Month: September 2025

The God in the Bread: Harvest 2025

Philippians 4.4-9, John 6.25-35

The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, 5 October 2025 

Eldroth, Clapham

Harvest-time is a moveable feast. We celebrate it in many different ways, from playing dominoes to making donations to those who are suffering famine. One harvest-time tradition in the church is Lammastide. It’s an ancient English Christian custom, celebrated on August 1st, of baking a first loaf of bread from the flour of that harvest and then bringing it to church to have it blessed. So, albeit a couple of moths late, I think it’s worth our reflecting on Lammas in our harvest festival today, especially because during this service we bless and break bread together.

“Lammas,” is a compound word formed from the phrase “loaf mass.” A bit like Michaelmas for the feast of the Archangel Michael in November, or Candlemas for the feast of Christ’s Presentation in February, or of course Christmas, focussing on the feast of Christ’s nativity. Lammas is a day to focus on bread.

Blessing a loaf of bread in church may sound a bit odd to some. What’s so special about bread? Well, maybe the point is this: there’s nothing particularly special abut bread. It is bread’s very ordinariness which makes it so blessed.

Today’s gospel reading tells us that people followed Jesus around because he fed them: he’d noticed how they pursued him not so much to hear his message but more because he gave them bread. Here, he tells them that they should be concentrating less on their stomachs but more on their souls, less on the food that perishes, more on ‘the food that endures for eternal life’, that is, following him and his ways.  But we should take care not to take his words to mean we should compartmentalise our lives, separating out the spiritual things from the physical. 

For, if we think about when God touches us in the Church most clearly, it is precisely through objects like this, in the most primal, elemental, basic and foundational stuff of everyday life: water, wine, oil, bread, cloth, hands, hair, dirt, stone, language, fire, wax, wood. All of these are to be found in the sacramental, mysterious life of the Church, and it is through them that the divine presence is communicated to us. Through these things, we connect to God.

The ancient Celtic Christians had prayers for rather ordinary things. Newborn babies were washed by dipping them three times in the water, while saying the names of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – it was like a kitchen-sink baptism. They also had prayers for rowing boats, walking, giving birth, looking after the cows, and lighting fires. It is a joy of our Christian life to experience this sense of God’s presence in the mundane, ordinary moments of life.

So bread, along with wine, is one of the two physical everyday things at the very centre of what it means to be Christians in communion with our God.

With a couple of exceptions in scripture like God sending Manna from heaven and Jesus feeding the five thousand, bread is always the result of the work of human people. It is baked in an oven, tended by a baker, who has formed the bread out of flour, salt, water and yeast. And the flour is from wheat, which is harvested by people. The salt is distilled from the sea or dug out of the ground, the water is drawn from its source, and the yeast is collected and propagated. At every stage, human activity is required for there to be bread.

Yet there would be no wheat without God, nor would there be water, salt or yeast. Even the strength and knowledge of the baker find their ultimate source in God, to say nothing of his very existence. And God created the physical laws according to which the matter of the universe normally operates. So it is clear that at every stage of its development, divine activity is required for there to be bread.

Bread is a sign of God and man working together. Far from solely being our Creator and our Lord, God also joins us as our co-worker, standing next to us in the most basic and ordinary moments and tasks of life. 

Bread is also our nourishment. Nearly every diet in every culture in the world includes bread in some form. Even the most meagre of diets – bread and water – includes bread. Bread goes to the very heart of human life.

It is therefore no coincidence that when the Lord chose the means to make His Body available to us as food, as the divine Eucharist, He chose to do it through bread.

This bread we are about to receive, it was made with the hands and the knowledge of a baker, and at the same time, it is the fruit of the divine Energy of God in His creation. And it is this ordinary thing, drawn from the ground, from the water, from the air, and from seed, by the creative energies of the Holy Spirit, which, through the same Spirit and by our prayers, now holds the awesome mystery of the wholeness of the Godhead within itself.

Christian life truly is so very intimate. Its power is that it spiritually intertwines the uncreated God with the created world. The ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the most basic, fundamental, everyday things become for us the means to help our understanding of who God is and what God is doing in the world.

At Harvest-time, taking the blessed bread, we are thankful to God for simply feeding us; and for using such familiar things to communicate the sacred aspect of our lives which are truly beyond our ability to describe. 

Notes

[1] Sermon edited from Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick, The God in the Bread: A Sermon for Lammas, Ancient Faith blog, 1 August 2011, which I previously preached at Austwick and Keasden in 2024.

Forgive anyway! (2025)

1 Timothy 2.1–7, Luke 16.1-13

The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, 21 September 2025

Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth 

Imagine a world where the greatest power in it, the principle by which the world operated, was that of mercy, compassion and forgiveness. 

Imagine a world where you called up your credit card company, said, “I’m sorry, I’ve overextended myself this month; and I can’t make my payment,” and the bank said, “Oh, that’s O.K., you’re forgiven. Don’t worry about it.” 

Imagine a world where you make a huge mistake at work that cost your company thousands of pounds, and your boss simply said, “Never mind! These things happen. You’ll do better next time.”

We may smile at such suggestions because the world we live in, which has shaped our outlook on life, feels often like a world which operates less on mercy, compassion and forgiveness, and more on the cold, hard exchange of cash-value, on the survival of the most solvent.

Our faith prompts us to ask: what would it be like to live in a world which was run on merciful and compassionate lines? Christians can imagine such a different world, and in the imagining, help bring this world into being. Jesus’ teachings about the Kingdom of God show us the way of mercy, compassion and forgiveness gently breaking through, like flowers through parched soil. 

Take today’s parable for example. It seems to be about the usual ‘dog eat dog’ world of work and business. A manager who works for a rich man is caught in some kind of incompetence. Jesus tells us that he has squandered his master’s property. In other words, he’s made a mistake of some sort  that has cost his company maybe millions of pounds. So as a consequence, he’s fired.

But rather than firing him immediately, taking his keys, giving him a few minutes to clear out his office, and have a security guard escort him out, the Managing Director in Jesus’ parable decides to let the manager stay on to settle up his last accounts. And this shrewd manager makes the most of his opportunity. He pulls a sting operation. He makes some friends with his Managing Director’s clients by writing off substantial portions of their bills. How clever was that! He gets even with his old boss and potentially wins himself new people to work for. These clients of his old boss will owe him a favour. Out, but not down, the sneaky manager has pulled a fast one.

Following the parable Jesus gives us some pithy proverbs to follow: proverbs which offer two ways, two paths, through life: the children of this age vs. children of the light; being a very little faithful vs. being a very little dishonest; ‘No slave can serve two masters.’ And the ultimate statement, ‘You cannot serve God and wealth.’

The essence of Jesus’ message is that we have only two choices in life: to serve the kingdoms of this world, which amounts to serving wealth, or to serve God in his way of compassion. You cannot serve two masters; you cannot serve God and wealth. There are only two basic paths in life: God’s way is the way of merciful love, the way of compassion. 

For those who have benefited from the tit-for-tat way, the survival of the fittest – me and you included – it’s almost incomprehensible that our God sent Jesus into the world to essentially be one of the losers, branded a criminal and hung upon the cross. It’s astonishing that from the cross Jesus refused to play the game of tit-for-tat. Instead, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” Can you imagine any more mercy than that? Can you imagine the same power of merciful, compassionate forgiveness that raised Jesus from the dead transforming our lives, the life of the world around us, if we are only faithful to it even a very little. If only we can try to unlearn the dog-eat-dog ways, to reshape our behaviour towards compassion.

It is possible to imagine mercy breaking into our world. It even breaks into the parable, albeit in imperfect ways. We see the manager in this parable being just a little bit merciful, in a businesslike sort of way. We see him using mercy as a commodity, to trade. To his master’s clients, he shows a kind of forgiveness, writing off big chunks of their bills, in order that they might show mercy back to him. He’s using mercy as a form of self-protection; but – this is important – he is using mercy.

Now this desperate act of forgiveness surprisingly gets the dishonest manager far more mercy than he bargained for, in return. For his incompetence, the manager got fired. For his dishonesty, one might expect he’d be thrown in jail. Instead, Jesus tells us that “His master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” No jail. No retribution of any kind. Rather, a commendation. Against all expectations the doubly-wronged Managing Director shows mercy to his manager. 

Jesus suggests that the children of this age can be more imaginative than the children of light about dealing mercifully with each other: imperfectly for sure, but effectively. It’s a challenge to us. Do we really have faith in the generous mercy, compassion and forgiveness of God? Do we feel worthy of receiving it, with all our faults and failings? Are we capable of giving it? Are we over-anxious about trying to be perfect that we can’t bring ourselves to risk any imperfect attempts to forgive, to love, to live? This parable seems to encourage us that when it comes to forgiveness, we may never get it completely right – our forgiveness may not be perfect, but we should forgive anyway.

You know, as the gospels record it, when Jesus taught The Lord’s Prayer these were the words he used: ‘Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.’ And he meant it in a monetary way. Jesus wants us to know that forgiveness can transform every area of life, even the monetary side. [2]

Imagine a world where those deep in debt are shown a way out, are given practical guidance and assistance towards becoming debt-free, and free of the problems of employment or addiction which may be contributing to their poverty. Imagine a world where people in business try to act with grace and compassion towards the vulnerable, the poor, and the earth itself. If you look, you will see that there are plenty around today, in Fairtrade and renewables and sustainable farming, and so on. You may have heard me last week talking about Patrick Grant’s Community Clothing, another example on our doorstep. [3] 

It is possible to imagine ourselves into a world operated by a loving Father, a world of mercy, compassion and forgiveness. If we open our eyes, we can see it already coming into being. If we open our hearts and minds, we realise that, however imperfectly, we can do our bit to nurture it.

Notes

[1] This is a revised version of Forgive anyway! preached in Somerset, 2016 and Gruline, Isle of Mull,  2019. An adapted and Anglicised version of the sermon The Reign of Compassion by Paul J. Nuechterlein, delivered at Emmaus Lutheran, Racine, WI, September 19-20, 1998.

[2] Luke 11.4 / Matthew 6.12 Sarah Dylan Breuer, SarahLaughed.net: dylan’s lectionary blog, Proper 20, Year C. Quoted in Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary, Reflections, Year C, Proper 20C.

[3] John Davies, In a throwaway society, searching for the lost. 14 September 2025. Community Clothing: Our Mission. Website accessed 11 September 2025.

Things you can do with a sign of the cross

Clapham Village Newsletter, October-November 2025

He went to the crossroad, fell down on his knees – did old Robert Johnson. He asked the Lord above, “Have mercy, save me if you please”.

There’s a lot of things you can do with a sign of the cross. You can make it a meeting place with the devil or with the Lord, like the blues singers do. You can make it a request for divine assistance in the manner of footballers, arriving on the pitch eyes lifted in petition, genuflecting. You can have it smeared in ash on your forehead to signal the start of your Lenten abstinence, or baked in to a hot cross bun when you break that fast. You can put it on a road sign. You can use it to direct people towards medical assistance or to signify a country on a flag. You can buy cross-shaped necklaces in all kinds of designs: I’ve heard jewellers say that occasionally a shopper may request “one with a little man on it”. 

In vicar training school they told us that following our ordination – the cathedral service when the bishop says special prayers for us – we would be uniquely empowered by The Church to bestow blessings on people by the simple cross-shaped motion of our hands. Now, I grew up with an understanding of “the priesthood of all believers” so I venture to suggest that anyone, with the genuine intention of blessing another, could do it in this way, to the same effect, should they so wish. 

Which isn’t to deny how much I cherish those moments at the end of our services where I’m able to send people out with a blessing, or when I make the cross-sign as a greeting at someone’s doorway, or on a baptised child’s forehead, or at a hospital bedside, with a family bidding their fond, prayerful, farewells to their loved one about to depart this life.

A sign of a cross can be a sign of welcome – as when it flies above St James’ Church tower, the Cross of St George signalling a church which is open for all. It’s a sign of the Church of England, that is, a church here to serve everyone on this island, of whatever circumstance in life. For some onlookers this red-cross-on-white may signify this country which they love, whether for its cricket or its creatures, its shipping forecast or its peculiar weather, but mostly because, for them, regardless of its shortcomings (which are legion) it is familiar and it is home. 

Of course, you can also use the cross as a sign of hostility, as we see it displayed on the gowns of the Klu Klux Klan whilst going about their lynchings, or when painted onto roundabouts in antagonism against a maligned minority group. I suggest that this cruel inhumanity is the most faithful use of a sign of a cross, because it is the closest in meaning to the cross’s original intention. For in Christianity the original cross was the mechanism for Jesus’ execution. In gospel times, crosses were how manipulative political players and aggravated crowds got rid of those they’d demonised. 

Three people hung at Calvary that day. Jesus and two condemned companions: were they each a scapegoat of sorts, the fatal violence inflicted on them a convenient way of galvanising the community? In this telling, the sign of the cross is a bloody, horrible, human, thing: this urge to “exterminate all the brutes”, it is “the sin of the world”. 

Why then would the Christian church turn the cross into a golden icon of temporal glory shining within some of the world’s most showy, expensive buildings? Some say because of Roman Emperor Constantine’s vision of a cross in the sky, on the night before a big battle, which he won, and his consequent adoption of the motto, “In this sign you shall conquer”. Thus the cross became an emblem of empire, a triumphalist symbol, a justification of state violence; with the notion of self-sacrifice at the heart of Christ’s offering on Calvary now commandeered for military purposes.

Another reason why the cross became glorified is that the Church came to see it as a sign of the success of the resurrection. Those necklaces with the little man on them only tell the start of the story. The empty crosses tell it all: “He is not here – he is risen!” Thus the cross becomes the sign of the possibility of redemption – and particularly for those who the world wants to crucify. 

We see this in bombed-out cities where at the sight of the Red Cross, the injured find cause for hope; we see it on stormy seas where at the sight of the RNLI flag – with the cross at its heart – those who thought themselves lost to the waves know that rescue is at hand.

You can use the sign of the cross for any purpose. Who will use it as a sign of hope? Who will use it as a sign of healing? Who will use it as a sign of grace and of redemption?

In a throwaway society, searching for the lost

1 Timothy 1.12–17, Luke 15.1–10

The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, 14 September 2025 

 Austwick, Keasden

The lost sheep and the lost coin are stories which describe how much value God puts on us; how precious we are in his eyes. How he longs for relationship with us, and will search and search for us however lost we may be to him.

How comforting to be assured of this, living as we do in a throwaway society, where it often seems that little is valued or precious, that everything is disposable and our relationships – with things and with people – are cheap. 

Indeed, a present-day parable might go like this:

She had a hundred blouses; and she threw them all away… so she could buy a hundred more.

Her flat was full of clothes; in cupboards, on chairs, under the bed, in plastic containers stacked in the hallway and behind the settee. Day by day it filled up more as she spent her hours scrolling the fashion websites and ordering whatever caught her eye.

It was easy doing this, for everything was so cheap: a two-piece tank top and wide leg pants for £10.99; a floral pyjama set for £3.49; loungewear top and leggings £3.99. [1] She’d already got plenty of these sorts of clothes, but they were in boxes somewhere, and for her, the joy was in getting something new: finding a lovely looking bargain online, the satisfaction of the one-click purchase, the frisson of receiving delivery parcels every day.

But it depressed her, being surrounded with all this stuff, having to clear a way through bin bags full of shoes just to get to the kitchen. She knew that she needed to have a clear-out. If she cleared out her flat it may help clear up the gloom she felt inside her. She couldn’t bring herself to do this, though; being a hoarder she found it impossible to get rid of anything. So after many months of deliberation, eventually she looked online and found a professional organiser to come and do the necessary decluttering for her. 

The declutterer was ruthless. With no room for nostalgia or emotion she threw hundreds of items of clothing away: including one old cardigan which had sat at the bottom of a drawer, untouched, for ages, the one which had been knitted years before by a loving grandmother, gifted with love, now frayed and shapeless, and washed-out of colour, it was one of the first things to go in the skip. 

After the declutterer had gone, the woman’s flat looked a lot emptier, cleaner somehow. How long would it be before she reached for her phone and began scrolling the fast-fashion websites again?

One of the stark statistics about our throwaway society is that less than 1% of clothing waste is recycled into new clothes – as our recycling systems just aren’t up to the task. So 99 per cent of the clothes we tip away end up in landfill. And as the majority of them are made of plastics, they’ll not decompose, they’ll just keep piling ever higher.

There are other startling statistics, as detailed by Patrick Grant in his book Less: 

“In 2023, 100 billion garments were made worldwide, most by workers paid virtually nothing, 70 per cent of them from plastic textiles made from oil. Thirty per cent of all the clothes made are never sold, two-thirds of the clothes we own we never wear, and new clothes are now so cheap they’re often thrown away rather than being washed and worn again. The British Fashion Council reported that 23 million returned garments were sent to landfill or incinerated in the UK in 2022 alone.”

I think Patrick speaks for many of us in saying that “We buy clothes and all sorts of other things with little or no care or consideration. Our consumption is thoughtless and careless. We buy so much, we have so much, and yet we enjoy so little.” [2]

So the parables of the lost coin and the lost sheep mean little to people who don’t care about losing things, as everything is disposable and easily replaced. 

Except when we stop to consider how, in the midst of all this reckless abundance, we ourselves can feel lost. “We have so much, and yet we enjoy so little,” Patrick wrote. The woman in the flat surrounded by her boxes was in a depression not uncommon to those of us who sense that we’ve been reduced to the function of consumers. We suspect that beneath the surface we may have rich and wonderful created natures, waiting, longing to come out, but we feel imprisoned in a way of life in which the precious, healthy, creative sides of us are not required to play a part.

And so, we might pray for an ending to the modern-day parable in which the women in her flat laments the loss of her grandmother’s old knitted cardigan, and in response, sets out to learn how to knit, so that she can give her newborn niece a baby blanket. She goes to a knitting class and makes new friends, finds she has a talent for it, and with her new-found friends sets up a little project knitting clothes and doing repairs for people in mother and child hostels and homeless and refugee families.

And we might celebrate the many businesses which are actively working to offer something different to fast fashion: like Patrick Grant’s Community Clothing, an online retailer which works on the principle of producing high quality everyday clothes at a third of the price of other premium brands, making 100% of them here in the UK, in 48 partner factories mostly in the North West, Yorkshire, the East Midlands, southern and central Scotland and South Wales, areas of severe economic and social deprivation whose mills have stood empty for decades. [3]

The business began when Patrick bought out the historic Blackburn clothing manufacturer Cookson & Clegg, saving it from closure, and now, by sustaining and creating jobs – good, fulfilling, well-paid jobs – Community Clothing is helping to restore local economic prosperity and pride in all these places, as well as offering potential customers like us a satisfying, ethical outlet to support.

“I once was lost…. but now I’m found; was blind, but now I see…”  [4]

In our throwaway society, where it often seems that little is valued or precious, that everything is disposable, and our relationships – with things and with people – are thus cheapened, let us always remember how very, very, highly God values us; how absolutely precious we are in his eyes. 

We can affirm and celebrate this, in the way we live our lives, even down to the way we wear our clothes; and certainly in our relationships with others. We can find fulfilment in doing our bit to search for the lost in the world around us, and find ourselves rejoicing when they are found.

Notes

[1] Actual priced items from Shein website accessed 9 September 2025.

[2] Patrick Grant, Less: Stop Buying So Much Rubbish: How Having Fewer, Better Things Can Make Us Happier. p.74.

[3] Community Clothing: Our Mission. Website accessed 11 September 2025.

[4] John Newton, Amazing Grace.

Choose Life: let your light shine!

Deuteronomy 30.15–20, Luke 14.25–33

The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 7 September 2025, 

Eldroth, Clapham

Once upon a time there were two brothers, Simon and Andrew. They had two things in common: they didn’t like school, but they did like fishing.

In school, Andrew didn’t mind doing adding up and taking away, but his teacher never encouraged him, so in the classroom all he ever counted in his head were fish, and he couldn’t wait to get out on the lake with his brother Andrew in their dad’s boat after school.

And in school, Simon liked listening to the stories in the scriptures, and the characters in them, especially Jonah, because Jonah sailed the sea and for three days lived inside a whale. But no-one helped Simon with his reading, and so he spent all day just waiting to get out fishing with his brother too.

Their dad was a quiet man who just got on with the job of fishing, and the jobs that went with fishing, like mending the boat and mending the nets. He’d tell them off if they did something wrong, but he didn’t encourage them or teach them special things, so Simon and Andrew simply learned from him by watching what he did. This made them ‘ok’ fishermen, not excellent ones, but they learned enough about fishing to know that when they left school, that would be their work.

And so it was that when they were grown-up, and their old dad had died, one day Simon and Andrew were down by the lake mending their nets when a man came up to them and said, “Follow me.” 

They realised that this must be Jesus, the man everyone had been talking about, who had been going around telling everyone that God loved them, healing people, even making blind people see again, and inviting people to join him, to follow him.

When Jesus said, “Follow me” this astonished Simon and Andrew, because no-one had ever spoken to them like that before. No-one had ever encouraged them, or shown any confidence in them like that, ever before. 

Jesus told Simon and Andrew, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of people.” He wanted them, two simple fishermen, to join in his wonderful work of healing people, and teaching people God’s good news, and bringing more people like them along on this wonderful journey.

So they dropped their nets, and followed him. They followed him up a hill, along with crowds of other people, when, at the top of the hill, Jesus stopped, they all gathered around, and he began to teach them, starting with these words:

“Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

“The poor,” said Simon to Andrew, “That’s us, we never have any money, we can hardly afford the rope to mend our nets with.”

Then Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

“Those who mourn,” said Andrew to Simon, “That’s us, we’re sad because our dad has died and we’re worried about whether we can keep his old fishing business going.”

Then Jesus said, “You are a city on a hill…” 

– which Simon thought was an odd thing to say; but then he understood when Jesus explained, “…a city on a hill can’t be hidden, it’s there for all to see.”

And Jesus continued saying, 

“You are the light of the world. People don’t light a lamp and then hide it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way,” Jesus said, “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

And Simon and Andrew turned to look at each other in amazement, because never in their lives had anyone ever spoken to them like this; never in their lives had anyone ever spoken about them like this. 

Jesus had every confidence in them. Jesus knew that they had a light shining inside them, just waiting to come out. It was the light of God, and in that light they could do good things, like Jesus did; and he would teach them and help them and show them how.

Jesus presented Simon and Andrew with a choice. He gave that choice to everyone listening to him on that hilltop. The choice to keep hiding their light, or to let it out and let it shine. 

It must have sounded very similar to these people to something recorded in their scriptures, the choice that God gave the people of Israel after he’d led them out of captivity and prepared them to enter a land of promise, a place of new beginnings. Through Moses God spoke these solemn words to them:

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days.”

The choice to live – to live in the light of Christ – is our choice moment by moment.  

Now, this may mean that we need to give some things up, as Jesus taught. And this may not come easy to us, living, as we do, in such an acquisitive society. But God wants his people to know the greater blessings there are in obeying him, to know that obeying means pursuing life and good, it means that we “become participants of the divine nature.” [2]

The Quaker George Fox once said, 

“This is the word of the Lord God to you all, and a charge to you all in the presence of the living God: be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.” [3]

Choose Life: let your light shine!

Notes

[1] This talk is an extension of an address I gave to the children of Austwick CE VA Primary School at my first Collective Worship of the new school year, 4 September 2025. “Let Your Light Shine” is the school vision. Austwick CE VA Primary School, Vision and Values.

[2] 2 Peter 1.4.

[3] George Fox, Letter to ministers, 1656. Quoted in Quaker Faith and Practice, 19.32.

The Flag of St George is a sign of welcome

Austwick Parish Newsletter, September 2025

When Revd Al Barratt, vicar of Hodge Hill, Birmingham, heard that a protest was planned outside a local hotel accommodating asylum seekers, he said, “My first, bodily, response was to feel sick. My second response that closely followed, in my guts but also in my head, was that we, the local church, needed to do something.”

In his Substack, ‘Loving our Neighbours when the Flags have Gone Up’, Revd Al describes, with refreshing honesty, his congregation’s modest attempt to respond with care and solidarity for to the hotel staff and residents; to offer their church as a place of welcome and sanctuary; and to engage positively with the protesters (“some local people… under whose anger lay just the kind of struggles and fragilities that we knew all too well from our community-building work… People feeling deeply unsettled by a world changing around them, and with little agency or power to do anything about it.”) Wearing hi-viz jackets with ‘Peace Chaplain’ on their back, the church volunteers walked among them offering them cupcakes and flowers, and flyers saying, “You are all our neighbours (Both outside and inside this hotel.) We are from the local Christian community (Church of England). We love you. God loves you. We believe in, and are working for, a local community where all are welcome, all are valued, all are listened to, and all have what they need for a decent life.”

Revd Al’s article is a fascinating read (https://substack.com/home/post/p-172087759): and it illustrates a truth that The Bishop of Oxford, The Rt Revd Stephen Croft describes in his ‘Open Letter to Nigel Farage’, published at the end of August: “The British people, as I understand them, want public policies founded on the deeply British and Christian values of compassion and care for those in need….”

I’d recommend Bishop Stephen’s full letter. It is a thoughtful and clearly stated affirmation of positive Christian values brought to bear on the complex issue of immigration (https://blogs.oxford.anglican.org/an-open-letter-to-nigel-farage).

I’d also recommend Horatio Clare’s ‘We Came By Sea: Stories of a Greater Britain‘ (Little Toller, 2025), “an untold story of the small boats crisis, a story which shows the best of us. It is the story of the volunteers who help thousands of refugees in Calais, of the lifeboat crews mounting one of the great search and rescue operations of all time, of an unrecognised, uncelebrated, all but unknown Britain which is giving its all to help the vulnerable and desperate. It is a journey through an unexamined nation, a nation which is as truly great and good as the people in the dinghies believe Britain to be. It is not the story we have been told, and it is a true story.”

Through reading Clare’s book I’ve realised that new arrivals in the country regard the flags of St George and the Union Flag as signs of welcome, friendship, new beginnings. Those nearing the end of their precarious journey across the Channel, increasingly fearful of their boat capsizing, delight to see that flag on the Dover rescue boat because they know that means they’ll make it safely to land. Beneath that flag they are welcomed with a generous sausage fry-up by volunteers at the reception centre; to those seeking safety that flag represents a country which, they believe, will receive them with kindness. Which, on the whole, it does. For when push comes to shove the refugees believe, and we know, that the majority of people will show “the deeply British and Christian values of compassion and care for those in need” which Stephen Croft described in his letter.

The flag of St George flown from our churches is a sign of welcome. At its heart is a cross, which is the sign of sacrificial self-giving for the sake of others, a sign of love and care especially for those most in need.