9 July 2017, 11.00am
1 Timothy 6.6-19
1 Corinthians 12.12-27
You can listen to this sermon here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/2017-07-09-simon-woodman-toxic-charity
There is a famous scene in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus,
which has
stayed with me down the decades
since I
first studied it for my A Level in English.
The Roman crowd are rioting against their rulers,
demanding
the right to set the price of grain for themselves,
rather than
having to accept the price imposed by the senate.
Menenius Agrippa, a patrician of the city, intercepts the
crowd
and offers
them a poetic metaphor to justify the social hierarchy.
He compares the Roman state to the human body,
with the
members rebelling against their own body.
As is usually the case with Shakespeare’s histories,
the play he
wrote about Coriolanus was drawing on other, older, sources.
So here’s the way the first century writer Plutarch relates
the story
of Menenius’
address to the crowd:
He says:
“It once happened . . . that all
the other members of a man
mutinied
against the stomach,
which
they accused as the only idle,
un-contributing
part of the whole body,
while
the rest were put to hardships
and
the expense of much labour
to
supply and minister to its appetites.
The stomach, however, merely
ridiculed the silliness of the members,
who
appeared not to be aware
that
the stomach certainly does receive the general nourishment
but
only to return it again and redistribute it among the rest.
Such is the case . . . ye citizens,
between you and the senate.
The
counsels and plans that are there duly digested,
convey
and secure to all of you
your
proper benefit and support.”[1]
And here, in a perfect classical metaphor,
you have
all the justification you will ever need
for a
top-down benefaction approach
to
wealth, poverty, charity, and trickle-down economics.
The lesson is clear: the population should not begrudge
the wealth
and privilege of the elite,
because without the elite,
there would
be no money or food for the populace.
Do bankers’ bonuses offend you?
Well, get
over it, wise up, and smell the money!
And of course the metaphor of the body is a good one:
it makes
sense, and we can all relate to it.
Even Paul used it, in his own way, in his letter to the
Corinthians;
where he
compared the church to a body,
assuring
the members that each part is of equal
value to each other part,
and
that therefore the ear should not be envious of the eye, and so on.
And whilst I like Paul’s use of the body metaphor,
and
spiritually I’m right there with him
in
his conviction that, in Christ, all are of equal value,
I think there remain some uncomfortable questions
with regard
to how equal we all are
in other, how
shall I put this, ‘less spiritual’, ways.
I think that, for me, Paul’s use of the body-metaphor
to
assert universal spiritual equality in Christ
is still
rather too close to the Roman Patriarchal body-metaphor
on which it is based.
What I think Paul was trying
to do, in his letter to the Corinthians,
was to
subvert the Roman concept of the empire as a body,
by taking over the image, and applying it to the body of
Christ,
which is
the church.
And Paul’s image of the church as a body is his attempt
to unpick
the pervasive and seductive logic of Menenius’ argument.
Rather than inequality being an essential characteristic of
humanity,
with lesser
lesser members needing the well-fed and privileged elite
to ensure their own survival,
Paul talks of the greater honour that God gives to the
inferior member,
elevating
the poor and the weak above the powerful and the rich.
So far, so revolutionary, so good.
But my concern is that Paul’s message has not really
filtered very well
down the
centuries into much of what has gone by the name of Christianity.
We have a history, as Christians, of colluding with and
perpetuating
vast
socio-economic inequalities,
both within wider society, and within the structures of the
church itself.
Too often, in church life, we have taken Paul’s metaphor of
the body,
and turned
it back into the one on which it was based.
The radical vision for equality that Paul offers his readers
becomes in
reality just another excuse for perpetuating
a
patriarchal trickle-down style of economic community,
where the
poor are the bottom of the pile,
and
are dependent on the charitable giving of a wealthy elite.
And whilst we can point to the evils of Christendom,
and five
hundred years on from Martin Luther,
we
can echo his critique of practices such as the selling of indulgences,
and
the monetizing of spirituality,
we also have to face the uncomfortable truth
that our
own traditions are far from immune
from an
approach to wealth and charity
that
is based more on defending entrenched inequality,
than
it is on promoting radical equality.
Why is it, we might wonder, that most Christian churches in
the western world
are
predominantly middle class?
Why is it that the even within churches
where there
is a substantial number of those
we
might term economically disadvantaged,
the
leadership structures are dominated by those
with
wealth, power, and privilege?
These are uncomfortable questions…
and they
are raised for us by Paul’s radical re-working of the body metaphor,
as he tried to take it away from the Roman ideal
of a
well-fed centralised belly, distributing resources to the members,
into a vision of fundamental equality between all members of
the body.
What, I wonder, would it look like for us to be a community
where the
powerless, the poor, and the put-upon
are
empowered, enriched, and enabled?
Well, in many ways, as a church here in Central London,
we’re
already doing exactly this.
There are many who come into our building,
and into
our wider sphere of influence,
who find friendship, respite, care, and love,
and who
discover the possibility of genuine transformation
through
their encounter with the body of Christ.
And I don’t want to minimise the significance of this.
In her sermon last week, Ruth spoke of the importance
of the
small response of loving kindness
–
of how sometimes giving a person a cup of water
when
they are thirsty and crying out for water
is
the most significant thing you can do for them in that moment.
And there are many of us here who, over the years,
have given
that cup of water many a hundred times over.
Sometimes it literally is a cool drink
given to a
person who has wandered in on a hot day seeking refreshment,
or perhaps a cup of tea or soup in the depths of winter
to someone
who is frozen from a night on the streets.
Sometimes it’s a coach fare, or an Oyster card,
or a top-up
on the electric meter, or a voucher for the food bank,
or a hot
lunch on a Sunday, and I could go on…
We do this, and we do it well, and I don’t think we should
stop.
But I have a concern that, for all the good that we do,
such
charitable giving can become a model of charity
that
has more in common with Menenius’ metaphor than Paul’s.
It’s an approach to the inequalities of society
where those
who ‘have’ give to those who ‘have not’.
And whilst that might be OK, and sometimes it might be
brilliant, is it transformatory?
Does it
genuinely raise up the person who receives the gift,
does
it gift them the equality that Paul speaks of
in
his image of a body where all are equal?
To answer my own question for a moment,
sometimes I
think it can be transformatory for
people
–
we should not underestimate the significance
of
getting to know a person’s name,
of
spending time with them, getting to hear their story,
and
valuing them as a person.
Those who volunteer for the night shelter, or the Evening
Centre,
or who sit
at tables over Sunday Lunch
with
guests who haven’t necessarily been in the morning service,
are
contributing to something profound and important.
As I was preparing this sermon on Friday,
my thoughts
were very much with Barbara Stanford,
and I was reflecting on the stories that I have heard over
the last few years
of the
tremendous and selfless difference
that
she has made over her decades at Bloomsbury
to the lives of so many people.
From hospital visiting to greeting the street-homeless and
vulnerable,
Barbara has
consistently shown the same love and respect to each person.
It is a role model to aspire to.
And one of the things Barbara has said to me on a number of
occasions,
when I’ve
been feeling a bit despondent about things,
is that
‘you can’t win them all, you know’.
There is a powerful scene in the musical ‘Jesus Christ
Superstar’
where the
crowd of needy people are surrounding Jesus,
calling out to him again and again
for help and for healing,
reaching out to try to touch him.
At the end of the scene, Jesus just cries out in anguish,
Don't push me
There's too little of me
Don't crowd me, please don't crowd
me.
And then the devastating final line of despair:
Oh, heal yourselves.
And it’s true – we can’t win them all – and we can’t help
them all…
But I do believe we can win some!
And I do
believe that we should expect to see
transformation, and progress,
as
people encounter Christ through his body the church,
and
are brought to a new experience of life.
We should
expect to see people released from their addictions
as
they come to the various anonymous groups that meet here.
We should
expect to see people find healing from poor mental health
as
they find pathways to counselling and other support.
We should
expect to see people find stability
where
previously chaos has held their lives in a powerful grip.
These are not bad things to aspire to.
They are, I
believe, the kind of thing Paul has in mind,
when he
offers his image of the body of the church
as
a community of equality where the poor are valued.
Over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be looking in
more detail
at what we
think we’re doing when we seek to offer charity as a church.
Next week we’ll be looking at bearing one another’s burdens,
and the
week after that we’ll be looking at the idea of restorative reciprocity.
But for this week, I would like us to spend a few moments
raising for
ourselves the question of what, exactly, we think we’re doing
when we
seek to help those who are in need.
Because sometimes, what we hope to achieve isn’t what we
actually accomplish.
I’ll give you an example.
What should the appropriate Christian response be
to the
person you passed this morning as you came to church,
sitting on
the street begging for money?
I assume you saw them.
Should you have given them what they are asking for?
After all,
Jesus says in Luke’s gospel:
Luke 6:30 Give to everyone who begs from
you.
And yet all the advice we receive from the agencies
that work with
those who are homeless, and those who are begging,
is that giving cash to the person
is almost
always the wrong thing to do.
It creates a culture of dependency,
it
facilitates the exploitation of the poor by gangs,
it feeds
destructive addictions,
and it does nothing to help that person escape the cycle
of
disempowerment, abuse, and homelessness.
It is much better to give your money to a homelessness
charity,
or indeed
to a church like Bloomsbury! (just saying).
In fact, you may have noticed the signs we have in our
foyer,
which
explain that we don’t give out cash,
for exactly
this reason.
We want to offer help and support that is accountable and
measurable in its effect,
at least at
some level.
Or, think of it another way.
A person
who comes in and asks for a glass of water, will of course get one.
But the
person who comes in begging for a glass of alcoholic drink will not get one,
because
even if they are convinced that this
is the solution to their problem,
giving
them what they are asking for is still the wrong thing to do.
And here’s the challenge for us this morning.
In our thinking about how, as a church, we are to seek to
‘do good’,
to offer
charity, love, and care to those who are in need,
how can we do our best to ensure that what we offer
is, at the
very minimum, not actually making the recipient’s life worse.
I’ve been reading a very challenging book recently, called
‘Toxic Charity:
How Churches and
Charities Hurt Those They Help
(And How to Reverse It)
The author, Robert Lupton, observes that,
‘while we
are very generous in charitable giving,
much of
that money is either wasted or actually harms
the people
it is targeted to help’.[2]
There is a saying that I often hear
in the work
some of us do through the church’s involvement with London Citizens,
and it is this: ‘Never do for someone what they have the
capacity to do for themselves’.
Because
doing so will create dependency, and destroy personal initiative.
Robert Lupton continues:
‘For all our efforts to eliminate
poverty
–
our entitlements, our programs, our charities –
we have succeeded only in
creating a permanent underclass,
dismantling
family structures, and eroding their ethic of work.
And our poor continue to become
poorer.’[3]
He says that,
‘Giving to those in need what
they could be gaining from their own initiative
may
well be the kindest way to destroy people.’[4]
Which is a devastating critique of well-meaning charity,
and a
warning we all need to hear:
that
we need to be sure
that when we think we’re helping,
we actually are making things better
and not worse.
I was at a West London Citizens leadership team meeting this
week,
and we were
talking about the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
As a church, we’re in the same Citizens UK district as
Grenfell,
and the
local residents association there is one of our member institutions.
So I was sat with some of those who went down on the first
day,
to help
organise the local community response.
In the midst of the stories of horror,
there were
amazing stories of love, compassion, and generosity.
But there were also stories of people turning up with unsolicited
vans of perishable food,
which could
not be distributed and which was only going to go off.
And when they were thanked, but asked to please take it away
again,
some of
those people then started getting abusive
towards
those co-ordinating the response,
because
their charity wasn’t being received in the way they had anticipated.
And it made me wonder – for whose benefit do we give?
For the
benefit of the person in need,
or
for our own benefit?
A couple of weeks ago, our Regional Team Leader Phil Barnard
was
preaching for our church anniversary Sunday.
And he quoted someone from one of the churches
in the
locality of Grenfell Tower as saying,
‘We believe
in a gospel of transformation not benevolence’.
The gospel of transformation in Christ
is not
about doing things ‘to’ people, or even ‘for’ people.
It is about doing things ‘with’ people.
It is about
equalising power and wealth and status,
by raising up the poor and
vulnerable,
and
enabling them to begin to do for themselves
what
we might otherwise to do for them
Robert Lupton again:
‘We mean well, our motives are
good, but we have neglected to conduct
care-full
due diligence to determine emotional, economic,
and
cultural outcomes on the receiving end of our charity.
Why do we miss this crucial
aspect in evaluating our charitable work?
Because, as compassionate people,
we have been evaluating our charity
by
the rewards we receive through service,
rather
than the benefits received by the served.’[5]
Now please don’t hear me wrong here:
I do not
believe that charitable giving is wrong, or pointless.
And I don’t believe that having money is wrong.
Money is
not the root of all evil.
However, as Paul says in his letter to Timothy,
‘the love of money is a root of all
kinds of evil’.
And those
of us who want to hold lightly to our wealth and possessions,
and to do good with that which we
have,
will have
to also hold lightly to our own emotional sense of satisfaction,
that such good does.
It might feel better to give to the person
sitting on the street and begging,
than to gift-aid money so the church
can pay its bills,
but as we
have seen, not only is it true that if there is no building, and no staff,
then the poor and vulnerable cannot
come through the door to find transformation;
it is also
true that our emotionally-motivated giving may do more harm than good.
Robert
Lupton suggests an Oath for Compassionate Service:
·
Never
do for the poor what they have (or could have) the capacity to do for
themselves.
·
Limit
one-way giving to emergency situations.
·
Strive
to empower the poor through employment, lending, and investing, using grants
sparingly to reinforce achievements.
·
Subordinate
self-interests to the needs of those being served.
·
Listen
closely to those you seek to help, especially to what is not being said –
unspoken feelings may contain essential clues to effective service.
·
Above
all, do no harm.[6]
And we’re
back to Paul’s letter to Timothy again:
He tells
the rich and the powerful to
‘pursue righteousness, godliness,
faith, love, endurance, gentleness,
and to do good, to be rich in good
works, generous, and ready to share.’ (6.11,18)
And as a church with money, and as people with resources,
we need to
be sure that in our doing good, in our good works,
in
our generosity and our sharing,
we are
actually bringing the gospel of Christ into being
in the lives of those we want to
help.
We might not be able to win them all,
but we can
make sure that we win some,
and that we
do this well.
I’d like to close with an introduction to a topic
which I
hope will be something that you will be hearing more of
over the
coming months.
About twenty years ago, I came across a Christian-run
charity in Bristol
called the
Bristol Debt Advice Centre.
It was set up by a man called Martin, who became a friend of
mine.
He is
actually the son of Bernard Green,
a
former General Secretary of the Baptist Union
and
someone who would have visited this church often over the years.
Anyway, Bristol Debt Advice Centre did exactly what it said
on the tin,
it provided
advice for people trapped by the spirals of debt.
And I remember thinking to myself,
that one
day I’d love to be part of a church that helped people
escape the
tyranny of financial indebtedness.
Well, twenty years on, the problem hasn’t gone away.
and the latest
figures for UK personal debt are more depressing than ever:
·
People
in the UK owed £1.532 trillion at the end of April 2017. ...
·
The
average total debt per household – including mortgages – was £56,750 in April.
·
According
to the Office for Budget Responsibility's March 2017 forecast, household debt
is predicted to reach £2.322 trillion in Q1 2022.
If we want to help the homeless,
one
of the things we can do is help people not become homeless.
The causes of homelessness are famously complex,
and include
relationship breakdown,
poor mental
health,
and
financial crisis.
So, I’m starting to wonder, what would it look like for a church
to begin to address these?
We can talk about supporting relationships and mental
healthcare another time,
but what
about money?
Let’s find out…
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