Today has quite a few different labels. For a start, we’re into half term week; we’re back into Greenwich Mean Time as of this morning; and in church terms it’s the last Sunday after Trinity, and also Bible Sunday, and also the Sunday for celebrating the founding of your church if you don’t have a saint’s day to do it on.
Bible Sunday reminds us that as Christians we’re called to be bearers and sharers of the God’s word. And to share the word we must dare to live it; so what will it mean, what’s required of us, if we’re to live the word of God? Of course doing our best to follow our Lord, living in imitation of him. Our reading from Hebrews reminded us that he’s the one priest worthy of that title. But he’s more than that; he is, as St John tells us, the Word of God in creative action.
And then we have this morning’s Gospel reading, which is a story that’s always attracted and moved me - the blind man on the street crying out for help. It’s a great story for school assemblies and family services, because it dramatises so well: blind Bartimaeus crying out for help, and everyone round him telling him to belt up. This is a man who counts for nothing, he doesn't really even have a name of his own, since all Bartimaeus means is 'son of Timaeus'. And they all tell him to shut up. But Jesus doesn’t. Jesus hears him, and responds.
One message to take from this is that mission happens when we take time for others, when we respond to our neighbour's need; here is where God’s word is revealed and shared. But there’s a detail of this story which is easily overlooked, but which is I think important, and it’s this. Jesus asks Bartimaeus a question: 'What do you want me to do for you?' The answer is surely obvious, but he still asks the question.
The question Jesus asked reminds me that to do mission in God's name we’ve not only to respond to our neighbour's need but also to respect our neighbour's autonomy and independence. We don’t have all the answers. As you know, I used to work for one of the world mission agencies of the Church, the one founded by Thomas Bray whose plaque is on your wall - then called the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and now known simply as “Us”. I learned that to do mission in a worldwide setting you need to start by doing some serious listening, and you need dialogue. During my time there I met some marvellous people, among them church members and leaders from around the worldwide Anglican Communion. I saw the tremendous love and respect they had for the English Church and for the See of Canterbury. But I also realised they had their own stories, their own projects, their own hopes and dreams; and that I needed to hear what they were telling me.
Did I mention that today’s also the last day of One World Week? The theme of One World Week 2015 is “Hope in Action”. Hope may seem to be in short supply in today’s world; and a lot of the action in the news reports we see is challenging and worrying. We see the growth in terrorist atrocities, we see terrorist pseudo-states such as those established by the Taleban, Al Qaeda and Isis. And we see huge movements of people, often triggered by the impact of groups like Isis.
From the time I spent time visiting landless or dispossessed families in Brazil, Peru, Palestine and Tanzania, I became very aware of what had driven people like them to up sticks and go - what they were running from, and what they were hoping for. Today there’s an incredible movement of people all across the world - and the asylum seekers and economic migrants arriving on our shores are just one small component of that.
At USPG I also learned that those who take the Gospel to new places need themselves to leave a lot behind and to travel light. That’s what Jesus told his disciples to do - take the bare minimum for the journey, don’t be encumbered by stuff. There’s a lot of cultural baggage to leave behind if we’re to travel with our faith from where we are to where our neighbour lives.
And if our neighbour’s lost his land, if the land has failed them, if they’ve been driven out of it by persecution and terrorism and war, what then? What can we offer them? What should we offer them? An immense challenge faces us in the UK and Europe today, a challenge that faces the whole world, a challenge with no easy answers. But to begin with, we need to hear their story. We need to make space to listen, as Jesus chose to listen to Bartimaeus.
Charity begins at home, you may say, and I’ll not disagree with that. If charity didn’t begin at home, it wouldn’t begin at all. But where it begins doesn't have to be where it ends. One World Week reminds us that, science fiction apart, we’ve only the one place to go, just one world to share - one home for one family, all of whom are called and loved by our Lord.
That’s what motivated Thomas Bray I think; certainly it motivates the society he founded as it continues today to give support to partners around the world, and as it does what it does in the name of Christ, working in places on the edge, and among some of the vulnerable and dispossessed people of our world. It’s what motivates people young and older to give maybe a year of their lives to go and work overseas. And it’s why while I was with the Society I saw God’s word being not only preached but courageously lived, and our Lord’s name proclaimed, in so many exciting and very valid ways.
So here’s the big challenge I take from today’s Gospel story. For the people who turned out to hear Jesus that day, to catch the latest thing, the phenomenon of this new prophet, this man Bartimaeus was a problem, an annoyance, and maybe even a threat. All they wanted was for him to shut up. Where is Bartimaeus today? When we look at the camps at Calais, hear the stories from islands like Lesbos, see the crowds waiting to cross the border into Slovenia or Croatia, it’s no surprise if we find ourselves thinking the same way. They’re a problem and a threat; shut them up and send them away!
The sheer numbers of migrants, that doesn’t help. We need to hear their stories, we need to identify them as family, but it’s hard to hear any one story, however valid, however moving, when there are so many voices raised, so many people speaking all at once, and when they speak in languages, and from situations, so very foreign to us. But we need still to try and hear them. Christians should always have a One World perspective. If there isn’t “Hope in Action” where we are, then where will people find it? And the response of Jesus that day to Bartimaeus, the unknown, un-named problem man who needed help - and who, in his need knew who Jesus was - the response of Jesus that day shows us what he would want from us today.
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