Love and grace

‘THE SPACE’ is a drop-in centre in Govanhill run by the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul.

One day a mother of nine children, in desperation, found her way to ‘The Space’.

She had been left to care for her children alone, but her biggest challenge was her young son who had severe learning difficulties and was also incontinent.

The boy could hardly walk; his shoes were two sizes too small and they hadn’t been off his feet in months. A worker at ‘The Space’ described how socks and a new pair of shoes were bought for that young boy and she told me how she had peeled off the old shoes, taken the boy’s feet on her lap and washed them clean.

While she did that the boy’s mother wept.

She wept because no one had ever done that kind of thing for her or for her boy.

She was experiencing love and grace being poured out. There were no words, but two things were true of that scene: real practical help was being given to someone on the margins of society and God was present – present in a pair of shoes and socks from Asda.

God should not be understood as some kind of puppet master presiding over good and evil in the universe – God is the presence that walks with the poor and when we reach out to lift up the marginalised and the excluded we are making God present, known and real.

That is why I am overcome by shame at the presentation of plans to set up a processing facility in the southern hemisphere for refugees and asylum seekers arriving on our shores. The Archbishop of Canterbury was right to say that the plan was ungodly. It is, and it denies us the opportunity to make the presence of God known and real in the hospitality and welcome that we provide for traumatised people who are running for their lives.

It is deeply disturbing to reflect on the thought that this policy is considered by some to be a ‘vote winner’. That is not because it puts pressure on people smugglers, but because it has the potential to keep people who are regarded by some as job thieves and spongers out of the country. This is not Britain at its best – this is populism at its worst.

There is a global refugee crisis, but the truth is that it hardly touches the United Kingdom. 85% of the world’s refugees live in the poorest countries in the world. It is simply wrong to suggest that there is a refugee crisis in the UK. Refugees made up just 0.2% of our population in 2019.

According to UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, the UK received 31,752 asylum applications in the year ending September 2020 – while Germany received155,295, France 129,480 and Spain 128,520. Turkey now hosts the highest number of refugees in the world with 3.7 million, followed by Colombia with 1.7 million.

…when we reach out to lift up the marginalised and the excluded we are making God present, known and real.

More people are on the run from war, oppression and hunger than at any time in history. But instead of dealing directly to break-up the people smuggling cartels and dealing compassionately with people so desperate that they would risk their lives and the lives of their families to a rubber dinghy in the busiest shipping lane in the world, we propose sending them more than 4000 miles to be processed as if they were a product on an assembly line.

I have never been so conscious of the connection that there is between right decisions in our political life and the right outcomes for the most desperate and vulnerable people in the world. I have never been so conscious of the link between how we treat the outsider and the words of Jesus in Matthew 25: ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’