Social Service '06

Texts: Jeremiah 23:1-6; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Today in the Church Calendar we mark Social Services Sunday, and earlier this week, the Reverend Bill Schroeder raised the question on the Diocesan email link, what exactly is a social service? I found that question helpful, and I want to start with it this morning.

In particular, I want to think about what Christian social services are. What are we trying to do when we offer social services through our Church and its agencies? At first sight, that may seem pretty obvious. We are trying to help people in need. Bill suggests we offer care to those in need in an attempt to help them towards independence. That sounded pretty right to me, until I tried to put it alongside today’s readings – and many other passages of Scripture. Then difficulties started to arise.

For instance, take Bill’s word “independence”. Is that a Christian word? Independent of whom? Our culture may urge us to stand on our own two feet, to look after number 1, not to be a burden to others, and so on – but is that the message of our faith? What about the word “social”? What does this mean in this context? Does it simply imply that a service of some type is provided by a group or agency, rather than by an individual? Or does it suggest that society both provides and receives the service? That social services are the way in which society helps itself?

The danger with the classical approach is that it divides us into two groups, the strong and capable, and the weak and needy. Those of us who are providing the social services are the strong, capable ones, and those who are receiving them are the other sort. And taking Bill’s suggested aim of trying to get them to be independent seems to mean that at that stage we wash our hands of them. We do not seek an ongoing relationship with them – they are problems that we, clever things that we are, have solved, and so we can move on to the next ones.

And that’s fine for secular social services – see a need, meet it, close the file and move on. But is that the way a Christian community should be offering social services? I wonder if part of the deal for us shouldn’t be the integration of those we help into the community of which we and they are a part. Even if we take those stories where Jesus heals an individual, we often find that there is another level to the healing. The ten lepers who are healed are told to go and show themselves to a priest? Why? So that they can be integrated into the faith community.

The man who was so dangerous that he was forced to live outside the community among the tombstones asked, when he was healed, to be allowed to go away with Jesus. But Jesus wouldn’t let him. He sent the man back to his own community to live among them. In that way, surely, the man and his community were healed. Perhaps that’s what Christian social service is all about – rebuilding healthy communities in which the previously excluded may be included.

Certainly, in the first of our readings today, from the Book of Jeremiah, the emphasis is on the needs of the whole society. There has been a failure of leadership, leading to a breakdown in community cohesion – a scattering. No doubt this has impacted on individual people, many of whom might need individual help as a consequence. But the real problem is a dysfunctional society – and that is the problem that God is going to attend to. When we have a healthy functioning society, we will have healthy functioning individuals. That seems to me to be the message of Scripture.

Our second reading today could hardly be more timely, as once more the peoples of the Middle East are cast back into all the horrors of war and injustice, fear and hatred. Of course, individuals are suffering, and we must do what we can to help them. But can anyone seriously doubt that the real need of all the people in the region is a fundamental healing of the relationship between Jews and Arabs? Isn’t the greatest service anyone can do for the people of the Middle East is to convince them that there is only one race and that they are all members of it? That the health of the Jewish people depends on the health of the Arab people, and vice versa? Not independence, but interdependence.

Today’s gospel is a fascinating choice…Look at the bit we are missing out. More precisely, two bits. The first and most important bit is the feeding of the five thousand. Wouldn’t you think that would be a good text for the theme of “The Compassion of Christ”? And, of course, an excellent choice for Social Services Sunday? And the second bit is the marvellously dramatic account of Jesus walking on the water.

Instead of these two high points, we get a couple of seemingly disconnected bits of the sort that, if they turned up in a novel, we might be tempted to skip lightly over. But let’s not do that – let’s have a look at what they tell us about real Christian social service.

And the first thing they tell us is that the providers have needs, too. Jesus’ ministry team has been flat out; St Mark says, so many people were coming and going, they did not even have a chance to eat. Jesus recognised their needs, and he tried to lead them to a quiet place for rest and refreshment. So there’s the first point. The ministers are just as needy as those to whom they minister. There are no strong ones and weak ones, only people.

So Jesus takes them by boat to a solitary place; but his plan doesn’t work out. People discover them and follow them. There’s the second point. Human need and human compassion are not governed by the clock. For Christian ministry there are no ordinary business hours. They are in need now, so Jesus tends to their need now.

But then comes the surprise. When we are told that Jesus had compassion on them, we expect him to go into social service mode, don’t we? We expect him to feed them or provide shelter for them or heal them of their diseases; but that’s not what happens. St Mark puts it this way: he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things. In his compassion for them, he began teaching them because they were like a flock without a shepherd. We might say, they were lacking in social cohesion, they were all over the place, they lacked direction in their lives.

But is that what the people wanted? Perhaps not. In the second part of our reading this morning, something similar has happened. Jesus and his disciples have just arrived on the other side of the lake, where they are recognised and a large crowd gathers. And wherever they went, people came and brought their sick to him, and begged that they be allowed to touch him and be healed of their infirmities. It’s almost as though Jesus and the crowds are talking past one another; he is trying to teach them to be a community; they are trying to get their individual problems seen to.

Of course, it is never a matter of either/or. Individual needs must be met. Perhaps the teaching of Christ is that individual needs are best met in the context of social arrangements. Christian social services must seek to meet individual needs in a way that heals social arrangements, that builds community that recognises the need for a real and mutual and ongoing relationship between those who provide the services and those who receive them.

St Paul used the image of the body. He said if one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. Somewhere in that idea, maybe, lies the answer to Bill Schroeder’s question.