If you are one of our very brave and courageous Christian Aid collectors, you will have just finished your collecting for this year, and I bet you’re glad! We are incredibly grateful to you because I know you have hearts like lions! You need to have. I hear stories every year that would make your hair stand on end.

As one wise collector said to me many years ago, it would be easier to put 50 pence in an envelope and hand it to a collector at the door than go through all the rig-ma-roll of hiding behind sofas and avoiding and ignoring collectors as if they had some kind of dangerous disease!

You may realise by now that by some means or other I usually get to hear most things that go on in a parish. Any vicar or rector could probably write a veritable epic like ‘Peyton Place’ on their parish. (Does that age me terribly? I remember nothing about Peyton Place, only that my mother was hooked on it and that it went for years and years telling all the secrets of a small town in America!):

One particular story of Christian Aid Collecting has always stuck in my mind: A person (on our parish list, no less) actually went to all the trouble of getting out the Christian Aid envelope, procuring the leaflet that came with it, folding up the leaflet and putting the leaflet inside the Christian Aid envelope before handing it to the collector!

All that trouble to hand in what was effectively an ‘empty’ envelope when, would it not have been easier to just put 50 pence inside?

People aren’t ignorant these days, we can’t claim that we don’t know about the plight of the poor and the oppressed and the disadvantaged. Our news items constantly remind us, but perhaps not enough. The countless individual stories of human sadness and agony would astound you – we cannot choose not to know, what we choose is that we don’t care!

As a Church, I’m often tempted to give our whole ‘Needs of Others’ giving to Christian Aid. As you know there are huge numbers of charities and organisations which all do huge amounts of tremendous work and we cannot fault any one of them. But as a kind of umbrella group, which successfully crosses denominational boundaries, Christian Aid seems to offer the best kind of coordinated group effort to relieve immediate suffering that we could possibly get. Many would probably not agree with on this, so perhaps it is best to stick to our usual position. But, even if you have forgotten about our Christian Aid Lunch today, perhaps you could put your roast off till later on, perhaps, and join us in the Church Hall immediately after this Service. As you know, the land across the way, the Vicarage site has been unused, mainly because the market has suffered so much in recent years. But it was our plan and it is still our plan that whatever happens we should have an outward looking view of things. The Parsih Development Plan includes looking at how best we can support and serve projects in the wider Church, most probably through Christian Aid. I have already spoken to them about it.

So what I am saying, in all of this, is that Christian Aid is a very important organisation to us and I hope you can help us to support them.

I couldn’t help noticing on TV recently that ‘Age Concern’ and ‘Help the Aged’ have combined forces and now call themselves, ‘Age UK’. If you look up their website, it says, “Age needs one voice – now it has”. What a lesson that is to so many charities and organisations. It’s happening even in politics – the Dave and Nick Show!

That such charities can come together like this is music to my ears and my soul! The fact that different organisations who believe the same things and fighting for the same rights are coming together to achieve more is tremendous. Where does that leave us; a disfigured and fragmented Church, a capital city, down the road, with a different Church on every corner?

As a clergyman, that’s the most striking thing of all; each of us fighting for our own space and so many, while we squabble, just fall through the net, including those who need help the most; the underprivileged and the most malnourished peoples of the world. That’s the most shocking message we could ever give out to a very suspect world. We cannot choose not to know, but are we really choosing not to care?

In other words, are our divisions worth more than what we care about? At least in dire circumstances there is the Disasters Emergency Committee, when a variety of relief organisations come together to work for the common good. It’s what we are meant to be about all the time.

James Brown, the Funeral Director, regularly offers lunch to clergy who help him in his business! I attended a luncheon a week or so ago, and there was a lot of ‘holy talk’, so I was glad to get home! But there was a true story that I was reminded about on that day which concerns an old friend, a certain Tony Campolo. I think it was at a Spring Harvest gathering way back in 1998, when Tony Campolo was giving the main address of the night and he was getting annoyed at everyone’s holiness! It’s all about me and my personal salvation; you know the kind of thing. And Campolo is passionate about serving and helping the poorest of the poor, it has been a true characteristic of his whole ministry. And when he spoke that night, he used a very bad word! I’ll let you imagine it, but he said something along the lines, in all your holiness, you don’t give a ... about the poor! And what’s more, most of you will be more upset at my saying the word ... than you will be about caring for the poor

He’s right! If we ever come across as a Church that doesn’t care, then we are in real trouble

Thank you to all our collectors and thank you to all of you who have helped to support Christian Aid.