome they were very keen to know what our work with the poor would be. And I’m told that there is a perception among them that the reason that these communities haven’t worked in the past is because there isn’t the same strength of family, or of concern for the poor, in England as there is elsewhere in the world.
I don’t think that’s true; I think there may be other reasons which I won’t go into here. But there is a real question, which is – what is our relationship with the poor? Who are the poor? And what language is appropriate? In an email after last week’s prayers, someone said, and I quote – “In the NT and throughout antiquity, the ptochoi/pauperes are more a social than an economic category. They don't just lack money, they also lack power, freedom, and respect. 'Poverty' is an all-embracing condition into which they are born and which defines them as essentially dependent. Is it because of our impoverished sense of the meaning of poverty that we need to talk about the 'marginalised', as you said? It's clearly different in Italian. Is this because povertà has a richer, possibly more archaic meaning than poverty?
Whatever the answers we reach, we can be sure that we are, here, surrounded by levels of exclusion and deprivation which are profoundly shocking. The penal system in Britain, for example, is a national scandal about which we hear very little. And within this corner of Waterloo is immense alienation, loneliness and poverty which is equally scandalous. And we are one of the richest countries of the world, living on the back of unspeakable deprivation elsewhere. Then there are immediate and urgent questions about peace and war, the arms trade, the environment, food and farming..... there is much to do, and above all much to pray for. Your thoughts and ideas and suggestions about the ways forward are, therefore, vital, and if you’d like to be part of a steering group I’d particularly welcome that.
Let us take comfort and hope from the continuing promise of God as expressed in the words of Isaiah –
“I have put my words in your mouth, and hidden you in the shadow of my hand, stretching out the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion – “You are my people.””
So now we’re properly launched. I’ve also been rereading the Molesworth books – Down with Skool and Back in the Jug Agane – Molesworth reminded me when he’s talking about geom, alg and maths that a line drawn from one point through another will stretch out to infinity. So here we go on our journey to infinity.
But even as we start, there are many questions around. Many people have asked me – what do you have in mind? To which my answer has been – I don’t have anything in mind except the hope that this can be a source of nourishment and inspiration for people concerned about justice. Ideally, a sort of steering group will emerge which enables us to focus, eventually, on some particular aspects of love and justice as they are played out in London – but what form that might take I don’t know – it’s up to you.
I also reflect on the wonderfully apposite readings we have today – “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Bishop David last week challenged us to be witnesses to the radical love of Jesus here in the city, and here we have Jesus himself challenging the people of Jerusalem to live out the promises of Isaiah “The oppressed shall speedily be released; they shall not die and go down to the Pit, nor shall they lack bread.”
But behind these questions of what we may do and where we are heading – of how we may live out the radical love of Jesus both individually (and I know how much many of us are doing in different ways already) and collectively - is an even more fundamental question. I mentioned last week that when I visited the Sant’Egidio Community in Rome they were very keen to know what our work with the poor would be. And I’m told that there is a perception among them that the reason that these communities haven’t worked in the past is because there isn’t the same strength of family, or of concern for the poor, in England as there is elsewhere in the world.
I don’t think that’s true; I think there may be other reasons which I won’t go into here. But there is a real question, which is – what is our relationship with the poor? Who are the poor? And what language is appropriate? In an email after last week’s prayers, someone said, and I quote – “In the NT and throughout antiquity, the ptochoi/pauperes are more a social than an economic category. They don't just lack money, they also lack power, freedom, and respect. 'Poverty' is an all-embracing condition into which they are born and which defines them as essentially dependent. Is it because of our impoverished sense of the meaning of poverty that we need to talk about the 'marginalised', as you said? It's clearly different in Italian. Is this because povertà has a richer, possibly more archaic meaning than poverty?
Whatever the answers we reach, we can be sure that we are, here, surrounded by levels of exclusion and deprivation which are profoundly shocking. The penal system in Britain, for example, is a national scandal about which we hear very little. And within this corner of Waterloo is immense alienation, loneliness and poverty which is equally scandalous. And we are one of the richest countries of the world, living on the back of unspeakable deprivation elsewhere. Then there are immediate and urgent questions about peace and war, the arms trade, the environment, food and farming..... there is much to do, and above all much to pray for. Your thoughts and ideas and suggestions about the ways forward are, therefore, vital, and if you’d like to be part of a steering group I’d particularly welcome that.
Let us take comfort and hope from the continuing promise of God as expressed in the words of Isaiah –
“I have put my words in your mouth, and hidden you in the shadow of my hand, stretching out the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion – “You are my people.””
