The fifteenth day of Lent: Indifference

“We are called to be more than this. 

We are better than this. 

Britain is Greater than this.”

So tweeted the Bishop of Kirkstall this morning. This refugee thing bothers me greatly. There are parts of this country which do “them and us” well. And worse, we don’t care about “them” - “them” equal nobodies - and maybe even worse we pretend “they” don’t exist. They used to produce comic cartoons of the government lecterns during Covid. Shudderingly, this is a genuine picture taken prior to yesterday’s statement by the Prime Minister. 

Don’t get me wrong - there is a problem - but we risk not caring about those who have no other choice but to run and sail to protect their lives. The stranger and the refugee and their care are at the heart of strong religious ethics. 

Here’s the Bishop of Durham’s take on this:

“We must not abdicate our legal and moral responsibility to some of the world’s most vulnerable by simply treating asylum seekers as a group not to be welcomed or integrated, but detained and returned. We must do and be better.”

I’m not going down the Gary Lineker line of saying we are acting like Nazi Germany but we are in danger of being indifferent to real suffering. We cannot label everyone as “them.” We need to remember “they” are real people. Sadly we can turn all GB News about “them” if we aren’t careful. 

Of course, we’ve always been indifferent to suffering and want to shut our eyes and hearts to it as we don’t have time or energy to get involved. It was no different with Jesus on the cross. We sent him and “them” to a rubbish dump outside the city wall to die painfully and alone. It’s an attractive thing in his story he is part of “them” a lot - a refugee as a child, outside of religious respectability, a mixer with undesirables, condemned to die as a rebel.

But that doesn’t excuse us when we don’t care today as we crucify him again when we treat God’s children as less than human. Today, the Church remembers Geoffrey Studdart-Kennedy. He was a much loved priest and poet and chaplain in the trenches of World War One. As we ask for forgiveness when we quickly cast people aside or we want a sugary sweet “me only” world, let’s remember our indifference also forsook Christ… 

When Jesus came to Golgotha
They hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet,
And made a Calvary.
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns;
Red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days,
And human flesh was cheap.

When Jesus came to Birmingham,
They simply passed Him by;
They never hurt a hair of Him,
They only let Him die.
For men had grown more tender,
And they would not give Him pain;
They only just passed down the street,
And left Him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried, “Forgive them,
For they know not what they do.”
And still it rained the winter rain
That drenched Him through and through.
The crowds went home and left the streets
Without a soul to see;
And Jesus crouched against a wall
And cried for Calvary.