Acts 2.41-47 and Luke10.25-37
In recent weeks the most common question that Ive been askedhas been, What will you miss about being bishop of Dudley? So here are my topten things:
- The warmth of the people.
- Slow cooked grey paysand bacon.
- The tell you direct honesty of parishioners.
- Walks on the Clent Hills during bluebell season.
- Being involved with the amazing charity CHADD serving some ofthe most vulnerable in our community.
- The Chiltern Line.
- My fantastic PA, Helen.
- This museum and its vision.
- Friendships with other faith communities.
- Walking through Netherton tunnel.
And there is so much more.
And I wonder if you would like to know what I wont miss?
Faggots and cold black pudding!
I am particularly grateful for our neighbours from otherfaith communities for being here today and for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Communityfor providing a curry for us all. It has been the greatest honour when those ofyou from other faiths have called me our bishop. Thank you. I am hugelygrateful to each and every one of you for how you have formed me as a bishopover the last five and a bit years youve been bostin.
In this incredible museum we are transported back in time toa different era of the Black Country, to see the sights, hear the sounds, smellthe iron, and taste the fish n chips of yesteryear times of hardship and care,of neighbourliness and close knit communities, and, also, certain codes of howto be a community defined in PeakyBlinders. In our gospel reading, the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesusdraws us in to explore hardship and care, and what it is to be a neighbour. Weare transported to a dusty road in the Judean desert, a place of danger andrisk with lots of twists and turns as it climbed over desert hills anddescended into wadis. But we are also given a glimpse into the codes of being acommunity in Jesus day because across the story fall the strict Jewish purityrules.[i]
Two of those rules were that Gentiles and dead bodies wereunclean. An observant Jew couldnt touch a Gentile, could not eat with one, andcertainly couldnt touch a dead body without, in a sense, catching theimpurity.
The priest had perhaps been doing his religious duty in theTemple in Jerusalem and he was trotting home on his donkey to Jericho. He waskeen to get home. He was a good man. And then he sees a man lying in the road,stripped naked, not moving, possibly dead. His religious code forbid him fromtouching a Gentile or a dead body. He cant tell if the man lying in the roadis a Gentile or a Jew. He cant tell if the man lying in the road is alive ordead. And according to the rules of his community he cant come within fivefeet of death or he himself will become impure. So here we have a man who hasspent a fortnight praying in the Temple and is at the very height of purity. Ifhe touches the man lying in the road, and the man is dead or a Gentile, thenhell have to turn his donkey round and ride back up to Jerusalem to cleansehimself again. So, what does he do?
He asks himself the same question as the lawyer, Who is myneighbour?, and his answer is not that man today. He takes the easy route,but it comes, and this is the point, out of the deep codes of his faith.
The next person is a Levite. Hes a little lower in thepecking order and hes on foot. He too is sincere about his faith. Perhaps hesaw the priest pass by and assumed that the priest had worked out that this wasa dead man or a Gentile. He asks himself the same question as the lawyer andthe Priest, Who is my neighbour?, and his answer is not that man today.
Then who comes next? Jesus original hearers, having heardabout a Priest and a Levite, would have been expecting the next level down inthe religious hierarchy of their day - an Israelite, ie a layperson. But herecomes the twist in the parable, because Jesus always likes to put a twist inhis stories.
Back in history there was a schism between Jew and Samaritanand there was a distrust between them. Think a thousand times worse thanbetween Wolves and the Albion! So when Jesus speaks about a Samaritan he isspeaking about a person who is loathed. And this Samaritan follows a fairlysimilar religious life as the other two and finds that he needs to make thesame decision. He should really pass by on the other side.
But he is moved beyond measure. He asks himself the samequestion as the lawyer, the Priest and the Levite, Who is my neighbour? andhe has this explosion of compassion within him. It blows the rulebook away this man needed help. And he needed it there and then. The Samaritan is living out the theologianMiroslav Volfs definition of hope: Hope is love stretched into the future.
The robbers had said, whats yours is mine.
The Priest and Levite had said, whats mine is mine.
But the Samaritan said, whats mine is yours.[ii]
And there is the clue to unlock the rich lawyers question,who is my neighbour?
Our neighbours are anyone in need of me. Our neighbours areevery person made in the beautiful image of God. Our neighbours are those wehave a tendency to label as the other. Our neighbours are those whoinconvenience us and those it would, frankly, make life a lot easier simply toignore. Our neighbours are even those we think are different from us. Ourneighbours have an identity.
We build friendship with our neighbours that enable us toface times of difficulty together. We discover in our neighbours, more oftenthan not, peace and joy and love. We find paths to understanding andreconciliation with them. Our churches mustnt be clubs for the privileged few,they must be places that create space to foster being a good neighbour. Theymust never be places that put up walls, but always places that build bridgesinto communities. They must be places of welcome and safety. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor and theologiankilled by the Nazis, challenged us when he said, Any community of Jesus thatwants to be invisible, is no longer a community that follows him. All are welcome at the table of theLord, to devote themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to thebreaking of bread and the prayers. From this study and bread breaking andprayer, wells up our calling to bandage the wounds of the hurting and care forthose in need.
Thats why you find Christians in this borough running the BlackCountry food bank where people like Dave asked for food last week because hiswages are simply not enough to support the needs of his family.
Thats why you find us running a charity that provides thewomens refuge where people like Lynn told me about the delays in gettingUniversal Credit for herself and her three kids who had escaped from theviolence of her partner.
Thats why each week in Halesowen, refugees like Omar aregiven support. An Iranian Christian, who told me about how he had crossed fromTurkey to Greece in an overcrowded boat, fearful that he would drown.
Thats why we stand with people of other faiths when the farright want to stir up hatred in our town.
Thats why a thousand, thousand acts of kindness andgenerosity are offered each year by Christians in this borough.
Thats why our churches are places of mini-miracles wherevows of baptism and marriage made and honoured, forgiveness offered andreceived, and times of mourning and loss placed in the palms of Gods hands.
Simply, because that is what Jesus would be doing. Christians should share their joy writesPope Francis, we should point to a horizon of beauty, and invite others to adelicious banquet.
Werenot to pull a fizzog or have a cob on. Dont be a half-soaked bab or begin blarting. No more clarting about saying youll get on with it sometime. Loving Godmeans getting out there, sharing our faith, and serving our neighbours boththeir needs and through creating spaces where good conversations can happen. Itstime, it always is, to sing Gods song again, as we bless the Lord oh my souland sing of his holy name. And until we meet again, its just, ta-ra a bit.
[i] Material about the GoodSamaritan parable drawn from the writings of Kenneth Bailey and RichardHolloway
[ii]From a tweet by Jo Bailey Wells
