Generosity and Inclusion
Sunday before Advent – Year A – 2017
Last Sunday was a day of celebration for two families in our Parish as they celebrated the arrival of new members of their families and for us as we welcomed them into the family of the Church. The Archbishop, in his sermon, encouraged us to draw inspiration from those who had gone before us and to look forwards and outwards, highlighting the emergence of new housing areas on the edge of our Parish.
He used three expressions that resonated with me: ‘Generous Christianity,’ an ‘Anglican Garland of Generosity and Inclusion,’ and a warning against ‘Self-Generosity.’ Our Gospel reading, the parable of the sheep and the goats, shows both groups encountering the King at the end of time and learning that they had met him before in the poor and marginalized. The goats used their ignorance as an excuse for inaction, while the sheep were amazed to find that in serving the needy, they had served their King.
I find this Parable to be one of the most challenging, as it calls us to discern genuine need from deceit and to recognize that needs are not always simply material. There is often a deeper need of loneliness, the need to be treated as a human being. I am impressed by the Focus Ireland Centre, which reminds us that a society can be judged by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable.
Completing the work on the roof and external fabric of our Parish Church is the easy part. We are now faced with securing the future of our worshipping community. What sort of community do we envisage here in thirty or forty years? The community of the future is being formed now.