All are Welcome: The Practice of Sanctuary

A sermon from the Revd Richard Andrew, President of the Methodist Conference 2025-26

On a recent Sunday morning I found myself worshipping in Dunblane Cathedral in Scotland – I was there for an afternoon service to welcome the new Scotland Circuit. The minister introduced his sermon with the words, ‘I am a Dull man.’ He meant it quite literally as he was originally from the village of Dull in Perth and Kinross, twinned with Boring in Oregon and Bland in Australia.

He drew attention to this connection because of an ancient Celtic cross in the heart of the village, now only partly intact due to an accident with a horse pulling away from it in the nineteenth century. The cross was a place of sanctuary in the early Christian centuries where politics and conflict were not allowed to intrude until justice had been allowed to run its course. It reminded me of the famous sanctuary door knocker on the door of Durham Cathedral, a legacy of the days when the monks would keep watch for people seeking sanctuary and then provide them with food, clothing, bedding and other necessities until their safe transition onwards could be arranged. The United Kingdom has a long, ancient and proud tradition of sanctuary. We need more of those spaces now, places where politics and conflict are put on hold whilst the process of justice works its way through, and those seeking sanctuary are looked after with both care and respect.

The troubled politics of this present time reminds me that we are happy to see the image of God in ourselves but often have reservations when it comes to the other, especially if that other is a stranger, a refugee or an asylum seeker. Sometimes our identities can be like closed books with little space to imagine the gifts that might flow from journeying with other travellers. ‘We have just enough religion to make us hate one another,’ Jonathan Swift once observed, but not enough to make us love one another.’

Everyday we switch on the news or check our social media and find stories or videos designed to polarise us around issues of identity and difference. We have become vulnerable to what Barbara Brown Taylor calls, ‘oppositional identity,’ defining ourselves by what we believe to be different about ourselves rather than what we share in common with other human beings. Nothing seems to strengthen a dysfunctional community quite like the creation and scapegoating of those we turn into a common enemy.

The recent example of the pinning of St George’s flags to motorway bridges, and the painting of the same flag onto mini roundabouts in many towns and cities up and down the country was designed to intimidate rather than unite. It reminded me of the sectional ghettos still found in parts of Northern Ireland rather than the open embrace we find, for example, in the use of the flag to celebrate a diverse and multi-cultural football team during world and European championships. As many have pointed out, the perpetrators seemed oblivious to the fact that St George was a Turkish knight, patron saint to a wide variety of countries, whose mother was from Palestine. Nor did they seem to appreciate that terms like English or British are elastic, embracing a long history of difference and diversity, of migration and cross fertilisation of peoples across the ages: Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Norman, Jew and Muslim, African, Caribbean, Asian, to name but a few examples to which we might add cross country migration amongst the peoples of the British and Irish isles. How ironic that the surname, ‘Farage’, is a Huguenot name reflecting a history of escape from religious persecution in France.

But if identity and difference is a key question in our society today, how might we respond to it in ways which do not set us up in false opposition with others and in ways which recognise and respect the integrity and honour of our fellow human beings especially those who are most vulnerable such as refugees and asylum seekers? To believe in sanctuary is to insist that what we share in common with others is our humanity and, because of that, we bear a responsibility towards one another, especially in times of adversity. This deep faith borne responsibility is a life-saving, love bearing practice and it is one which, whilst not unique to faith, is found in the scriptures of many traditions.

There is an old story – Muslim in origin I believe – that is told about the nature of the image of God. Each day groups of angels stand outside a house, waiting for a human being to pass through the door. As a human being appears, they bow down and proclaim, ‘There goes the image of God.’ It’s a beautiful story that reflects the honour each person deserves. In the story from Genesis 18, we see this reflected in the practice of hospitality as Abraham welcomes three strangers into his home and in doing so meets with God. Hospitality in ancient Middle Eastern cultures is, of course, a sign of welcome and acceptance not merely of politeness, shaped over centuries as a response to surviving in a harsh environment. It is a response of co-operation and mutual aid where the lack of those things can mean the difference between life and death.

But it is above all, a practice which stands in sharp contrast to xenophobia – fear of the stranger. In ancient Greek, hospitality is known as philoxenia – love of the stranger. It is fascinating to note that in the Hebrew Bible, the command to love our neighbour occurs only once but the command to love the stranger occurs in no fewer than 36 places. Why were God’s people commanded to do this?

Firstly, the scriptures tell us, you shall love the stranger because you know what it means to be a stranger yourself. A few weeks ago, I spent some time along with the Vice President at the Greenbelt Festival. One installation invited you to ‘Walk a Mile in my Shoes,’ an invitation to swap your shoes for someone else’s, walking in them for a while whilst you listened to the story of a stranger on headphones, many of them refugees and asylum seekers. The Jews themselves had been strangers and refugees themselves, in exodus and exile, and, tragically, of course, at many other times in their history. Because they had been strangers themselves, there was a special responsibility to welcome the stranger. It is one that we are called to share in too and to do so in a way that creates the imaginative space in which to receive the story of another and the journey that they have undertaken as a gift rather than as a threat.

The second reason for the command is because loving the stranger shows you God. There are countless examples of this in the scriptures not least the example in Matthew 25, where on the day of judgement the practice of love is shown to have been the most significant practice of all:

Sanctuary is a unique calling placed upon people of faith and upon those who share our values to create communities in which people can feel safe and welcomed in which they can rebuild their lives. I pray that the Methodist people might burn with a desire to create a country of sanctuary in which, notwithstanding legitimate debates about migration, all are welcomed and respected. In doing this, I believe, in living out a practice of love rather than opposition, we bring ourselves close to God and find ourselves not only bearers of love but its recipients.

A post on Facebook from someone in Dublin illustrates this well. It read, ‘I was set upon by immigrants. It was they who performed my triple heart bypass and enabled me to live.’ Let me conclude with a quote from Barbara Brown Taylor:

As the angels in the proverb proclaimed, never forget that whenever you meet another human being, ‘There goes the image of God.’ If that is the case, better meet them with respect or even hurry out to greet them as Abraham once did to three strangers for that is what it means to practice love rather than opposition.

Revd Richard Andrew, President of the Methodist Conference 2025-26