Flesh And Blood

Don't you hate it when the Bible is misused by people?  Doesn't it annoy you that God and his people are brought into disrepute by wilful and opportunistic misappropriation of odd verses within it by intolerant people who are serving themselves rather than God?  You know, as if the Bible (and the wonderful God behind it) promoted racism and homophobia and a general disdain for the poor and the other?

Tell me when I do it myself by mistake, please.

It annoys me most when I hear people use the phrase "flesh and blood."  Usually, people say they have to look after their own flesh and blood, which means preferential treatment for family members.  And while Paul (who wrote some of the Bible) is clear that we have a duty to the people under our noses, it's only a short step from "don't neglect your nearest and dearest" to "family first" to "stuff the rest of you."

Likewise, "charity begins at home" is often just a positive spin on "I look after my own," itself not a country mile away from "I'm all right, Jack" and "Get lost."

But flesh and blood… flesh and blood seems to find its origin as a phrase in one of my total all-time hashtag amaze balls really rather good Bible passages.

Isaiah 58.

The bit where Isaiah (or God) (or Isaiah) (or God) (or both) spell out what true religion looks like.  It's not religious observance.  It's not showy church attendance.  It's not having been in the same pew for so long that you can claim the indentation in the wood as your own.

It's loosing the chains of injustice, setting the oppressed free, sharing your food, providing the poor wanderer with shelter.  Go on and read it.  Best.  Bible.  Chapter.  Ever.

And the people who do those things - care for the badly-done-by, basically - don't need showy religion.    Certainly not to signify to God how they're part of his program.  Their light - says Isaiah - breaks forth like the dawn.  The Bible is crammed - or littered - with these warnings that church attendance doesn't cut it if our behaviour the other six days is oppressive, unjust, intolerant, exclusive.

Anyway, in the heart of this hard-hitting, greatly liberating chapter comes the phrase:

"Do not turn away from your own flesh and blood"

and God and Isaiah don't seem to mean your immediate family.  Your own flesh and blood will be the whole human race.  Jesus said something about who our neighbour is (spoiler: everybody).  There's even that lovely dirge we used to sing in primary school: "and the creed and the colour and the name won't matter…"

Much of the EU debate has raged around how we might be poorer if we remain/leave.  Very, very little - shamefully little on behalf of the majority of campaigners on either side - has been said about how this country might help others.  There's a terrible, wrong assumption that of course we want to close our borders, of course immigrants (refugees, migrants, everyone who can't stake their birth to a corner of the UK) are trouble, of course we deserve better just by dint of popping out of our mother's womb on this sceptred isle.  What on earth happened to hospitality?  Responsibility?  I hope the UK I see in this debate isn't every local community writ large.

And people talk about a Christian country, as if a Christian country were one in which only Christians were allowed in.  My friends, that would be a deeply unChristian country.  Ever since God's people found themselves with borders, God has been clear that the measure of a country's spiritual health is its treatment of people who have no other help.  Widows and orphans and strangers and aliens.

Being a Christian country isn't about denying other cultures a way of life.  It isn't about imagining that being arbitrarily born in a place gives one rights or makes one superior.  Being a Christian country should mean that we care for the sick (ah! the NHS! love you) and look after the less able (hello ATOS) and do something marvellous and constructive when people arrive whose own home has become untenable through civil wars and fundamentalist governments and air strikes.

I don't always know what.  I can't crunch the numbers.  But I know that when we turn aside - from human need, from a Big Issue vendor, from drowned bodies on a shore - we become a little less Christ-like, a little less God-like.  

But when we address ourselves to the poor and displaced, the outcome to our hearts is different again.  Isaiah 58 is chock-full of promises:

If we do away with oppression… if we stop pointing the finger… if we call time on malicious talk… if we spend ourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed…

then

our light will rise in the darkness!

then

our night will become like the noonday!

then

our needs will be satisfied in a sun-scorched land!

then

we will be like a well-watered garden.

And our reputation?  We will be called Repairer-of-Broken-Walls, Restorer-of-Street-with-Dwellings.

I want those on my tombstone (if I can manage it) and I want them on the UK's coat of arms - that we figured out that the only way to be great in any way at all is to be carers, above and beyond whatever call of duty we think we might have.  Greatness doesn't lie in looking after your own flesh and blood, but in looking after everybody's flesh and blood.

There are great things about Great Britain: increased acceptance within our borders is the big one.  But to be properly, usefully, truly Great, we need to look beyond, and down and across, and seek the kingdom of God before the United Kingdom.  We could light up the dark night of international politics by being a beacon of hope and welcome.  Our own night might even become noonday in the process.

Anyway.  Flesh and blood.  Christian country.  It's all words.  It's only the actions that mean anything.