Lighting the way for a shared future – Bishop Dave for Interfaith Week

Interfaith Week takes place between 8 and 15 November, and this year’s theme, Lighting the Way for a Shared Future, is a celebration of hope.

Bishop Dave shared a message with Buckinghamshire Council reflecting on our shared calling to love our neighbour and light the way.

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The great commandments

Jesus was once asked, what’s the most important commandment in life? And he replied:

“There are two. The first is to love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength. And the second is love your neighbour as yourself.”

He told one of his most famous stories to illustrate this second point that we must love our neighbour. You may well have heard of it – it was the parable of the Good Samaritan. And if you know the story, a man was robbed and left for dead and the person who came to help him and care for him was the very last person you would expect – a person, the Good Samaritan, with whom he had practically nothing in common.

Building community across broad differences

Jesus told this story so that his followers would be in no doubt how important it is to love everyone, and especially those who are very different from ourselves. The work of the Faith Forum and interfaith work gives us a wonderful opportunity to do exactly this.

It’s an opportunity for us to come together and to love each other, to care for each other, to get to know each other, to build community together across sometimes some very broad differences. And this patient, often unseen, but crucially important work is something that our nation needs so much at the moment.

Is it not true that we are constantly being tempted, encouraged even, to close ourselves off into little groups who think the same, act the same, believe the same things as us?

In fact, as Christians, this teaching of Jesus inspires us to go out of our way, to care for those who might be very different to us, who might believe different things, might dress differently, look differently, speak differently to us.

Unconditional love across Buckinghamshire (and beyond)

And so I’m delighted to affirm the commitment of the churches in Buckinghamshire to this work. And I’m very committed to working together with the wonderful leaders of other faiths to show and demonstrate, we hope, to this county and our nation that it is not just possible, it is desirable and joyful that we learn to know and love each other and to work together for peace, for tolerance, for calm and for acceptance of those who are very different to us.

Thank you for the work that you do to strengthen relationships, to build communities, and to show unconditional love to those across all of Buckinghamshire in all our different communities.