1 John 3:16-24
Father, we ask you to speak to each one of us.
through the power of your Holy Spirit,
in Jesus name we pray, Amen.
Today is Safeguarding Sunday,
so the second reading from the 1st letter of John
about love in action,
is on this theme rather than the lectionary one..
For Safeguarding at its heart,
is about caring for each other, loving one another.
Isabelle Hamley who is Principal of Ridley Hall,
wrote in her book Embracing Humanity
God’s love is active and perfect
whereas ours is patchy and limited.
But as the people of God, loved by God,
we are called to be imitators of God.
To be loved by God is to be called
to share this love beyond ourselves,
and in the process,
enable others to know the love of God,
and expand our understanding of love itself.
Our understanding of who we are,
our very identities, are worth thinking about.
Claudia Highbaugh discusses this.
She says that in the Gospels,
followers of Jesus are invited into a new sense
of family and relationship.
In Jesus, we are all invited to be one family
—we are all related,
brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.
The reading from 1 John calls us,
the readers, “little children”.
The first verse of the chapter,
that we did not read today says:
See what love the Father has given us,
that we should be called children of God;
and that is what we are. …
Beloved, we are God’s children now;
It is as though we have been adopted
and we have been given a new surname
or family name: “child of God.”
It is the name for all of us, from all over the world.
The struggles that communities and cultures,
races and ethnicities, towns and neighborhoods
have with the outsider are corrected here,
pushing our relationships past the familiar and easy,
to include people
whom we have not yet recognized as family.
Through the ages women and men
have sought to define and prescribe relationships.
The gospel gives us a way to be in relationship
with the people we do not know as well as the people we do know—“we are God’s children now.”
But that does not make it easy.
In human families, we are named
and expected to maintain lifelong relationships
with them.
In our church families,
it is God who is the head of the family.
Abiding in God is setting up a new kind of family relationship, a different way of connecting.
So now we put away just thinking about our bloodlines or genetic links
and instead live as “little children”
in the household of God, as people,
connected by the tie of our loving heavenly Father.
Today, we are not focusing on our relationships
with the world in general, or the wider church,
but we are thinking about our community
here at St Thomas’s.
As well as thinking of this command to love one another,
we know of Paul’s image of the church
as the body of Christ.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul says:
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many,
are one body, so it is with Christ.
For in the one Spirit we were all baptized
into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—
and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
This passage goes on to talk about the different roles that different parts of the body play,
but that everyone has their part to play
in how the body operates.
We have many people here
who undertake many different tasks,
and we thank you all for that you do.
However there are always jobs to do,
and people who have been doing jobs
for a long time may need to pass them on
to someone new.
So one way that we can care for each other,
is by contributing our time and skills
and ensuring that others
are not overloaded with responsibilities.
This passage about the body of Christ
leads on to the very famous chapter about love.
1 Corinthians 13.
Love is patient; love is kind;
love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing,
but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
However, love is difficult.
Isabelle Hamley again:
Love between frail humans is a dangerous business- yet it is an essential business
and the core business for Christians.
Scripture and tradition
give us tools for the business of love.
The core tool may be surprising: it is forgiveness.
That is the ability to forgive others for loving us imperfectly;
the ability to forgive ourselves for loving
little and patchily;
the ability to forgive the world
for being a fragile and painful home.
To love is to let go our ideas of perfection
and live with the reality of who we are
– and within it, find the treasures of God
clothed in frailty.
Henri Nouwen wrote:
Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly.
The hard truth is that all people love poorly.
We need to forgive and be forgiven every day,
every hour increasingly.
That is the great work of love.
So lets think more about what that means.
It is easy to be irritated or upset by other people.
And it is easy for us to upset or irritate others,
perhaps without even realising it.
But God’s commandment is for us to forgive
and to love one another.
Let us all ensure that our relationships
with each other
are not spoiled by remembering past issues,
but that with forgiveness we can move forward afresh.
There will always be those who we find it easy
to like, and easy to get on with.
And others who we find more difficult.
The passage from John’s letter that we read this morning makes some clear points.
Firstly that love is shown by deeds and actions, not by feelings or words.
This raises questions that are worth thinking about.
So how can we show love and care for one another?
How do we ensure that this care is extended to all,
not just those who are like us,
or those whom we have known for a long time?
We can take the time to get to know people,
to listen to concerns, to pay attention,
to be aware.
This may be harder at the 8 o’clock service
where there is not a social time with coffee,
but there is still an opportunity for conversation.
Secondly the passage shows that love can be costly. It refers to the example we have in Jesus, who laid down his life for us all.
It is extremely unlikely that we will be called to lay down our lives,
but loving others is demanding.
It can require time, effort or money.
It can require us to forgive, to put ourselves out.
Thirdly, the reading says that love is a commandment.
We can choose to obey or disobey,
but we are commanded to love.
In safeguarding terms, this love in action
involves both addressing
and protecting against harm,
being willing to face truth and pursue justice,
providing support for those at risk
from others or themselves.
Safeguarding means ensuring that
the culture of this place,
and the way that we organise ourselves,
best enables us to put that loving and caring
into practice in an appropriate way.
It means for example that
before we allow people to take on
certain roles and responsibilities,
that we will obtain references
and carry out DBS checks.
It means that we will expect people with roles to undertake training on these issues.
It means that we will have certain codes of practice
in the way that we operate,
for example having at least two adults with groups of children. These are just examples.
So please do not feel frustrated, or picked upon,
if these codes require things of you.
And please do be patient as checks take time.
These are designed to keep everyone safe,
and to enable us to better care for each other
I will also here caveat a point made earlier.
I have talked about how we need to forgive one another, and we do.
But if, for example, anyone had a history of being an abuser, then forgiveness is not enough.
Safeguards have to be put in place to protect others.
Safeguarding is also about treating all individuals with respect and dignity,
including respecting people’s rights to personal privacy.
That means that if someone is ill for example,
Information can only be shared
with the person or their family’s permission.
Confidentiality is important.
It can sometimes be aggravating not to know.
But sometimes permission does need to be obtained first,
and in other circumstances information just cannot be shared.
That also means that if you are told a critical story that seems odd, it is possible that due to confidentiality issues, the vicar and churchwardens
are unable to tell you the other point of view.
We come back always to the love of God,
and loving one another,
enabling everyone here not just to be safe,
but to flourish,
playing their part in the body of Christ in this place.
I will close with a prayer by Isabelle Hamley:
Loving God,
We thank you that your love led you to put yourself on the line.
Help us to love with the same willingness without counting the cost
Help us when we feel fragile and afraid of breaking.
Bring others round us to tend to our wounds and care for our pain.
Help us to recognise the vulnerability of others especially at times when we may feel strong,
Lord, teach us to love as you yourself have loved us.
Amen.
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