Loving our gypsy neighbour

A sermon for the 11^th Sunday of Trinity,

4th September 2011

Fr. Tim Jones, St. Lawrence church, York

From Romans chapter 13 verses 9&10 in which St. Paul quotes the teaching of Jesus Christ our Lord. : “Whatever commandments there may be are summed up in this one rule: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law”

A great deal of St. Paul's writing in the Bible deals with our relationship to the Law. The Law – by which he means the Ten Commandments, and the myriad of religious laws by which the ancient Jewish people ordered their lives together – is a good thing, necessary because of our weakness. But it is not the Law which enables us to lead a good life. It is the grace of God, the overflowing, irrepressible, self giving, powerful, love of God which reconciles us to Him and makes us worthy.

It is a love given most perfect expression, most effective purpose, in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is in our faith in Jesus Christ, our surrender to Jesus, our seeking to walk in His way, that we truly open ourselves to righteousness. God teaches us through St. Paul that we just can't do that by the Law. It is by following the teaching and example of Jesus Christ – which (as Rev'd Maggie reminded us last week) will require Christian disciples at times to bear their own cross - that we are most likely to do the right thing, the loving thing, the thing that God wants from us. Law – any law – while necessary and important, of course, simply cannot do for us that which love can do.

The gypsy travellers at Dale farm in Essex have been judged to have broken the law. Travellers are no longer allowed to pitch their caravans at the side of the road – which can in any case be a place of real danger – and so instead must find other places. There are not nearly enough places provided, given the number of gypsy travellers. Not nearly enough. Many, therefore, find themselves, like those at Dale Farm, living technically outside the law. They have purchased the land, but have been refused permission to live there.

Where local authorities – and York is an example of this - do provide sites for travellers, they are often on land which, to say the least, is challenging. Sometimes there have been occasions – as here in York – when the impression has been given that for operational reasons the police find it easier to treat an entire gypsy site as if the residents were simply one huge criminal gang, in a way that would be considered outrageous if an entire street of the settled community was treated in the same way. Societies and their institutions, as well as individuals, would do well to love their neighbours as themselves.

Contempt for those who live differently to ourselves is one of the most common human failings. Contempt might be defined as the abject failure to love one's neighbour as oneself. Some of us find it difficult to love a neighbour unless they are really very similar to ourselves: those who are not are feared, or rejected, or persecuted, or required to conform.

For centuries across Europe there have always been members of the settled community who seem to be irrationally unsettled by the notion that there are some people who live a semi nomadic life. The twentieth century saw various efforts to eradicate the gypsy culture, by stealth or by violence. With the greatest of respect to the Holy Father, even Pope Benedict, in June of this year, before an audience of some 2,000 European gypsies, asked for gypsies to be afforded greater civility and respect, but then called upon the gypsy community to earn such respect by integrating into society at large, to stop their travelling and live in ordinary houses and get ordinary jobs – in other words, to stop being gypsies.

But there is surely nothing inherently sinful about living a nomadic or semi-nomadic way of life. It must simply be acknowledged that the existence of such communities makes life a little more complex for us all. Our laws, and our attitudes, could and should afford more scope for this complexity, if they are to be laws and attitudes which reflect a society characterized by love and respect.

If St. Paul is correct, and love is indeed the fulfilling of the law, then Basildon Council should surely draw back from their terrible decision to send bulldozers in to demolish the (technically illegal) homes of children and pensioners who are there because they have nowhere else to go.

Jesus Christ commanded that we love our neighbour as ourself. We must never allow this sublime command to degenerate into a demand that our neighbours earn our love by being more like us. “ Loving our neighbour” - including our traveller neighbours - entails that we and our laws make a proper and decent allowance for them.