A conduit of grace: spirituality and social justice

This pastoral reflection finds its inspiration in a famous prayer often attributed to St Theresa of Ávila:

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours.

Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.

Christ has no body on earth but yours. Of course, it is a fabulous prayer and a great call to action to join in the great work of God in the world. But it does place the onus on the worker of compassion and seems to limit the grace of God to our fragile and fallible flesh, placing us in positions of power over those Christ comes to save. Surely God’s saving action in our world is not reliant wholly on us? Some would argue that it is, and that it is the exclusive commission of his Church. But as a Canon Missioner, I would like to argue that it is not. God works in our world regardless of and often despite our best efforts to contain him. The ministry of the Church, especially in regard to social justice, is to see where the living water is flowing and to join in as channels and conduits of grace.

But before we jump in and start dictating how and where and why we perceive God to be working, we have to sit on the dry land for a while and ask the question: what is God doing in the way of social justice? How and where is God revealing his saving love within our world? What are the hallmarks of grace and how can we be conduits rather than dams to his living water? We need to enter that contemplative sphere of listening and openness to God’s grace ourselves, especially listening to stories of encounter, acceptance, forgiveness, belonging, gratitude and transformation. I would like to suggest that these six key elements shape the spirituality of social justice and reveal where God is working in his world today.

Rather than outlining the relative meaning and analysis of each of these areas across the field of Christian spirituality and throughout history, I’d like instead to tell you a story, a true story. A story of social justice in action which reveals all these six spiritual elements and, only in hindsight, reveals how individuals and communities became conduits of grace.

The story is about a couple who used to sit in the porch of a village church where I was parish priest. They appeared one day out of the blue, never entering the church even though it was unlocked. Word came to me that this odd duo could be found daily sitting there in our lovely village church porch. They weren’t doing anything but looked a little unkempt, smelled of alcohol and carried plastic bags, and so we all just let them be.

Time passed and it became normal for this couple, or more often just the woman, to be found sitting in the porch. She would stay an hour or so and then leave. One day a member of the churchyard team was mowing the grass and happened to see her and so said hello. This began a series of encounters through which we slowly came to know her name and where she lived; nothing more. Some were curious and concerned as Sophie (not her real name) looked rather ill, with unkempt hair under a strange, knitted hat, and shabby clothes, always clutching plastic bags of bottles. She spoke very little and always refused any offer of help or a cup of tea. So, we just let her be and became accustomed to Sophie who sat in the porch.

It became normal for her to be there, especially on a Friday morning, and so in her own way she became part of our community. Throughout my ministry as a priest and before, I often have had distinctive feelings and senses, even words in my head, nudging or directly telling me to either ring or see a certain person. I’ve come to trust these intuitions because, every time I have sensed that I should contact a certain person, it turns out that there was a crucial need, and my timing has been uncannily perfect. I had such a feeling about Sophie in the porch. I intuited that I had to go and see her, and I had to go that Friday. So, I went and found her crying. We sat in the porch together mostly in silence. I asked her name and told her mine. She said she was fine and didn’t need anything. The silence was unbearable for us both, but I couldn’t leave. I knew I had to stay. Then she asked about God and what he thought of sinners. I talked about how God loved sinners best of all. She didn’t believe me but was interested to know more. I asked if she would like to meet again next Friday, and we would talk more. She agreed, and so every Friday we met in the porch for half an hour. She talked and I listened.

Gradually, over many months, she told me her story. How she lived in the village with her boyfriend. How they were both alcoholics, but he worse than her. How she had been thrown out by her mother who couldn’t get on with her boyfriend and how Friday was her day to walk to her mother’s and then she would stop at the church porch as she found it peaceful. She wanted to know more about God. So, I gave her a Bible and pointed out Luke’s parables as a good place to start. But she didn’t believe God could love her. It was then that I started to offer to pray with her – simple words of affirmation that just held in prayer all that she had talked about. This carried on week by week, month after month, until one day I found her crying again. She was desperate to tell me her whole story, a story of an abusive husband, failure at school, lost opportunities, an aborted child and high living. It was like a confession, and with the prayer of absolution a heaviness seemed to lift from her. Her heart seemed no longer burdened. Something had happened – I’m not sure what – but from then on everything changed. Her boyfriend had been given only months to live if he continued drinking, but, if he gave up, he and Sophie could access the medication they needed to break the addiction. Could they do it and keep clean long enough for the GP to prescribe them what they needed? Every Friday was another week down until at last they made it.

Sophie wanted me to meet her boyfriend, whom I shall call Daniel. He sometimes came on a Friday, and then one Sunday they came together to church. The two ‘porch’ people were now well known by sight and loved by this little community, and everyone was delighted to see them sitting at the back, leaving before the end, but still there. More weeks passed and the smell of alcohol left, and Sophie started to help in the local community hub.

Then one Friday, Sophie and Daniel met me in the church – which is where we had moved to as the weather got colder – and asked if I would marry them. They were scared I would refuse because Sophie’s relationship with Daniel had caused the breakup of her marriage. But who was I to allow church politics to stand in the way of compassion, to stop the work of God in healing and saving these two lives?

There are many stories like this, some involving the Church and others not, but dig deeper and you will find that so often they contain those six spiritual elements to a greater or lesser degree which we find here: encounter, acceptance, reconciliation or forgiveness, belonging, gratitude and transformation. So let us consider them a little deeper and how they interrelate with each other.

The first, encounter. Encounter is crucial but it can be hard and scary to encounter the other. It is why we need those missionaries of optimism to pave the way, those who have sat on the side of the other and know how to bridge our gaps of preconceptions – people who have the grace of introduction and breaking down barriers.

Then comes acceptance. We can accept another superficially, but it takes time, an unfolding of story and deepening of trust, to accept another just as they are. This is not about one-way acceptance of the provider to the clients, but a mutual acceptance of two individuals that leads from encounter to relationship through the unfolding of personal stories and more – just the acceptance that God may care and love everyone. For many, ourselves included, one of the crucial elements of this storytelling is that of unburdening. The Church is often seen as having a monopoly on confession and can wield a stick of judgement alongside the grace of forgiveness, but at the heart of Jesus’ ministry is a constant forgiving, healing and releasing grace that releases and unburdens sinners from their past and renews that relationship with God and others that lies so much at the basis of social justice.

The fourth element – belonging – is borne from relationship and acceptance. We often believe that we are on a mission to enable the vulnerable and outsider to belong to the Church as if we were a club of the saved that needs new members. But, the grace of belonging is more than tribalism or church numbers; it is about how we belong to each other and how God belongs to us as one of us, and we belong to God as his children within the community of the Trinity.

From this grace of belonging there naturally flows the fifth element of gratitude – gratitude for one another, gratitude for created order and gratitude for the work and the grace of God in all our lives.

Finally, over a long period of time, God’s time, we come to see how God gradually transforms so that what is broken becomes whole, what is wounded is healed, what is isolated becomes included, what is lost is found. This work of transformation and salvation ever continues as rain falling across the land. It is our privilege and calling to, in our own way, become conduits for that grace so that prayer is love in action and love in action is service.