Sydney Callaghan's life and ministry transcended class, creed, colour, race, religion, nation. His ministry was one of adventure, discovery and disclosure in the pulpit, beside the Table, at the fireside, on the ward, in committee, on the street, in factory, school, college or church, in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, in person, on radio and television, to individuals, to small groups and great congregations.
He belonged to that golden order of humankind that aspires single-mindedly to a comprehensive focus of commitment. In his case it was to the God disclosed with greatest clarity in the person of Jesus Christ. To all else he was uncommitted. Sydney was born into an affluent Dublin Protestant family of evangelical conviction and philanthropic zeal. Inside his home there was love and security; outside it there was the insecurity of the minority community and the grinding poverty of Ireland in the 1930s. The young Sydney was aware of these contrasts.
His ministry in the Methodist Church began as the war in Europe and the Emergency in Ireland ended. Again he was alert to profound contradictions: the creation and use of weapons of mass destruction in the interests of peace; the maintenance and reinforcement of religious and denominational distinction in the service of community identity; workhouse hospitals where there were Protestant and Roman Catholic wards maintaining separation even in circumstances of enfeeblement, deprivation and death; credibility gaps between rich and poor of which religions appeared to approve.
None of this made sense to Sydney. The writings of Barth and Bonhoeffer and Tillich confirmed that there was a scholarly community which shared the depths of his growing discontent. They gave him confidence to follow his own faith instincts while remaining true to his evangelical origins.
Jesus had to be taken seriously. His message could not be diluted. To the underprivileged in Dublin and Belfast Sydney gave his all. He had the grace to understand that doctrine follows doing. So he began with a life committed to Jesus defined as a life lived in the service of others - the poor, the outcast, the stranger, the widow, the fatherless. No trouble was too small, no distance too great, no person too insignificant. He lived like a breeze, a breath of fresh air. He was into bed at 3 a.m. and out of it at 7 a.m.
Others also meant for Sydney some of the most dangerous folk in our society. Frequently a house guest would be someone with a proven record of extreme violence in need of a home. Without the slightest regard for his own safety Sydney offered a relationship of trust that restored respecting warmth to a previously cold heart.
No person was unsigned by God. For Sydney they might not be likeable, and he would say so, but they were loveable. And loving like that embraced all that he had: his money (sometimes it wasn't clear from where the next meal was coming); his clothes (getting him half-decently dressed for his conduct of public worship Sunday by Sunday could be a marathon exercise); his beloved car (he would go to jail rather than reveal who crashed it). The only time distress was shown in relation to possessions was when some of his father's books found their way into the pawnshop.
Brenda and Kate and Michael knew and understood that the husband and father who breezed in and breezed out was always about Someone Else's business and they could but grin and bear it and rejoice. As he lived, he learned, and his ministry to persons took on corporate expressions: the Samaritans, the Northern Ireland Hospice, social housing, collegiate congregational ministries.
A life lived with such relentless lack of self-interest required eventually a place as well as a person of renewal. Sydney discovered his Bethany in Donegal. Year after year he withdrew for a short space to the hinterlands of Portnoo and Rosbeg, where he grew to love with ever deepening awareness the multi-layers of culture, civilisation and spirituality that constitute the simple complexity of Ireland.
Last summer, as the suffocating fogs of his mortal illness swirled closer, he planned the renewal of his Donegal environment. Still last to bed and first up in the morning, in our table conversations and around the fire, breathless and breathlessly, he put words on his live vision - words that echo those of Paul Tillich: "The universe is God's sanctuary. Every workday is a day of the Lord, every meal the Lord's Supper, every work the fulfilment of a divine task, every joy a joy in God. In all preliminary concerns, ultimate concern is present, consecrating them. Essentially the religious and the secular are not separate realms. Rather they are within each other".
W.S.S.