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The first thing I was booked to do for the Diocese of Worcester, when my appointment was announced in 2000 was to go with seventy others on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I'd cleared my diary, even had all my jabs and then two weeks before we were due to leave the security situation nose-dived and the trip was cancelled. We tried to re-arrange if for around the same time the following year, with the same result. I've given up. I may never get to see the holy places of Jerusalem that feature in the Passion Story. So when I was invited to spend this Holy Week with you here at Great Malvern Priory I decided that what I wanted to do, for my benefit as much as yours, was to bring those places here.
Over these next eight days we are going to follow the footsteps of Jesus stopping each day at somewhere significant from the Gospel accounts of the Easter Story. I'm going to try, in words, to conjure something of the atmosphere and significance of those places. What I want to do through that is twofold: to help the Gospels come alive for us, and to pay attention to some similar places on our present day journeys, in Malvern in 2007. Each of the talks or sermons I give (on successive daily evenings) will stand on its own, but I do hope you'll be able to join me for as much of the week as possible.
Streets are places of mixing - they are public in a way no building is because everyone can claim a reason for being in the street. The streets bring us into contact with people unlike ourselves. We are offered the opportunity to mix and to engage. We can take it or reject it. The Gospels give us many accounts of Jesus stopping along his journey to speak with someone. By contrast I can't think of a single occasion when we're told he hurried past. A woman touches the hem of his garment, and he turns and addresses her; a man climbs a tree to get a better view and Jesus invites himself into Zacchaeus's home; life changing encounters, both of them.
Last month a report was issued on Social Housing - some of you will probably recall that that's rather a pet interest of mine. It makes a very welcome call for a greater mixing of tenures in our communities: there should be more rented properties in largely mortgage areas and more owner-occupiers living in communities where most are tenants. I couldn't agree more. Getting people to live on the same streets is a necessary condition for any serious mixing. But it's only the first step. The riots in some Northern towns a few years ago show the dangers of communities living cheek by jowl, but not mixing. And 20,000 plus signature petition in Dudley against a new Mosque shows that even in our own diocese simple physical proximity does not automatically lead to mutual understanding or sympathy.
The challenge for us as Christians today is to really engage with those who share our streets and yet whose lives and stories are very different from our own. If we don't do that we can't possibly live out the Great Commandment to make disciples of every sort of person, nor our diocesan aim to be the church for those who are not, or not yet, our members. At the heart of the Palm Sunday story of the Jerusalem streets is the crowd that gathers, and that behaves like so many crowds we ourselves have met. It catches a mood and resonates with it, tearing the very branches from the trees in excitement. But it's as fickle as any crowd. You and I know that the same crowd that has cried "Hosanna" on Sunday will shout "Crucify him" on Friday. Crowds are easily led. Sometimes crowds are wonderful places to be.
I get a real buzz out of being part of a throng cheering at a cricket or football match - the atmosphere just isn't the same watching it at home on TV. But crowds are often led by the basest of feelings and impulses. The hard duty of the Christian is most often that of resisting the pull of the crowd. Actually, resisting is the second hardest, the hardest is being prepared to speak out and challenge the crowd.
Last month the General Synod had debates on both the Trident nuclear defence system and Criminal Justice, both were thoughtful debates, rooted in scripture, prayer and engagement, both led us to places different from the majority in our nation. I'm proud of those church people who speak out and act out on behalf of asylum seekers; and I'm equally proud of those who support having projects for the needy as the teeth of vituperative opposition from the "not-in-my-backyard" crowds. Where are you, this week, called to resist the crowd?
Today then, we begun with Jesus on the streets, mixing with the diversity of city life, surrounded by the milling crowd, paying attention to those on the margins. Perhaps over this Holy Week we can each try to follow him in at least one of those aspects of his journey.
Bishop David
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