Thanksgiving on the Anniversary of the National Health Service

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Ecclesiasticus 38:1-9, Psalm 147:1-12, Revelation 22:1-5, Luke 10:29-37

To meet the needs of all. Free at the point of delivery. Based on need not wealth. The three core founding principles of the NHS. Also, a pretty adequate analysis of the Good Samaritan. And that shouldn’t surprise us, as the NHS came into being when Christianity still had a strong hold on the politics and ethics of the nation. Archbishop William Temple was instrumental in the setting up of the welfare state. Writing before the pandemic the current Archbishop of Canterbury wrote that ‘Healthcare is a key marker of our values… [and] Public Health is the greatest catalyst for solidarity. Its absence on a sustained and fair basis across all sectors of society is likely to increase inequality dramatically, and to diminish solidarity.’ (Reimagining Britain) The fact that the nation has shared the cost, the loss, the restrictions and the solution to this pandemic on an equal basis, has been a great spur to solidarity. it’s not insignificant that members of the Royal family received the vaccine at the same time as their age cohorts, without advantage. Nothing fits so well with the British sense of equality and justice. Which is no doubt why individuals who have flouted the rules from public office have created such anger. Nothing cheapens inequality like a health minister breaking his own rules.

And the NHS is a tremendous symbol of equality. The danger of equality is always that in trying to cover everyone, its overall effect is to lower the bar for everyone. The faith that the nation has in the NHS – amply demonstrated in the last year – and proving Lawson’s ill-intended remark that the NHS is the national religion (though others may apply) – suggests that equality has not just led to a diminished health care for all. Nye Bevan said in the year the NHS was founded: ‘[W]e ought to take pride in the fact that, despite our financial and economic anxieties, we are still able to do the most civilised thing in the world—put the welfare of the sick in front of every other consideration.’ That statement, it seems to me, is more true than ever. The story of the Good Samaritan is Jesus’ response to the question – what does it mean to love my neighbour. From the parable we come to understand that it means we treat the person according to the need – not our own prejudices. Within the story it’s clear the Samaritan has a grasp of first aid and is well resourced. He has what he needs to offer aid effectively. And he’s not concerned with personal gain or reward. The act of service is enough in itself. The NHS can be seen as an attempt to insitutionalise the Good Samaritan at the heart of our national health. To publicly fund the Good Samaritan.

Love is particular. Love acts in a particular situation towards a particular person. I asked two young doctors to speak at today’s 10am service. Jack will speak to how as young doctors they were reminded at the outset of their careers that “every day at work you will see people on the worst day of their life”; and he describe some of the heroism he’s seen in the last year: the ICU nurse who stayed late to plait the hair of the lady with covid in a medical coma she had been looking after all day; the medical consultants who came in on their own time to facilitate video calls between patients and relatives; a junior doctor colleague who realised one of the nurses hadn’t had a break and covered her patients for an hour; another junior doctor who fought for a homeless patient with no one to advocate for them to be admitted to intensive care

And this kind of love is costly. So Evie speaks of: ‘the overwhelming sense of loss, sadness and distress when thinking off all the souls we cared for to the end of their lives, all the families unable to give proper farewells and all those patients stories you carry home with you in the hopes that by remembering them you gain a sense of meaning to the suffering you saw. It isn’t what any of us imagined when we started medicine, and without my faith I’m not sure it would have been a path I was able to walk. To sit in the quiet of a palliative ward, to accept that our science wasn’t enough and to relinquish control. To say I am here, I will act out of love and that is enough goes against the grain for the modern scientist in us and I think I have learnt much in that stillness of love about what it is to really care for someone in need.’ Love is personal. Love is the Christian ethic.

But what happens when you try to put love at the heart of a public service? When you institutionalise love? Well undoubtedly sometimes it falls short. Sometimes, as we have heard, it exceeds all expectations, And takes the character of grace. And when love does become available to all; When love meets equality, you get something a little different. We call it justice.

This is how you effectively meet the prophetic demand to care for the poor, the widow and the orphan. This is how a society fulfils the song of Mary, to raise up the lowly, to echo Jesus’ ministry – when the Spirit of the Lord is upon me – to bring good news to the poor; There is nothing greater that a society could do to bring the kingdom of God near, than to provide adequate healthcare for all.

So today we honour physicians. We give thanks for the gift of healing. And for medicine – ‘Which the sensible will not despise’! And we give thanks for all those who in their everyday life serve in love the needs of their neighbour – In whom we find the face of Christ – The embodiment of love; And today we give thanks on this day for a Health Service that in its ethos attempts to raise love, through service, to the ideal of justice. Thanks be to God.