I was stood by the door waiting for someone else to arrive when a refugee banged on it. I was annoyed. It wasn’t opening time yet and it’s always awkward explaining that across a language barrier. I took my time coming to the door and fiddled with the key, hoping my body language would set the tone for a short conversation.

“We’re not open yet”, I said as I cracked the door open and felt the chill of the early December cold snap.

The Iranian man looked me earnestly in the eyes, thrust a heavily laden shopping bag into my hands and said in a heavy accent:

“I’m sorry, I can’t come today”.

He flashed me a grin that showed his missing teeth, leaned over to hug me, turned his bike around and rode off up the hill.

I’d known Ebrahim (not his real name) for a few weeks – maybe a month – since another refugee had introduced me to him. I’d heard rumours of his generosity, but this was my first experience of it.

I shut the door to the church against the cold, and as I locked it my mind wandered back to an interaction with John Barclay – a professor at Durham University. I was a PhD student at the University of Nottingham at the time, and he was a world-leading theologian who had been invited to give the Firth Lectures. It was as close as you come in academia to meeting a rock star.

He came to mind as I closed the door because in those lectures, he argued that one of the key reasons the first Christian communities grew was because they practiced risky generosity.

The first followers of Jesus were likely poor enough that they relied on each other to get by: you can borrow my coat today because I’m going to need your saucepan tomorrow. That was not unusual in the ancient world and lots of communities were generous in that way.

What made Christians unique was that they were much more willing to risk including outsiders – they were willing to give to people who they didn’t know well enough to be able to rely on them giving back.

I retreated from the door wondering what had just happened and whether Ebrahim would get a decent meal today if he couldn’t come to our drop in. But mostly, I wondered why he was being so generous and I was so stingy. I mean, one of us is rich by almost any metric – and it’s not Ebrahim.

As I turned round, I saw Sami (not his real name) across the room. He’s been around longer than Ebrahim and has actually been helping us by translating sermons into Farsi for other Iranian refugees. He was already inside because he was helping us today.

They show up with gratitude, and give generously of the very little they have. They practice this risky generosity with no guarantee of return.

I know a bit of Sami’s story – how he has arrived in the UK seeking asylum because his family found out about his faith and suddenly he was no longer safe in his own home. I’ve seen the scars he got from living through that story. And yet, when Sami manages to find a way to work under the radar to supplement the pittance he’s living on and make his days more meaningful, he is as generous with what he earns as he is with his time.

There’s something striking about the risky generosity I see in Ebrahim and Sami. I can’t imagine living through what they’ve endured, but they show up with gratitude, and give generously of the very little they have. They practice this risky generosity with no guarantee of return – not least because the church is so mindful of being taken in by a sob story that we make big demands before we’ll baptise or send letters of support for anyone. It challenges me. Despite the fact that I’m the rich one, my asylum seeker friends seem closer to the attitude of the first Christians than I am.

It particularly challenges me when I then read stories about small boats, Home Secretaries and Rwanda. Because somehow people like Ebrahim and Sami seem to go missing in all the debate.

I’m not in a position to solve immigration, and I’m not for a second pretending it’s not complicated. But I thought about Ebrahim, Sami and John Barclay again when my children’s CofE primary school told me what they were teaching my boys about British values and Christian values. It’s probably no surprise that there was no mention of this kind of risky generosity that was in fact a hallmark of the first Christian communities and that I think I’ve seen in these brothers from another nation. I think that’s a shame.

There’s no doubt that the Bible talks clearly about God providing for his people –wealth is not bad, and Jesus’ call to give it all away came to one particular person rather than to every follower. But God’s own generosity runs like a thread throughout the story told in Scripture.

Maybe that’s why Paul writes that ‘God loves a cheerful giver' . The original Greek word translated ‘cheerful’ there is hilaron and we get the word ‘hilarious’ from that root. It might not be funny, but within the conversation we tend to have about wealth it is surely laughable for Ebrahim to give away a bag full of goodies when he has nothing? It’s risky, certainly: better to hold onto the money as you might need it next month if the Home Office moves you without warning again. And yet, he gives.

And because he gives, he challenges me. If John Barclay is right – and I think he is – Christians have always been the kind of people who take risks to welcome others into their community. That makes no sense if you’re trying to keep your own food and energy bills down in the face of inflation. It’s laughable, in fact. But apparently, that’s the kind of giver God likes – a hilarious one!

I think he likes that kind of giver because when he looks at them he sees the image of his own generosity. After all, according to Genesis, that’s the image humans were made to carry. Seeing Ebrahim and Sami giving reminds me that for all the complexity of the immigration debate these are human beings. Their risky generosity challenges me to live up to the actual values of the first Christian community.

Weekend essay

Culture

Generosity

6 October 2023

5 min read

From family to flourishing community, why relationships count so much

Little local acts of listening and kindness shed light on an age-old question, writes Rob Wickham - am I my brother’s keeper?

Rob Wickham

Rob Wickham is the CEO of the Church Urban Fund, a charity helping people access a community of support. He was the Bishop of Edmonton, and has participated in community building in London and Tyneside.

A group of old and young men sit on red sofas, listening to one of themselves.

Stoke FC's Place of Welcome.

Church Urban Fund.

Every week a group of 20 or so older people gather in an ordinary church in Walsall. A small handful also attend church on Sundays, but most do not. Amongst them are clear signs of poverty, mental health issues, struggles, broken relationships, and grief. Each person has a profound story. They come to sit in a place where strangers can become friends and will listen. For almost half of this group, this moment would be the only one that week when they are personally noticed and acknowledged by another human being.

This safe space is therefore a transforming blessing. It is life enhancing and hope creating. It was born out of a simple instruction, heard weekly by the church’s congregation - “Ite, missa est” – ‘Go the mass is ended’. This simple instruction, and a belief that their role was to build community as a result, has led to lives being transformed, fueled by the Bread of Life.

But it is not just churches. Stoke City Football Club opens its doors leaving Yasmin to reflect about her Grandmother, Sandra, who has dementia:

“My Nan has made friends and this place has helped her with talking and socializing more. Especially since COVID she stopped socializing and was feeling lonely. I think this has really made a difference”.

Or in Lichfield where the local theatre provides the same hospitality, leaving Jean to reflect that:

”You get to know people don’t you, coming here. It’s lovely.”

Churches, theatres, football clubs, libraries, mosques, temples, community halls, all of them can become places of welcome, centres of hope. Countless conversations, countless lives transformed, with the majority so simple and basic that they go unnoticed.

Relational capital goes beyond self to acknowledge that together, the other is a precious gift and not a problem that needs to be solved.

Towards the beginning of the book of Genesis, just after the first murder occurs with the death of Abel at the hands of his jealous and angry brother Cain, God asks Cain “Where is Abel?” Cain’s response is a common response, a response of one who judges or ‘others’, and then washes their hands.

“My brother is not my problem, Am I my brother’s keeper?”

It is a fundamental question to human flourishing and the principles of living for the common good.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s extraordinary book, Life Together, shares that any act of love or generosity to another person begins with a posture of holding your tongue in order to listen and to understand. Bonhoeffer then speaks of meekness, bearing, listening and ultimately, and only then, to be in a position to speak. All too often, we jump to speaking before doing the hard work, emphasizing an engrained paternalistic power dynamic, and thinking that we know best. For Bonhoeffer, this is an act of service which is relational, built upon trust and a relational capital that says that each person matters. Relational capital goes beyond self to acknowledge that together, the other is a precious gift and not a problem that needs to be solved. Bonhoeffer also recognizes the prophetic wisdom and complexity of this as he shares that:

“in order to flourish, every community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The marginalization of the weak leads to a broken humanity”.

At the heart of this dynamic, a posture is decided. If I am not my siblings’ keeper, and my sibling must look after themselves, then the weak will, of course, be marginalized. A broken and privatized humanity will be the ultimate end result.

But, if I am my siblings keeper, the posture is very different. Open arms, a desire to listen, to understand.

A clear example of this remains in many housing or immigration policies, or in a highly profitable banking sector - benefitting from the spoils of the cost of living crisis, adding to the misery of the majority. Like Pilate, hands are washed, in the pursuit of profit, thankfully challenged by the growing Just Finance Foundation.

Furthermore, in housing, regeneration for human flourishing, rooted in the call upon a person’s life given in the simple ceremony of baptism, often gives way to gentrification, in which fragmentation and broken relationships become the norm. This is a far cry from the vision of Fr Basil Jellicoe, where ‘homes for heroes’ were redeveloped in inner city Euston, rented at the same price as their slum predecessors as a symbol of action and justice for human flourishing.

But, if I am my siblings keeper, the posture is very different. Open arms, a desire to listen, to understand. This reflects something of the resurrection, where generosity is found, quite simply because God so loved the world. It is often in the most deprived communities that this is demonstrated, echoing a bias to the poorest, and a desire for the justice that Mary promises as she sings at the beginning of her child’s life.

In essence, our broken and fallen self often looks inside ourselves for fulfilment, but the transformed, loved and forgiven self looks to others as an act of self-giving love, humility and grace. The vision is often to live out the fundamental challenge of Jesus to the Church, personified in its founder Peter. “Do you love me… Feed my lambs”. Jesus, depicting himself as a shepherd, says to Peter, one of his closest followers – “if you love me, feed my sheep.” This is made all the more extraordinary as Peter himself had recently carried out a knife attack, yet he was still breathed upon with the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

The stories from Places of Welcome, and the testimonies from the communities who have used the Growing Good resources which exist to provide a framework as to how and why churches can and should serve their local contexts, are a reminder that relationships matter, people matter and love matters. Much hidden Christian ministry, alongside that of other faiths, as Near Neighbours testifies, strive for this different vision. Their stories demonstrate that living the principles of presence, perseverance, hospitality, adaptability, participation and action can lead to organic altruistic and flourishing communities. Daily, safe spaces are being created for the broken soul to rejoice, dance and sing.

The human urge to be in relationship with others is paramount. When such relational stories are told, actions follow. Good action is justice focused, co-created and participatory. This requires a mutuality, and a desire to learn, knowing context, listening to the local, and daring to ask the difficult questions of why certain communities are impoverished in the first place. It is in asking these questions, developing a learner’s heart, filled with curiosity, that will lead to the flourishing of all. Staying quiet when you have heard is not a viable option.

The posture is simple. Am I my siblings’ keeper? The answer no inevitably leads to death of relationship. The answer yes has the potential to lead to true human flourishing.