Safeguarding Sunday
“Jesus said to his disciples, ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. ”
Overview
We have a great Diocesan Safeguarding Team, excellent Parish Safeguarding Officers (Nicola and Zoe) and all of us who volunteer or lead are required to undergo checks and receive thorough Safeguarding training; yet, as 1 Corinthians 13:1-8a reminds us, if we have “all these things but do not have love we gain nothing”.
Not all of us are called to an official role in the church but we are ALL called to love and more than this, we are commanded to love, John 13:34-35, as Jesus loves us, without exception, without limits, without partiality.
Sadly, these readings have often been used to encourage those who have been wounded or harmed by the church to forgive and forget. But love requires that truth is spoken and justice is served.
Love is a not always easy. None of us live up to the standards set down in Corinthians yet it is still the standard that, by God’s grace, we strive to attain.
Above all Jesus calls us to love the “little ones”, the poor, the vulnerable, the needy, the stranger and the outsider. These are the ones who cannot always protect themselves or speak up for themselves. We must do so on their behalf.
This is not just the job of the Safeguarding team, or the church officers and leaders, it is everyone’s responsibility. Every single one us has a part to play in learning to understand one another, care for one another and protect one another. Only together can we make our church a safe church and our community a community of love.
FIRST READING
1 Corinthians 13:1-8a
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
GOSPEL
John 13:34-35
Jesus said to his disciples, ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’
