Being human and hospitable and challenging hatred - The Revd Dr Claire Potter
29 March 2026, 5:45pm | Readings: Psalm 80, Isaiah 5 : 1-7, Matthew 21 : 33-46 | The Revd Dr Claire Potter
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
It is a great honour to be here. Thank you for inviting me to this magnificent place of worship and sanctuary on this Palm Sunday.
I am the minister at Wesley’s Chapel which was built by John Wesley in 1778. His statue stands in the courtyard facing not toward his Chapel but outwards into the world. The immediate environment of that world is just outside the City of London in the very southern edge of the London Borough of Islington – which has just celebrated becoming a Borough of Sanctuary with a special event last Sunday. There, the founder of the Sanctuary Movement, Methodist minister, the Revd Inderjit Bhogal, spoke about his longing for three things: that people are human and call others to be human, that people are hospitable and call others to be hospitable and that people challenge hatred wherever they find it.
The Lent theme of Sanctuary in the life of this Cathedral and the way Nicholas Mynheer has brought the same things to life in this wonderful exhibition also demonstrate the same desire – for people to be human and hospitable and to challenge hatred.
I hope that the donkeys of the country are now relaxing in their fields because they have been busy this morning! You had a donkey-led Palm Sunday procession here as we did in our corner of London, as we remembered the cries that the crowds shouted when Jesus rode into Jerusalem ‘Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’. That word ‘Hosanna’, used as a shout of praise, actually meant ‘save us’. So Jesus was being acclaimed because of what the crowds believed he could do for them – to rescue them. And once he did not do what they expected, they soon turned from acclamation to condemnation.
How often that is how we human beings behave. In the parable we have heard from Matthew’s gospel we find these tenants in a vineyard who are entirely motivated by their own selfish gain. Being human to them is certainly not about being remotely humane. Three times they killed, beat and stoned those who are sent to collect the harvest. Their sole motivation was to claim the riches of the vineyard for themselves. That represented salvation for them – providing them with security.
Another artist who has reflected deeply on migration and sanctuary is Barbara Walker. Her wonderful exhibition called ‘Burden of Proof’ illustrated the people at the heart of the Windrush scandal where citizens were suddenly having to prove their rights to live in Britain. Portraits demonstrated the personality and humanity of the people involved. For more than 10 years Barbara Walker has been erasing her work at the end of her exhibitions. So she washed the walls, wiping out all of that painstaking beautiful art, removing these human beings and all that those portraits demonstrated. When I saw the exhibition, I found it almost unbearable to think that it would be destroyed. But that it the point. It is a powerful message about people who are often not seen.
In the parable, the landowner sends his slaves to collect his harvest. They are the unseen people in this parable and they seem to be expendable. When the first three are attacked and killed, more are sent and treated in the same way. Slavery is, and was, never acceptable. They had no rights, no justice, no names – it is as if they were hardly human.
And our world is full of people like those slaves. These are the unseen people – under someone else’s power, or knowing no other home than a refugee camp, or fleeing constantly from conflict, or never having enough of the basic necessities of life.
Being human means seeing the humanity in another person. One of John Wesley’s last letters was written to William Wilberforce to support his campaign to end the slave trade. The symbol of that movement was an image of an enslaved African man in chains with the caption: ‘am I not a man and a brother’? It is a question we surely need to ask in the world of today. Am I not human as you are human?
The second longing that came from that celebration in Islington was about hospitality. A vineyard is described in both the parable from Matthew and in the passage from Isaiah. In both, it was created with great care - the soil was fertile, stones were removed, a fence was constructed, a watchtower was built, only the best vines were planted and the wine press was constructed ready to reap the rewards.
This then was a protected place, full of potential abundant fruitfulness. Is that not an image of a sanctuary - somewhere where people can feel safe and resourced? But can it only be a sanctuary by barricading itself against the dangers that are on the other side of the fence? Well Jesus suggests an alternative view to that at the end of the parable, where he shows that this vineyard is an image of the kingdom of God. This is the vineyard offered to all people without restriction. ‘Abide in me’ said Jesus - as he abides in God. We are all given the opportunity to be connected and receive of all that abundant fruitfulness. So the vineyard is an image of hospitality.
But the tenants’ behaviour is not that of hospitality. They did not welcome the landowner’s slaves after their journey with food or drink or shelter. Instead they destroyed them. And when the owner’s son is sent – instead of commanding respect, he too is killed.
Giving lies at the heart of hospitality but all they knew about was taking. When people in today’s world seek sanctuary, they are throwing themselves on other people’s mercy. Often they become dependent on unscrupulous people who see them as an easy target – gaining from their desperation. And it can only be desperation that compels people to risk dangerous journeys to unfamiliar places, with cultures and languages and opportunities they know nothing about. In the light of all that, when people seek sanctuary, surely the first response should be that of hospitality.
And thirdly in that celebration event in Islington, we were called to challenge hatred wherever we find it. In the parable, Jesus asked his audience in the temple what they think the landowner should have done with the wicked tenants. Their answer is uncompromising: ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at harvest time’. They do not realise that they are holding a mirror up to themselves. Jesus says that the kingdom of God will be taken away from people behaving unjustly and given instead to those who produce the fruits of the kingdom. We need a health warning here. Let us not be smug Christians thinking that we know which side of this equation we are on. This is not saying that one religion is superior to another. This is saying that every person has a choice in the way we want to respond to God. When have any of us not behaved selfishly? When have any of us not turned a blind eye to injustice?
Surely God’s example should be our focus. The landowner stands for God and he placed enormous trust in the tenants again and again even when they had behaved despicably. From our perspective, he was naïve to think that they would respect his son when they had not respected his slaves – but what this shows is that God’s instinct is not ours. There is nothing calculated about God’s way of loving all human beings as we will again remember in this Holy Week. He offers sanctuary and sacrificial overflowing grace in his vineyard. Can we follow that example?
One of the speakers in that sanctuary celebration last weekend was a refugee from Darfur. He read his own poem, speaking of seeing things few people ever see, walking for mile after mile barefoot, travelling on and on and on – and eventually finding safety and freedom. The cost of that freedom though was to be separated from all the people he loved. And he said at the end of the poem that ‘freedom is heavy’. Standing out against all hatred means being involved with other people’s needs for the long term. Even when people can find sanctuary, it can take a long, long time to build a new life after losing so much.
Being human and calling others to be human. Being hospitable and calling others to be hospitable and challenging hatred wherever we find it. This is what true sanctuary looks like. When Jesus rode the donkey into Jerusalem, he was offering that place in God’s vineyard to all people – then and now. As we travel through this Holy Week, may God help us all to walk with Jesus and consider our response to that offer. Let us pray in the words of the psalm: ‘Restore us O Lord God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved’.