Isaiah 45.1-7; Matthew 22.1-14

 

I wonder if you recognise this:

 

I am my mum; and my sister.
I am my best friend Mike, who I’ve known since school.
I am Kate, who’s still somewhere in Thailand.
I am all the girls I’ve ever kissed; and the girls I will.
I am the teacher that failed me; and the one that spurred me on.
I am my bosses and every one of my friends.
I am a bloke I’ll meet travelling, who’ll teach me the guitar.
I am the places I’ll go to with mates – and the jokes I’ll share with them.
I am the people who put me down; and the ones who pick me up.
I am who I am because of everyone.

The words are taken from a recent advert for a mobile ‘phone company and they are designed to promote this product: to sell to people the idea and experience of being more connected to each other. And through texts, telephone calls, Facebook, Bebo, and messenger services, it is possible to be more ‘in touch’ with people today than ever before.

The advert acknowledges the fact that each of us is the product of the experiences we have had – our family relationships, friends, teachers, boyfriends, girl friends; the part of the world in which we live; and the parts of the world that we have connections with.

And that thought is not a bad place to start from as we start to think about one world week, because it asks us to think about those around us with whom we have connections. One World Week asks us to think about those connections that we’ve had in the past and how they’ve been good for us; and to think about the connections that we have now with others – how our actions affect those around us – near and far. We are asked to take the step of by increasing the number of those connections and by deepening them.

One World week’s vision doesn’t explicitly come from Christian faith – it comes from a secular perspective. It is founded on the belief that

 

When we understand each other's perspectives, our lives can be transformed and enriched.

 

And so it is that:

 

One World Week exists to provide the space for people from diverse backgrounds to come together to learn about global justice, to spread that learning and to use it to challenge inequality, discrimination and degradation, locally and globally.

  

* * *

Today, as different parts of our service are led by different members of a diverse congregation with different backgrounds, we are able to give thanks for our diversity and remember how it enriches our life together as a church. We can think about some excellent music and curries on our Afro-Caribbean evening; the distinctive celebration of baptism in African families – with blessing of a baptism cake afterwards and amazing food; we can think about our different church backgrounds and insights – including the experience that many from an African background bring of Catholic liturgy being combined with real passion for scripture; and also generosity in traditional East End life and neighbourliness in communities, where people are known for ‘sticking together’.

But that awareness of connections can also present a challenge. As we learn more about people across the world, we learn more about their needs and struggles. Here in the Parish of Poplar, we have a particular link with the Delhi brother-hood and so learn about struggles in life there. Fr Alan came back last year from Indonesia and Thailand and told us in a powerful way about the Indian Ocean Tsumani and its effects there. We hear about the effects of global warming in Africa – rainfall and food. And especially at the moment, are aware of the effects of the credit crunch on international money markets and trading. Governments have realised the need to act together to limit the damage caused as the Free Market Economy falters – the last two weeks have seen Alistair Darling off in the US; Gordon Brown in Paris; governments across the world releasing billions of pounds to bail out failing banks.

As jobless total rises, inflation rises and house prices fall, we know in a very immediate way the truth that the Mobile Phone advert is trying to communicate. People across the world are all joined to each other; our fate – for each one of us - is tied up with the welfare of individuals in another country that we do not know. Point of one world week – rather than those relationships being hidden, they need to be brought into the open.

Not only that, rather than those relationships be chaotic and unpredictable, that people work together for the common good, acknowledging that it is not only our relationships with those who are close to us that makes us who we are: ‘I am my mother and my sister’; but also relationships with people and places that are away: “I am the melting ice cap, and the fleeing child in Hiroshima;” “I am the sunrise over the African plane; I am a Maori tribal dance.”

But there are some things that it is easy to accept as having a part in our background and make up; and other things that are more difficult.

* * *

It is perhaps rather a Norman Tebbit kind of question to ask, “Of which country are you a citizen?” It is the same kind of acid-test question as ‘who do you support in cricket?”

That kind of question pares away at a tensions between different parts of our identity. If I were to say that I supported the West Indies in cricket, might be as unexpected as Fr Tom forsaking his devotion to West Ham.

But as Christians – I want to suggest – it is exactly those kinds of allegiances that come into question, and we are asked to lay to one side.

In the gospel today, Jesus is presented with that kind of choice. When the Pharisees ask “Is it lawful to pay taxes or not?,” they’re asking him a question along the lines of “which cricket team do you support?” Who do you belong to; who are you for; and how far does your conviction go?

If Jesus were to answer, “Yes, it is lawful to pay taxes,” it would have looked like a cop-out, incompatible with his uncompromising religious teaching and life: to accept the authority of the Roman Emperor, was to reject the claim of God, because the land and all the people in it were God’s – and the emperor set himself up as God: the Romans were invaders and foreign, irreligious imposters.

But to say that Jews should not pay Roman tax – well, that was tantamount to treason. As taxes were raised for the first time in 6 AD, uprising broke out – only to be put down with a bloody massacre. If Jesus followed the line that the Pharisees expected, that would lead to his immediate and grisly end.

Jesus doesn’t give into either of these extremes. He turns the question back on the Pharisees themselves. “Whose head is on this coin?” – well, if it is the emperor’s money, it is legitimate to pay it to the emperor. But more importantly, he won’t allow a division between secular and sacred. And that is where this encounter is often misread.

‘Give to Caesar what is Caesars and to God what is God’s,’ doesn’t separate religious life from secular life, but insists that the two go together. Caesar rules under God’s authority; he has not dethroned God; rather God has allowed him to have his authority for a while: but like other earthly rulers, his time will come and go.

Jesus’ point is that to pay taxes to Caesar is not to forsake one’s religion; living a ‘quietly governed and godly life’ – in this instance – is part of the religious package. In the same way, whether we support the West Indies at cricket, or England – doesn’t make us any less members of the church – it doesn’t make us any less members of this church. Supporting West Ham, Arsenal or Real Madrid makes someone no more or less a member of All Saints.

* * *

As some members of the congregation here know well, it is African tribal identity that speaks very clearly about the relationship of being connected to each other, summarised in the proverb, “It takes a whole village to raise a child.” That is an idea which will resonate with indigenous white East Enders too.

Recently, one word has been used increasingly to capture this relationship, in our relationships within the Anglican Communion, and in the movement for peace and reconciliation in South Africa and elsewhere: Ubuntu. This word has its origins in the Bantu languages of South Africa and communicates the idea of ‘active togetherness”.

This is how Desmond Tutu tried to explain what ubuntu means:

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

Ubuntu is a secular concept, and it is also a deeply Christian one. But it is also one that we see that in the churches life, when different kinds of people are brought together through common faith, that faith is deepened. That is an idea that is at the heart of the gospel. Paul speaks of the church as being one body with many parts – one cannot do without the other. The eye cannot reject the hand; the foot cannot reject the head. They are all different, they have their own function, and the body only functions as a body if they work together.

But that is not always an easy journey. There is a degree to which we are self-selecting at All Saints. Our worship is familiar to us and most chose to worship here. All Saints has a traditional liturgy; and it is known as an open; accepting church, relatively relaxed, inclusive. So I believe this is an ubuntu church. But we are still asked to step beyond where we are at the moment; to step beyond the congregation too. Down the road is a Black Pentecostal congregation – almost exclusively Black; across the way is the Salvation Army; and then there is the Tower Hamlets community church; these are groups we have ubuntu connections with too.

Getting to know each other more personally might mean that we encounter a different way of holding faith; that we taste different food; that we experience slightly different family relationships. It is these kinds of encounters that enrich. It is these relationships – across difference - that make us Christians. 1 Jn 4.11-12 : Beloved, since God has loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

If God’s image is perfected in us through our love for each other, as that love embraces all our diversity, then the mission of the church – its active life – must start from the reality of those relationships too. Our common mission comes from our ‘active togetherness’ – our shared ubuntu – and that ubuntu must come from who we are today.

In my spiritual reading this week, I came across this quote from a Carthusian:

 

Old men are naturally inclined to look rather towards the past, to re-live and re-hash the days of their youth. The Spirit, however, would turn their minds to the future, a future defined by God’s promises. He would have them dream dreams.

 

Real dreams – rather than voices of the past or pipe dreams – real dreams … are like a star towards which we direct our energies, and these are rooted in real possibilities. They give form to the creative vitality within us.

 

The Spirit would turn their minds – our minds – to the future – a future defined by God’s promises.

 

God’s promise is that people of many different languages, backgrounds, convictions, worshipping God in many different ways – will all join together in heaven to worship him; and every bit of that diversity will be needed if we are to worship God as fully as we will want to – and need to - in heaven.

 

Then we will know that:

I am my black Pentecostal sister from Uganda;
I am the morning call to prayer in Bethlehem;
I am incense rising over the hills of Tibet;
I am the breeze in the desert.

I am sitting outside the curry hut on Chrisp Street Market on a Saturday afternoon.
I am because of every person of faith and every person made in the image of God.
I am through Jesus Christ.

 

Amen.

©         John Seymour

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