Provoking Faith
24
April 2020
Transformation,
not charity
Acts 3.1-10
Listen to this sermon here: https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/transformation-not-charity
The scene which Luke paints for us
in
our reading this morning from the book of Acts
is
as contemporary as it is ancient.
It could be any street, in any city, in any
country.
From
Bloomsbury to Bangalore,
the
picture is as familiar as it is troubling.
A man with a physical deformity has placed
himself
on
the pavement at a busy intersection,
and
is begging for money.
Those of us who regularly walk the streets of
London,
are
no strangers to those who sit and beg.
And
whether they present with a disability
or
a note written on a piece of cardboard,
the
message, the request, is constant:
‘Please can I have some money?’
Well,
This week, I’ve been involved in a number of
Zoom meetings
with
our partners at London Citizens,
discussing the situation facing those who are
homeless
both
in terms of the current lockdown,
and
also the implications for when lockdown ends.
Apparently, right now,
despite
the government offering to house all people who are homeless
in temporary hotel accommodation,
there
are still about 130 people sleeping on the streets of the West End,
congregating in Soho Square during the
day
for meal handouts from local hotels.
In addition, there are real concerns that when
the lockdown ends,
with
those who have been put into hotels being kicked out,
their numbers will combine with those who have
lost their jobs and security,
to
bring about a homelessness situation in London
far
worse than we were facing before this crisis began.
And here I want to suggest something radical:
which
is that this homelessness crisis won’t be solved
by providing accommodation and money
alone.
There are deep structural and systemic
injustices in our society,
which
keep people disempowered and on the streets.
Simply opening hotels to the homeless
doesn’t
solve the problem.
As a trip to Soho Square this afternoon will
amply demonstrate.
And neither does feeding people solve homelessness,
nor
having a stock of cast-off clothing,
nor
offering a washing machine for people to use.
These things may help make today a bit better,
but
even at their best they don’t solve the underlying problems
of poor mental health, addictions, and
disempowerment;
and
at their worst, they actively perpetuate the toxic cultures
of dependency and patronage
which keep people on the streets.
And it was no different in the first century,
with
our anonymous friend we meet in the book of Acts,
sitting outside the Temple in
Jerusalem,
strategically
positioned in prime location
by
the gate called ‘Beautiful’,
where,
the cynic in me suspects,
the contrast between the soaring
sublime architecture,
and
his own deformed body,
was
carefully constructed to elicit maximum sympathy (and cash)
from
those entering the temple
to
bring their worship and offerings before the Lord.
After all, how could a person with their eyes
turned to God
ignore
the plight of one of God’s suffering children?
It’s the same reason that today people often choose
to beg
in
places where others are having a nice time.
I’m sure that many of those who came to the
temple
gave
to the beggar at the gate,
believing
that by doing so,
they
were offering to this unfortunate man
a
tangible expression of the care that God had for him.
But where they doing any good?
Or
were they merely perpetuating a dysfunctional system
where the wealthy made themselves feel
a bit less guilty for their wealth
by giving the beggar a gift that, far
from transforming his life,
simply
trapped him ever more firmly
in the toxic system of begging for
survival.
It is in this context that Peter utters his
famous line,
‘silver
and gold have I none, but what I have I give you.’
And on such a sentence the world turns upside
down.
In this simple statement from Peter,
the
basic transaction
which lay at the root of the Temple
system,
was
subverted.
The Temple system represented middle class
religion,
and
was primarily populated by those who had money.
The beggar knew how it was supposed to work,
the
worshippers knew how it was supposed to work,
the
temple officials knew how it was supposed to work.
The moneyed worshippers’ job was to give alms
to the poor;
whilst
the job of the poor was to receive the handouts.
It was a tried and tested system, and everyone
felt better in the process.
The small acts of kindness,
directed
towards an undeserving (or even culpable) poor,
appeased
the conscience of the rich,
whilst
at the same time highlighting their ultimate powerlessness
to
effect genuine change.
It was into this context that Peter and John
conducted their transgressive act
against
the system of inequality
that
everyone had become complicit in.
They didn’t give alms to the beggar.
They
didn’t give him silver, or gold, or even a few copper coins.
They refused the transaction of handing over
money
in
exchange for a temporarily salved conscience.
Rather, Peter looked the beggar in the eye,
reached
out a hand to him, and lifted him up.
This was deeply subversive stuff,
because
it challenged all the implicit and unspoken assumptions
about
the way the world works.
The world says that the poor are not to be lifted
up,
they
are not to be looked at as equals.
They are to be ignored, vilified,
blamed,
stigmatized, and done unto.
They are there to provide the ‘weak’
to
the Temple system’s ‘strong’.
If Peter and John had simply given money to the
man,
they
would have become complicit in the very system
that
kept him in his poverty.
But they took a different, more Christ-like
path,
which
challenged the system
and
opened the door to transformation.
There is a wonderful story told about Thomas
Aquinas
who
once went to see the Pope,
before whom a large sum of
money was spread out
the
Pope observed proudly to St Thomas,
“You see, the Church is no longer in
that age
in which she said, ‘Silver and gold
have I none.’
Aquinas
replied, “True, holy father,”
“neither can she any longer say to the
lame, ‘Rise up and walk.’”[1]
Those who follow Christ have the God-given capacity
to
see the pearl of great price inside each human soul,
to
discern the spark of the divine in every person.
And our calling is not to charity,
it
is to transformation.
The world might give money to the poor
to
make their today a little more bearable,
but we are called to see their potential
and
to help them discover a way of rising up from their begging-bed,
to
discover a life of true flourishing based not what they have,
or even what they do, but on who they
are.
I’ve been reading Sam Wells’ book ‘A Future
That’s Bigger Than The Past’,
and
I strongly recommend it to you as some lockdown reading.
In there, he points to an essay written by
Oscar Wilde over a hundred years ago.
By way of conclusion, I’m going to give Wilde
the last word,
which
I think he would have appreciated:
He says:
Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were
kind to their slaves,
and so
prevented the horror of the system being realised
by those who suffered from it,
and
understood by those who contemplated it,
so, in the present state of things in England,
the
people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.
Jesus moved in a community
that
allowed the accumulation of private property just as ours does,
and the gospel that he preached
was not
that in such a community it is an advantage
for a [person] to live on scanty,
unwholesome food,
to
wear ragged, unwholesome clothes,
to sleep in horrid, unwholesome
dwellings,
and a
disadvantage for a [person] to live
under healthy, pleasant, and decent
conditions . . .
It is to be noted that Jesus never says
that
impoverished people are necessarily good,
or
wealthy people necessarily bad.
That would not have been true . . .
There is only one class in the community
that
thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.
The poor can think of nothing else.
That is
the misery of being poor.
What Jesus does say is that [humankind] reaches [its]
perfection,
not through
what [it] has,
not even through what [it] does,
but
entirely through what [it] is.
Or, as Peter said, "I have no silver or
gold, but what I have I give you;
in
the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk."
And he took him by the right
hand and raised him up;
[1] Vide Acts iii. 2–8.
