Social Services Sunday

Rev Indrea Alexander

Matt 13:24-30 & 36-43

We live in a wheaty, weedy world, where the good the bad and the ugly grow alongside each other. Weeds of hate and fear grow in the same paddocks as love and trust; the good wheat of welcome, inclusion and appreciation are interspersed with weeds of racism, sexism and criticism. Weeds of superiority grow alongside the wheat of humility. 
 
The gospel reading suggests we can’t root out all the bad stuff without damaging the good crop too, but as last weeks gospel suggested, we can abundantly sow good seed in season and out of season, and do our utmost to ensure there’s opportunity for a good crop to grow.
 
Today is Social Services Sunday, when we especially focus on God’s continuing call to the church to reach out in loving compassion and seek justice for all who are in need. We have a clear example in Jesus who helped the suffering and vulnerable, and spoke in warning to those who were so focussed on rules, regulations and their own respectability that they neglected those in need. Over the centuries the church too has swayed from compassion to respectability and back again. Sayings like “Cold as charity” remind us that even our best actions bring little comfort unless warmed by love. But we started well. 
 
Nearly 2000 years ago the persecuted Christian church gained an extraordinary reputation as people who welcomed society’s outcasts. They cared for the neglected, took in abandoned babies, loved the unlovable and brought healing and hope to people accustomed to rejection. They began buying slaves in order to free them. Romans persecuting Christians remarked, “See how they love one another—and love even our own people more than we do.”
 
From the 4th century onward, when official persecution of the church had ended, Christians became leaders in social reform. A gathering of church leaders in 325 AD declared that wherever the church was planted, places of care for the needy should also be planted.
 
Forty years later the first large scale Christian hospital was built for the public in 369AD, with 300 beds for the sick and disabled. A wealthy Christian woman founded a similar hospital in Rome. Around 400 years later, Emperor Charlemagne decreed every cathedral should have an attached hospital.
 
Out of concern for the sick in the 1500s, Catholic reformer St Vincent de Paul co-founded the Daughters of Charity in France. They travelled to towns and villages to seek out and serve the sick, following the example of Jesus. 
 
In the 1860s Florence Nightingale established nursing as a skilled profession and career, with a training school in London. She said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within, but we must also make it so without.” 
 
One of her inspirations was Elizabeth Fry, a Quaker minister who, in the early 1800s, had begun visiting the notorious Newgate Gaol, reading the Bible and preaching to the inhabitants. She was appalled by the sub-human conditions in the prison, the moral depravity of the unsegregated prison, and the plight of prisoners’ children, who were in Newgate with them.
 
Elizabeth provided clothing for near-naked babies, sought the safety of women, the provision of basic sanitation, and began useful industry for the inmates. It launched her on a lifetime of prison and mental asylum reform, travelling, teaching and influencing law makers. 
 
In addition to the demands of such a high public profile role, one of the frequent calls on Elizabeth’s time was to nurse the sick, companion the dying, and assist at childbirth among her family and friends. She developed a skill and interest in nursing at a time when such menial work was done by ill-educated women of poor repute. It’s no wonder that later in the century Florence Nightingale acknowledged Elizabeth Fry as an inspiration.
 
Churches today continue to be involved in a plethora of social service initiatives.
The NZ Council of Christian Social Services encompasses the Anglican Care network, Baptist and Presbyterian social services agencies, and the Methodist and Salvation Army churches. Together, these six members have 213 agencies in 55 towns and cities throughout New Zealand. They are involved in child and family services, services for older people, food bank and emergency services, housing, budgeting, and disability, addiction, community development and employment services. They serve thousands of people across NZ every day.
 
Our parish is linked to the Anglican Care network. Anglican Care Canterbury Westland is the social services and social justice arm of the Diocese of Christchurch. Anglican Care strives “in Christian love to serve and seek justice in the community.” It has an annual budget of over $14 million and serves and ministers to people in need. It has three main divisions: The Christchurch City Mission, Anglican Advocacy, and Anglican Care South Canterbury.
 
The Christchurch City Mission has the highest profile— it offers night shelters, day programs, foodbanks and drug and alcohol services. It has a network of community houses in Christchurch and works with local communities to address local needs.
Anglican Advocacy is the Social Justice arm of the diocese, undertaking research into local and national issues and taking action to bring justice. In Mid and South Canterbury Anglican Advocacy has a more directly one-to-one approach where co-ordinators Warren James and Ruth Swale work with teams of volunteers to provide support to individuals facing tricky situations. More about that later.
 
The third division of Anglican Care is Anglican Care South Canterbury, which is increasingly supporting people in Mid Canterbury. It resources the Oceans loss and grief programme which is about to begin at St Stephen’s on August 11, and they intend to offer a range of workshops here designed to build people’s confidence and skills in conflict-resolution, communication, and dealing with change, shame, anxiety and loneliness.
 
As well as having these links to Anglican social services in the diocese, our parish contributes to wider social service work through Anglican Missions, which has been “putting love into action” for over 100 years. Working with and on behalf of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa and Polynesia, Anglican Missions supports Christian mission in NZ and overseas through evangelisation, development and humanitarian work. Anglican Missions says, “We are motivated by Jesus to see His Kingdom here on earth.” August is to be marked as Mission Month, and we will explore more of their work together in the next few weeks.
 
Through the diocese, we are also specifically linked to Christian World Service, New Zealand’s longest serving home-grown development and aid agency. It has 76 years of “making sure people have water, food, and justice”. It works on behalf of the NZ Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian churches, Christian Churches New Zealand and the Quakers. CWS says, “We believe that a profession of faith in the God of Life, revealed in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, requires the rejection of those conditions, structures and systems which perpetuate human hunger, poverty and injustice. All human beings have the right to a livelihood that ensures justice, human dignity and environmental integrity.”
 
That’s enough about organisations and their lofty ideals. The reality is that social service is about people. Individuals. Families. Communities.  When someone has been in need, our hope must be that they will be able to say, “You came, you cared.”
 
The human side is evident in the following brief Anglican advocacy reports: 
 
Supported young sole parent with a Ministry of Social Development fraud investigation... She was able to successfully prove to the investigator that she had not done anything wrong … a great outcome.
 
Assisted client … to get an advance from Work and Income for her Specsavers bill; also liaised with local Rotary Club to provide her with some free firewood.
“You came, you cared.”
 
Offered support to a young father bringing up 5 children on his own, including a 1-year-old with special needs… helped him to access more services for his youngest child and also addressed his need for more social connections.
“You came, you cared.”
 
Assisted a client with a very tense employment disciplinary meeting, who afterwards said, “thank you for your support today – it made the situation much easier to deal with having you there.”
“You came, you cared.”
 
Supported a senior lady, with multiple financial and health-related issues, to a successful resolution in selling her house and getting her debts settled.
“You came, you cared.”
 
The people helped by Anglican Advocacy aren’t billed, but are invited to instead pay-it-forward by helping someone else in whatever way they are able. On one special occasion “paying it forward” it happened immediately.
 
A member of the Advocacy team wrote the following (adapted for clarity):
Being support person for a woman at a recent Restorative Justice Conference was a very moving experience. She was extremely grateful to have an Advocate help her to prepare before meeting with the offender, attend with her, and debrief afterward, where she told me, “I had an epiphany moment, and then I knew just what I needed to say to keep the door open for future change (in the offender).”
 
Even faced by weeds among the wheat, Christian social service plants hope, which can in turn bear further hope.