If our patron saint will forgive me, I should like to add a new ‘Blessed’ to his list of Beatitudes in today’s gospel, ‘Blessed are the subversive thinkers’ and ‘Blessed are those who are tenacious’…for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
We have heard a lot this week about the Labourt Party Manifesto and whether the Budget Statement on Wednesday was a departure from it. I am not going to get into that controversy but simply to say that today’s gospel reading from the Beatitudes is quite simply the manifesto of life in the Kingdom of God – where the meek, the merciful, the poor are valued over their opposites: the aggressive, those seeking vengeance and the rich and so on . In fact, these qualities are not only the expectations of those living the life of the Kingdom, but they are also the characteristics of a holy person, a saint of the Church today.
Some of these holy people and obvious: in my lifetime, I could cite those who have inspired me including Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Janani Luwum (murdered personally by Amin) Mother Theresa of Calcutta and Martin Luther King.
But the Feast of All Saints gives us an opportunity to reflect on the others; the unnamed people who through the centuries have revealed—in their lives, sometimes in their deaths—the love of God for his world.
They are the unsung heroes of the Christian Church, and this is their moment.
The second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church sums it up well:
…that countless number of men and women, busy at work in their daily life and activity, oftentimes far from view and quite unacclaimed by the world, unknown to the world's great personages but nonetheless looked upon in love by the Father, untiring labourers who work in the Lord's vineyard. Confident and steadfast through the power of God's grace, these are the humble yet great builders of the Kingdom of God in history.[1]
Rather than talk conceptually, I would like to illustrate this with some examples:
Four women, who all became famous but only after a long and tenacious journey in which they sought to express their vocation to build the Kingdom of God:
The first is Florence Nightingale, the second is the American Anglican poet, Vassar Miller, the third is Dr Cicely Saunders, the fourth is Dr Sarah Gilbert.
I am a proud to be the husband of a Nightingale – that is, a nurse trained at the Nightingale School of Nursing at St Thomas’ Hospital, the first in the world, founded by Florence herself in 1860.
Susan wasn’t there in 1860, she went there in 1977. Even so, the memory of Florence Nightingale still imbued her hospital – its Christian foundation – the uniforms worn by the nurses (you knew who was in charge) prayers led by Sister at the beginning of each working day.
Florence Nightingale laid the foundation of nursing as a profession – her emphasis on infection control in the Crimean War not only influenced the practice of nursing but also impacted hugely on the future of medicine.
She was characterised as the ‘Lady with the lamp’ and that nostalgic image may or may not be true. But in fact, she was principally a Christian woman who cared deeply and used her training in maths and statistics to explore why so many soldiers in the Crimea, with relatively minor injuries, died.
Florence Nightingale recognised that bringing people together into hospital without ruthlessly addressing mutual contamination put patients at risk because of the danger of cross-infection. Hence one of her most famous sayings, ‘First, do no harm.’
What I learn from her is that saints are often subversive and, in their time, sometimes unpopular characters.
Vassar Miller was an American poet who was born in Houston Texas in 1924 and died there in 1998.
She was a distinguished poet and a Christian layperson, in fact an Anglican, but she was not well-known because all her life because was confined to a wheelchair with cerebral palsy.
Though she won many awards for her work, including a Pulitzer Prize, the limitations of her condition made the radio and tv studios of the USA and the world inaccessible – in the way some of her other contemporaries such as Eliot and Auden were able to do.
She did not w feel sorry for herself: as a clever girl and woman – who otherwise would have been reading her work around the world and potentially a candidate for a Nobel Prize.
Vassar creatively and spiritually managed her constraints seeing them as means of grace. One of her famous poems is her poignant and funny, ‘If I had wheels on love.’
Her poetry is out of print, but one of our friends here at St Matthew’s (Dr Judith Maltby) until recently Dean and History Fellow at Corpus Christi, Oxford, is working on a book on her life. So, I hope she will become better known – particularly within the Episcopal Church of the USA. Thank you to Judith for the introduction.
·
Dr Cicely Saunders was nurse, a social worker, and a physician.
…who turned her attention to better care of the dying. This arose from nursing a patient, a Polish émigré with whom she fell in love. From this experience she began to understand that the health service at that time was primarily about keeping people alive at almost any cost, rather than helping them to live and die well, in a managed and dignified way.
Death for her was not a failure, but a natural part of the human journey which deserved to be respected. This led to the foundation of St Christopher’s Hospice in Sydenham in south London and the hospice movement across the United Kingdom and the world.
What I learn from Dame Cicely is that her work is as relevant as ever, as we once again debate the pros and cons of Assisted Suicide.
And I am proud that our bishop (Sarah, herself a former Chief Nurse) is playing a leading role in presenting the case against assisted suicide in the House of Lords. In this she is accompanied by many persons of faith and not faith.
For me, the individualism of western culture has resulted in a culture of personal control, even when dying.
Rather than seeing death as a natural part of life, a dying person (never a patient) is not a failed piece of medical engineering but a person who should be kept alive at all costs – but a person who should be supported by family, friends, volunteers, and specially trained medical staff to die well; supported by a coherent team that provides companionship and which employs where necessary the judicious use of pain-killing drugs.
What we are in danger of losing is more than an argument amongst people with differing experiences or fears of death – but we are in danger of damaging the Hospice movement itself, one of the UK’s greatest gifts to the world.
Dr Sarah Gilbert is a research virologist who played a significant part in the creation of the Astra Zeneca vaccine at the University of Oxford, which saved so many lives during the pandemic.
A clever and humble scientist who worked long and hard to crack the problem, sometimes in the face of hesitation and resistance from politicians and civil servants. In one sense, it is invidious to focus on Dr Gilbert and she would be the first to say that this work was a team effort.
But speaking for myself, I was always deeply reassured when I heard her speak on the television in those scary days of the pandemic.
So that is a selective sample of all that we are celebrating today.
Even then, however, when we had rightly praised God for these people I would want to nominate as saints, acknowledging their faith and courage and witness for the gospel, I had still thought of them as quite different from me. I could not begin to identify myself with them—they were incredibly impressive, in a different class.
Of course, in that I was right—it would have been arrogant to compare myself with people like that.
But, on reflection, I was also wrong because I wanted to keep the call to sanctity -- which is after all, what a saint is, a holy person -- at arms' length. That sort of religious commitment is not for me—it is for the fanatics, not for an ordinary third division Christian like me.
Of course, such a view is mistaken. Part of our vocation as Christians is to recognise that each one of us is called to live a holy life, that we are all called to be saints.
Jesus Christ wants each one of us to follow the call to lead a holy life.
We will not be particularly good at it —but we, and people like us throughout the world and throughout history, are all God has through which to reveal God’s deep love for his world.
We need both that vision of commitment, of courage, of faith, to look up to those four women but we also need the salutary recognition that those saints are made by God from people like you and me—ordinary, incompetent, flawed and sinful.
If we acknowledge that we have nowhere to run, nowhere to escape from God’s invitation to holiness of life. At its heart, the gospel is quite simple, simple but nevertheless deeply counter cultural:
God love us all his children. God calls us to:
· to follow him and
· to increase our faith and commitment—
· in short, to respond in thanksgiving to all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ, risen and glorified.
If we do this in our quiet and sometimes, hidden way – you might be counted amongst all the saints.