St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A sermon preached by The Revd Bruce W. B. Jenneker in the Cathedral Church of St George in the City and Diocese of Cape Town on the Thirteenth Sunday of the Year, 1 July 2007

During the 14th and 15th centuries when Jews were being expelled from other European nations, they found a refuge in Poland where there was already a significant Jewish community. These refugee Jews found a special comfort in the name of their adopted homeland, for when they transliterated the name Poland it became the Hebrew word for 'place of rest and refuge', 'place to relax'. 500 years later the Nazis would turn that place of refuge into the death-camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka.

'Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,' Jesus said.

Today the Gospel focuses our attention on home, our place of refuge and rest, our dwelling and our security. Home – for some of us the comfort of a well-known, well-loved and lived-in house, for some the smell of bread baking and the sounds of children's laughter. In the natural order of things we are born into a family and into a place. A family that loves and provides, a place that offers shelter and security. Home, without it we don't know where we come from, without it there is no restorative place of return and recuperation. Home is the capital letter that begins the story of our lives and our days. Home is the full stop that allows us to tell that story in coherent, manageable episodes.

These last several weeks at Evensong we have been reading the account of Israel's Exodus and the long, weary journey to the Promised Land. Even as we have been moved by the promise of a homeland for God's chosen people, we have been troubled by the fact that the Promised Land had always already been homeland to others, homeland which now became occupied territory, territory taken away from them, leaving them homeless. The displacement of those indigenous peoples in God's divine economy is perplexing to us, for were they not also God's creation? Down the long centuries human history replete with its ongoing saga of the displacement of one people by another, this story of the displacement of the Canaanites to make way for the 'more chosen' Jews has been used as a warrant for territorial expansion and jingoism.

'Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,' Jesus said.

In this homelessness of our Lord, the love of God - which is the meaning of all truth and the ultimate reality of all life – the love of God became the dislocated and displaced, homeless and a refugee, a fugitive and a victim. When the love of God takes human form we do not see it paraded as the triumph of power and the pageant of majesty, not as the exercise of control and the esteem of status, not as the security of rights and privileges nor as the safety of ownership and possessions. No: Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head.

When the love of God takes human form its advent it is a stable and its end is on a cross. And in between - for as long as the love of God lived among us as one of us - it is despised and rejected, misunderstood and dismissed, a refugee, an exile, an outcast and a stranger. The love of God does not by-pass the rich and powerful, nor does it gainsay the comfortable and the secure. Rather it is they that are deaf and dumb to God's approach, blind and unfeeling, having barricaded themselves against the vulnerability that heralds love's drawing near. No, the love of God does not by pass the rich and powerful, but it does run straight to embrace immediately precisely those who are despised and rejected, misunderstood and dismissed, the refugees, the exiles, the outcasts and the strangers.

Because the love of God knows the pain of loss, the agony of displacement and dispossession, it is tenderly disposed to those who robbed of all that makes for security by acts of human selfishness and greed – for that is what they always are whether we call them war or civil strife. God in Jesus knows the keen ache of loss of home and kin. God in Jesus knows the hard pavement bed and the cold winter wet against which cardboard and plastic cannot protect.

'Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,' Jesus said.

There are nearly 40 million refugees in the world today and more than 60% of them are women and children. Many of them are on the streets of our city, some of them are at the doors of this Cathedral. Perhaps you have heard of The Suitcase Stories – a little book that tells a very big story about a programme in Johannesburg that reaches out to young refugee children. These children had all been discovered to be immune to every other kind of therapy. Glynnis Clacherty and her companions who were working with them came up with an innovative therapy concept. They gathered a pile of old suitcases and invited the children to decorate both the insides and the outsides of the suitcases. In that process these throw-away suitcases became works of art that told the poignant stories of these unhappy children, cut off from their roots, far from their parents and friends, distanced from all that is familiar and hurled into the strange, suspicious, unwelcoming places where their names mean nothing, they have less than nothing and are treated as nothing. Talking about her suitcase, one of the girls said, “This suitcase is a good memory. I want to keep it for my children so they will know what I have done and where I have been with this suitcase. This suitcase is my life.” Another refugee child said, “I am going to always take this suitcase with me. I want to go to Australia, and I will take this suitcase for my interview, because it tells my history.”

Unlike the foxes, these children have no holes, and unlike the birds of the air, they have no nests. These have been taken from them by circumstances way beyond their control. They have been robbed of a sense of security, a rootedness and hope too has been torn out of them. But they have been given a suitcase, a thing in which to carry their lives, an ordinary thing in which to begin packing an extraordinary life in process by which the beauty of both the suitcase and the life-story it tells become a thing of beauty.

A generous parishioner, who did not know that this sermon was percolating in me over the last few weeks, gave me a copy of Living on the Fence, a collection of poems written by women who are refugees in our country from other countries in Africa. I want to share one of those poems with you:

Remember me?
I am the girl you made feel worthless
the one you stripped of identity
and thought would never make it
the one you caged – remember me?

I am the girl you called ugly, the girl you despised
the girl you thought would become your slave
Remember that girl?
Remember her tiny dark face?
that tiny little body?

Well, this beautiful creature you see is her
She has uncaged her thoughts
and become a song
sung to Zama Jobe's blues
she rhymes to Tumi's beats.

Yes that one has turned into this beautiful work of art
this African queen
She's a goddess
Yes that girl – Remember?

Remember her? Remember?
Now she her – me
Remember.

The refugees on our streets are people with identity and dignity. They have a story to tell and the right to a meaningful life. Deprivation and pain they know. Insecurity and despair are their constant companions. We are the world that must welcome and care for them, provide and nurture. Some of this is advocacy work and a lot of it is generosity and kindness, consideration and respect.

But there is something else, isn't there? It is the profound recognition that for those who follow him who had no home, our home is not our home, for it is not our ultimate and lasting security. That comes from the home we make in the heart of God and with the Body of Christ. How much of a home have you claimed there in the heart of God, and here in the Body of Christ? For it is only when you are truly at home in God's heart and have genuinely made Christ's Body the Church your home, that you can make space for refugees and those who have no homes to call their own. Do you recognise that whatever gives you security day by day is in fact most fragile and impermanent – your door can be blown off its locks and hinges, you can lose you money or your health or your community. Like the Lord himself and like the refugee on the street, you and I can be homeless and outcast in the morning. Our true home is in the heart of God and our true family is the Body of Christ. Rooted in God's heart and nurtured by Christ's body, we are never homeless and never without refuge.

Though mountains rage and tremble,
though swirling waters are raging,
God the Lord of hosts is with us evermore. (from Psalm 46)

And then with that security, we are truly at home.

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