Sunday 15th July
9.00 a.m. Parish Communion, St Mary Magdalene, Barkway
10.30 a.m. Parish Communion + baptism of Evie Smith, St Mary’s, Reed
4.00 p.m. Patronal Festival Service and dragon-themed tea, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley

Monday 16th July
8.15 a.m. Morning Prayer, St Mary Magdalene, Barkway
7.00 p.m. Barley Church Times study group
7.30 p.m. Deanery Chapter supper, Buntingford

Tuesday 17th July
8.15 a.m. Morning Prayer, St Mary Magdalene, Barkway
6.00 p.m. Barley VC First School Leavers’ Concert, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley

Wednesday 18th July
8.15 a.m Morning Prayer, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley
7.30 p.m. Deanery Pastoral and Standing Committee meeting
8.00 p.m. North Buntingford Prayer Group, Aylwins, Roe Green

Thursday 19th July
8.15 a.m Morning Prayer, St Mary’s, Reed
10 a.m. Barkway VA First School End-of-term Event
7.45 p.m. Archdeaconry Budgetary Presentation, St Andrew’s, Hertford

Friday 20th July
 
Saturday 21st July
9.00 a.m. Morning Prayer, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley
11.00 a.m. Interment of ashes, Barley churchyard

Sunday 22nd July
9.00 a.m. Parish Communion, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley
10.30 a.m. Patronal Festival Sung Eucharist + Junior Church, St Mary Magdalene, Barkway
3.00 p.m. A Woman’s Touch - Concert by Ros Holbrow, John Witchell and Danielle Young, St Mary Magdalene, Barkway, and cream tea.

THE COMING MONTH
(Morning Prayer usually takes place each day: Monday and Tuesday in Barkway; Wednesday and Saturday in Barley and Thursday in Reed)

Saturday 28th July
11.00 a.m. Baptism of Sam, Archie and George Morgan, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley

Sunday 29th July
10.30 a.m. United Benefice Holy Communion, St Andrew’s, Buckland

Wednesday 1st August
10.30 a.m. Holy Communion, Margaret House, Barley

Thursday 2nd August
10.45 a.m. Holy Communion, Wheatsheaf Meadow House, Barkway

Deuteronomy 30-9-14; Colossians 1.1-14; Luke 10.25-37

It’s a very well known story. What else is there to say about the Good Samaritan? Those of us here this morning have probably been familiar with this story for a very long time. And that’s one of the difficulties with it.

When we know something very well, we often feel that there is little more to learn from it. If we’re reading it, we might find ourselves skimming it rather than reading it word for word. If we’re listening to it read, we might find our minds wandering because we know what the outcome of the story is.

We know that the man is going to be attacked on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.

We know that the holy men, the priest and the Levite, are going to ignore him. We know that the baddie in the story - the Samaritan - is going to turn out good.

But there are some things that we might not notice either because of our familiarity.

The lawyer asks Jesus a question to which he already knows the answer. But we’re told he’s testing Jesus, presumably in the hope of catching him out, trying to make him say something that will get him in trouble. But, as so often, Jesus turns the question back: what is written in the law? Jesus is pointing out to the lawyer the blindingly obvious. You know the answer, he is saying.

And, of course, he does - as we all do. To receive eternal life, we must love God and love our neighbour - simple, straightforward.

But sometimes the most simple things are also the most profound. Loving God and loving our neighbour couldn’t be more straightforward, until we try to live it out.

The lawyer wants to justify himself. He wants to prove to Jesus that he’s a good Jew, that he does indeed keep the law, and that he will therefore qualify for eternal life. So he asks the question - who is my neighbour? - expecting in return from Jesus a list of people who are included in that designation.

I suspect the answer he wanted was people like you. Good Jewish people who keep the law and don’t rock the boat. He certainly wouldn’t want the answer to include those whom the Jewish people saw as unclean or as their enemies. The divide between Jew and Gentile was great. If the Jews were to remain pure, that divide needed to stay in place.

But, as so often with Jesus, the answer the lawyer wanted was not the one he got. Instead of a list of acceptable neighbours and those who were not, Jesus told a story: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho . . .”

Often those who hear this story assume that Jesus is saying - everyone is my neighbour, even those people whom I hate. But, if we look more carefully, we see that the neighbour in the story is not the injured man, the one in need, but the one who offers help. So often this story is interpreted that the one in need is the neighbour to whom we most show love. And, of course, that’s an important message. But . . .

“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said: “The one who showed him mercy.”

The neighbour in this instance is the Samaritan, the one who showed love, not the one who received it. 

The Levite and the priest were not good neighbours. They were blinded to the need of the wounded man. So caught up were they in their own concerns, in their not wanting to get involved, in their desire to stay pure, that, though they noticed the man, they passed on by. Their many rules and regulations would not have let them touch the injured traveller, just in case he was not a Jew - of course, there was no way of telling since the man had no clothes on by this point. They didn’t know who he was.

But, if there was a possibility that he might contaminate them, either because he was not Jewish or because he was dead, they had to avoid him at all costs. If a priest touched something unclean, he would lose his entitlement to tithes and so put his well-being and that of his family at risk. Priests had to remain ritually clean; the process to restore this cleanliness was time-consuming and expensive, so it really wasn’t worth risking that.

The true neighbour was the Samaritan. We miss the impact of what that means, because the word Samaritan does not induce in us the same horror it would have done in the lawyer’s mind. But we have equivalents which will make this story powerful again. Perhaps, knowing that the man who was attacked was Jewish, putting a Nazi in the role of Samaritan might cause some impact.

A real-life Good Samaritan might be someone like Valentin Müller. Müller was the Nazi in charge of Assisi’s hospitals during the Occupation in the Second World War. He persuaded the authorities to declare Assisi a hospital city, which meant that the troops were kept out of the town and the fighting away from it.  He arranged for German troops to be evacuated so that the Allies wouldn’t be tempted to bomb Assisi. When they left, he arranged for large quantities of medicine to be left in Assisi for use by its resident, something that put him at risk of a severe punishment, but certainly an action that would be seen as one of a good neighbour. And he continued to visit Jewish homes long after any other doctor.

Perhaps today in 2007, the shock factor would be highest if we cast in the role of the Samaritan, a Muslim fundamentalist, maybe a member of Al-Qaeda.

To be a neighbour was to show compassion for others, not to be bound by laws and conventions, but to act in mercy and love. To be a neighbour was not about a clearly defined set of who was in and who was out. To be a neighbour was to show compassion to those in need.

The lawyer was after a straightforward answer - and in reality that is what he received. A neighbour is one who shows mercy.

Go and be a neighbour, Jesus was saying. Don’t worry about who the person is or where they’ve come from before you act as a neighbour. Don’t worry about whether you will be defiled before you become a neighbour. Don’t let yourself be blinded by your own concerns so that you are prevented from being a neighbour. Just go out and do likewise.

One very good example from this village of people acting as good neighbours was the way in which people cared for Nancy Tranter - visiting her, taking her shopping and to the doctors, helping her with finance and admin.-type stuff and so on. People giving of their time and skills and of themselves to be a neighbour to someone in need.

What, I wonder, prevents us from being a good neighbour? Are we blinded to the need around by our prejudices, by the boundaries we draw around ourselves about who it is and isn’t acceptable to help? What would have happened, if the Samaritan had seen the victim as a Jew rather than as a person in need of help?

Are we blinded by a lack of time that causes to be so busy that we don’t lift our eyes beyond our own busy lives? What would have happened, if the Samaritan had been too intent on reaching his destination in time to stop and help bandage up the wounded man and bathe his wounds in wine and oil and put him on his donkey and take him to an inn?

Are we blinded by a lack of generosity? What would have happened, if the Samaritan had not been generous enough to open his purse and pay the innkeeper and promise to make good any shortfall?

Are we blinded by our own shortsightedness? What would have happened, if the Samaritan had had the attitude that charity begins at home or that he was living a good life because he didn’t do anyone harm?

It takes honesty to face up to who we identify most with in the story, particularly if it’s one of the characters portrayed in a bad light, but Jesus’s commandment is clear: Go and do likewise.

Go and offer love to those in need. Keep your eyes open so that you are aware of where the need is. Open your purses to help those who have nothing. Be compassionate. Show mercy. Love God. Love your neighbour.

Isaiah 66.1-14; Galatians 6.7-16; Luke 10.1-11; 16-20 

It’s Harvest Festival in a small rural village church. The vicar is organising the annual harvest service. It’s a church where the congregation follows the tradition of bringing some of their produce to church with them to offer during the service.

People bring their home-grown plants and vegetables to the service. But this year is a bit different too. The village cricket team has just won its league, and the village is in celebratory mood, so the vicar decides to do something special and rather unusual - she will combine the normal harvest service with a cricket theme.

The day of the service arrives, and the church is filled with flowers. People bring their offerings of vegetables as usual, but in the middle of the display is a cricket wicket - a strip of turf with a set of wooden stumps at each end - and people place their offerings on the turf.

Everything is going fine, until one lady who doesn’t have a garden but still wishes to contribute to the Harvest thanksgiving comes up to the front of the church, and places a can of peas among the other vegetables. She is stopped by the vicar, so she returns to her seat, still clutching her peas.

The woman sitting next to her notices that she has returned with her tinned peas. “What happened?” she asked.

The first woman shrugged her shoulders, and said: “There’s no peas for the wicket.”

Harvest is about gathering in. When the time for the harvest of the kingdom of God comes, it will affect everyone - good or wicked, peas or no peas.

And people need to know that the time of harvest is coming. There is an urgency which Jesus wishes to instil into the 70 people he sends out. The mission has got bigger throughout Luke’s Gospel. In Luke chapter 8, Jesus himself goes through towns and villages; in chapter 9, the Twelve are sent out; now a larger group of disciples is being sent out.

They are to travel light, not encumbered by anything that might hold them back. They are to be reliant on God’s grace and people’s hospitality for their needs - no purse, no bag. They are not even to stop to say hello to people they meet on the road, because there is an urgent task to do. People must be told that the kingdom of heaven is drawing near.

If they are welcomed in, they are to receive the hospitality offered. The people are welcoming not just the disciples but also Jesus. But where a town is not welcoming, they are not to keep on trying, bullying them into offering hospitality, they are to move on and accept that some people reject God’s kingdom. That is their choice. In rejecting the disciples, we are told, they are rejecting Jesus too.

This urgency, this imperative to let people know that the kingdom is near and that they must be ready, is something that runs through the Gospels. There’s the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, the guests who turn down invitations because they have other things to do, the teaching of Jesus and of John the Baptist - the coming kingdom is near.

It’s hard to understand in the same way just how that urgency is still there, because we are living 2000 years later, and obviously what they expected hasn’t yet happened. But the imperative to go out and share with people that the kingdom of heaven is coming remains.

Evangelism - sharing the good news about Jesus Christ and about the kingdom of God  - is what those 70 were doing. We all decry the fact that children are growing up without knowing about God, without having any experience of church, but who is going to tell them about God, if we don’t. We all wish that more people came to church Sunday by Sunday, but who is going to invite them, if we don’t?

It will always be their choice whether they respond or not. Many of us are reticent about sharing our faith. I’ve heard many people say things like - I can be a good Christian without coming to church - but the Bible is clear that as Christians we need each other.

People say that it’s too embarrassing to talk about faith - Jesus didn’t let that stop him, and over the years, if people hadn’t shared their faith with others, then they would not have come to know about God for themselves.

People see faith as a private matter - something between them and God - but again that’s not the picture we are given in our New Testament, where Christians’ lives were much more intertwined with each other than they are now.

People also lack confidence about their faith. This is partly because their own knowledge and understanding might not seem to be up to much, but that can soon change with some study and prayer.

One of the reasons why we don’t talk to others about our faith is because we are worried that they will reject what we have to say.  But look back at today’s Gospel reading - it’s not us whom they are rejecting but it’s Jesus; whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.

There’s a story about two shoe salesmen, who worked for competing shoe companies. Both were sent to a new area where neither company already had any salesmen. Both men arrived with a supply of shoes, hoping that they would manage to sell lots.

When they arrived they both realised that this area was unlike any they had ever been to before. It was the custom of the people in that area to go barefoot all the time. No one wore shoes. As soon as they realised the situation both shoe salesman raced to e-mail their home office to alert them to the situation.

But their messages were quite different. One sent the message: “Don’t send any more shoes. No one here wears any.”

The other wired his office and said, “Send all the shoes you can. No one here has any.”

We could apply a similar thing to church - we can say “There’s no point in inviting so-and-so to church, they’re not churchgoers.”

Or we could think - “I’ve something to offer that I want to share. So-and-so doesn’t come to church, why don’t I invite them along?”

Of course, it’s not just about coming to church, it’s also about growing and developing faith, and putting one’s trust in Jesus, and helping people to see God at work already in the world around.

However, research has shown that often the believing follows a sense of belonging. Churches can become cliques of like-minded people that outsiders find it hard to penetrate. Churches can become inward-looking and fail to extend true hospitality. Those who come to church week by week forget that for those who don’t a service can be quite a daunting prospect - even following a service booklet, if you’re not used to it, can be a challenge.

So a challenge for us is how can we encourage people to feel they belong? How can we encourage people to feel that this church building is for them as well as us? How can we as a church offer hospitality to those who are not part of our congregation.

There’ll be lots of different ways in which we can do this in our various churches, but we do need to keep asking those questions.

Because at root what we are talking about is our love for God and our love for our neighbour - in action. The kingdom of heaven is about love - God’s love - we are called to reflect that in our lives.