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Caring for our neighbour

 City Missioner Chris Farrelly speaks about faith and action and engaging with our neighbours 
Chris Farrelly

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Caring for our neighbour

Transcript
Toyota, he Gloria kitty kitty. Kado pi, kingitanga katoa. To Rua. It is very colicky, originated, not Quay at the far, north in a very good time on a routine iata. Tena koutou Tena, koutou tena, koutou katoa Good morning, everyone. to acknowledge all of you here, I want to acknowledge our vicar Helen and all of you who make up this community, I want to thank you for the invitation of being here this morning. For all of my life that I can remember, Saint Matthew in the city has been for me. Somewhat distant, but very real. Very real Beacon of Hope of justice of acceptance of diversity of Courage. Of generosity. It's been a place of searching and a place of finding. And over the years, I have quietly from time to time, crept through the back door and attended a service at Christmas or Easter or some other time, I was in the city. Never ever, ever thinking that one day, I may be up here and having the privilege of actually speaking to you. And I feel most humbled and honored to be here today. And only God knows how I got here. I thank you for the invitation. And as as your vika Helena said I'm the City Commissioner. And today, it's an honor for me to speak on this social services Sunday. But I'm not going to speak on social services or social justice because if there's one community that understands it is, you you live it. You reflect on it. Preach on it, you sing on it. The words are there and they have been here for a long, long time, as are the actions The challenge of course, for us in the Christian Community, is the words are there that they're beautifully, they're written beautifully. They are sung beautifully there, preached on beautifully, but the challenge continues to be all about action. And I could, I think that is the challenge that yet, again, Saint James puts before us today our faith, without the actions that go with us with, it is dead. A few weeks ago I attended a beautiful service here where fire waiata spoke and she put before us a fuck at okey here. Heart him in Nuit. What is the greatest hit tongue? Gotta hear tangata here, tangata. It is people. It is people. It is people and there's a second part to that fucker Toki here. Ha two.hoorah he What is the pathway? You DOMA. Eat a Tikka, the porno material Doha. It is doing what is right. With integrity. and with compassion, it is doing what is right with integrity and with compassion, And that word integrity is the one that can trip us up. For integrity demands congruence between our words and our actions. The matching of the written, the spoken, the preaching, with what we do? the issues that challenge us today and call us to action are complex And many. And for many of us, they're all much almost too much to daunting. How often do we hear people say to us? I can no longer watch the news. I can no longer read a newspaper. It's just too much. Too heavy too daunting. These are not just issues of Faraway lands of refugees and war and violence their issues. Right? At our very doorstep in our own country. and we as a community are shocked, that in our own land and our own Community, we have such levels of violence of any quality of poverty of desperateness of homelessness, It can become too daunting. We're gifted today to have many great women leaders in our world. And one of these was a woman is a woman called Mary Robinson. And Mary was the president of Ireland, first woman president of Ireland in the mid-90s, remarkable leader of that country, which transformed the presidency from as just a ceremonial title position to one that challenged just issues around Justice and was Little Wonder then that Mary Robinson became the UN commissioner for human rights up into the mid 2000s. And was in her own way. A courageous a Beacon of Hope, courageous woman. And I was remember, I was watching her being interviewed some years ago, on BBC, hardtalk and had stalkers are fairly, you know, kind can be kind of a brutal type of a interview. And the interviewer looked at her and said, Madam commissioner? You've got War. You've got refugees. You've got displacement and violence. Poverty, all over the world. What's the answer? What's your answer to all this? You've been on the road now for six years. What's the answer? And she just looked at him and said, the answer is speak to your neighbor. What? Just talk to your neighbor, it sets simple. Now, I think he expected some long economic trustees, somehow. We got to change systems that cause this and that, and the other thing, and she bought it right down to us, you and me where we live, and how we relate with our neighbor. Whoever our neighbor is and whoever no matter how different they are, get to know your neighbor. Listen to your neighbor, understand your neighbor, speak with your neighbor, break bread with your neighbor. Very simple really. But can you imagine if that was happening right throughout our land and our world, we would perhaps have a different world and a more peaceful world. So we are challenged here, always to say, well, who is my neighbor? And that was the challenge before us a few weeks ago and Good Samaritan Sunday, who's, who's my neighbor? And each of us does reflect on that, who is my neighbor. But I ask you today as a community, Saint Matthew in the city, who is your neighbor? Well, I am your neighbor. I am your neighbor right next door. The Auckland City Mission is your neighbor. We share, not only a physical proximity and a boundary and thank God is no boundary fence. We share common values. A common Anglican heritage. We share space, we share people. Deacon. This morning, Linda works here and works with us during the week as does wealth as do others. When I started my role as the city missioner, a couple months ago, it was in this place that I was formally welcomed with an amazing pool 40. And just on Friday. It was in this church that we buried one of our long-term Street. He's poorly in a beautiful and very moving ceremony here where many many Street people and homeless people could come in and feel at home. We share a lot in common and so today I want to just stand here if I did nothing else today. Nothing else is just to look at you and reach out to you and to Helen and all of you and say thank you for talking with us, for crossing the boundary for becoming part of or from the very beginning for being part of the Auckland City Mission. One of the first things I did when coming here was meet with Helen and I committed myself as a missionary to her that we will be good neighbors that we will not only talk together. And get to know each other and break bread together. We will do things together. We will translate the rhetoric into action There's huge potential for us here. Saint Matthew in the city, and the Auckland City Mission, right next door to work closer together, and to be an even brighter Beacon for our city. And I look forward to that. With only seven weeks in the job. I can hardly stand here today and claimed to speak from a lot of experience. As Auckland City Mission are still very wet behind the ears and I'm going to use the excuse that I know nothing that I'm new to the job for a long time to come. but as you do, when you go to a new place, whether it be a new country, or a new job or a new house or a new community, you notice things And after a while you stop noticing the things, you notice first actually become the norm and life goes on. And so, it's always very important to note. What? You notice, first of all, when you come to a place, and I've noticed a lot in the last few weeks and there are three things I'd like to share to YouTube with you today of what I have noticed and what I note My first observation comes from the concept of the theme that those of us who are working on the edge, on the margin in areas of justice and peace and anti-violence and anti-discrimination. We are a group of companions on a journey and the word companion in itself is so evocative. You hear it in the Spanish company arrow and you know, it comes from the Latin calm pan share bread. Sharing bread with the beautiful word companion to share bread with the other on the journey. So, this group of companions who work in that fairly dangerous, often misunderstood hard place, whether it be in the Christian church or in society in general, the area of challenging, Injustice, and inequality. And inequity, what I have noticed is that we are burning ourselves out. I am noticing tiredness I'm noticing weariness and I've noticed us for a long time. I noticed the same thing in my career in health. The question is, do who cares for the carers? Do we care for each other as carers? Sometimes we're so focused on the job or the mission or the task that we forget that we too are human beings and need caring for And so I am noticing a need for us, particularly involved in areas of great stress and distress and violence, and hardship to stop and perhaps care a little more for each other. Who cares for the carers? How do we care for each other? When we work in these tough areas? How do we do it? That's a question I leave more than an answer. My second observation comes from what's best captured for me by a quote from the French philosopher. Albert Camus. Who said in the midst of winter? I discovered an invincible summer in the midst of winter. I discovered an invincible summer We not only have a seasonal winter at the moment. We have another form of winter in our community, the winter of poverty homelessness. Violence break up, just winter of discontent. That causes us such Such displays such disturbance such unease, such anger. We caught up in it. But in the midst of this winter, we also see something incredibly beautiful and hopeful. And so I've been at the Auckland City Mission. Now, just for some weeks and my friends, and people say, to me, all you must be finding quite disturbing seeing all that homelessness and poverty, or that hunger or that break up. And I look at them and I can and I look at jerking off to honestly, say what I have noticed, most is not that it is the other side, it is the generosity, the beauty, The Compassion, the care, the concern of people, It's amazing. It's wonderful, it's beautiful. And we can be proud that we still live in a compassionate community and without a doubt, it is in. Oftentimes, it's in our hardest times that the best of us emerge. I'm sure many of you have read, Victor Frankel's Man's Search, for meaning that in even in the harsh, German prisoner of war camps, great, generosity and heroism. Just and we see this in this space that we work in and your clan City Mission Inn where it is desperate and it is hard but we are privileged to see generosity on a huge scale. Daily, I see it. Hundreds and hundreds of people wanting to help helping hearing children bringing in home, baking Chinese Buddhists preparing a meal, a high court, judge quietly, packing in our distribution center music. Musicians, coming in and playing artists and Potter's coming in and assisting people to discover the artist Within It goes on and on. So that's my second observation in the midst of winter. We certainly do have an invincible summer. and my third observation is, We do have a very serious situation. Let's not gloss over it. Let's not say there is no crises let's not say our it will pass. New Zealand is in a very serious situation at the moment in terms of equity and inequality, the gap between those who have and who have not is growing and growing and thus, the plight of those who have not is becoming more desperate And we see that on a daily basis. And we see the growth incredibly disturbing. The numbers of homeless on our streets have doubled in the last two years. The Auckland City Mission gives out a lot of food every day to people all over Auckland through our distribution center packages of food, family packages to fear, family of four for four days, thousands upon thousands of these go out during the course of a year. And we've just tallied up the distribution for the last 12 months. And in the last 12 months, we have given out 25% more. Packages than we did last year. That's a growth of 25% in one year. And what we are noticing is that in there was a time when these were emergency packages to tied, a family over for a few days, when something had happened. But they no longer emergency packages for many of our community, they are required to sustain themselves on a weekly basis. And many of those people are working. They're working. Such as a state of our minimum wage in this country. And I know Saint Matthew in the city, is at the for of trying to bring forth in our country, the concept of the concept, and the reality of a living wage. Our so-called minimum wage is in itself an injustice. It only takes one thing to happen. One car to break down or warrant of Fitness or a doctor's appointment or a school trip, and there's nowhere else to go and where do we go? Where do many of our people go? They go to these loan sharks who circling the streets. An observation is that we as a community must look at new ways of giving microfinance to people at a very low rate because just a couple of hundred dollars that's needed, can in the end become thousands of dollars upon interest and lead people to be on the streets. So we do have a serious problem. But in the midst of it, all we do have an invincible summer. We are companions compañero on the journey, and we share bread together. This is a wonderful place to come and share bread. It's a wonderful place to be nourished. That's a wonderful place to care for each other. And as I continue or really commence my mission next door, I'm very conscious that I am your neighbor and I'm conscious of the potential ahead of us to continue this journey together nor data Tina Coto Tena koe toe and my Nike gear kotick Ottawa.