Sermon - Blackbirds, Pigeons, Doves & our Wings of Faith

Charles McGhee - One of the St Giles' Blackbirds (1824. Painting by John Dempsey. National Portrait Gallery)

A sermon given during Holy Communion (BCP) at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 12th May 2024 based on the text of 1 Peter 4.7-11 and John 15.26-16.4. You can listen to an audio recording of this sermon at this link.

For much of its history, the land to the north of the church was a slum. A no-go area. Portrayed as a haven for thieves and prostitutes, with living conditions as insanitary as the morals of its inhabitants, packed together tightly like a large colony of roosting birds. 

Our new history book about the parish suggests that The St Giles Rookery may also have been so-called because of a community of black beggars who once lived there.  The “blackbirds of St Giles” were former slaves who had fought with the British in the American War of Independence in return for their protection and freedom. 

Like most residents of the Rookeries we know very little about their lives. Living under-the-radar, very few of their voices can be heard - even in the most well researched history books. Except for the few “characters” whose lives were deemed intriguing enough to grace the pages of the periodicals of the day. Like the one-eyed Charles McGhee, who by day earned a living as a street sweeper at the crossroads of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill before returning to the St Giles Rookery at night. 

The Committee for the Black Poor, established in the late 1700s to distribute food and medical care, soon began developing plans to move people like Charles McGhee to a new home, where it was thought they could spread their wings and flourish. When a scheme to relocate the blackbirds to Nova Scotia in Canada fell through, a new proposal was put forward by businessman Henry Smeatham. With the offer of building materials, tools, medicine and three months’ food supplies, the blackbirds would be transported to a new territory in West Africa, which became the British Protectorate of Sierra Leone. At that time, while it was illegal to own a slave in or transport one to Britain, the global slave trade was still thriving. Smeatham reassured parliament that the blackbirds would not be at risk of being forced back into slavery, because Sierra Leone was a safe country - despite having given evidence to the contrary just a year earlier. 

Twenty years after the proposals were first mooted and following a great deal of parliamentary wrangling and debate in the press, three ships set sail for Sierra Leone. Among the four hundred on board were several St Giles blackbirds, as well as a number of others who had been press-ganged into joining the voyage.

One third of those who survived the journey died within three months of their arrival in Africa. 


In the nineteenth century, The Rookeries became known as the Holy Land - due to the large population of Irish people who lived there at that time. According to one local clergyman the Irish were “more virtuous and moral than our own poor.” 

Whole families were crammed into single rooms of poorly ventilated buildings. Living at close quarters, nerves became frayed. Tensions often boiled over into violence and rioting. 

Even before a further influx of migrants following the potato famine, the parish Medical Officer noted that the Irish accounted for twenty per cent of the population of St Giles and received two thirds of the poor relief - around £2m a year in today’s money - raised by a tax on wealthier residents. 

But not everyone seemed happy to welcome the newcomers. John Parton, the Vestry Clerk - the chief administrator of this parish - wrote that “Irish and aliens, beggars, dissolute and depraved characters had ‘infested’ St Giles.” 

 

Like flying rats - or pigeons.

 

Two such pigeons were Margaret Read and Michael Donovan, who came here with their parents as young adults, met, married and became my great-great grandparents. Had the parish not opened its doors to what John Parton implied were vermin like them, it is highly likely that I would not be here now to say how abhorrent his language was. Yet - just like the plight of the St Giles blackbirds, how familiar - how contemporary - it sounds. And how contrary it is to everything we believe about the nature of God, in whose image we are made and whose risen and ascended Son we are called to follow. 

 

On the surface, the passage we heard from the letter of Peter hardly needs translation:

 

“be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer. And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves.”

 

But what is fervent charity? 

 

It is charity that is intense. Sacrificial. Charity that comes at a real cost to the giver.

 

For the scattered and oppressed Christian communities who would have first heard Peter’s words, fervent charity meant feeding a stranger when they knew they didn’t have enough to feed themselves. Fervent charity meant opening their home and sleeping on the floor to give their bed to a traveller passing through. 

 

These seemingly small acts of kindness that often came at great personal cost, became a defining feature of the faith - much to the bemusement of many. 

 

When fervent charity like this is performed it’s not the sort of thing that makes the history books - unlike big philanthropic gestures.

 

 

But, as we have seen in the history of the St Giles Rookery - through the witness of John Parton and Henry Smeatham, history does record the effects of not performing it. And it continues to do so. We don’t have to be accomplished researchers to find evidence of our failure to live up to the greatest commandment. Our failure to love our neighbour as we love God and as he loves us. Our failure to have fervent charity among ourselves. 

 

The death of children crossing the channel. The poverty caused by unjust global economics. The suffering that results from needless violence. The environmental damage wrought by our insatiable desire for more stuff despite the waste that creates. The times we pass by on the other side to avoid facing someone we would rather not meet. 

 

How desperately the words of Peter’s letter still need to be heard today. 

 

“Use hospitality one to another without grudging. As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”

After their marriage, my great great grandparents were able to leave the slums of St Giles when they were offered accommodation in the first Peabody Estate - the first social housing - in this area, just down the road at Wild Street. For the first time they had a home of their own. It was the step-up they needed for their family to flourish.

 

I’m not the only one here whose very existence might be said to have been dependent on an act of love manifest as hospitality. The same is true of each and every one of us. 

All those upon whom the Holy Spirit - what our gospel reading today describes as the Comforter - has descended, like a dove. All those who have opened their hearts to receive the love of God. Because until we did so we had no purpose, no hope. We were empty. We did not exist. 

Consider the words of the creed we said a few moments ago. 

If we truly believe those words, then we must accept that being open to something, someone, other than ourselves - being open to the stranger - is absolutely fundamental to our faith. Fundamental to who we are as people made in God’s image. Fundamental to our existence. 

 

So when the gospel today calls on us to “bear witness” to that truth - this cannot mean viewing it as a bystander and recounting or recollecting it later. It means that our whole lives must testify to that truth now and forever - because it is now dwelling within us. 

 

So as Christians we cannot be complacent, or indifferent about matters of hospitality and remain true to ourselves.

 

 

Our true home - as today’s Collect reminds us - that exalted place where our ascended Saviour has gone before us - the place to which we are being called - where we are destined to exist - is a place beyond divisive rhetoric and welfare programmes that demonise other people. It is a place where God is and which is God - where there is unity in diversity. 

And the scriptures tell us again and again, the way back to that home - is as witness bearers of that Spirit of truth – that heavenly dove. By being true to ourselves. Walking through life in a way that brings peace and justice and love to the world – being a blessing to each other and to God’s creation - even though it comes at a cost to us. By having fervent charity among ourselves. 

To create a world which is a haven for Blackbirds, Pigeons and Doves. 

So let ascend – rise up - flock together and fill ‘The Rookeries’ of today with our wings of faith. 


Image : Charles McGhee, one of the St Giles' Blackbirds