Sermon at St Stephen’s, Stanley on Sunday 14^th May 2006

This morning I would like to take you on a visit to China. This is not a shopping trip to Shenzhen. It’s not a business trip to Shanghai, or sight-seeing in Beijing. It’s a visit to Cold Mountain Prefecture, in the southern part of Sichuan Province in the remote southwest of China. It’s a land of big mountains and deep gorges, of red earth and rock and stone, where the roads cling precariously to the hillsides. Generations of farmers have terraced hundreds, a thousand feet up the hillsides. In the fertile valleys now the villagers are transplanting the rice by hand, barefoot and knee-deep in water, just as their ancestors did, so that the land is a patchwork quilt of greens and browns. This evening they will return to their homes, built of mud bricks or rammed earth. There are towns too, small but fast-developing, sprawling magnets for the villagers. But we haven’t come to see the towns. We’ve come to see villagers who will never live anywhere except in their own villages in the Cold Mountains. I’d like to introduce you to some of them.

I’d like you to meet Eishi Jiejie, a woman in her 30s or early 40s perhaps, dressed in black trousers, a jacket and a coloured headscarf. Eishi takes off her shoe, revealing toenails that have become huge, thick and black. One of her eyes is misty and she can’t see properly. She doesn’t speak putonghua, she speaks only Yi language. She’s a bit confused by the sudden appearance of foreigners in her village, although she knew we were coming. But she smiles all the same, and patiently submits as Liz grabs a sandpaper file and scalpel, and starts to cut away the dead growth of her toenails which is putting pressure on her feet and could easily cause sores and lead to a serious infection. Eishi feels nothing of what is happening to her feet, because she has leprosy.

In another village high in the mountains, a two-hour walk from the nearest drivable road, I’d like you to meet Cao Fu Guei. Mr Cao is hobbling down the path to meet us, grinning in welcome. He has a grizzled head and walks with a stick, and it’s obvious that but for the stick he couldn’t walk at all. He sits down on a small wooden bench by one of the villager’s houses, and although his fingers are reduced to stumps he deftly unties his shoes. He has no toes, and the soles of his feet are calloused and cracked. In one foot, a large crack hides a deep wound. If we had the scalpel again the hard skin could be cut back, and inside his foot we would find a deep ulcer. But in this village there is no health worker and no dressing to keep the ulcer clean. Mr Cao will have to wait for the next visit from the Liangshan Leprosy Project medical team. Hopefully by then a villager will be found who is prepared to act as the health worker. Hopefully Mr Cao’s foot ulcer will not be too much worse.

I’d like you to meet one more villager, Muse Jiwo. He squats in the doorway of his hut, his grey hair combed forward so that from the front he gives the impression of a full head of hair, although the back of his head is shaved. His face is burnt brown by the sun, and deeply lined. He has a single tooth protruding from his mouth. You would think he doesn’t have much to smile about. He pulls himself around his hut sitting on an old sack. His left foot is rotting, and he has a huge ulcer on his left leg. He really needs an amputation and a prosthetic limb. At present the prosthetic limb is not available here in Liangshan, the Cold Mountain, but it’s in the plans for the Leprosy Centre. The workshop is there in Xichang, waiting to be equipped. After his feet have been made as comfortable as time allows, Muse Jiwo cannot resist breaking out into a warm smile. Sally coaxes him to stand, and there he is, proudly standing up in his doorway, clutching to the doorframe to support himself. Who knows when he last stood?

I should have introduced you to Sally and some of the team from the Leprosy Centre. Sally is the Hong Kong Chinese Project Coordinator, a bright, pint-sized bundle of energy. Meet Kelly, a young Chinese doctor who is putting her heart into her work, gently caring and loving these people. And meet A Je, the slim, dark-skinned young nurse of the Yi nationality who can speak to the people in the leprosy villages in their own language, and be like a sister to them. We had some laughs together, and not too many tears. Because we saw in those remote villages something that I think has never been there before. For years the people in the leprosy villages have been largely neglected, abandoned and left literally to rot. But although lost fingers and toes can’t be restored, leprosy can be cured quite simply. And in those villages, for the first time, the people know that someone is caring for them. In Christian terms, they are living in Eastertime. Their suffering has not been taken away, but they are living now in hope, not despair. Even in the medieval conditions, among the dirt and squalor, they are just beginning to emerge from the long dark night into the light.

And we? Liz, who is a nurse, was fantastic, instantly sitting in the dust in front of the leprosy patients, and gently filing and cutting down the callouses and the hard skin around the ulcers. Peter who knows about bee-keeping had ideas about improving the yield of honey for villagers who keep bees. And I – I could help to hold a foot still while Liz or Kelly or one of the others set to work to cut back the dead skin and allow healing to begin. Each of us was able in our own way to serve them.

‘Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.’

Amen.

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