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Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.

We say it so often, in the Prayer Book version as at this service, or as translated into this more modern English. Can we think about it for a moment?

Jesus taught us to view God as our Father, who produced us, who provides for us, who cares for us. God is our Father, not my Father, or even our Father in the sense of just for the Christian community, but Father to all of humanity.

‘Our Father’, we pray, ‘may your name be hallowed, kept holy. And that implies all that God stands for, the principles of justice, mercy and loving-kindness that are implicit in God’s name. Then we go on: ‘May your kingdom may come as the time when your principles of justice and care predominate’. And this in turn implies: ‘give us – us – our daily bread. And just as you are our Father – Father to the whole of humanity – let us all be fed. Fed and nurtured and educated and given medical aid when we need it. And, best of all, everyone helped to find the means to provide all these things for ourselves.’

That’s all wrapped up in the ‘Our Father’ prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, which we pray every day. But how is God supposed to feed and nurture and educate and heal today? There’s only one way, and that is through the kindness of others, and especially the kindness of faithful Christian people. And that includes via Christian Aid, Christian Aid Week and our contributions.

Christian Aid’s focus this year is on Burundi, one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in Africa. Could you look at the Christian Aid envelope you were given when you arrived this afternoon, please? There you will see Aline. She was married while still a child to a man who proved abusive and violent. She escaped, but found herself plunged into poverty, wandering the streets with her children, begging for shelter each night. But then she came across a small business training scheme funded by Christian Aid, and set up her own little business, selling avocados and peanuts. I hope you can see a screen now, with some pictures of her. The business is thriving, and she went on to buy a bike to take more of her produce to market and help the children get to school. Then Aline, with her own hands, set about gradually building a solid, brick house for herself and the children, and they acquired a solar-powered lamp, so the children can do their homework. And, would you believe it, as if this wasn’t enough, Aline now actually leads a Village Savings and Loans Association, to help others women follow similar paths to hers. And all this through the work of Christian Aid, helping Aline get started, along with hundreds of other women and families in Burundi and in other corners of the world. This is the way Christian Aid works, working through local agencies, and not so much giving hand-outs as enabling poor people create their own livelihoods.

I’m just re-reading the momentous book called Small is Beautiful by the German-British economist Ernst Friedrich Schumacher. You may remember it. He describes the wholesale migration from rural areas to towns and cities, to try and find employment and livelihoods. This was in the 1970s, but it is still occurring, according to surveys recorded by the World Bank. But cities are now overflowing, so it’s surprising that there is now international migration on a large scale. Of course, many migrants are fleeing persecution or war. But many are people simply desperate for employment and a reasonable life. Stopping boats may reduce illegal migration. Chasing people smugglers may be even more useful. But they are not tackling the underlying issues. In the end, as Schumacher espoused, a more useful remedy is undoubtedly what he named ‘intermediate technology development’. That’s enabling people to learn simple methods to create their own small-scale industry, farming and trading on the basis of local materials, local labour and local markets.

And that’s what projects like the Village Savings and Loans Association led by Aline in Burundi are all about. Helping people to get started and help themselves where they are. ‘Small is Beautiful’ as the title of Schumacher’s book proclaims. But Small is also Effective.
The readings this afternoon were first from the prophet Isaiah and then about Jesus, in the synagogue in Nazareth, reading from the scroll of the same passage.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
Jesus then rolled up the scroll and sat down, saying, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’. In other words, Jesus was the personification of all these qualities in favour captives, the blind, the oppressed and the poor. Jesus went on to exemplify this in what he said and did. But how was this to be continued after he had gone?

St Teresa of Avila in the 16th century wrote these familiar words to her fellow Christians:
Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless His people.

So it’s down to us, and all Christian people. And Christian Aid is an effective agent for our involvement. And, remembering that Jesus advocated loving our neighbour as ourselves, we pray ‘Give us this day our daily bread’.