Welcome to our parish

14 July 2019                15^th Sunday Year C

NEIGHBOURS FROM…?

You can usually see Alex with a can of beer in his hand on the bench outside the market. The smell’s not very nice and he could do with a new set of clothes. Not that he would buy any himself since most of his state benefits are divided equally between the off-licence and the Black Bull. He’s not originally from round here; he seems to have appeared a few years ago, lives in one the flats on the estate and has no family that anyone knows of.

Everyone at our church knows Rita. She turns up for everything and has joined almost every group going. She’s a pleasant enough soul, very willing, but can be a bit clingy. This is probably due to her living alone. She does have a granddaughter somewhere but they rarely see each other.

Akim and Kwame live in Abuja. They’re thirteen and eleven years old and have to look after each other now that both their parents have died from AIDS. They don’t complain, since many of their friends are in the same boat. It seems that there are more people in their village with AIDS than there are without it. Their patchy health service does its best but the problem is so vast.

Life couldn’t be different for the gang of kids who hang around our local chip shop at nights. Left to their own devices by their parents, they make a lot of noise and can seem a bit intimidating to older people. In fact, they’re harmless enough apart from the occasional broken bench and the hoard of litter they create.

And so the list goes on at home and abroad. Lupita and Toni are grandparents who work in a sweatshop on the outskirts of Manila…Abdhel and Ibrahim are twins who beg for food in Darfur…Louise lives in our town and longs for her husband to be out of prison…Magodonga lives near Harare and wants nothing more than a decent education…Craig has all the advantages of Los Angeles but doesn’t know it because he spends most of his time on drugs…

Near or far, who is my neighbour?

Which of these three, do you think, proved a neighbour to the man who fell into the brigands’ hands?                                                                                                               (Luke 10: 36)