The Church has always, whatever Richard Dawkins might argue, been at the heart of a particular vision for society.
Whether it is a big society or an open society or just a better society is not always clear.
Certainly my experience of the Church is that it has been open to the vulnerable and the needy.
Once as a young vicar I opened my door to a gentlemen who asked if I might make him a sandwich for his lunch.
As it so happened I was alone that day and I was having my lunch, which consisted of a beetroot sandwich, I know! but it just happens to be a favorite vegetable of mine, a little salt is all that is required to make it very tasty.
So I asked him to stay where he was and went in and poured him a cup of tea and made him a sandwich, personally I thought sharing my beetroot with a stranger was pretty sacramental!
I took it it out to the gentleman and offered him the tea and the plate, he reacted violently to the tea, I don't take sugar and had forgotten that he might, spat out the mouthful he had taken and asked if I had any sugar, I went back in and found some at the back of a cupboard, when I returned to the door, the sandwich was lying on the floor amidst the shards of the broken plate, where he had thrown it.
He shouted at me, in a violent and aggressive manner to the effect that my predecessor, Fr Hedley, had always made him Bacon and Egg sandwiches and he wasn't about to eat this muck.
Fortunately for me I am six feet tall, and weighed some 16 stones, so very gently but firmly I pointed out that what I had done was share my lunch and if he didn't like it he could push off and find someone else who could afford bacon and eggs.
I then swept up the mess and put it in the bin.
That was early on in my career in the church but the memory stayed with me, every time I opened the door to a stranger I knew that there was a risk associated with the action, most of the vicarages I have lived in have been isolated at the end of long drives and sheltered from the road.
Even our house in Newcastle had a long path through a wooded garden and the children always ran from the front gate to the door as fast as they could, to avoid who ever might be lurking in the bushes half way down the path.
As they grew older the children also opened the door to passers by who wanted a sandwich or a cup of tea or money and became adept at sussing out the con merchants and making sandwiches out of whatever was in the cupboard.
The church see's the open door as part of it's ministry to those excluded from society, it is quite properly a way of extending or fuzzing the edges of society so that people who might feel excluded can feel that at least the church is prepared to offer them some support.
There is also in the Gospels support for this policy, 'inasmuch as you did it for the least of these'.
One day at the Cathedral in Bradford, my sixteen year old son answered the door to a man asking for a sandwich, he hadn't apparently eaten for days, so my son who was in the house alone and just happened to be making himself a sandwich, made an extra one for the person at the door.
When we got back he told us that he had made a grave error, his sandwich had been finely composed, with ham and cheese a genuine deep fill special, not just a sandwich but a better than M&S, sandwich, the other was a little lighter, a little less generous, it was only after he closed the door and returned to his own sandwich that he realised that he had mistakenly taken the wrong sandwich to the door.
He was still put out with himself some day's later.
So in the big society the Vicarage is and will continue to be, an open door, where acceptance and generosity will be found by those who exist on the margins of society.
The tragedy in Thornbury, where the Reverend John Suddards has been tragically killed is subject to further investigation by the Police, I only hope that it will not become a further argument for closing the door more firmly on the excluded, because of course as I know only too well, in opening that door you are also opening to the possibility of 'greeting angels unawares'.
So I asked him to stay where he was and went in and poured him a cup of tea and made him a sandwich, personally I thought sharing my beetroot with a stranger was pretty sacramental!
I took it it out to the gentleman and offered him the tea and the plate, he reacted violently to the tea, I don't take sugar and had forgotten that he might, spat out the mouthful he had taken and asked if I had any sugar, I went back in and found some at the back of a cupboard, when I returned to the door, the sandwich was lying on the floor amidst the shards of the broken plate, where he had thrown it.
He shouted at me, in a violent and aggressive manner to the effect that my predecessor, Fr Hedley, had always made him Bacon and Egg sandwiches and he wasn't about to eat this muck.
Fortunately for me I am six feet tall, and weighed some 16 stones, so very gently but firmly I pointed out that what I had done was share my lunch and if he didn't like it he could push off and find someone else who could afford bacon and eggs.
I then swept up the mess and put it in the bin.
That was early on in my career in the church but the memory stayed with me, every time I opened the door to a stranger I knew that there was a risk associated with the action, most of the vicarages I have lived in have been isolated at the end of long drives and sheltered from the road.
Even our house in Newcastle had a long path through a wooded garden and the children always ran from the front gate to the door as fast as they could, to avoid who ever might be lurking in the bushes half way down the path.
As they grew older the children also opened the door to passers by who wanted a sandwich or a cup of tea or money and became adept at sussing out the con merchants and making sandwiches out of whatever was in the cupboard.
The church see's the open door as part of it's ministry to those excluded from society, it is quite properly a way of extending or fuzzing the edges of society so that people who might feel excluded can feel that at least the church is prepared to offer them some support.
There is also in the Gospels support for this policy, 'inasmuch as you did it for the least of these'.
One day at the Cathedral in Bradford, my sixteen year old son answered the door to a man asking for a sandwich, he hadn't apparently eaten for days, so my son who was in the house alone and just happened to be making himself a sandwich, made an extra one for the person at the door.
When we got back he told us that he had made a grave error, his sandwich had been finely composed, with ham and cheese a genuine deep fill special, not just a sandwich but a better than M&S, sandwich, the other was a little lighter, a little less generous, it was only after he closed the door and returned to his own sandwich that he realised that he had mistakenly taken the wrong sandwich to the door.
He was still put out with himself some day's later.
So in the big society the Vicarage is and will continue to be, an open door, where acceptance and generosity will be found by those who exist on the margins of society.
The tragedy in Thornbury, where the Reverend John Suddards has been tragically killed is subject to further investigation by the Police, I only hope that it will not become a further argument for closing the door more firmly on the excluded, because of course as I know only too well, in opening that door you are also opening to the possibility of 'greeting angels unawares'.
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