Today is Safeguarding Sunday. Just to be clear at the outset, safeguarding is in essence responding,
hopefully well, to situations of abuse that we either witness or come to our attention. Abuse can be
of children and vulnerable adults. Each church is required to have a safeguarding officer, in our
case, Alun Williams.

Today, as I have said, churches are encouraged to keep this Sunday as Safeguarding Sunday. The
events of this past week have surely sharpened our awareness that safeguarding is a serious matter:
the report on the horrific abuse meted out by John Smyth and the resignation of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. So on this particular Safeguarding Sunday, where do we start and what do we say?
A good place to start is where we are right now and what we are doing. We are celebrating the
Eucharist. The Eucharist (meaning thanksgiving) is the defining act of Christian worship and life.
The Christian community is called both to celebrate the Eucharist (which means thanksgiving) and
to live eucharistically (which means thankfully).

What does this involve? Listen to what a famous early 20th century Anglican woman has to say. Her
name was Evelyn Underhill.

‘The Eucharistic life is the clue to all real existence … It is concerned
with the mighty realities of evil and redemption, death and life. The more deeply the soul enters into
the great movement of the liturgy, the more this truth is experienced.’

The Eucharist is one great act of prayer.The Eucharist is prayed by a body of people who claim to be
the body of Christ. The Eucharist is a transformatory act of God accepted in faith. Each of these
aspects is directly relevant to safeguarding.
Let’s take them one by one.

First, our praying.
Safeguarding Sunday makes us aware that the abuse of vulnerable people, children and adults is a
tragic feature of our society. More than that, as we have recognised to our shame, it occurs within
the church. The victims of that abuse rightly shame us.

Christianity does not close our eyes to evil. ‘Deliver us from evil’ is one of the petitions of the
Christian family prayer, the Lord’s Prayer. We cannot faithfully pray this prayer unless we
acknowledge evil. ‘Deliver us from evil.’ The abuse of children and vulnerable adults is one form of
evil. Father, deliver us from child abuse, from psychological abuse, we might also pray. Father,
deliver us from sexual abuse, and from spiritual abuse.

If we pray like this, as surely we must, we have our eyes opened to two facts: the nature of abuse
and the possibility of abuse in our midst. Current safeguarding training has done much to alert us to
the spectrum of abuse. The John Smyth case which has caused the Archbishop’s resignation is an
example. It was a combination of physical abuse for sexual gratification, psychological and spiritual
abuse. The cruel punishments he meted out were, he claimed, God’s punishment. That’s spiritual
abuse, which is the distortion and manipulation of Christian teaching for selfish ends.

Having our spiritual senses made aware of evil also shows us that abuse is a possibility in our
midst, in the communities where we live and the churches in which we worship. It is dangerous to
think, ‘Oh, that could never happen here!’ Jesus teaches us quite clearly about the human condition:
‘For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these
evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’ This is the human condition. We are a
human community. Abuse could happen here.

In our church we have these handy safeguarding cards. They make some simple bold statements
about why safeguarding is important and what we are to do. Michelle has suggested that all
members of our congregation might have one. The card talks plainly about ‘the challenge of
preventing abuse’. Later in this service we shall all pray the Lord’s Prayer. We shall ask our Father
to ‘deliver us from evil’. This prayer is a request for grace that we may be strengthened to play our
part in meeting ‘the challenge of preventing abuse’.

Let’s move on to safeguarding and how it links to ourselves as a body of people, in fact the body of
Christ. The card says this:
The Gospel speaks of welcome for all, especially the most vulnerable, into a Church which affirms
the value and dignity of every human, and [where] those in positions of responsibility and authority
are truly trustworthy.

God welcomes all and longs for each and every human being to come to the fullness of life. So does
the Church.

Jesus says in John’s Gospel, ‘I have come that you may have life, life in its fullness’
(John 10.10). The Church must welcome all and seek for them the fullness of life because it is
Christ’s body. To do otherwise would betray our baptism. But this openness makes the Church
vulnerable to those whose intent is malign. So, the card goes on:
Being faithful to this therefore compels us to take with the utmost seriousness the challenge of
preventing abuse from happening and responding well where it has.

We might be tempted to think that responding well is someone else’s responsibility, the Vicar’s, the
Safeguarding Officer’s. Of course, those in positions of authority have a special responsibility, but
not a sole responsibility. A church community that is truly both welcoming and safe is one where
everybody bears responsibility.

The card goes on to read: ‘If you have a concern about an individual’s physical sexual or emotional
well-being it is your responsibility to seek advice and support from your Parish Safeguarding
Officer.’

The New Testament is quite clear that the Church, Christ’s body, is a community where each has a
concern for each. St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians chapter 12 is the classic text. It is too long
to quote in full here. But it concludes with this: If one member suffers, all suffer together, if one
member is honoured, all rejoice together. The health of the body of the Church is marked by
genuine mutual care and concern. It is pastorally concerned and pastorally aware. This Sunday we
set safeguarding firmly in that context of mutual pastoral care.Safeguarding and praying; safeguarding and the Body of Christ. Finally safeguarding and the transforming power of the Eucharist.

There have been calls in the press and elsewhere for the Church of England to change. I am sure that safeguarding processes in the Church can be improved. But real change is a matter of the Spirit. The contemporary Christian writer Richard Rohr says this,
‘Only people of the Spirit actually change things, the rest of us just rearrange them’.

But we are in fact the people of the Spirit. At our baptism and our confirmation we received the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit transforms us into the likeness of Christ. Each of us, and all of us together are in a
divinely led process of spiritual transformation. This not only changes us, it changes people and the situation around us. The Holy Spirit can change us into a people who are a safe Church who, in the
words of the safeguarding card, are ‘responding well’ in matters of safeguarding.

Our praying, our identity as the Body of Christ and the reality of our fellowship in the Holy Spirit
invite us, challenge us and enable us to be a safe church.

Service: Canon Bill Croft. 17th November 2024. (St John The Baptist Church Peterborough UK)

Readings: Daniel 12.1-3; Psalm 16; Hebrews 10.11-14 (15-18); Mark 13.1-8