The service sheet for the celebration is here (PDF 319Kb)
More than a year on since Merrick died, I wonder where we all are with our memories of him? With the passing of time it can seem that memories begin to be filed away in our minds – distilled into a series of snapshots perhaps. I wonder what your abiding memory of Merrick is? Perhaps when you first met him or when you last saw him? Or is it captured in one of the extraordinary anecdotes about his life. Mine is of when I first met him, soon after I’d moved into the vicarage he came walking up the driveway with a bouquet of flowers. A gentlemanly flourish that I came to realise was typical of the man.
Merrick learned the art of gentlemanly behaviour as he grew up and went through his education. And it was at school, attending chapel and studying scripture, that the building blocks of his faith were formed and laid. It wasn’t, though, until he went to a prayer breakfast in Sacramento, California, where he worshipped alongside a mixed bag of people in a style which was the polar opposite of school chapel, that his spirituality was ignited. The religion he’d learned about and dutifully practised through his school years became a faith that he owned and lived.
The faith that Merrick owned and lived is described by St Paul in the passage from his letter to the Romans that we heard earlier. St Paul speaks to all of us through these words but it’s almost as if Merrick had had a one to one conversation with him and heard the words just for himself and then gone on to live by them. These are words about self awareness, humility and using the gifts we have, to build up the body we all belong to – Christ’s body of compassion and love in the world.
Merrick used what he had and where he was to build up the Body of Christ. He knew himself and he knew his gifting, he saw where God had placed him and what tools he had at hand. In knowing himself he knew also the value of the people around him; recognising their gifts and knowing without doubt that God sees everyone as God’s children and loves us all in equal measure.
One of the tools that Merrick had to hand in order to live out his faith was freedom. I feel that he was very much aware of the freedom that came with a financially privileged upbringing, a sharp and intelligent mind, a good education and a high-powered job that allowed him to travel the world and meet people from all walks of life. He met people who were at the very centre of the social whirl and people who were on the extreme edges of society; and he met them all with curiosity, humour and kindness. There is something Christ-like in this.
Merrick used his freedom to come alongside people who had none; people who had no physical freedom at all because they were in prison, but perhaps whose social freedom had been limited from the start by lack of money, education or opportunity. His prison work began in California and continued in the UK with his work with Prison Fellowship, in particular although amongst other things, their Sycamore Tree programme that teaches prisoners the principles of restorative justice.
The programme title, Sycamore Tree, comes from a Bible story about a thieving tax collector who so badly wanted to see Jesus that he climbed a sycamore tree to get a better view of him. Jesus noticed him and showed him great care and attention before going to his home to eat with him. Understandably, the community who’d suffered as victims of Zacchaeus’s criminal dealings were disgruntled that such love should have been shown to a man who’d hurt them so badly. But Zacchaeus’s meeting with Jesus changed his life and he revealed the transformation he’d undergone by promising to pay back four times what he’d stolen and give half of his possessions to the poor. There we have restorative justice modelled and recounted for us in our scriptures.
Merrick was one of the volunteers who teach the Sycamore Tree programme in prisons and who follow the model and example set by Jesus. They bring to their work their gifts and skills and their belief in the value of all people in the eyes of God. The money collection at today’s service is for the work of Prison Fellowship that Merrick valued so highly and worked for so diligently.
That work with Prison Fellowship is just one snapshot of Merrick’s life. It may or may not be the one that comes to your mind when you think of him. But whatever your snapshot is, I invite you to see it framed by the words of St Paul. I think that the greatest tribute we can pay to Merrick is to understand that everything that he did was framed by his faith, and his faith is described so well in those words of St Paul to the church in Rome.
So perhaps, as we remember and honour Merrick, we do so best by acknowledging his faith; and also by using the gifts that we’ve been given, the places we find ourselves and the tools we have to hand to follow his example of showing how we believe in the value all our sisters and brothers on this earth, all loved by God in equal measure.
