Sermon Archive
Why People Matter
Sermon preached by Kenneth Boyd at Holy Communion on 22 April 2007
Acts 9:1-6 ; Revelation 5:11-14 ; John 21:1-19
Earlier this year, you may remember, there was some discussion in the media about a little girl in America called Ashley. Ashley was a nine-year-old, but was born with a rare condition which made her unable to walk, talk or, on her own, to eat, sit up or roll over. She was and would remain at the stage of a three-month-old baby, at least mentally. But physically she was continuing to grow and eventually she would have the body of an adult woman. At her present size, her parents were able to care for her at home; and so that they could continue to do this, they and her doctors devised a form of treatment, including hormones to stunt her growth, which would prevent her growing further. Ashley's parents and doctors did this, because they believed that it was in her best interests to continue to be cared for in the familiar surroundings of her own loving home, rather than in the kind of institution she might have to move to when she grew too large for her parents to manage. But it wasn't an easy decision for Ashley's parents or doctors to make, and the reason it became public knowledge was that they wanted to share their thoughts and experiences with other families who might be facing similar difficulties.
Now when it did become public knowledge, some commentators were very critical. Were the parents doing this just for their own convenience? Was it setting a precedent that other less scrupulous parents or doctors could use in less justifiable circumstances? Wasn't it beginning to sound a bit like eugenics? But others were not so sure that it was wrong; and as the discussion deepened, it became increasingly difficult for thoughtful people to decide about the ethics of Ashley's treatment. Keeping her small, and thus easy to move and be part of family activities, was likely to benefit her health, but did that justify such drastic treatment? And if society had been willing and able to give Ashley's parents the support necessary to care at home for her infant mind in a growing body, wouldn't that be a better alternative? But was such support actually available and affordable? In American health care, that seemed unlikely. So in their own particular circumstances, perhaps Ashley's parents and doctors were acting in her best interests. Some people might still claim, of course, that they were doing it for their own convenience. But was that wrong, if it also was the most effective way to do what was best for Ashley, and if the desire to do what was best for Ashley was what basically motivated her parents?
Ashley's treatment raised many difficult ethical questions. But it also made some things clear. When difficult ethical decisions have to be made, it is important not to rush to judgement. You need first to consider all the circumstances, as Ashley's parents and doctors had to; and if it is still difficult to know what to do for the best, you need to examine your own intentions and motives carefully and critically. That, from all accounts, is what Ashley's parents and doctors also did. When difficult ethical decisions have to be made, much depends on what is right or wrong not just in theory but in the particular circumstances; and much also depends on the intentions and motives of the people involved. It's not enough just to get the law and ethics right: you also need good people to put them into practice.
Ashley's treatment involved a very rare condition; but much the same questions could be asked about a much more common example. Last week, a government minister suggested that elderly people with dementia could be electronically tagged to make it easier to track their movements. Initially, it was very tempting to rush to judgement and say that old people aren't criminals to be tagged and that it all sounded too like the 'Big Brother' state. But as someone from Help the Aged commented, we need to consider all the circumstances. We shouldn't dismiss the possibility, for example, that sensitive use of such technology, with the consent of those involved, might enable people with dementia 'to stay within their communities for much longer while minimising some of the risk.' And the ethical question here again requires us to examine our own intentions and motives, as individuals and as a society, carefully and critically. As the same person from Help the Aged put it: 'The crucial issue is, is the care better for the person with dementia or is it just about our convenience?'
When we are faced with difficult ethical decisions, in our own lives, or in society and politics, we need not to rush to judgement, to consider all the circumstances, and to examine our own intentions and motives carefully and critically. But all that, of course, is very demanding. So, some might ask, why should we bother? Well, ultimately, it is because such decisions are about people - like Ashley, or a person with dementia - and because people matter. Today, of course, it may seem to us that it should go without saying that people matter. But that has not always and everywhere been obvious, as the historical record of man's inhumanity to man all-too-clearly demonstrates. The insight that people matter is something that humanity has had to learn.
How has humanity learned that people matter? One of the most important ways, in our culture at least, has been by absorbing the implications of what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures tell us about the love of God. This morning's gospel reading reminds us of that. In it, Jesus says to Peter. 'Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.' In the context of what I have just been saying about dementia, these words are particularly poignant. But in their original context they foretell, or for the author of the fourth gospel recall, the elderly apostle Peter's martyrdom, traditionally by crucifixion. Jesus' words, the gospel writer tells us, 'indicate the kind of death by which [Peter] would glorify God'. To modern Western minds, not least today when so many suicide bombers are seeking martyrdom, it may be difficult to understand how martyrdom could 'glorify God'. But St Peter, from whose hand the sword dropped in Gethsemane, was no suicide bomber; and what he lived and died for, was the good news of Christ, who taught that each and all of us are eternally loved by God, who is Love. If Peter, like Jesus himself and countless other Christians, hadn't been prepared to testify to that good news, even to death, would humanity have learned that people matter? It is, at the very least, unlikely, since such news is, by all earthly standards, too good to be true. The good news of Christ, you might say, is highly quixotic - or at least it would be quixotic if it was about anything we had the capacity to fully understand. But then what that good news is about, is something we can never fully understand in this life, even when we feel most strongly that it is true. To say that people matter, ultimately matter because they are loved by eternal love, is an act of faith; and what it means can be understood, only by living as if it were true, and by dying in the same hope.
How do people come to that faith? In our reading from Acts, we heard the dramatic story of how St Paul came to it. Others have come in different ways. Two or three centuries later, a man with a similar name, a middle-aged scholarly Roman senator called Paulinus, near the end of his life would sell himself into slavery to save a young fellow-countryman from that fate. That was part of the fruit of his Christian faith. But Paulinus came to Christian faith only very gradually. For him, 'there was no halt, dazzled with excess of light, on the Damascus road. Paulinus wakened under the countenance of eternity as a man might waken sleeping out of doors at sunrise.'
That marvellous description of St Paulinus' conversion was written by another who came to faith in her own way, the Latin scholar and poet Helen Waddell. For the last ten years of her life she also had to be led by the hand, her 'eyes dead to all human recognition', her 'brilliant mind extinguished', awaiting daybreak. Before she entered that silence however she had seen deeply into the deepest mysteries of life and death. There is a passage in her novel Peter Abelard, about the death of a small animal, which expresses her insight into the suffering love of God in language too profound to be summed up in a brief quotation. Let me just quote instead something else she wrote to a friend:
What if it were really true, that the power at the back of this cruel universe were love as we know it... It's no wonder Dante said when he had that vision of 'love that moves the sun and stars' that it was 'tanto ottragio' a kind of outrage on his being. For to come within the least whisper of it, is to leave one gasping. ... [that] the Holy Ghost was love, and that the whole world lay in it, moved by it, the love of God the Father and God the Son. One writes it, and it is trite - the familiar commonplace that we have heard from our cradles. But if ever one comes within its breath, it is so terrible that one almost looks about for familiar little shelters of noise and buses to shut out the stars.'
Familiar little shelters of noise and buses to shut out the stars. Perhaps that is where most of us, most of the time, are hiding ourselves. Our busy modern world certainly provides plenty of opportunities. And perhaps too, we need to hide ourselves, until our hearts are great enough, our imagination loving enough, to absorb, and to bear, the profound implications of the possibility that 'the power at the back of this cruel universe' is 'love as we know it'. Yet forever to hide ourselves from that vision incurs a heavy cost - the cost of not recognising why it is that people, including ourselves, ultimately matter.
That recognition moreover is what this joyful season of Easter celebrates. So let me end with part of Helen Waddell's translation of a 4th century morning hymn celebrating Christ's resurrection.
Light enters in: the sky/ Whitens. Christ comes!...
The mist sheers apart/ Cleft by the sun's spear.
Colour comes back to things/ From his bright face.