Doing as Jesus did

I HAD the enormous privilege of visiting a couple of partner Churches we, as the Church of Scotland, have had connections with for a very long time.

The Church of South India and the Church of North India are both growing churches in a land in which Christians are very much in the minority. Both struggle because of that and also because, in a society that is functionally framed around the caste system, the churches care for the lowest – for the Dalit and tribal communities made up of people those around them treat as ‘cheap’.

The work the churches are doing is akin to the fantastic work being done across Scotland by our Urban Priority Area congregations, only on a far grander scale by virtue of the sheer numbers the Churches in India have to deal with. Their context too, is different. The levels of poverty there are hard for us to grasp and the impact of it is felt way beyond the towns and cities, to rural villages.

The Churches in India are doing all they can to try to stand up for those with no voice and they are involved in everything from training people for work, to running schools and hospitals, clinics and colleges, to organising self help groups and credit unions for the most vulnerable in the population – that is on top of worship and all the other stuff!

Those who are the target of all these efforts are, as I say, those at the bottom of the societal pile: women and children and the unclean Dalit and tribal people. Lots of projects we saw and heard about, took our breath away – too many to outline here – but it was listening to the story of one that took my thoughts in a surprising direction.

We were hearing about the work being done with what they politely call ‘manual scavengers’. These are the people who deal with emptying sewers and septic tanks – manually. They crawl inside. Often they are killed by the gasses and always they are shunned by everyone.

The Churches, in tandem with these workers, have managed to get the government to legislate for their health and safety and while it is one thing to pass laws and another to implement them, they have made vast and positive inroads into the plight of these people. Talking to manual scavengers, caring for them and educating them when no one else would, has made an enormous difference to their situation.

And that has made those further up the social scale nervous.

This was the thought that caught me unawares. There are those in this world who want to keep people in their places. Why is that? It could simply be because that’s how things have always been and people can’t think beyond that. But it could also be that human nature being what it is, people feel threatened when those they feel superior to, stand up for themselves and demand to be treated with the same respect as everyone else.

“There are those in this world who want to keep people in their places. Why is that?

That is a sobering thought. Whether in India or in Scotland, if we are honest, there are those we don’t treat as respectfully as we should. Perhaps because they look different or speak differently, or come from a different faith or ethnic background – or simply live at the ‘wrong’ end of town.

This Lent, let’s practice doing as Jesus did. At the Last Supper, he took and washed the feet of all who were sitting round the table: his betrayer included. Jesus treated each of those there with equal respect. So should we.

The Rt Rev Susan Brown is minister at Dornoch Cathedral and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 2018/19.