Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is the Rev David Mumford of St Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Brechin.
I am rector of Brechin and Tarfside in the Brechin diocese of the Scottish Episcopal Church—many thanks indeed for inviting me here today.
I begin with a true story about taking sides and the common good. Twenty years ago, I was a parish priest in east Newcastle upon Tyne, and I had a very good relationship with the local Methodists. Their minister was a lithe and active young man, and one day he saw a youth mugging an elderly lady and stealing her handbag. He took off in pursuit, collared the youth and sat on him until the police arrived.
Later that day, the minister went to the police station to visit the youth and found him with quite severe bruising, which the youth alleged had been caused by the police. The minister went to the station sergeant and lodged a formal complaint about the ill treatment that the young man had received. The station sergeant took down the details, and then took the minister on one side and asked him if he really wanted to make the complaint. The young man was known to the police, had a record for petty theft and drug taking and had clearly caused the old lady real suffering. The courts would not adequately punish him for what he had done. The sergeant ended up by congratulating the minister on apprehending the youth, and said, “Well, whose side are you on, ours or his?”
Taking sides is often a problem in reflecting on the common good. After a period of silence, the minister said, “I think I’m trying to be on God’s side.”
One of our Episcopal prayers goes as follows:
“Bless and guide Elizabeth our queen, give wisdom to all in authority; direct this and every nation in the ways of peace and justice that we may honour one another and seek the common good.”
The common good is something that enables all people to flourish—as John’s gospel says, that we
“may have life and have it in abundance.”
Security, food, warmth, shelter, housing, health, education, the chance to participate in determining our own destiny and the society in which we live—all those are part of what goes together in making up the common good. Christians would see the promotion of the common good as a public consequence of being on God’s side, and there is a moral responsibility on public authorities to seek that common good.
May God be with you in this work.
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