Newark Congregational Church

It’s been a while since I posted one of my services but I think this one is important.

Call to worship

Strangers meet.
Oil and grain turn to bread.
The sick are healed.
The weary are lifted up.
The prisoners are set free.
The everyday becomes a miracle.
This is God’s work.
We are its witnesses.
Let us worship God.

The Lord’s Prayer

Shine Jesus Shine – this is a new version with some Indian influences

So I was going to carry on with Luke’s Gospel today – but I’ve changed my mind because something’s cropped up in the last week or two.

The Paris Olympics started two weeks ago and finish today.

So I thought we’d start by having a look at a few British Sports people.

See how many you recognise.

We’ll start with 3 Gold Medal winners from the London Olympics Let’s see how many you can recognise

Mo Farah

He famously won the 5,000 and the 10,000 meters finals in London and then again in Rio 4 years later

Bradley Wiggins

He won the Tour de France in 2012 and then a Gold Medal in the Men’s Time Trial in 2012

Jess Ennis (Ennis-Hill as she is now known)

She was the poster girls for the London Olympics and won the gold Medal in the Heptathlon

Here’s another 2 British Sporting Heroes

Emma Raducanu

She came to fame when she won the US Tennis open as a qualifier in 2022 without losing a set.

Ben Stokes

England Cricket captain of course and one of the greatest cricketers in the world. I remember in 2019 when England were 9 wickets down needing 76 to win a Test Match against the Australians. Just Stokes and the last batsman Jack Leach. Everyone had given up. Then Stokes started. We got the 76 runs. And Stokes got 75 of them.

Now four of these have something in common. Do you know what it is?

And who is the odd one out?

Well 4 of these Great British Sporting heroes weren’t born in the UK.

Mo Farah came here as a refugee from Somalia.

Bradley Wiggins was born in Belgium

Emma Raducanu is from Canada

Ben Stokes was a New Zealander.

So the odd one out is Jessica Ennis. She was born and brought up in Sheffield.

But her dad was a Jamaican.

Let’s have a hymn

Brother Sister Let me Serve you

So despite how we started we’re not going to be thinking about sport today. And the thing that’s cropped up in the last week or two that I mentioned isn’t the Olympics.

2 weeks ago, on Monday 29 July a terrible event happened in Southport.

A group of children taking part in a dancing workshop in the summer holidays were attacked. 3 young girls were killed.

A young man has been charged with the murders. So far I have not heard any reason why the attack took place. Whatever reason the perpetrator had cannot be a justification of what happened – of course it can’t.

But what I want us to think about today is not the tragedy itself but what has happened since.

Riots

Looting

Attacks on Mosques

Setting fire to hotels

Time for a song. Do you like Reggae?

Love is the Only Law – Ziggy Marley

Now I’m not much of one for taking Bible texts out of context – but today I want us to do just that.

Here are some Bible texts that I want you to look at. What message are they giving us?

Exodus 12:49

⁴⁹ The same regulations apply to native-born Israelites and to foreigners who settle among you.”

Leviticus 19:9-10

⁹ “When you harvest your fields, do not cut the grain at the edges of the fields, and do not go back to cut the heads of grain that were left. ¹⁰ Do not go back through your vineyard to gather the grapes that were missed or to pick up the grapes that have fallen; leave them for poor people and foreigners. I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 19:33-34

³³ “Do not mistreat foreigners who are living in your land. ³⁴ Treat them as you would an Israelite, and love them as you love yourselves. Remember that you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

Psalm 146:9

⁹ He protects the strangers who live in our land;
    he helps widows and orphans,
    but takes the wicked to their ruin

Jeremiah 22:3

³ “I, the Lord, command you to do what is just and right. Protect the person who is being cheated from the one who is cheating him. Do not mistreat or oppress aliens, orphans, or widows; and do not kill innocent people in this holy place.

Zechariah 7:10

¹⁰ Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners who live among you, or anyone else in need. And do not plan ways of harming one another.’

Galatians 5:14

¹⁴ For the whole Law is summed up in one commandment: “Love your neighbour as you love yourself.”

Hebrews 13:2

² Remember to welcome strangers in your homes. There were some who did that and welcomed angels without knowing it.

The Bible couldn’t be clearer. From Old Testament times onward the Jewish people, and now us, have been called to care for strangers/foreigners/aliens.

Here’s are some more Bible texts

Genesis 12:1

12 The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your relatives, and your father’s home, and go to a land that I am going to show you.

Genesis 12:10

¹⁰ But there was a famine in Canaan, and it was so bad that Abram went farther south to Egypt, to live there for a while.

Genesis 46:28-34

²⁸ Jacob sent Judah ahead to ask Joseph to meet them in Goshen. When they arrived, ²⁹ Joseph got in his chariot and went to Goshen to meet his father. When they met, Joseph threw his arms around his father’s neck and cried for a long time. ³⁰ Jacob said to Joseph, “I am ready to die, now that I have seen you and know that you are still alive.”

³¹ Then Joseph said to his brothers and the rest of his father’s family, “I must go and tell the king that my brothers and all my father’s family, who were living in Canaan, have come to me. ³² I will tell him that you are shepherds and take care of livestock and that you have brought your flocks and herds and everything else that belongs to you. ³³ When the king calls for you and asks what your occupation is, ³⁴ be sure to tell him that you have taken care of livestock all your lives, just as your ancestors did. In this way he will let you live in the region of Goshen.”

Ruth 1:16-17

¹⁶ But Ruth answered, “Don’t ask me to leave you! Let me go with you. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. ¹⁷ Wherever you die, I will die, and that is where I will be buried. May the Lord’s worst punishment come upon me if I let anything but death^[a] separate me from you!”

Matthew 2:13-15

¹³ After they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph and said, “Herod will be looking for the child in order to kill him. So get up, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you to leave.”

¹⁴ Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and left during the night for Egypt, ¹⁵ where he stayed until Herod died. This was done to make come true what the Lord had said through the prophet, “I called my Son out of Egypt.”

What do these passages say to us? Here are some of my thoughts:

• Migration across boundaries was common in Bible times
• Reasons for migration
  • Famine (Abram and Joseph’s family)
  • Wanting to be with your own family (Ruth)
  • Fear of death (The Holy Family)
• Jesus was a refugee and would have been called an asylum seeker now.

We are called to welcome strangers

We are called to welcome strangers,
offer shelter, food and rest;
heal the wounds of mind and body,
showing love with true respect. 
Those who flee from war-torn homelands
or fear death for their beliefs,
those who run from flood or famine: 
will we meet them in their grief?

Here we see our brothers, sisters,
each the image of our God.
If we turn our faces from them,
we deny his living word. 
He would have us feed the hungry,
free the captive, tend the weak,
care for all who now are helpless,
offer respite to the meek.

If we fail to challenge falsehood,
if we bow to unjust laws,
then the stranger’s eyes will show us 
God’s own eyes which weep for us.
Let us pray as Jesus taught us,
“Father, let your kingdom come,”
and with Christ-like loving kindness
we will welcome strangers home.

I’m going to ask you to do one more thing for me. It’s to answer this question.

What percentage of the people who immigrated to the UK in 2023 came in on small boats across the channel?

Total inward migration into the UK in 2023 was 1,218,000

Number coming in on small boats 30,000

That’s 2.5%

Does that surprise you?

It seems to have been one of the main topics of conversation for several years. But over 97% of all the people who migrated into the country last year came through the normal legal channels.

If the Rwanda scheme had been implemented, and if it had acted as a 100% deterrent – the number of people coming into the country would hardly have changed.

Now it’s not unreasonable for folks in this country, or any country, to have concerns about immigration.

1,218,000 people coming into the country in a year is a lot.

It’s bound to have an impact on things like housing supply demands for services etc.

By the way – our local MP Robert Jenrick was Minister for Immigration for almost the whole of 2023 when those million people were allowed in.

Why are so many people allowed into the country?

Well here are a few statistics.

Around 20% of all NHS staff are non-British – that’s about 265,000 staff

The proportion is around the same in Social Care – that’s another 350,000 staff.

And how many people from overseas work in the hospitality industry, or in building?

We currently rely on immigrants to do a lot of the important work that needs doing.

Anyway it’s against the background of this high immigration that the riots have happened.

But what have the Southport murders got to do with immigration, whether on small boats or otherwise?

Absolutely nothing. The young man who killed these girls was British. He was born in Cardiff. He is at least as British as Jessica Ennis as Mo Farah, as Ben Stokes – people we are proud to call British because they are good at sport and win medals and trophies for us.

The reason for the riots after Southport can be linked to fake news. Yesterday a 55-year-old mother of 3 was arrested on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred, a public order offence under a 1986 law, and false communications, an offence created under the Online Safety Act 2023.

She had published online a fake story that said the Stockport murderer was an asylum seeker who had come to Britain on a small boat, that he was a Muslim by the name of Ali Al-Shakat and that he was on a ’watchlist’ of the security service MI6.

All totally untrue.

Then the racists got hold of it and used it as a pretext for rioting.

The far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson used it to stir things up with his million followers – all while he was hundreds of miles away ion holiday..

It’s not been helped by some politicians, to say the least. Nigel Farage posted a video questioning whether the police were withholding information about the attacker. With no justification whatever.

This week Robert Jenrick, our MP and candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party, called for people who shout out ‘Allahu Akbar’ to be immediately arrested.

Do you know what ‘Allahu Akbar’ means? It means God is Great. I think most of us here today would agree with that staement. It’s the Muslim equivalent of Hallelujah. I wrote to Robert Jenrick on Friday asking him if he would call for me to be arrested if I as a Christian minister shouted out ‘God is Great’ in Newark Market Place, or if it’s only a problem if a Muslim does it in Arabic.

I’ll let you know if I get a reply.

Thankfully the rioting seems to have rapidly been brought to an end. This is due in part to the rapid justice that has been administered – over 700 arrests and people already jailed, not only for being physically involved in the riots but also for stirring other people up online. But another huge contributing factor is that when there were threats of riots in another 100 towns and cities on Wednesday the reasonable people of the UK turned out in counter-demonstrations and none of those riots happened.

What should our response be?

Well we’ve seen what the Bible says. It couldn’t be clearer. We’re to welcome strangers and foreigners.

As it says in Hebrews – Remember to welcome strangers in your homes. There were some who did that and welcomed angels without knowing it.

Jesus himself was a refugee.

We all know that what the rioters have been doing is wrong. But that’s not enough.

We need to call out those who are promoting racial tensions.

We need to promote tolerance.

If, in conversation, people make racist comments we need to tell them that we disagree and to stop.

If people make offensive statements on social media we need to respond to them and maybe decide we don’t want them as online friends after all.

We need to promote sensible measured discussions about immigration

• Is it too high?
• If so why – is it because we won’t pay people enough to do the jobs that need doing?
• What is a fair and just way to deal with asylum seekers so that we can stop the human suffering and death caused by small boat crossings?

It’s always easy to blame scapegoats, to tell lies about groups of people that ‘aren’t like us’ and blame them for what’s wrong.

That’s what happened in Germany in the 1930s.

Let’s pray

Our first prayer is one written by Pope Francis on the subject of countering Fake News.

Pope Francis’ Prayer for Countering “Fake News”

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.

Help us to recognize the evil latent in a communication that does not build communion.

Help us to remove the venom from our judgments.

Help us to speak about others as our brothers and sisters.

You are faithful and trustworthy:

may our words be seeds of goodness for the world:

Where there is shouting, let us practice listening:

Where there is confusion, let us inspire harmony,

Where there is ambiguity, let us bring clarity:

Where there is exclusion, let us offer solidarity;

Where there is sensationalism, let us use sobriety:

Where there is superficiality, let us raise real questions;

Where there is prejudice, let us awaken trust;

Where there is hostility, let us bring respect;

Where there is falsehood, let us bring truth. Amen.

And a prayer about welcoming strangers.

Beloved, teach us to open our shuttered hearts

and our portioned and boarded up spirits

with bold generous and with courageous hospitality.

Estranged and alienated so often and from so much,

sustain us in making circles of welcome out of gatherings of strangers.

Around the table of wonder, meet us in abundance,

drawing out our stories

and showing us how to weave together community with steadfast love.

The wells of life are our responsibilities;

teach us to care for them together,

with forbearance, forgiveness, gratitude, and rejoicing.

When we are cast out and wandering,

may we find welcome and compassion

that calls us back into accountable relationship,

into the ways of healing, into the ways of peace.

Generation after generation has wrested and exiled

or been dispossessed.

Generation after generation has learned anew

how to make welcome,

how to make home wherever they are, however they are,

and how to welcome You, Beloved,

in welcoming enemies, strangers, and exiles

into a life of transforming love. Amen.

Our final hymn is Help Us Accept Each Other  by one of my favourite hymn writers, Fred Kaan.

The grace

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

and the love of God,

and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit

be with us all now

and for evermore.

Amen.