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This script cannot exactly reflect the transmission, as it was prepared before the service was broadcast. It may include editorial notes prepared by the producer, and minor spelling and other errors that were corrected before the radio broadcast.

It may contain gaps to be filled in at the time so that prayers may reflect the needs of the world, and changes may also be made at the last minute for timing reasons, or to reflect current events.

Radio 4 Opening Announcement: ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4.Ìý It’s ten past eight and time to go live to the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London’s Trafalgar Square for the third in our Advent Sunday Worship series ‘Paying Attention.’ÌýÌý Today’s service ‘Learning to see’ is led by the Associate Vicar for Ministry, the Reverend Katherine Hedderly. It begins with the choir singing Graham Kendrick’s carol ‘Like a Candle Flame.’

Music: Like a candle flame (Graham Kendrick)

Katherine Hedderly:
Good morning. Advent is about preparing for two momentous events – the coming of the Christ child at Christmas, and the coming of the end of the world on the last day. If we’ve paid close attention to the form Jesus takes when he comes to us as a baby, as a prophet, as a teacher, healer, saviour and Lord, then we’ll have nothing to fear when he returns as judge and deliverer. Today we reflect on what that act of paying attention means. We look at what it means to pay attention to God, to ourselves, to those in trouble and to those the world ignores. Most of all we recognise the wonder that we’ll be celebrating at Christmas – that God pays such close attention to us. Let us pray.

Coming God, in Christ you know our secrets – our hopes and fears, our humility and our deception. Redeem our wrongdoing, redirect our distracted hearts, and turn all our energies, to you, the joy of our desiring and the sun of righteousness. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our opening hymn shakes us into a new awareness of what God is about to do among us. ‘Hark a thrilling voice is sounding.’

Music: Hark! a thrilling voice is sounding

Katherine Hedderly:
St Martin’s outreach to the homeless is well known, perhaps because homelessness is one of the saddest parts of life in the centre of London and many churches and charities are trying to help. So today, we’ll be paying attention to the homeless, and to what homelessness means spiritually and emotionally.Ìý And one thing we continue to learn is that to emerge from destitution the single most important thing is that someone pays attention to you and sees you in your distress. Here’s Stephen’s story.
Ìý
Stephen Eacups:
My name is Stephen. I work as a housing support officer in Wakefield.Ìý
I am an addict. I took drugs for 23 years. I’ve been to prison and been homeless many times. My drug-taking started when I lived at home in Scotland at the age of 15. For the next 20 years plus this was my life. It didn’t seem a problem to me going to prison; and sometimes being homeless seemed part of the way things were.

When I was 37 I lost custody of my 2½-year-old daughter and I realised I had lost control of my life and wanted to make a change.
The problem was that at this lowest point I had no self-belief – no confidence in myself, until I met some people who started to believe in me and in who I could be.

One support worker managed to get me a flat. But it was the little things I remember most. I moved into that flat late at night so we couldn't get any electricity on till the next day. The support worker remembered I liked to read so she went out and bought me a torch so I could read that night.Ìý That simple act of paying attention has stuck in my mind for 8 years and that act of kindness started me on the road to becoming the person I am today.

Once I had stabilised I volunteered for Turning Point. Eventually I gained full-time employment dealing with drugs and alcohol issues. After four years there I moved to the job I have today.

I’m now a housing support officer for Wakefield Rent Deposit Scheme, a charity formed 20 years ago through Wakefield Cathedral and Wakefield Council.Ìý We feel that the little things we do on a day to day basis like handing out food parcels and vouchers to buy fresh fruit and veg, taking someone to an appointment, or just being there to listen and pay attention to the individual can help to change people's lives for the better. We’re trying to support people as they establish themselves in a home after being homeless. Even sending a birthday card can bring a smile and make a difference as someone tries to start again.

Music: Beautiful City (from ‘Godspell’)

Katherine Hedderly:
‘Beautiful City’ from Stephen Schwarz’s musical ‘Godspell’ talks about how when trust is shattered faith can be rebuilt by close attention to details and patient understanding.Ìý Our reading speaks of how God pays close attention to people in trouble.

And then the Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, is our preacher.

Reader:
A reading from the book of Exodus, chapter 3. The angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ … Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them.’Ìý

Sam Wells:
I wonder if you’ve ever felt invisible. Maybe you’re a wheelchair-user, and everyone in the room seems to be looking past you. Perhaps you’re deeply attracted to a person and longing for them to see you but they don’t seem to realise you’re even there.

In 1879 the author Ralph, Lord Lovelace, newly bereaved, wrote to one Margaret Stuart-Wortley, proposing marriage. He concluded his letter with the words, ‘If you find yourself unwilling to accept me, will you please pass this letter on to your sister Caroline.’ Understandably she declined, as, indeed, did Caroline; but their elder sister Mary nobly stepped in.

If you’re black, and see all the jobs going to white people; if you’re homeless, and watch the busy world rush by as you seek shelter in a doorway, then you know what it’s like to feel ignored, discarded – like others assume or wish you were just not there.

And you probably know, better than most (because it happens so rarely), what it means to be truly seen. Attention means focusing all your energies on the gift of the person in front of you. It means laying aside your preoccupations, your own desire to be noticed, putting away your distractions, your texts and instant messages and plans for the rest of the day, setting down your preconceptions, projections and assumptions, and truly beholding this person in all their uniqueness and difference and complexity and particularity. It means dropping all excuses and disinclination to engage, and being truly with them.

This is how God sees us. God says to Moses, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings.’ Jesus says to the disciples, ‘Even the hairs of your head are all counted [by your heavenly Father].’ God pays attention – one psalm promises that God watches over us and neither slumbers nor sleeps. This is no faraway, distant God. This is a God whose attention is wholly rapt upon us.

But contrary as we are, having complained that no one notices us, we shrink from such close attention. We bemoan our surveillance culture, and when banks or internet search engines or government agencies pay us constant attention we call it spying. The idea that God gazes at us all the time makes us nervous, caught up as we are in our own anxiety and guilt; and quickly we project onto God an assumption of perpetual judgement and disdain.

That’s the paradox of Advent: we say we want to be flooded with God’s grace, for the earth to be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea – but when it comes down to being face to face with the overwhelming presence of God, we slink away, nervous of being judged and held to account. And even once we accept that God beholds us with loving attention, that God’s every wish is to encourage, inspire, restore and empower us, we wilfully hide from God’s gaze, saying we’re suffocated and worn out with all this constant attention and need some time to ourselves away from the spotlight.

Imagine for a moment what it would be like to be truly seen, seen and known, known and understood, understood and forgiven, forgiven and accepted, accepted and enjoyed, enjoyed and celebrated, celebrated and loved, loved and cherished. That’s what God’s loving attention means. That’s why one writer calls true attention ‘the rarest and purest form of generosity.’

Rather than giving a person things, like food, clothes or money, paying true attention means giving a person yourself, your time, your eyes, your stillness, your focus, your energy, your grace. More than generosity it’s perhaps better expressed as true hospitality, because in paying attention to someone you’re making space for them to discover, explore, risk, experiment, relax, wonder, articulate, imagine – and take down their guard.

Yet that’s where again our resistances kick in. We’re nervous of receiving such profound attention, lest in such moments the person giving it perceive our inadequacies, our games, our lies, our blemishes. But we’re even more reluctant to bestow on someone our whole attention, because it’s a kind of ‘unsealing’ that leaves us nothing in reserve. And if we do invest in the person the kind of love that attention truly requires, we fear we’ll run out of love, and become impossibly vulnerable – vulnerable if the person really does have characteristics that make us squirm, and even more vulnerable if we pour all our generosity and hospitality into someone who will one day let us down, or die; or both.

But here’s the real significance of attention. Without attention, without close recognition of particulars, without seeing details and noticing small alterations, we’re living in a fantasy world of distraction, false assumption, unchecked projection and idle superficiality. If we truly want to help say a homeless person, it’s no use just tossing money or food or clothes at them; everything depends on the details: finding what they’re running away from, learning why being on the streets is better than where they were before, discovering what they’re truly looking for, hearing what skills they can build on. Without attention to such things, trying to help is simply flattering our self-importance or assuaging our guilty conscience.

God doesn’t save the world with a lazy sweep of the hand like a millionaire writing off a bad debt. God in Christ redeems us one person at a time, with loving attention to redeeming the details of our folly and sin as well as to affirming our goodness and kindness. That’s why the cross is so painful – because there God is forgiving us with meticulous attention, one excruciating sin at a time.

You’ve heard the expression, when looking at a troubled teenager, ‘That young man needs a good listening to.’ What it means is ‘Offer that human being the rarest and purest form of generosity – your real, sustained, wholehearted attention – exactly what God gives to you.’ You may think, ‘That’s not going to change the world.’ I’ve got news for you. It’s the only thing that ever has.

Music: Emmaus Carol (Paul Trepte)

Katherine Hedderly:
The Emmaus Carol by Paul Trepte. Let us pray.

God our judge, you count every hair on our head and know every secret of our hearts. Transform the lives of those who live under the curse of civil war, community division, constant antagonism or perpetual fear. Inspire any who sing from a weary throat, all who sink under the burden of grief, and those who walk in the valley of the shadow of death. When we wonder if anyone cares, may we feel your eyes of love upon us.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God our saviour, in Christ you came as a tiny, vulnerable child. Bless those today who feel vulnerable, because they have been exploited, because they are powerless, because they believe that no one is paying attention to them. Encourage parents who don’t know where to turn in bringing up their children, and children who are bewildered by the challenges of supporting aging parents. Make us a people of generosity and hospitality who discover we are entertaining angels unawares.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

God our redeemer, in Christ you will come again to bring a new heaven and a new earth. Bless your creation today, that your people may find better ways to make the creation their friend. Uphold any who feel they have nothing to live for. Bring comfort to those who slept outside last night. And make your church a people who look forward to the future you promise us in Christ.

We make our Advent prayer for the coming of God’s kingdom in the words Jesus taught us.
Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

This song was written for this year’s Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin-in-the-Fields by John Telfer, who plays Alan Franks, the vicar, on The Archers. The song is called I see you and John Telfer himself is here to play it for us.

Music: I see you (Telfer}

Katherine Hedderly:
Our final hymn expresses the paradox that God is bringing redemption to the whole world, step by tiny step – and that we can join that story, but our efforts will come to naught if we don’t march in time with God. ‘God is working his purpose out.’

Hymn: God is working his purpose out.

Katherine Hedderly:
Christ the Sun of Righteousness shine upon you, scatter the darkness from before your path, and make you ready to meet him when he comes in glory; and the blessing …

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