Sir Roger Moore, who died recently, will be remembered for his successful film career, notably his role as 007, James Bond. His childhood in London was by no means affluent, and he owed his success in part to the Irish film director Brian Hurst, who funded his training at drama school. In 1991 he was appointed goodwill ambassador for Unicef, the international children’s relief agency. Looking back over his life, he said: “I am perhaps best known for my role as Bond but my role as goodwill ambassador is the one I’m certainly most passionate about.” He was introduced to Unicef by Audrey Hepburn, who had special reason to support the work. She lived in Holland during the second World War, when the occupying Germans cut food supplies. The people, including her own family, suffered terribly and many died. She developed health problems because of malnutrition. Aubrey Hepburn was committed to Unicef because she knew what it meant to be a starving child in a war-torn country.
Tomorrow’s readings have something to say about caring for children, although we begin with that difficult story in Genesis where God appears to instruct Abraham to do the unthinkable and sacrifice Isaac, his only child. It is possible that Abraham represents an ancient culture that believed such an action had divine approval. (People still do bad things, believing that God approves). Scholars suggest that this event represents Israel’s abandonment of the ghastly practice of child sacrifice. The God that Jesus reveals would never require anyone to harm a child, a point illustrated in the gospel reading where Jesus commends “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple – truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” A cup of cold water – overflowing with love and compassion – the very stuff of authentic Christianity. (Since 1990, 2.6 billion people have been provided with clean drinking water by Unicef but sadly dirty water still kills almost 1,000 Third World children per day.)
In his recent book Something More, Bishop John Pritchard said: "Healthy religion is always concerned with changing society in the direction of justice, compassion and mercy. People of faith should always be involved in bandaging the bruised and picking up the broken, but they should also be asking the questions 'Why are they bruised? What made them broken?' and that places us in the field of change."
Christians should not only ask questions but provide answers as well. For example, Holy Trinity Church on London’s Clapham Common is associated with William Wilberforce and members of the Clapham Sect who campaigned in 19th-century Britain for social reform, notably the abolition of slavery. In that church, there is an old worn table on which it is said Wilberforce drafted his antislavery legislation, and to this day Holy Communion is celebrated on that same table week by week, affirming the link between the sacred and the secular, each giving meaning to the other.
“To be or not to be”. The famous words capture that sense of fragile opportunity seen in the stories of Roger Moore and Audrey Hepburn, who owed their successes, at least in part, to the generosity and support of others. St Paul writing to the Corinthians reminds us that all of us are indebted in one way or another to the goodness of others and ultimately the goodness of God.
Paul challenges each one of us: “What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?” If we accept that everything we are and have is gift then the question arises: what are we doing with it? St Francis of Assisi points the way: “For it is in giving that we receive, it is in loving that we are loved, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”