Christian Aid talk, by Angela Lascelles, Sunday 17th April 2016, at St George’s Campden Hill and St John the Baptist, Holland Road
Christian
Aid talk, by Angela Lascelles, Sunday 17th April 2016, at St George’s
Campden Hill and St John the Baptist, Holland Road
By way of introduction I can explain why I am standing
here. Last year, while putting together the church’s MAP, the PCC decided to
form sub-committees to deal with various aspects of our overall mission of
serving God and our Neighbour. St Gs has for many years actively supported
charities both here in London and overseas and the formation of a charity
subcommittee formalised what we were doing already and continue to do. At the
moment I am chairing that committee.
One of our charities, CA has long been supported by the
congregations of St G, especially in Christian Aid week, and I have become
closely involved with part of its work in Africa and visited it 3 times so far,
so I have first-hand experience of the poverty, need and injustice it grapples
with in so many areas of our world.
So what does it do, and why should we support it? Its
mission statement is simple and clear – ‘we believe in life before death’ – and so many of our
brothers and sisters in this world live in conditions of extreme deprivation,
so different from our comfortable lives here. Christian Aid’s funds are
provided by Christians in Britain but it works to support and transform the
lives of all people of faith, or none, in the areas of the world where it works.
These are Africa, South America, Asia, and the Middle East. It works to provide
longer term support to help communities to become independent – work such as I
have been involved with – and it also responds to large scale disaster
emergencies, as part of the DEC, the committee which comes into operation when
there is an earthquake, flood or other natural disaster. I will briefly
describe the work I have witnessed in rural Angola.
After the end of the civil war which had lasted for 27
years the country was devastated and destitute, especially in the country areas
where there was no food, no water, no schools, no health care, just a load of
land mines waiting to blow up those who returned to the villages. It was a
place which had been the bread basket of Africa, but was now a desolate place
where there was not enough food even to feed a wild animal, let alone a human
being. A group of villages in one of the most isolated parts of the world was
chosen and a project began, to help the people help themselves and rebuild
their lives. They were given seeds and tools to grow maize, they were given
materials to build schools and they were helped to unblock the water wells. It
was a long and twisting journey till their lives began to rebuild, and the
additional hazard along the way has been climate volatility, which either
drowned the seeds or starved them of water – no good seed on the land, fed and
watered by God’s almighty hand. Ten years on, they have just enough to eat to
survive and a little left over in the seed bank to plant next season, the
schools are there, though the teachers may be in short supply, and they have a
few goats and chickens.
Of current interest of course is the way CA is responding
to the civil war in Syria and the tide of refugees from that desperate country.
Christian Aid works everywhere with local partners who are carefully selected
and then monitored. Their work amongst Syrian refugees, which is based in
Lebanon and Northern Iraq, involves supporting several organisations which
provide food and fuel for families, education for their children, and
counselling support for the many who have been psychologically affected by the
horrors they have witnessed, or indeed experienced themselves. They
particularly focus on the women and children. This is not out of some gender
awareness programme, such as might be the case in this country these days, but
out of recognition that the women bear the brunt of the family
responsibilities, in societies where the men are still the hunter gatherers,
though more the former than the latter. I have seen it in remotest Angola, seen
the need to give the women knowledge, skills and awareness to protect their
families from starvation and death.
On the CA website they ask us to donate for the Syrian
refugees - £20 for a pack of rice and vegetables, or £40 for a hygiene kit, or
£60 for a mattress, blanket, pillow and cooking set. Again, I’ve seen it first
hand in Angola, the difference between having nothing, yes nothing at all, in
their mud hut, to having the basic tools they can use to keep out the cold, and
grow food. It gives them hope, where before there was none.
As well as practical help via donations, they ask us to
pray for them. We have included their prayer for Syria as an insert with our
weekly service sheets. Please do look at the CA website and you will find so
many stories of tragedy affecting so many people - resulting from violence,
natural disasters, especially the recent floods in Pakistan, injustice and
poverty, and their response to the tragedies. As they say in their vision
statement, ‘we work globally for profound change that eradicates the causes of
poverty, striving to achieve equality, dignity and freedom for all, regardless
of faith or nationality.’ Whose teaching does that statement remind us of?
Jesus said ‘in my father’s house are many mansions’ – I’ve
seen some of these mansions. Returning from Angola three times now, with a
fourth due later this year, I have found the difference between their mud huts
and our mansions overwhelming. I have come straight from the returning plane
into this church on a Sunday morning and seen us all in our Sunday best – and
cried my way through the whole service. What we worry about, the trivial things
which upset us, the things we aspire to, are so completely irrelevant in the
lives of our brothers and sisters who live without food, water, healthcare or
education. Jesus said ‘love God and love your neighbour’. I pray that we learn
to love our neighbours prayerfully and generously.
Amen