Monday, September 3, 2012

“I want my house full!”

1 Corinthians 12:12–27 One body, many parts;

 Luke 14:12-24 Filling God's house

Sermon by the Reverend John Bradley
2nd September 2012

Last month the Olympic Games brought together the fittest, strongest, healthiest people in the world to compete in a wide range of sports. The original Olympic Games in Ancient Greece were also a festival of the highest ideal people. For the Greeks, the ideal person was young, male, fair-skinned, clean-shaven, healthy and athletic. Anyone else fell below the ideal. So if you were no longer young, you were less than the ideal. If you were female, you fell further below and if were dark skinned or had a beard, you were simply a barbarian! Those who were not in good health or had some kind of physical or mental impairment were right off the scale. The Ancient Greeks would find the concept of the Paralympics where people compete despite their impairments totally incomprehensible.

Of the seven billion people in the world today, one billion have some kind of physical or mental impairment. If we all belonged to one nation, it would be the third largest in the world after China and India. It would have the highest rate of unemployment, the lowest standard of education and in terms of Christian mission would be one of the most unreached nations in the world. The rise of the Paralympics from its beginning at Stoke Mandeville Hospital near Aylesbury through years of widespread neglect by the media to today when the same organisers and venues provide both the Olympics and the Paralympics has been a long and arduous one.

There was a time when those who saw the world population growing exponentially seriously proposed that people with disabilities should be exterminated. ‘Social Darwinism’, which was not the view of Charles Darwin himself, said that if nature teaches the survival of the fittest, only the fittest should be allowed to survive. Those who consume the earth’s resources but make no contribution to its production were termed 'useless eaters' an expression favoured by the Nazis. In many parts of the world today, children with disabilities are hidden away from sight because they are considered a curse on the community. Not long ago in this country it would have been unthinkable to have a Home Secretary who was blind. Whenever President Franklin Roosevelt appeared on television, his wheelchair was always hidden to camera. Seventy years ago it was politically unacceptable for the Commander in Chief to be disabled, even though his wheelchair enabled him to manage his impaired mobility.

In our Gospel reading, we heard Jesus turning the world upside-down again! “When you give a dinner party,” he tells his wealthy, healthy host, “don’t invite your wealthy healthy chums. Instead, invite the people on the margins, the ones you usually ignore.” Then he presses the point home with one of his subversive stories! The healthy wealthy people had accepted the invitation to the banquet but when the time came, they all found something more important to do. But the host no more wanted empty seats at his banquet than did the organisers of the Olympic Games. So the uninvited – those whose diaries were empty because nobody ever invited them to anything – became the invited. But still there were empty seats so he sent his stewards out again to the margins, to the excluded, and told them to make them come in because, the host says, “I want my house full!”

Here at Cornerstone there is good news and bad news about the car park outside. The good news is that on most Sunday mornings, particularly damp ones, the car park is usually full. The bad news is that most people are not here worshipping God but are across the road worshipping Mammon! What do you think would happen if I were to go across there and grab complete strangers by the arm saying “you thought you were coming here today just to get your weekly shopping but actually you are invited to the greatest banquet in the universe? Even the long-life bread you buy here today will go stale and leave you hungry for more but come now and receive a foretaste of the heavenly banquet prepared for all mankind!” Perhaps they won’t come until they are hungry enough.

Then the second reading was Paul’s familiar picture of the members of the Church being like the different organs which make up a human body. The analogy wasn’t original to him but he used it in a different way. In the version in the Hindu scriptures, the head represents the Brahmin priests, the shoulders represent the warrior princes, the thighs represent the merchants and the feet represent the ordinary labourers who tread the dusty road. The untouchable dalits, the ‘crushed’ people, don’t get a mention; they are like the downtrodden dust. Paul doesn’t have a hierarchy like that. Instead, like Jesus, he turns the world’s way upside down. No part of the body of Christ can say to another part “I don’t need you.” There is no appendix in the Church; no part of the body that we had no idea was there until it started causing us trouble! Those of us with impairments, far as we are from the world’s ideal, not only have a place but have a special place of honour in the body of Christ.

Since the Disability Discrimination Act made it a legal requirement for all public buildings to be reasonably accessible to people with impairments, in my experience the Christian churches have generally made more effort to comply with this than have commercial shops and restaurants. That is to be expected, not because churches are more charitable than businesses but because there is a radical welcome at the heart of the Christian faith for those who are otherwise marginalised and rejected. But before we congratulate ourselves, we should remember that we are still on the journey. I often find that church buildings which have been made totally accessible for wheelchair users like me to join the congregation have barriers to prevent us from taking part in leading worship. When we first came to Cornerstone, the ramp for the dais was stored away in a cupboard and only Jim knew that we had one! When I’m invited to preach in an old parish church where there is a steep winding staircase up to the pulpit, they usually suggest I stay seated in my wheelchair in the chancel. I feel as if I should preface my homily with a disclaimer “don’t worry, I’m not the bishop!”

Much has been said about the legacy of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The colossal amount of money has been spent not just for a few weeks of sporting entertainment or for the regeneration of a run-down area East of London but that the whole nation shall be inspired to become healthier, more active and engage in sport. For people with impairments, the focus shifts from what we can’t do to what we can do. My own experience of acquired disability has been one of learning to let go of what I can no longer do in order to be available for what I can do. Because of the Centre for Integrated Living in particular, this building is more familiar to people with impairments than are many church buildings. They are most welcome guests here, not only because our practical needs can be addressed but also we are most especially cherished by the Lord of the Banquet who wants His house to be full!