Thought for the week: We must ensure the growth of our churches as communities of love
It is an honour to be invited to contribute a reflection to the News Letter, following the unexpected death of Rev Dr Houston McKelvey.
Ordained in 1967, Houston gave significant public service beyond the congregations of the Church. As Dean of Belfast, he held one of the most important civic and inner city ministries in the Church of Ireland.
It was also Houston who, as secretary of the Church of Ireland Board of Education in the mid-1990s, first developed its child protection procedures. Including lines of responsibility in every parish and diocese, requirements for vetting for all engaging in ministry with children and young people, and for reporting of disclosures, allegations or concerns to the police or social services, this was ground-breaking work in its time. Revised and updated, it endures to this day. This is not a matter for complacency or self-congratulation.
The protection of children and of adults at risk needs constant vigilance. But, for his laying solid foundations for what has become established practice, the Church of Ireland owes Rev Dr Houston McKelvey its enduring gratitude.
In the Gospel that will be read in some of our churches tomorrow, Jesus says to His disciples: "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you" (John 14:18).
We think first of children as orphans, bereaved of one or both parents, but we all become orphans at some time in our lives. Orphanhood is painful. We are always our parents’ children. They have always been part of our world. The world is changed without them. We mourn and grieve. Even if relationships within the family were not as they might have been, we may wish it had been otherwise.
In Jesus’ day, widows and orphans, without a male breadwinner, were acutely vulnerable – see Jesus’ compassion for a widow bereaved of her son (Luke 17:11) and James’ comment on "true religion" (James 1:27).
Although orphanhood is bereavement of our parents, speaking after the Last Supper, Jesus knows that His death will leave His disciples bereaved of their Master and acutely vulnerable. He promises them both that they will see Him – as they did, risen from the dead – and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, within and among them.
God, the Father, who has been present with them embodied in Jesus, will henceforth be present through the Holy Spirit to those who obey His commands.
Jesus’ command is, supremely, that we love one another as he loved us, who died for us. The fruit of our obedience, the evidence of the Holy Spirit in us and among us, of Jesus’ abiding presence with us, will be the growth of our churches as communities of love – not least of one another – in which we shall find support in our own orphanhood, and in the other losses, failures, disappointments and bereavements that life brings to us all.