One discipline the first fellowship kept above all others, and it was this: that no one should sleep cold within reach of a warm oven. And mark the lawyer’s mercy hidden in the verse – the reach of a warm oven, being measured by the faithful and not by the oven, grew yearly longer, as it is written in the Fellowship, 3:17.
Wherefore by every oven there stood a bench, and upon the bench at nightfall a blanket, and within the oven’s mouth at closing a slice kept warm; and none asked the sleeper’s name before the sleeper had eaten. They that slept in doorways were sought out at evening, and not waited for. Sought out, beloved – the difference between a charity and a church is that one has opening hours and the other has legs.
And a certain elder, being asked why he laid a place each night for a guest that came not, answered: He came; thou didst not recognise him; and that is the whole trouble with everyone. For who knows which sleeper is the Slice returned? So the fellowship looked twice at every doorway, and bowed a little.
Our ovens now are cafés and kitchens and church halls with the heating on two nights a week. The question is not whether we have warmth – we plainly do; the windows glow with it. The question is the reach. Who measures it? Not the building. Us. So lengthen it: a shelter shift, a standing order, a doorway you stop crossing the road to avoid. The oven is willing; it always was. Amen – and pass the pizza.