Freely you have received,
   freely give.”
     (Matt. 10:8)      

             You can’t have helped but notice the buzz that’s in and around Edinburgh at the moment. I’m not talking about the upcoming summer holidays, the Edinburgh Festival or even the SEC General Synod that met last week.  What I am talking about is the G8 Summit which will take place on July 2nd at Gleneagles and all the protests that are planned for that weekend.  It’s created quite a stir!  What with the doom-mongers predicting chaos on the streets, civil disorder, the city coming to a stand-still and so on it’s hard not to feel a little nervous about the prospect of up to a million people descending on our fair city in a few weeks’ time.  Thanks a lot Bob Geldof!

            Putting the scare-tactics aside, however, I personally think that all of this is very hopeful.  I think that the organizers of the Make Poverty History Campaign, for instance, are right when they say that we, in this country, have a unique opportunity these next few weeks.  Not only is the UK sponsoring the G8 Summit – the meeting of the leaders of the eight most powerful and wealthy nations on earth - but the UK government is also holds the E.U. Presidency for the next six months.  So we (and our government) really do have an opportunity to make a difference; to make a difference to the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people all across the world.  People such as the ones highlighted in yesterday’s edition of the Guardian:

“Justine Chesang, Uganda , Coffee Farmer, 35.

I am married with six children.  I am a housewife, but if I lived in a country where there is employment, I would be teaching in a secondary school.  I have a teaching diploma.

I earn a living through agricultural production: I grow maize, coffee, bananas, beans and vegetables.  I produce enough bananas for my family, the rest I sell, so I can buy necessities such as soap, sugar, salt and cooking oil.

Coffee grows very well in our district.  We harvest enough, but the price keeps fluctuating – year after year, month after month, even weekly.  When the prices drop I can’t buy the things I need.  We are getting only 1500 shillings (45p) a kilo.  We sell it to middle men, who sell it on at about 2500 shillings (76p) a kilo. [The average price for refined coffee in the UK is over 6 Pounds per kilo].

The World Bank planned debt relief to Uganda in 1998 – 2000 on the basis that the country’s export earning would increase by 6% over two years.  Instead coffee prices have fallen more than 60% in two years.”

Abiba Gyarko, Ghana, tomato farmer, 28.

My husband and I have two children.  We are small farmers growing tomatoes and maize. 

…In the market place our fresh tomatoes have to compete with very cheap tinned tomatoes from Europe and we are loosing.  The people who sell cooked food in the markets now use tinned tomatoes, and people are getting a taste for them.  European governments subsidise their farmers to produce all these cheap tinned tomatoes; its not fair competition.”

“In the 1990’s as a condition of loans and aid from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Ghana was forced to open its markets to imported tomatoes.  Since then, two of Ghana ’s three tomato processing plants have closed, pushing many of the 3 million Ghanaians who rely on tomatoes for a living into poverty.”

Sabina Nicholas , Tanzania , Nurse, 57.

“I live in Tandale, a densely populated area of Dar Es Salaam .  Water is a big problem in my life.  There are 14 people, all family, living under our roof.  We use about 10 buckets of water in the morning and 10 buckets of water in the evening.  In the past we have pipes coming to our house, and all I had to do was to turn on the tap.

But then this new water company, City Water, took over.  There were a lot of leaking pipes, due to construction of a road and new houses.  Rather than repairing the pipes, they decided to cut off the supply in some areas. Now we are forced to buy water from private vendors, which is very expensive.  My daughters leave early in the morning to buy water before it runs out.  Sometimes they cannot find water nearby and they have to walk a long distance to another area to fetch it.

…......Across Africa , aid from the World Bank, the EU and the G8 countries continues to be linked to water privatisation, despite evidence that these schemes have failed to benefit poor communities.  In May 2005, the Tanzanian government cancelled its contract with the UK based company BIWATER, City Water’s parent company.  City Water has filed a case again the Tanzanian government for breach of contract.” (The Guardian, June 11th)

I am hopeful because people seem to care, there appears to be some movement.  Having said that, I often have two reactions to such stories. 

• The first is that I have a hard time really understanding – getting my head round – the enormity of some of these issues, issues of poverty, famine, global economics and the like.       Such stories are hard to picture happening in reality.  But such places and thelives that people have to live make our own Craigmillar and Muriehouse look palatial, and Colinton and Morningside look like paradise – which, of course,in comparison they are!

“Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matt. 10:8)

• My second reaction is to sink into inert despondency, wringing my hands and saying, ‘what on earth can I, one tiny little person, possibly do about any of this!’

  With all of this in mind what does the Gospel we heard read to us this morning have to say to us?

“Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matt. 10:8)

These are simple, wonderful, terrible words.  Simple, wonderful and terrible because we have to ask ourselves, ‘what could this mean, what is Jesus trying to say to us, to me?’  Simple, wonderful and terrible because I suspect that we know, deep down in our souls, we know exactly what they mean!

“Freely you have received…”

I remember, it’s years ago now, having, what ended up I’m sorry to say, being a rather heated argument with one of my parent’s neighbours.  I can’t remember how, but we had gotten onto the subject of how fortunate we were to live in the UK .  The neighbour was arguing that all the material wealth that we enjoyed was down to our own hard work.  I was saying that, while that was certainly true, it wasn’t the whole story.  That chance and good fortune had a lot to do with it, not least of which was being born into stable family in Great Britain – which neither of us could take credit for…

Which reminds me of this joke:

There were two maggots sitting, quite contentedly, on the handle of a garden shovel, when all of sudden the shovel was picked up and carried off.  Well, it wasn’t long before both maggots were shaken off the shovel and onto the ground.  One maggot fell into a roadside gutter while the other maggot fell, quite by chance, right into the middle of a very dead cat.

Many weeks later the two maggots happened to meet up again.  The maggot who had fallen into the gutter was very thin and sickly looking, having hardly eaten at all, while the maggot who had fallen into the dead cat was sleek and very well fed.

The thin maggot said to the fat maggot, “My brother, life seems to have treated you very well since we last met.  To what do you attribute your great fortune?”  To which the fat maggot replied, “brains and personality, brother, brains and personality!”

The truth is that it’s all a gift from God.  None of what we have actually belongs to us.  Or, as Jesus put it, “Freely you have received…”

“…freely give”

For many years Michele, my wife and I, have been committed to giving a certain % of our pre-tax income away, mostly to the Church but other charities and organizations that we believe in too.  Right now we give 5% of our income away.  And we do it, not because we have to or because God said we should or because we want to feel especially pious or it’s in the ‘rules’, somewhere, but because we want to. 

We give because its part of how we live our lives as human beings as well as Christians. 
We give because we live in a world of great plenty and also tremendous need.
We give because we want to see the Good News of God’s love shared.
We give because the world is an unfair place.
We give because we are blessed. 
Because we can.

Of course, giving isn’t only about money – although that’s a very important part of giving – it’s also about our time and our talents.  For example:

Making our voice (small though it may be) heard. 
Standing up for what we know to be right. 
Praying. 
Physically helping others, if and when we can.

With the approach of the G8 Summit, and with those simple and yet powerful words of Jesus in our minds and hearts, I think that we stand at a moment of both reflection and action:

• A moment to reflect on our own blessings – all of which are gifts and all of which come from God.  “Freely you [and I] have received”

• And a moment for action:

-         A moment in history to make our mark as a nation

-         And a moment to think about our own personal response, both to these issues and to the call of God, whatever that may be for us

“Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matt. 10:8)