Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 1st December 2024

Dear Friends,

At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, chapter 21, we read:

Looking up, he (Jesus) saw rich people putting their offerings into the treasury; and he noticed a poverty-stricken widow putting in two small coins, and he said, ‘I tell you truly, this poor widow has put in more than any of them; for these have all put in money they could spare, but she in her poverty has put in that she had to live on.’

This story came to mind as I was reflecting on recent ministry about seeing others and noticing their contributions to the community. I wonder whether the widow in the story realised that Jesus had seen her. Maybe Jesus spoke to her, let her know that she had been seen. What might he have said? Was she pleased to have been seen? Or did she hope nobody would notice her embarrassingly small offering?

We’re re-thinking ways in which we at Lewes Meeting might improve pastoral care, and at our recent meeting to discuss the issue, we realised that organising good pastoral care in a church community is challenging. One way in which we can all contribute is to grow in seeing others and their contributions to the community as well as their struggles. If we were all alert in this way (and I’m the first to admit to a need for improvement), and ready to take appropriate action when we see an opportunity to offer affirmation or support, the pressure on whatever structure we devise would be reduced.

The other side to this concept of seeing is being seen. Do we actually want to be seen? And I don’t mean simply that we want to hide our worst behaviour – I mean the tendency many people have to avoid attention, particularly affirming attention, on themselves. Maybe we have learned, for whatever reason, to feel bad about ourselves.  So our immediate reaction to praise or appreciation of ourselves or what we do, is to say something negative about ourselves and change the subject as quickly as possible. I’ve known people who would say, ‘Oh it wasn’t me, it was the Lord’ in a rather pious way of avoiding taking any credit. Which is likely to put the person who has seen them off from bothering in future.

So it matters not only that we see one another but also that we are open and willing to be seen. None of which will happen easily unless we are prepared to take the risks – the risk of speaking up to others about what we have seen, and the (perhaps even bigger) risk of allowing ourselves to be seen.

One opportunity to know each other more deeply and develop trust in one another so as to grow in seeing and being seen is in small groups like our Circles, so it seems to me that whatever structure we come up with in our deliberations, the opportunity to meet in smaller more intimate groups will probably be part of it.

Pat Price Tomes

on behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (David Hitchin, Chris Lawson, Tim Pitt-Payne, Caroline Pybus, Theresa Samms and Nancy Wall)