We live in an age very conscious of The ‘Rights’ of the individual, an ideal that dates back and takes its inspiration from the foundation of the United States.

Equality and Liberty

Thomas Jefferson famously stated the principles on which the American Constitution was founded

“ We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”

The problem, of course, is that sometimes these unalienable rights compete with each other. Take for instance liberty and equality. They so often clash, not only in Slave owning States of the United States but today in liberal Europe.

Please allow me a moment to reflect on the competing rights of majority and minority communities in Europe and Latin America before moving on to the picture Luke gives us of a diverse community of very different people living in apparent harmony!

In the debate between liberals and conservatives that has been provoked by the clash of cultures in Europe ‘Equality’ and ‘Liberty’ often come to blows.

Where liberal values focus on Freedom, and the values of minorities claim protection under ‘Equality’ laws that ban ‘hate speech’ and discrimination, society struggles to find a place where cultures can live peacefully together. The freedom to say what others may consider offensive competes with the values of minorities.

A similar clash of cultures can be sensed in many Latin American cultures where European and Amerindian cultures have lived uneasily together for 500 years. I once had a fascinating encounter with a young Chilean craftsman selling his art. His art is inspired by Mapuche mythology and culture and as we got into a conversation about Chile and its many communities I sensed a great deal of anger in his voice. As a Chilean of mixed descent, he had decided that his real identity was Mapuche and he had taken up their cause as his own. He felt more comfortable to be the victim of history rather than the victor. Where then can we come together, as both victim and victor?

A Moral Vision for Society

Is there a vision of society that can hold together the competing claims of different communities?

Most of us despair of any resolution to these competing claims and retreat into our private world and yet the institutions that hold society together require from us all a moral vision that allows our private life and our public world to flourish together.

Communities of all sorts have, of course, come together with a common vision that brings together men and women from a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and talents. Artistic communities provide an example of how creatives feed off each other and in so doing grow in confidence and skill. Think of the impressionists who originally came together in Brittany inspired by its rugged landscape and sparkling light. Amongst them were several British artists committed to the ideal of painting ‘en plein air’. They returned to England to discover the same inspiration as they had found in Brittany in Devon and Cornwall. The leader of this group that came to be known as the Newlyn School was Stanhope Forbes whose painting ‘A fish sale on a Cornish beach’ 1885 was exhibited in the Royal Academy. Such was its impact that extra carriages were added to the Penzance to London train by the Great Western Railway to accommodate the number of submissions to the annual Royal Academy exhibition by the growing artistic community in Newlyn.

Can we find a similar common vision that brings the diverse communities of Britain? I believe that Jesus offered such a vision, a vision that brought together a diverse group of men and women, rich and poor, Greek and Jew, intellectual and practical. At its core this is a religious vision and yet the values it expresses can and have been embraced by our secular society. it is often stated in our liberal cultures that religion belongs to the private realm and yet this is certainly not the case in many countries and indeed has only recently become the norm in Western European countries.

Jesus liked to mix politics with religion and mention the unmentionable as well as questioning the unquestionable. His Vision of Society: He called it ‘The Kingdom’ which broke down the barriers between private and public, secular and religious, conservative and radical.

The Calling of Peter

His actions in Luke’s account of the Calling of Peter illustrate something of his disregard for boundaries.

He takes a boat and uses it for a pulpit.

He tells a fisherman how to fish.

In John’s gospel, he crashes a wedding party, interrupts a funeral, trespasses on others' land, he overturns the exchange desks of the money changers.

The Kingdom of God

At the centre of this blurring of boundaries, the clash of private and public interests can be seen in a new way.

In Jesus' Kingdom, private and public interests are not competing claims but complementary gifts that enrich a community. He is building a diverse community of men and women who might have previously been enemies. Their private interests will always clash but they are held together in a team in which the whole is greater than the parts.

Love is the only way

At the heart of this new community is a new way of living together. ‘Equality’ and ‘Freedom’, as we have seen, lead us into competing with others so that our rights might be respected, but there is another way.

The fishermen fish their way but Jesus proposes another way, and after a fruitless night of fishing Peter is ready to acknowledge his unworthiness. Peter is the first to recognise that he needs to change not only the way that he fishes, but the way that he lives. He surrenders his right to do things things his way to be part of a greater community.

Team spirit

“ If we can’t live together we’re gonna die alone” Not the words of Peter but of Jack in an Airplane crash drama as he attempts to bring together a group of survivors struggling to survive in their own way. Only together can they survive. These words though do point to a reality of life in 'Community', it requires sacrifice if we are all to survive.

Another word for Sacrifice is love, indeed it is the plus side of Sacrifice reaching out to the other not just turning away from self.

The remarkable fact of Jesus' group of followers was that it was so diverse. Tax collectors and terrorists as an example, there was a great need for love that reached out and embraced the difference in each of these disciples!

Yet from this diversity sprang up a worldwide fellowship. What united them was not equality before the law or freedom of choice, but the love of ‘The other’ – those who were different and underlying that love, a recognition of our equality before God who both forgives our foolishness and fulfills our dreams.

Conversations and Community

Maybe our best contemporary examples of leaders who have embraced this inclusive vision of society are Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama.

In his autobiography ‘Dreams of My Father’ Barack Obama tells of his struggles with his identity as a black man with a white mother. As a black man he tries to establish his identity in the history of oppression and injustice, but in attempting to establish his right over against others he is left unable to reach out across the divisions of society.

This retreat into the politics of race, gender, and class can only be self-defeating.

Like Peter he is brought to realise his failures in a profession he thought he understood, the delusions, the blindness, and the bigotry of this kind of identity politics. Instead, he finds answers in the engagement of others in a conversation with those who recognise they are not a community without those who differ from them.

Underlying this political vision is the vision of Jesus for a Kingdom in which all are equal before God, bound together not by ties of race, gender, religion, or class but by a recognition of our incompleteness and our inadequacy without others. Without that community that God alone can bring together we can never truly recognise our potential as human beings. Only when we recognise the gifts that others bring by their difference can we become secure in our identity and offer up our gifts that will enrich others.

Rev Simon Brignall