Thought for the Week – St Martin-in-the-Fields

This week St Martin’s marks Homelessness Sunday, aptly coinciding with the Third Sunday of Epiphany which takes as its theme the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.

For the ‘church of the ever-open door’, which has long been associated with outreach to those on the edges of society in the heart of London, Homelessness Sunday has a particularly strong resonance. Matthew 25: 35-40 emphasises Jesus’ core teaching that we should feed, clothe and welcome the ‘least of my brethren’, and the need to do so has never been more acute than today.

Housing Justice, which was formed from the organisations which worked together to initiate Homelessness Sunday in 1993, estimates that there are 3,898 people sleeping on the streets per night in England, a 120% increase since 2010, and 324,990 households were assessed as homeless according to the latest figures from 2024.

However, anyone who lives or works in London doesn’t need statistics to see the scale of the problem. At St Martin’s we are fortunate to be part of a community which through its own outreach and advocacy work including the International Group and the Vicar’s Relief Fund, and the invaluable services provided by The Connection, does so much to seek to help those experiencing homelessness, as well as to influence national policy in a way which will tackle the systemic problems that cause people to become homeless and prevent them from receiving the necessary support.

Homelessness Sunday provides an opportunity to reflect on what else we can do to support this work, not only financially, but also through the giving of time and heeding the call in Proverbs 31: 8-9 to: ‘Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves’ and ‘defend the rights of the poor and needy’.

Matthew Morrison

Over the Christmas holiday I read a book about the partition of India, Freedom at Midnight, by Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre. Of the four main players in the final act, three were strongly opposed to partition. They all feared the bloodbath that could follow dividing India into two countries. One of these, of course, was Gandhi. When the boundaries of India and Pakistan were revealed, the result, as predicted, was technically feasible – practically a disaster. Everyone expected the worst of the bloodshed would be in Calcutta. Gandhi, therefore, went to Calcutta, to persuade the city’s Hindus to become protectors of the city’s Moslems. The miracle of Calcutta’s peace, whilst the Punjab tore itself apart, lasted till the end of August. When two Muslim day labourers were murdered by Hindus, the 78-year-old Gandhi began a fast until death. Within 72 hours, peace was restored to Calcutta. Hindu, Sikh and Moslem leaders of the city solemnly promised Gandhi, ‘We shall never allow communal strife in the city again and shall strive until death to prevent it’.

Sam preached a sermon in October, What does it mean to be a Christian?, in which he quoted Michael Curry, then presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States. ‘If it doesn’t look like Jesus, if it doesn’t love like Jesus, if it doesn’t care about others like Jesus…it may well not be Christian.’ If, as Sam argues, ‘Christian’ should be defined not by cultural heritage or personal identity but by the concrete action it yields, then I would say Gandhi’s actions were Christian.

My prayer for 2026 is that leaders in the world today who, whatever religion they follow, by culture or personal identity live that sense of Christianity.

Wendy Quill

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