Action on Dementia Sunderland

Isaiah 61:1-4

¹The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
    to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and release to the prisoners;
² to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,
    and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn;
³ to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
    to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
    the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
    the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.
⁴ They shall build up the ancient ruins,
    they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
    the devastations of many generations.

Matthew 5:1-12 

¹When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. ² Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

³ ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

⁴ ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

⁵ ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

⁶ ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

⁷ ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

⁸ ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

⁹ ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

¹⁰ ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

¹¹ ‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

The theme for this year’s World Alzheimer’s Month is ‘Dementia: Can we reduce the risk?’ And a growing body of evidence suggests that we can, indeed, reduce the risk of dementia, by fostering a ‘brain-healthy lifestyle’ built on the six pillars of regular exercise, a healthy diet, mental stimulation, quality sleep, stress management, and an active social life. ‘Lifestyles’ are best fostered in community. We all have a part to play. This afternoon I would like contribute to that debate from a faith perspective, being grounded in a particular faith community, seeking to serve our wider society.

Our first reading was from the prophet Isaiah. Throughout the Bible, we find accounts of people crying out to God to come and rescue them from circumstances that have become unbearable; and time and time again, we see God come to rescue his people. Isaiah’s imagination was caught up by God’s compassion for the oppressed and broken-hearted. I use the word ‘compassion’ advisedly, because compassion is always expressed in action. These words are not just fine poetry, but find expression in being sent, to bring about a change. And the change is nothing short of a transformation.

It is a vision of a community where people experience healing. Now, healing is not the same as cure. Cure has to do with physical conditions. Healing has to do with relationship. Certain conditions can isolate individuals from the community, to the detriment of both. Healing happens when such individuals are restored to community. We wait for a cure, but in transformed attitudes towards those with dementia or indeed at risk of dementia, healing can be part of our experience even as we wait.

It is a vision that recognises such honoured-and-so-healed people as ‘oaks of righteousness’. Oaks are among the most amazing ecosystems on earth, but only when they are mature. What does aging reveal, that youthful vigour is only a preparation for? What does passing through loss teach us about right relationships, that our society has yet to value?

And it is a vision of a process of decay - of breaking down - reversed: where what has been devastated becomes the very building-blocks for a good future. It speaks of a dismantling of our pride and achievement; and of a God who is then able to rebuild our lives.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus quotes these verses from Isaiah, to declare how he understood himself, as one caught up by the same vision, as the one who had come to usher-in such a community. The Beatitudes are Matthew’s version of the same declaration: an account of Jesus making the same claim in a different way. Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn – not because your condition is a good one, but because God has heard your cries and has responded. Compassion.

And this is why I believe that the Church has a role to play in shaping how we relate to those living with dementia, whether those who have dementia or those who love them. This is why I believe that even as dementia robs us of what we understand to be our personal and relational identity, God’s heart is to heal, to create something beautiful among us. And this is why – while affirming all of that – I believe that the Church as a role to play in reducing the risk of dementia; because while God has heard and responded, dementia itself is still a crushing circumstance.

So let us return to the challenge of fostering a ‘brain-healthy lifestyle’ built on regular exercise, a healthy diet, mental stimulation, quality sleep, stress management, and an active social life.

We need to remember that God has made us with a body, and that, while God will one day make our body new, we will still be embodied. Jesus said that the whole of God’s law was summed up as to love God with heart and mind and soul and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves. We are embodied, and every part of our identity is integrated. It should be no surprise that attending to – or neglecting - our heart or our mind or our soul or our strength has an impact on the other dimensions. At times, parts of the Church have struggled to hold these parts of our created being as being of equal importance; but, of all communities, the Church ought to recognise this.

And we do, albeit far from perfectly. Up and down the land, churches are increasingly creating space for exercise classes, for lunch clubs, for interest groups and opportunities to discover new things, many of these things aimed at an aging population. And then there are our worship services. The provision of old, familiar liturgies that create paths to the past, and new creative liturgies that open up paths into the future, can both play a role in stimulating the mind – and, indeed, the heart and soul and even our physical bodies.

Studies are suggesting that faith is good for us. From a Christian faith perspective, that belonging to a grounded, local, faith community; as well as the far wider Church; and an awareness of God’s presence with us by his Holy Spirit, is good for us. That it can have an impact on the quality of our sleep, and help stress management, and provide us with an active social life.

And where these things are not at present true of the Church, they can and ought to be. Where these things are not at present true of the wider society to which we belong, the Church can speak to that too; can play a part in building something that provides shelter for life to be lived, where the shelters of previous generations have fallen apart and been abandoned.

And in so far as these things are evident in our wider society, the Church can champion them. I am delighted that we can support the work of Action on Dementia Sunderland through these annual services, through prayer, and through raising awareness of your Lunch Club and network of Memory Cafés. Thank you for all you do: we honour you, and the families you support, today. I am also delighted that you are one of the Mayor’s charities this year. And I want to say to the Mayor, thank you: thank you for being an advocate for all those living with dementia in Sunderland. We know that the Council has had to cut services, including the kinds of community services that can help prevent dementia, and we understand that you have had to take difficult decisions you would not chose to take in better circumstances. But we will work together, and in a climate of bad news we will share the good news stories that connect people to hope.

Within our churches, and beyond, the God who has heard our cry and has responded is doing something. So let us join in, and let us spread the word.

Taken ... Blessed ... Broken ... Given ...

Taken … Blessed … Broken … Given …

One of the images St Paul employs in his letters, to help some of the earliest congregations of the Church to understand their new identity, is that they are ‘the body of Christ’ … Over several months, I have spent time with members of the congregation of Sunderland Minster, in the places where they are to be found throughout the week. As I watched them working and listened to their experiences, I was drawn to their hands, eyes and mouths … and to the tools that act as extensions of our hands, eyes and mouths … as well as to the ways in which the workplace overlapped with the home, and home-life spilled into work … The image that came to the fore was of the body of Christ: Taken and Blessed, as we gather together Sunday by Sunday and encounter Jesus in Word and Sacrament … and then Broken and Given, as we are sent back out into the world in ones and twos to love and serve the Lord and our neighbour … to be taken up again … At first I had intended to exhibit one photograph of each person I visited, as a means of celebrating ‘ordinarily extraordinary’ people … but as I looked through the images I had taken, the project became a series of photographs in groups of three. Like the body of Christ, these particular images are part of an ongoing work-in-progress, which will be added to over time …

the artist … Sarah

I visited Sarah at her home, where she showed me several pieces she had made, in different media. I was drawn to a pot she had fashioned from clay. The clay was scarred, and fired, and these processes had made it a thing of beauty. The pot itself was empty, a vessel, full of potential, waiting to be filled. The artist and her creation resonated with the rich biblical images of humanity … resonate with our humanity.

the solicitors … Hollie and Graeme

Husband-and-wife Graeme and Hollie work together at Hardings Solicitors, where Hollie is one of the Directors and Graeme is office manager. Hollie specialises in matters relating to Property and to Wills … our connections to place, and across time … Here professional and personal relationships are woven together … toys brought-in and left-behind by their sons … there is a sense of ‘family’ to the firm … And a commitment to justice as a universal righteous principle, and not a commodity to be bought by wealth.

the voluntary sector coordinator … Gillian

At the time I photographed her, Gillian was working for Age UK. She has since retired … Her team of volunteers made regular phone calls to elderly people at home, who might not otherwise have had that human contact. Encroaching isolation might be experienced as, to borrow a biblical image, entanglement in the cords of death. The play of hand with telephone cord suggests God’s intervention to set free … Conversely, the same action recalls another biblical image, our being knitted together by God in the womb … life, cherished …

the archaeologists … Becca and Chris

Daughter-and-father, Becca oversees a team of archaeologists, Chris volunteers on her dig … one generation serving, supporting, the next … and the past serving the present, by giving-up its stories, its wisdom and folly, offering corrective to the stories we tell in our search to be earthed … I joined them for one day, learning to patiently reveal pottery from the ground, from the ash and clay … bringing us full circle.

text and photographs … Andrew Dowsett

Workplace sermon series 2 : Feast of St Matthew

Matthew 9:9-13

Last Sunday, I introduced a five-part sermon series on work. Today, I’d like us to think about a particular aspect of work that came up again and again in the conversations I’ve had as I’ve spent time with some of you, and that is frustration. Frustration at not being able to do as much as you would like to do, to serve and to bless others through your work – often because of a bureaucratic burden in addition to your primary focus, or as a result of the cutting of funds or some other resource. And perhaps a frustration that what you do is not really understood, its value is not appreciated by others.

One of Jesus’ closest friends wrote an account of their friendship, and today we’ve read the excerpt where Matthew recalls their first significant meeting. It took place at Matthew’s place of work.

Matthew was a tax collector. Now, the people were living under a puppet-king, who raised taxes, who sat under the patronage of the Roman Emperor, who also raised taxes. It is likely that Matthew was one of the tax collectors for the local ruler rather than the imperial occupiers; but nonetheless, tax collectors were hated. Everyone knew that tax collectors took a cut for themselves – just like everyone knows that all politicians are liars, or that teachers work short days and have long holidays but still complain about their work conditions. I’m suspicious of things that ‘everyone knows’, but there we are …

Jesus takes the time to notice him. Not as a tax collector but as a person. And then Jesus makes him an intriguing offer: ‘Follow me.’

Where is Jesus going? To eat a meal. To share bread, from which we get the word companion. With other people like Matthew. People that respectable people worked hard not to notice. Only, now they can’t help but notice, and they demand to know what is going on.

One of the big ideas in the Bible is that of being a sinner. It is such a big idea that it is explored – that attempts are made to express it – in many different ways. There is wilful rebellion against God, certainly; but it is much bigger than that. A big part of it has to do with falling short of a target – of our own target as much as God’s. One time, Paul writes of his utter frustration at not being able to do the good things he desires to do, and cries out, who will set me free from this body of death? – thanks be to God, who has done something about it, sending Jesus!

And while the Bible speaks of how God transforms us so that we are drawn less and less to that wilful rebellion, there is a really positive sense to being a sinner. We see it in that short story Matthew recounts for us. It is the recognition that we are not self-sufficient, the recognition that we cannot do what we are called upon to do in our own strength. And it is those who recognise themselves as sinners who are open to that encounter with Jesus. Those who believe that they are doing just fine have no need for him. The Pharisees had learnt only to see sin in negative terms, and so it was hard for them to receive grace.

Like the other Gospel writers, Matthew took all the stories he might have told about Jesus and thought about which ones to include, and which ones he would have to leave out, and what order to put them down in. They aren’t strictly chronological. And he records the time Jesus invited him to supper right in the middle of a collection of accounts of Jesus healing people and restoring them to their loved ones, to their community. Indeed, Jesus even uses the analogy of a doctor here. You see, the grace of being recognised and of being blessed with companionship is a healing, albeit not a physical one.

We are sinners, and – whether people recognise that description of themselves or not – that is the only kind of person there is. We will always have that frustration of not being able to do all that we would like to do to serve and to bless others through our work. We know what it is like to have 10 things to do today and only manage to get 8, or 6, or sometimes 3 of them done … and for the back-log to accumulate so that we fall further and further behind. We know what it is like to get it all done, only for someone else to add number 11 to the list. But when we own our sinfulness, we also get to be saints: friends of Jesus, companions at the table, experiencing rest from our labour, experiencing the recreation that empowers us to work well and to God’s glory.

Frustration, and grace. May the one bring us to the other.

I’m going to invite Richard up now, and interview him about his experience of work. [Here followed a short interview with Richard Davison.]

Workplace sermon series 1

Philippians 2:6-11

This morning, I am beginning a five-part sermon series on work, and today we’ll explore what we might mean by work. The backdrop to the series is that I have been visiting members of our church family in the places where they work through the week. I intend to keep doing so through the autumn, and the Minster will be holding an exhibition of photographs celebrating our congregation as it is dispersed across the city – watch this space.

In the ancient world, there was a belief that the gods did what they liked, and that mere mortals were slaves, were workers. The exception were kings or emperors, who, as living representatives of the gods, as bearers of the divine likeness and partakers in the divine nature, god-like, did as they chose.

Of course, we are much more advanced today. We don’t believe in pantheons of gods, in whose image the great and the good are made. Or do we?

One of the things that has become even clearer to me as I have spent time listening to members of the congregation in work contexts is that our society has come to devalue work that does not generate money. That we find ourselves in a self-perpetuating system of slavery to money, where people are seen primarily as economic units, net contributors to generating money (high earners, financial sector) or a net drain on money (children, though they are a necessary investment; pensioners, the disabled or ill). We might be aware of a tension, in the public rhetoric of such a system, between affirming the voluntary sector as easing the financial burden and decrying the same people for perpetuating inefficiency in the machine. It seems to me that our advanced society hasn’t advanced anywhere since Pharaoh enslaved the Israelites, or the Emperor sat in Rome.

And like the Israelites, it is easy to fixate on the negative, on the problem we can do nothing about rather than look to the God who has set us free.

Let us turn to the church in Philippi. Philippi, in Greece, was an ex-pat retirement city for the Roman army, a place where those who had served the system might reap the rewards of their labours. (Not dissimilar to the English ex-pat enclaves in Spain?) It was the place of the first church Paul planted in Europe, a church composed of the household of a merchant-woman and the household of a prison governor. Their livelihoods were dependent on the Pax Romana – just as ours are dependent on western democracy and the free market economy. And Paul sends them a hymn. Paul sends a hymn, because those words that we rehearse over and over shape us, and he wants our attitude to be conformed to that of Jesus Christ.

This hymn is in fact a proclamation of the gospel, as the early church understood it: Because Jesus had faithfully represented God to his unfaithful people, God had overturned his unjust death at the hands of those who had rejected him; and had established this Jesus as Lord over a renewed people of God, composed of Jews and – surprisingly – Gentiles scattered across the Roman Empire, who would survive the imminent judgement of national Israel (this took place in AD70) and guarantee God’s ongoing intention to form a people through whom the nations would be blessed. And in the end, this servant-king would be acknowledged as faithfully representing God by all other claimants to God’s throne (in the context of the Church scattered throughout the Roman Empire, this was ‘fulfilled’ when the Roman Emperor Constantine submitted to Christ).

But what has this to do with work? Well first, in the verses preceding our reading, Paul contrasts work as a means of taking (verse 3) and work as a means of giving (verse 4). And against that backdrop, we are shown that the nature of God revealed in the humanity of Jesus is this: God is a slave, a worker (verses 6, 7). That is revolutionary. God, who does not need to work, chooses to work, to serve, to bless.

Work, then, might be understood as what we do, as an expression of ourselves, for the common good.

That might be paid or unpaid. It might be based in an office, or the open air. It might be as the primary carer of a relative. It might be, for the retired, the work of attending to community among those who would otherwise find themselves isolated – the work of keeping body and mind and heart and soul active – the work of going to the cinema and on to lunch.

Work, as what we do as an expression of ourselves for the common good. Such an understanding of work involves a self-humbling – it is for the common good – but the act of self-humbling finds us not only working for God but also working with God, partnering with the God who works to serve others in order that they might be blessed.

And in that sharing in the obedience of Christ – in the faithful representation of God’s likeness – we will also share in the liberating victory of the servant-king over the tyranny of false gods.

So what might it look like to recognise Jesus Christ as Lord over our lives, for the blessing of all people? Let me tell you some stories.

I have spent time with Liz, serving a hot meal to homeless men and women.

I have spent time with Sarah, a student of art, someone who challenges how we see the world. In shaping a vase, she reveals potential in unpromising clay. In fashioning a lightshade from plastic cups, she imagines new purpose for something considered ‘disposable’. Our society needs artists, who might tell an alternative story.

I have spent time with married couple Hollie and Graeme. Solicitors working in the same firm, Hollie is one of the directors, Graeme the office manager. Through Legal Aid, they insist that justice is a righteous and universal principle and not a commodity to be controlled by those with wealth. And yes, they live with the tension of cuts to Legal Aid and the need for their firm to provide for its family, but it is a tension they are committed to wrestling with. Likewise, they are committed to investing in the legal training path for local people. To blessing others.

I have spent time with Gillian, before she retired, at Age UK, where she has helped those considered ‘surplus to requirements’ to remain human in a society that would de-humanise them. Again, it is a constant struggle, in which we need to be reminded that Jesus is Lord.

I have spent time with father-and-daughter Chris and Becca on an archaeological dig, where Becca has been a team leader and Chris a volunteer. Our society has a very short memory, and needs those who reveal the past, who might reveal how flawed some of the stories we tell about ourselves are. It might sound like a strange way to bless a people, to tell a different story. But stories shape cultures: they can lock us in prison cells, and they can shake the prison foundations and burst open doors. At the dig at Binchester, a ring was found this summer that testifies to faith in Jesus as Lord. The political landscape has been drawn and redrawn many times since, and peoples come and go: but through the ages, God has kept his promise to secure a people for himself through whom the nations will be blessed. And we, in our turn, are part of that people.

And we take part in God’s intention in diverse ways, both together and dispersed. But as we do, we need to be encouraged, and my hope is that over this autumn, you will be. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be looking at particular workplace issues. Alongside the sermon series, there will be an opportunity to explore things further on Tuesday evenings, at a discipleship class I will be starting on the 23^rd. If you’d be interested in taking part, pick up a flyer this morning.

As we work out together what it means to be God’s new people in the world, may our attitude be increasingly conformed to that of Jesus Christ. Amen.