Sermon preached at Morning Prayer at St. Aidan's Church, Thockrington, Northumberland on Wednesday, 4th July 2018.
By Rev’d. Nigel M. Goodfellow MA
Trust Head of Chaplaincy
Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
A service to celebrate 70 years of the NHS
and remembering Sir William Beveridge.
Readings:
1 Samuel chapter 3 verses 1 to 10 – Samuel hears God’s call
Matthew chapter 25 verses 35 to 40:
For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink:
I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me:
I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying,
Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them,
Verily I say unto you, In as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
1)The story goes, or so they say,
That there was once a man, named Peter, who loved to garden …
But as he grew older, he found it increasingly difficult to keep on top of things.
He, loved to grow potatoes …
but the heavy digging needed to turn the plot over was becoming just too much.
His son, George, used to do the digging for him but he had recently had a run in with the police and was in prison.
In one of his letters to George, Peter expressed his frustration at not being able to dig the potato patch.
“Son,” he wrote, “I think my gardening days are over. The digging is too much for me … so I won’t be planting the potatoes this year. I know you would have helped … but you can’t. I miss you.”
A few days later, Peter received a letter back from George.
Thank
“Dad,” the letter read, “I am so sorry to hear that you feel your gardening days are over. I’m really frustrated that I can’t help you this year but I’m also glad that you can’t dig the potato patch this year because that’s where I buried the bodies. Miss you too.”
The next day, Peter was woken early by the sound of police vans pulling up outside the house. A group of police officers got out and the senior officer knocked on the door to explain that they had received a tip off that there were bodies buried in the garden and that they had no alternative but to dig up the garden to check.
Eventually the officer came back to Peter and said they were very sorry for the trouble they had caused but they had found nothing.
The next morning Peter, received another letter from George,
“Dad,” he wrote, “Go ahead and plant the potatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances, Love George.”
2)Whether it’s true or not … I’ll leave that for you to work out … but like all good stories … as Jesus demonstrated in the way he taught ... it is the underlying message that is important.
As George demonstrated, in that story, sometimes in life it is really important to “Think creatively” or to “think radically” or to “think outside of the box” (whichever term you are most comfortable with).
In meeting today to celebrate 70 years of the NHS and the key role Sir William Beveridge played in setting up the mechanism for its inception we are celebrating “Revolutionary thinking” at its best … for that is what it was … as Sir William himself said:
“Any proposals for the future, while they should use to the full the experience gathered in the past, should not be restricted by consideration of sectional interests established in the obtaining of that experience.
Now, when the war is abolishing landmarks of every kind, is the opportunity for using experience in a clear field. A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not patching.”
That revolutionary thinking, that Sir William championed changed the basis of British society and has enabled countless numbers of people to experience life in ways that were unthinkable before then, with as he said “the happiness of common man” as the “object of government in peace and war, not the glory of rulers or races.”
3) It took revolutionary thinking to change people’s lives and so today as we remember Sir WIlliamBeveridge ... we give thanks and celebrate his vision and his Revolutionary thinking that made the NHS possible ...
but we are not just celebrating the past today ... we are also acknowledging and celebrating what is going on today ... in hospitals, GP practices, in people’s homes and in community settings across the country ... even though it is so often taken for granted ... as a patient recently said to me ...”I didn’t realise what goes on ... how much people really care. It’s a pity you have to be ill to see what goes on day in day out.”
Sir Williams revolutionary thinking is alive and present in those places today ... where individuals continue to “think outside the box” to make a difference to people’s lives ...
be they a porter chatting to a patient about the England victory last night as they push them to x-ray and in doing so humanises the experience and puts the patient at ease ... even if it is only for a few minutes ...
or a domestic chatting to a patient as they clean around the bed of a patient and discovers that the patient is in pain but they don’t want to disturb the nurses as they have so much to do and there’s not enough of them ... so is able to tip the nurses off without making a fuss ...
or a junior doctor staying behind, yet again, to help a colleague because there’s no letup in the patients coming through the doors of the Emergency Department ...
or a consultant who devises a dialysis machine for tiny preterm babies in their garage ... in their spare time ... because nothing currently exists in the market ...
or a surgeon who takes the risk of operating on patients every day in an attempt to save someone’s life ... even though they could kill them in the process ...
You
or a nurse ... who dresses the wound, ...or brushes the hair of the frail elderly person with compassion and care ... or keeps the junior doctors right when they have just rotated onto a new ward and haven’t a clue what they are doing ... or picks up the signs of a collapsing patient and begins resuscitation ...
or a therapist who listens to a suicidal patient in their home and develops a care package that transforms their view of life ... or pushes the exercise plan for a patient beyond the pain threshold to help them regain their mobility ...
or a lab technician who pushes the boundaries of medical knowledge in the laboratories and ensures that there are valid test results available to make the best clinical decisions ...
or a secretary ... or manger ... or accountant or chief executive who makes the appointments, looks after the books, and finds revolutionary ways of meeting the targets and keeping the whole thing afloat ...
or a Chaplain who journeys with patients, relatives and staff through the good times and bad helping them find ways of coping with all that’s happening to them.
The desire to change people’s lives is alive and well and so today as we look back over 70 years we also pause to say thank you for the skills and gifts that are used ... day in day out ...to make people whole ... to revolutionise others’ lives ... to bring light into darkness and hope in despair.
4) Today ... indeed the whole 70th Anniversary celebrations ... are a great chance to look back, to think about the present and be grateful for what has been and still is ...
but any event that just focuses on the past and present runs a very real risk of becoming an empty and meaningless ritual if it ends there and we don’t think about what this all means for the future.
In response to constant questioning about what needed to be done in order to reach their full potential as human beings ... to live as members of the Kingdom of God ...
Jesus didn’t talk about obeying every letter of the law as some people believed,
and He didn’t talk about the importance of offering sacrifices, rituals and worship to gain the favour of a benevolent God as some others did ...
He was much more revolutionary in his thinking ... and suggested that the answer lay ...in creating a society in which the sick, the imprisoned and the outcast are cared for ... without that everything else he suggested was empty and meaningless.
Nothing in life remains static ... we are constantly in the midst of change ... and who knows what the future holds ... even for the NHS ... but the one thing that is certain is that there will always be a need for “Revolutionary Thinking” to ensure “the happiness of common man” and a society in which “incentive, opportunity and responsibility is not stifled”.
As Ghandi famously said,
“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members”
So as we celebrate the past and the present ... may the revolutionary thinking of Sir William be a challenge and an incentive to us ... to take up the mantle that is passed on to us ... to be revolutionary in our thinking ... to hold to account those in positions of power and authority, including those in parliament ... to ensure that going forward we do not lose sight of that vision for a society in which there is justice and peace, healing and wholeness.
Amen.
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