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If you have cause to read the UK Government website ‘nidirect’, you find a very encouraging statement:

 

 ‘The benefits system provides practical help and financial support if you are unemployed and looking for work. It also provides you with additional income when your earnings are low, if you are bringing up children, are retired, care for someone, are ill or have a disability.’

 

If you have seen the film I, Daniel Blake, you may have come away with a slightly different viewpoint. It is the Cathy Come Home of the 21st century and I for one would hope that it has a similar effect in changing government policies and public attitudes.

 

In April, our Justice and Peace group at St Margaret’s, Lochgilphead, in Argyll, invited our MP, Brendan O’Hara, to discuss how the benefits system disadvantages people living in rural areas, exacerbating poverty. Our research confirmed that too many members of our community suffer increased levels of stress and anxiety in their efforts to meet the criteria demanded by the system. Failure to meet those criteria frequently leads to individuals and families without food and living with the threat of homelessness. They become rural Daniel Blakes.

 

We know that it is hard enough wherever you live to be unemployed or on a low wage, but it really does get worse when there isn’t a bus to get you to the appointment on which hangs you being awarded benefits or being sanctioned instead. For the uninitiated, being sanctioned means your benefits are stopped – possibly for three weeks, possibly for more than a year.

 

Let me give you an example. A disabled man living outside a Mid Argyll village, two miles from a bus stop, was sanctioned because he couldn’t get to the Job Centre. By the time he was contacted, he hadn’t eaten for three days. The quickest ‘official’ food parcel, funded by the local social work department, couldn’t be delivered to him for six days. The local MS centre delivered food to him, adding fresh food items to the parcel.

 

That isn’t why the MS Centre exists – it’s there to care for people with multiple sclerosis and other auto-immune conditions. But it is in the local caring ‘charity’ loop and so heard about the situation and acted. It can’t act every time there’s such a crisis.

 

The Trussell Trust provided 145,865 3-day emergency food supplies in Scotland in 2016-17. Our nearest food banks are in Oban (a 74-mile round trip) and Campbeltown (a 100-mile round trip). Public transport is thin on the ground and costs money. The food parcels don’t contain any fresh food and people can’t afford the electricity costs to cook, so pot noodles and tinned creamed rice become staples. The idea of making your own nourishing soup is nothing more than a modern fairy story.

 

A local charity, MO-MA (Moving On Mid Argyll), which provides basic household and personal essentials for individuals and families moving into a new home after a crisis, now finds that they have to add food parcels to the package.

People have to go through hoops to get their benefits. Employment Support Allowance interviews may take place in Oban but PIP interviews may be carried out in Glasgow – a 190 mile round journey on buses that don’t always fit with appointment times. People already stressed and anxious become suicidal faced with these obstacles.

 

Our faith seeks to promote integral human development. Pope Francis has initiated a new dicastery with responsibilities that include ‘…those in need, the sick, the excluded and marginalized, the imprisoned and the unemployed’. Our Justice and Peace group now hopes to work with the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and even more closely with our friends at MO-MA. And we’re hoping to make our voices heard at Westminster, whatever the election result.

A recent report has shown that Church attendance has decreased and suggests this is a crisis for Christianity. Well it might be - but it might not be.  In the past there was a tendency to go to Church for cultural rather than religious reasons. It was the expected thing to do. What we used to refer to as Christendom is certainly breaking down in our secular, multi-faith age. This means that the people who do go to Church are likely to be committed Christians who want the support of a Christian community and find Church an authentic expression of their faith. This change of circumstance was foretold many years ago by a Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, who spoke of a diaspora Church, a small but faithful Church, one that would be alive in faith and service to the world. As happens with such reports people begin to look for reasons for the decline and one given was that the Church was not seen as relevant and did not speak the language of ordinary people.  I agree with this and think the Church has much to learn but my experience this Easter has been very different from the picture painted by the report.

 

In the Catholic Church the three days from Holy Thursday to the vigil of Easter on Saturday evening is called the Sacred Triduum – it’s a time for Catholics to remember and enter into the rich meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The liturgy is different from the usual Eucharistic celebrations and the symbolism gets to the heart of what Christianity is about.  The Church I attended was packed for all of these services, no decline here, and if people didn’t come early they didn’t get a seat and had to stand – as many did on Good Friday. It was heartening to join a steady stream of people making their way towards the Church. It was as though the whole area was making their way there. The congregation was made up of old, young, middle aged, men, women and children. We welcomed refugees from Syria, a couple from Uganda recently moved into the area, a newly married couple, a couple who had recently had their first baby, people grieving the recent death of loved ones – in fact we were a microcosm of the  whole of humanity with all its joys and sorrows, hopes and fears. We couldn’t be self-satisfied or feel isolated from the reality of our world which at the present time feels a very dangerous place. These liturgies were definitely communal celebrations in which the whole world was present in our hearts and prayers.

 

Part of the Holy Thursday liturgy is the retelling and acting out of the story of the Last Supper when the priest washes the feet of twelve members of the community. We’re used to seeing pictures of Pope Francis doing this, usually in a prison and this year at a high security prison for mafia informers but it happens in all Catholic Churches throughout the world.  It reflects what Beatrice Bruteau calls ‘The Holy Thursday Revolution’ when the dominating, hierarchical relationships of our society are turned on their head - when one who is the Lord turns servant, not simply to show humility but to show that those hierarchical relations don’t matter anymore. For Christians this action is seen within the context of John’s account of Jesus’ sermon before he faces his death, when he calls his disciples friends, acknowledging his intimate relationship with them. He speaks of mutual indwelling between friends as well as with the source of Life which he calls The Father – reminiscent for me of Thich  Nhat Hanh’s interbeing. We ‘interbe’ with one another, we indwell one another, we share the same life force, we love others as we love ourselves because others are ourselves. There is a mutuality and interconnectedness at the heart of life and Jesus came as one who did not just serve but also allowed himself to be served. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and an unnamed woman washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.  Perhaps this mutuality should be included in the liturgy for Holy Thursday.  

 

Good Friday brings us face to face with the horror and helplessness that comes with death. Christians follow someone who was executed as a criminal for challenging the institutions of religion and politics in that he lived out his belief in mutuality, in getting to the heart of what religion is all about, in putting people before institutions.  He’s not the first or last to suffer such a fate. It’s as though society cannot cope with truth, with justice, with compassion, with selfless service, with forgiveness.  We all know the agony of bereavement, of loss so it’s easy to enter into the spirit of Good Friday which shows us that God, however we name or image God, is present in our suffering and pain. God is with us as we face the powerlessness and helplessness of powers beyond our control. We are totally impotent in the face of the emptiness of death and bereavement in whatever guise it comes. But for Christians this is not the whole story for the corollary of this is Resurrection – new life, celebrated symbolically at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. Easter is essentially a celebration of new life, that new life is possible even in the most dark and drastic of situations, that we can have hope and offer it to the world.
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So the three days ended in joy and hope, in energy and celebration. It was a profound experience, one that brought us back to the essentials of Christianity – equality, mutuality, service, love, interconnectedness, self-abandonment and life in its fullness. Surely the world needs more of this. Religion might seem to be declining but it’s message is a powerful one and if lived out could lead to the transformation of society.   

What brings together the Union of Catholic Mothers, a group of enthusiastic sixth years and a motley bunch of J&P workers with their kids on a cold January morning?
In our parish it meant it was Homeless Sunday as we worked together to highlight the issue of homelessness in Scotland today. Nearly 35,000 people are homeless according to recent statistics.

Every year Homeless Sunday is organised by Housing Justice and Scottish Churches Housing Action. They encourage churches throughout the UK to better understand, and raise awareness about, homelessness and ask why people are still homeless in 2017. In Scotland Scottish Churches Housing Action speaks on the issue on behalf of twelve Christian denominations, including the Catholic Church. The most ecumenical charity in the country!

I’ve been musing on what it is about Homeless Sunday that can draw people together in a way that other justice issues don’t. As justice and peace workers we can often feel that we’re working on our own. In some cases that’s because we’re seen as dealing with justice & peace issues on behalf of the parish; in others it’s because issues of justice can appear complex and off-putting, while campaigns which require people to march or lobby can be daunting for those who haven’t done it before.

Maybe what’s different about homelessness is that it’s very obviously personal. We all know the value of having a home where we can close the door on the world, or invite others in for a cuppa. We can also imagine, in our darkest moments, what it might be like not to have a home. In 2012 Shelter Scotland highlighted that a quarter of Scottish families are only one pay check away from not being able to pay their rent or mortgage if they lost their income. A fact that can bring us all up short.
In Musselburgh, where we have recently started a Justice & Peace group, we have a number of members who’ve not been involved in issues of justice and peace before.
Homeless Sunday has been an accessible way for all of us in the group to get a handle on a fundamental issue of justice, and consider how we best respond. At the same time, it has allowed us to reach out to other groups in the parish and work together on an issue that concerns us all.

So S6 Caritas students from our local high school researched information on homelessness and made a presentation to the parish; the Union of Catholic Mothers sold their home baking and ran a raffle, raising funds for homeless charities supported by the parish; the children’s liturgy group talked about homelessness as part of that Sunday’s session; while our parish priest and readers made sure prayers for those affected by homelessness were included in the weekend Masses.

For the justice and peace group itself, while we produced soup and drinks after Mass for the congregation (with help from our kids of all ages) conversations about homelessness and justice happened, between ourselves and with parishioners. What does it feel like to be homeless? How can we accept a society that allows homelessness to exist? And what do we, as people of faith, do about it?
Small, thoughtful conversations that challenged the assumption that homelessness is inevitable and began to explore how justice issues can be very close to home.
Through its mixture of practical action, awareness raising and prayer Homeless Sunday has helped us take issues of justice and peace beyond our small group and into the wider parish. It reminds us that homelessness, like all questions of justice and peace, is personal and enables us to find common ground through our belief that all people are loved and valued by God.