Sermon Archive
Choices
Sermon preached by Kenneth Boyd at Matins on 21 December 2003
In a programme on BBC Radio 4 called The Choice, people from all walks of life are interviewed about choices made which have changed their lives. The person interviewed last week was a man called Martin, who made at least three important choices in his life. The first was to become a priest, the second to leave his parish to care for his elderly mother, and the third was when he was asked to provide full-time care for a severely disturbed teenager. Martin's choices were complicated by the fact that he is homosexual, living in long term partnership with another man. For most of his parishioners, happily, this does not seem to have been a problem: he and his partner made no secret but also no fuss about their relationship. He seems to have been a good and caring priest, and he and his partner were simply accepted as part of the church community.
Martin's second choice, to leave his parish to look after his increasingly frail mother, had nothing to do with a loss of faith. Precisely the opposite. His faith taught him that every individual is equally loved by God, and in her old age his mother needed someone to love and care for her. Martin saw this as his vocation, just as much as his parish work had been, and perhaps even more, because he believed that love and care are best expressed in long-term commitment to an individual. But then, Martin was asked by his local social services to give respite care to the teenager Paul. Paul really was severely disturbed and often very violent. But he too, Martin believed, was loved by God, and when the local social services asked if they would care for Paul on a long term basis, Martin had to make his third choice.
This third choice was further complicated by the fact that many people, from ignorance or prejudice, confuse homosexuality with paedophilia. In fact, most paedophiles are heterosexual and most sexual abuse of children takes place within families. But the social services must have been very sure of Martin to ask him to provide full-time care for Paul, and both they and he were very courageous to do this. In the event, Paul's violent and unpredictable behaviour meant that Martin, his mother and his partner came very close to deciding that they could not continue to care for him. But the alternative, when no other family could be found for Paul, was that that the best he could expect was to live in an institution, where people hadn't enough time to give him the quality of attention he really needed, and the worst was that he, as is the case with some severely disturbed adolescents, might actually fall prey to paedophiles.
Martin, his partner and his mother, the programme told us, are still caring for Paul. Paul can still be violent and disturbed, and Martin has arranged with the social services for them to have their own times of respite care when Paul is not with them. But they are now his family, and the greatest reward, Martin says, is when from time to time, Paul tells them 'Me safe here'.
Now many people, and perhaps we ourselves, might feel, given the ongoing media frenzy about paedophilia and the Soham murders, that it was extraordinarily risky of the social service and of Martin and his family to do what they did. But if we feel that, we might also ask ourselves why the rest of us are not providing, either personally, or through higher taxation or more charitable giving, the amount of care and attention needed by so many children like Paul. Martin says that what eventually persuaded his mother that they must persevere, was when she saw a book of photographs of these children which the social services had produced, in the hope, largely disappointed, of finding families willing to care for them.
This may not seem a very seasonal story to relate in the run-up to our Christmas celebrations. But when I heard that programme last week, so close to Christmas, I could not help feeling that if we were to ask what is the equivalent today to the Holy Family toiling toward Bethlehem, here was the answer. The Christian doctrine of the Incarnation is that the Word became flesh in great humility. Humility is also potential humiliation, and who are more at risk of that today, at the hands of the media and our indifference, than people like Martin, his partner, his mother and Paul? If we ask where the Holy Family is to be found today, where further need we look?
Now that, no doubt, is the last thing that Martin, his partner and his mother would want to suggest. To us, they may seem extraordinarily heroic, but the way Martin told their story was extraordinarily matter-of-fact. I said earlier that Martin's motive for the choices he made, was his belief that every individual was equally loved by God. But that makes it sound too like an intellectual deduction. It was because his faith made Martin the sort of person he is, that he saw things that way, and chose as he did. Had Martin, or his partner or his mother had different lives, they might still have had faith, but decided not to care for Paul. They might perhaps have decided, realistically, that this was something they were unable to cope with without going to pieces. That certainly would be many other people's honest and correct assessment of their own capacities - perhaps most of ours also. Martin's realistic decision moreover must have been influenced by the fact that his life history, and perhaps particularly his experience as a parish priest, made him someone who was particularly good at dealing with difficult people; and he was also particularly fortunate in having a partner and mother who supported him and were willing to share the load with him.
Martin then might be profoundly embarrassed by my comparison of his family with the Holy Family. But there was something else he said on that programme that makes that comparison apt, and perhaps in a way he might approve. The greatest reward of his choice, Martin said, was that Paul was now a little less violent than before, and sometimes with genuine affection said, 'Me safe here'. When that happened, Martin said, he knew that their small family was 'blessed'. Blessed or happy, as St James writes in today's second lesson, 'are those who are steadfast'. But then Martin went on to say how very much harder it must be for many others who care for children, either their own, or adopted, or in institutions, and never experience such a loving response, but only continued violence or dislike or indifference.
Martin's story thus reminds us of how small the difference may be, between those individuals and families who can say that they are 'blessed' and those who can not. Part of this difference clearly is attributable to circumstances over which people have no control, or at most to choices they or other people made long ago. There are countless things in everyone's life which no-one now has any power to alter, and which are sometimes so painful, that the only way to cope with them is to shut them out of conscious awareness. The amount of suffering in the world actually would be totally overwhelming if any of us were aware of more than a minute fraction of it. Indeed, if the amount of sheer human suffering and mere human unhappiness were all there was in the world, the only rational thing to do would be to shut as much of it as we possibly can from our conscious awareness, and simply get on with cultivating our own gardens.
But suffering and unhappiness of course, are not all there is in the world: there is also breathtaking beauty and generous human kindness, love and laughter; and hovering over all the inexplicable contradictions of human life, a persistent hope: that we are not alone in a cold and indifferent universe, but, in the language of faith, that 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us'. The reality that faith's language strains to express - the ultimate reality of human suffering transfigured by divine suffering - is beyond our limited comprehension; and many say that it is not reality but wish-fulfilment. But if they are right, and we really are alone in a universe entirely indifferent to us, hope is irrelevant. Yet life without hope is unliveable; and it is not unreasonable, trusting in hope in the small things, to trust also in hope for the greatest.
Part of the difference between those who can and who cannot say they are 'blessed' is attributable to circumstances. But part also depends on how far people remain open to the promptings of hope and love in the everyday practicalities of living. Every life - yours, mine and everyone else's - is constrained by circumstances, the result of choices made by us or others, often long ago. But what matters, is whether within these constraints, we bemoan our fate like King Hezekiah at the beginning of today's first lesson, or like him at the end of that lesson, turn, and live.
What matters is whether or not we choose to let hope and love lighten the way forward. Most of us cannot, and some of us should not, aspire to do what Martin and his family have done. Some may, some may not. Most of us certainly cannot hope to make a great difference to the world. But each of us, if we remain open to hope and love's prompting, can make a small difference in small things; and it is those small differences, faith tells us, that gather to the greatness God awaits, with arms outstretched on the cross of the world he created. That too, is why what is at the heart of Christmas - hope and love incarnate in tiny human frailty - never ceases to call out to those who, when they hear, gain the courage to turn, and live, and so discover they are 'blessed'.
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