Sunday.......

Working in the Joint parish and Circuit of North Lambeth each week the Revised Common Lectionary is used in the 4 churches. Until moving here it wasn't something that I had followed while preaching all that often ( even though I get them emailed at the beginning of each week:(  ). Even now it's only when I'm preaching do I know what the following weeks readings are or on the occasions that we look through them at the team meeting. 

Todays gospel reading  was the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). I've heard many studies on this passage and retellings of the story using different types of people to look at who is my neighbour.. 


One retelling was when I was still in Nottingham... Our church was close to both Notts County and Nottingham Forests grounds.. And as you can guess it meant that our church was divided almost 50/50 between the two teams  and often led to much friendly banter. One thing we did agree on was that Derby county was as with a certain character in a popular children's book it was "them who weren't named" . 


The preacher this day decided to recount the story using football supporters  (done many times around the country) and yeah you guessed it the good Samaritan in his story was a derby fan ... ouch... makes you think.....


Today was very different the preacher didn't major on the question of who is my neighbour nor on the different characters in the story... His question for us today was

What can I do for my neighbour

In many communities the answer to that could be as simple as just getting to know them their names... Giving just a few minutes in your day as your in the lift to talk. the simplest thing can often be the most profound....

There is a song that isn't sang to often now but one we sung a lot at school..it asks  when I needed a neighbour were you there.

maybe one day we will start to get the question right and begging to ask what can I do for my neighbour. and the creed and the colour and the name wont matter..