Advent

Paula Gooder and Peter Babington, with the Archbishop of York.



Advent starts this Sunday - in St Hilda's we open the season with the children lighting the first of the Advent candles.

Reflection: Judgement: scale and perspective

Some thoughts triggered by Isaiah 40 and 41: 

The Last Judgement. Jean Cousin the Younger, The Louvre.

Judgement has been a bit of a theme in the weeks leading up to the end of the liturgical year,

We all judge others much of the time. It's a key way in which. as social animals, we locate ourselves in relation to other people. It is a continuous, instinctive  and potentially emotional process.

But Christians use the term in other ways, not least to know oneself (or to place oneself) over against God. This shifts the frame of reference from other people to God who is beyond us.

Secular judgement
In our secular society judgement too has been secularized.

In part this is a conscious rejection of earlier Christian teaching which equated divine judgement with a question of morality: was our behaviour - and our intent - acceptable to God?

There is nothing wrong with this question in itself. The false step was to seek to answer it for other people. Those who had power in the Church assumed that such power meant that they were able to speak and judge on God's behalf. And all too often they equated their grasp of God's judgement with the condemnation of others. They forgot first, that none of us can speak for God and, second, that the Christian God is a God of love with a presumption in favour of compassion and forgiveness.

We are known utterly by God, and  loved.

In our secular judgement we try not to use irrelevant criteria (skin colour, for example) but we're quite happy to use money - wealth and income - as a basis for (and evidence of) public judgement.

It's easier to see this by reversing the telescope: it's the poor that get's the blame. Those who have a little look down on those who have less. Housing, for example, could be a fundamental human right. Instead those who become homeless are regarded with disdain.

This is a very secular form of judgement which says little or nothing about morality and everything about material gain.

Our secular judgements give us ways to know who we are in relation to others in part - whether we like it or not - by 'irrelevant' dimensions (gender, ethnicity, disability, age etc.) and in part by where we locate ourselves on the scales of wealth and income.

Divine judgement

We are utterly insignificant in the universe
and precious in God's sight.

But if we place ourselves over against God we inherently judge ourselves very differently. After all, money is irrelevant to God.

First, God, who is perfection, puts all of us in the shade.

We are, so to speak, spiritually turned inside out: the public and personal skin by which we protect ourselves from others is stripped away and we are known to our core.

Our smallness, inadequacy, self-centredness is exposed to our own sight.

This has to be a scary place. All our instincts are to protect ourselves, to assert our own worth and our value to others, to construct a 'self' comfortable to ourself and to others. Our skin is there for good reason: to protect what is vulnerable.

Scale and perspective
It is very easy in both public and personal judgement to get everything out of perspective: to only condemn (ourselves and others) or to only excuse.

What I took from Isaiah 40 was to hold together first the greatness of God and the tininess of humanity - not least the self-important:

He [God] brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff. (40: 23, 24, NIV)

And, the second thing was to hold together both judgement and forgiveness, condemnation and affirmation.

I said, ‘You are my servant’; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (41: 9b, 10, NIV)

If we don't hold the opposites together - God's overwhelming greatness and his affirming love for each one us - our collective and personal failure and inadequacy and acceptance that we are forgiven and loved - then we distort and diminish both God and ourselves.

To know that we are judged and forgiven by God is to step out of the secular frame of judgement (at least for a while) and to set our selves in a different, spiritual, framework by which we know who we are in ourselves and in the world.

“People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”
― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

Making Winter Warmer

Making Winter Warmer helps support those who are homeless and sleeping on the streets this winter in Newcastle and Gateshead.

The project was set up in 2013 by Kerry Lister-Pattinson and her friend Jo-Anne Burns. Vimeo clip

If you would like to help, or for more information, email Kerry at makingwinterwarmer@gmail.com

Rucksacks of help
The pack rucksacks full of donated items and give them out to those who need them:

Kerry Lister-Pattinson with some of the donations
(c) The Journal

“They’re not necessarily for homeless people, although the majority of people we help do fall in to that category,” says Kerry. “If people need help they need help. We’ll not turn somebody away just because they’re not homeless.”

Kerry, 29, said: “We make up around 15 to 20 rucksacks on a Thursday, plus dozens of orders we receive when we are out the Saturday before. But the main thing for us is to be there for them and just be people. 

“I don’t want to say: ‘There you go, there’s your rucksack. Bye’. A lot of the people we help just want somebody to talk to them and acknowledge them. They feel embarrassed taking things, but value it more if you actually speak to them like human beings.”

The team are looking for:

Rucksack/Holdall/Small Suitcase  ~ Sleeping Bag 

Fleece  ~ Jacket  ~ Coat  ~ T-shirts  ~ Underwear  ~ Jumper  ~ Trousers

Hat  ~ Gloves  ~ Socks

Flask

Tins of soup (ring pull)  ~ Snacks (non-perishable)

Baby wipes  ~ Tissues  ~ Toothbrush & paste  ~ Deodorant  ~ Comb/brush

Spoon  ~ Bottled water  ~ Hand warmers

Understanding the problems
The work has also led the organisers to challenge some of the myths about homelessness and to question the approach of Newcastle City Council.

By no means all those homeless and on the streets are criminals. And the practice of repeatedly moving people on, or banning people from the City centre for a period, simply move people around and do nothing to address the underlying problems.

Kerry Lister-Pattinson (left) and Maria Wright
(c) the Journal

New Hope for Children

For some years St Hilda's has supported New Hope for Children.  This is a charity working with street children in Colombia.

children's party
(c) New Hope for Children

Just recently we welcomed Richard Sanderson and his son to give a presentation on the work.

We learnt they were soon to open a new house for the children in Bogota, we watched a film about the work and heard about their challenges and successes.

The main areas of activity include:

3 Children's Homes for 100 children from 0-Adults,

A school for 185 children. This is for the 100 resident children and 85 others who come from very poor areas of the city. The school is currently ranked "Above Superior", 

Hunger Relief - preparing 600 meals a day, 

The Medical Mission 2011
(c) New Hope for Children

Humanitarian Outreach - helping many poor families with donations or clothes, food, baby packs etc.... 

Health Care: the last Medical Mission helped almost 6,000 people in 9 days, 

Evangelism: sharing the life changing word of God with the children and others.

We wish them every blessing in their work and look forward to Richard's return to St Hilda's in autumn 2015.

Emergency Use Only

Tressell Trust, along with Oxfam, Child Poverty Action and the Church of England have produced a study of why people went to food banks:

Emergency Use Only: 

Understanding and reducing the use of food banks in the UK

The looked at data from 900 people using food banks, and from 178 people who had used an advice service at one food bank. They conducted interviews with  40 people.

Their main conclusion is summed up in the report's title. People use food banks because they are desperate.

Summary of key findings (From the Executive Summary of the report) Full report here (120 pages).

1. People interviewed for this research turned to food banks as a last resort, when other coping strategies had failed or were overstretched. 

Tressell Trust food bank - report cover

Deciding to accept help from a food bank was often difficult, and was described by participants as being ‘unnatural’, ‘embarrassing’ and ‘shameful’.  

2. Most food bank users were facing an immediate, acute financial crisis – either a complete loss of income or a very significant reduction in their income had left them at crisis point, with little or no money to put food on the table.  

3. The acute crises people faced could be prompted by a sudden loss of earnings, or a change in family circumstances such as bereavement or homelessness.

However, for between half and two-thirds of the people included in this research, the immediate income crisis was linked to the operation of the benefits system (with problems including waiting for benefit payments, sanctions, or reduction in disability benefits) or tax credit payments.  

4. The emergency support available to people at a time of crisis was not sufficient to prevent them having to turn to a food bank. 

Many participants were not aware of the various emergency payments available in

different circumstances, and even fewer were receiving them. 

Only half (or less) of the users we spoke to knew they could seek support from the Local Welfare Assistance Scheme; very few of those potentially eligible had been awarded short-term benefit advances or hardship payments. 

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Yesterday was the feast of Christ the King. I can only think that Christ is weeping.

It is shameful that the authorities of such a rich nation should reduce its citizens to seeking food from strangers - and so often because of the actions of the government's own welfare agency.