Ideas don't exist unless you do something!

It’s lovely to welcome Emily and Rosie to today’s service, and Chris’s father, John and stepmother Joyce. . Our thoughts and prayers have been very much with Chris ever since we heard of her illness and all through the time she has been at Sue Ryder home. It was lovely to share a very real celebration of her life at the Crematorium last Tuesday and it seemed right to mark Chris’s life during our service today. So Emily and Chris have brought along some cakes to have over coffee after the service.

Chris has had a love of this place, and has done an immense amount for us over the years. She worked with the children, and as a Deacon – she would take the minutes at Deacons meetings. All her working life Chris worked in scaffolding, so Chris played a key part in the maintenance of the building for a while, acquiring scaffolding for some key jobs. She has helped edit Highbury News for many years working with Stefan and with Desiree, and latterly with Diana. Chris loved her garden, flowers, and all things floral and so one of the things she brought to the magazine was the pictures and clipart and the often floral designs and flourishes.

But that wasn’t all Chris brought to the magazine. Chris had a passion for helping other people and for social justice. That meant that for a number of years Chris was our Christian Aid organiser, organising the Christian Aid week collection that happens in the second week of May each year. Chris would add in fillers for the magazine that came from Christian Aid – stories the need for justice and to work for justice. Our Congregational Federation has a Peace Fellowship: Chris was a keen member of that as well. That commitment to peace and justice came out in her choice of fillers to put into the magazine.

So for a few minutes on this Palm Sunday at the beginning of Holy Week I want to bring together that passion for social justice and caring for other people with one particular picture that I think would have appealed to Chris. And I want to link that with the story of Jesus and Holy Week, and that great story of the foot-washing.

It’s a beautifully colourful picture that depicts the crucified Christ.

That goes to the heart of what my faith is about. I don’t start with some theoretical idea of God is all powerful, all loving. When I do start there I end up with all sorts of massive questions about why such awful stuff should happen in the world with all its injustices, and the kind of unwarranted suffering that sometimes comes very close to home.

My faith starts with Jesus. He came as a servant to serve other people and wherever he saw people hurting he brought healing, and wherever he saw injustice he stood for justice and made a difference. He couldn’t escape the suffering that came to him, instead he went through it … and as we will celebrate on Easter Sunday next week won a victory that we can share. He opens up for me the God I believe in as a God who comes alongside us in our suffering, remains with us through it all and draws us home to his eternal love.

And he does come alongside us in our suffering.

Look again at the picture and it is a black Jesus depicted in this stained glass window. The window is in the 16th Baptist Church of Birmingham Alabama in the States.

In a moving radio programme a couple of weeks ago, journalist Gary younge told its story.
On the morning of 15th September 1963 a bomb planted in the church by four men from a splinter group of the Ku Klux Klan exploded taking the lives of three fourteen year old girls, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Me Collins and one 11 year old girl, Denise McNair.

It shocked the world and galvanised support for the Civil Rights campaign of Martin Luther King.

John Petts, a Welsh artist in stained glass heard the news of this atrocity in the small Carmarthenshire village of Llansteffan. In that instant he had an idea. He determined to offer his skills as an artist in the reconstruction of the church.

He said something then that is very powerful.

“An idea doesn’t exist unless you do something about it,” he said. “Thought has no real living meaning unless it’s followed by action of some kind.”

He rang a friend, David Cole, editor of the Western Mail, the national newspaper of Wales. An appeal laws launched. But it was an appeal with a difference. He did not want some rich benefactor to give all the money. The maximum anyone could give was half a crown 2 shillings and six pence. 12 pence today.

The appeal caught the imagination of the people of Wales. And soon the money was raised, the window designed and installed as a gift truly from The People of Wales.

Look again at the design. It is the suffering Christ who comes alongside people wherever they are – so in the window it is a Christ who for the people worshipping in that church is one with them, it is a black Christ.

One hand is held out as if calling a halt to the injustices of the world, and the sheer awfulness of the racism that was plaguing America and the world. You have made my Father’s house a den of thieves.

But the other hand is open and reaching out as if in forgiveness. “Father, forgive them …” were the words Jesus shared from the cross. And into that world of hatred Jesus brings the forgiveness that makes all the difference.

The words etched into the glass at the bottom of the window are words inspired by Matthew 25.

You do it to me.

How powerful that quotation is.

I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you gave me clothing,
I was sick and you took care of me,
I was in prison and you visited me.”

Just as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters,
you did it to me.

There is a wonderful comfort in the faith we share that focuses on the God who through Jesus Christ shares with us in our suffering, remains with us come what may and leads us through to his peace and his love.

But faith that looks to Jesus Christ as the suffering servant is faith that has to heed the challenge of Jesus’ words.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in that moment which we are going to remember as we share around this table.

And during supper Jesus … got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.

Then comes the moment when Jesus shares his great idea.

So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

What a great idea … that we serve one another.

That is the way the love Christ shows to us becomes a reality in the world around us.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

That’s the great idea.

But as John Petts saw …

“An idea doesn’t exist unless you do something about it.”

Chris got something of that idea … that’s what prompted her to help other people, all the way through even at the Sue Ryder home; it’s what prompted her to have a passion for justice and peace and to work for Christian Aid.

I guess the question for each of us is … what are we going to DO about it?