Shared Space – The Road Less Travelled: A Sermon

Shared Space – The Road Less Travelled: A Sermon

Sermon at Civic Service for Councillor Seamus Bennett, Mayor of Felixstowe

St John the Baptist, Felixstowe – Sunday 18 June 2023

Text: The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10v25-37)

God give you peace my sisters and brothers.

Firstly may I begin with a word of thanks. Thank you to each and every one of you who has been elected to serve your local community. Thank you as well to those who stood for election and were disappointed. All those who offer themselves to serve our communities in today’s challenging times, with ever diminishing resources and ever rising calls on finance and service, and that without pay or reward, are heroes. Bless you.

Those of you who are new to office will have learnt very quickly why sometimes a group of Civic Dignitaries are called ‘The Chain Gang’. Yes, the phrase describes your Chains of Office, but they also, as do the chains worn by convicts, weigh you down, constrain you, and sometimes make it difficult to see the way ahead. I suspect that some may feel that these are not chains of authority that set you free to serve your community but chains that bind your hands and hinder you from doing the very things you promised to do!

Does anyone think that a few days of removing the chains and doing what you would like to do instead of what the Town Hall diary says you have to do would be a godsend?

What would we give for the chance to choose our own path?

A path that is not dictated by others but one where there is freedom to breathe and transform our life and the life of those around us.

What would we give to be able to follow ‘The Road Less Travelled?’

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The road we choose to travel makes a difference.

In the Bible reading we have just heard that the road chosen made a great deal of difference. By all accounts the road from Jerusalem to Jericho in First Century Palestine was, even though a busy one, definitely not an AA recommended route! It was known to be infested with bandits who preyed on those descending from the hills to the lowlands around the River Jordan. After all, as we in Felixstowe living at the beginning of the A14 well know, just because a road is busy doesn’t mean you are protected from danger!

Sometimes we may say that life is not about the destination but the journey. More correctly, and this was shown by the lack of care by some and the generosity of the Good Samaritan, it is not being on the road – travelling – that is important but it is what we do whilst we are on the road – how we travel – that marks out our character.

In today’s too-busy life overflowing with Targets and Objectives, KPI’s and Outcomes, it can be tempting to travel down the road as quickly and securely as we can for fear that we ourselves fall prey to the latter day ‘robbers’ that thrive in society. But since when did it become more important to reach a target than live with compassion, or place efficiency above charity?

These are the choices spinning through the minds of the Priests and the Levites of our modern world who argue with themselves that stopping to help prevents society being improved. What is needed, however, is both helpful targets AND compassion, efficiency AND charity.

Why do we find it so difficult, in the face of dramatically increased need, to stop and cross-over the road to care for our sisters and brothers who have fallen ‘into the hands of robbers’?

Perhaps it is because of the way we have built the roads that tie communities together?

Perhaps it is because we have allowed ourselves to become a society which lives by the motto of ‘Everyone for themselves’?

Or worse, perhaps we have allowed ourselves to become so self-involved that our rallying cry is ‘Blow you, I’m all right, Jack’?

We need a different road to travel.

We need a road less-travelled.

We need a road that overflows with compassion and care for friend and foreigner alike.

Fortunately in Felixstowe we have such a road.

Hamilton Road.

Hang on vicar, I hear you say, are you saying we should pedestrianize the A14 and turn our highways into a Shared Space scheme? Tempting as that may sound to some, no.

What I am saying is that whatever road we travel, whatever journeys we undertake, we should, indeed we need, to journey with an awareness of all that is happening around us.

Physical Shared Space minimises the segregation between modes of road user making it unclear who has priority, people reduce their speed, in turn reducing the dominance of vehicles, reducing road casualty rates, and improving safety for other road users.

Would not the same benefits accrue if we viewed our society as a ‘Shared Space’?

What would our society be like if we were less certain of having priority in our own actions?

What would our society be like if each of us chose to reduce the dominance we have over others?

What would our society be like if we made the Green Cross Code part of our morals and ‘looked carefully all around us’ before going about our business?

The beauty of travelling in Shared Space is that no one group can lay claim to it, Community Leaders or robbers, Shopkeepers or Samaritans. It belongs to the whole community and for it to work well the whole community must work with every other member of the community.

Our mayor has today placed a challenge before us.

To take the road less travelled.

We are being called out of the busy-ness of our driven lives.

We are asked to ‘look carefully all around us’, and cross over to the other side, where through care and compassion, welcome and generosity we will be able to end that which separates and divides our communities.

We are challenged to build communities where all may prosper in a shared space and finally come to not only understand but also become, the answer to the question ‘Who is my neighbour?’

oooOOOooo