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.

Article

Belief

Change

13 May 2024

6 min read

What makes a journey a pilgrimage?

Travel may broaden the mind, but pilgrimage can nourish a soul.

Graeme Holdsworth

Graeme is a vicar of Marsden and Slaithwaite in West Yorkshire. He also cycles and juggles.

A country lane runs down a gentle hill between green and yellow fields under a cloud dappled sky.

The fields of Hertfordshire

Graeme Holdsworth.

On the recent anniversary of Chaucer’s pilgrims setting off to Canterbury, the British Pilgrimage Trust held a symposium on apocalyptic pilgrimage and spiritual tourism, in a London church – St James Clerkenwell. Nick Jones, the Editor of Seen & Unseen knows of my predilection for a spiritual aspect to travel, and recommended I go along. The only problem with his recommendation was that I live in West Yorkshire, and London seemed like an expensive journey for an evening sat quietly on church pews.

My nearest church is St James in Slaithwaite, and as St James is the patron saint of pilgrimages, it seemed obvious to turn the journey into a pilgrimage. The shortest walking distance is 185 miles and would take me a month to walk. Kosuke Koyama wrote that the speed of love is three miles an hour, the speed God walks. However, God has an eternity to travel, and I had to be back to lead Holy Communion the following Sunday. Cycling (the cheapest, easiest, and finest form of travel) would take me two days, if I took it easy and stayed in a hotel halfway.

I love the isolation of these high places, the wilderness-ness; it is a place for crying out, and place where only God is listening.

Not every journey is a pilgrimage. Sometimes people are just travelling. What would make this a pilgrimage rather than simply a long bicycle ride? I believe it is the intention of the heart that makes the difference - what are pilgrims hoping to achieve? Travel tends to broaden the mind, but a pilgrimage is something that might nourish a soul. There is no suggestion that every pilgrimage is religious, but when people undertake pilgrimages they are making a statement that they’re looking for something beyond themselves. For those who are religious, they’ve made space to meet God in the full knowledge that they may be disappointed. Dr Paula Gooder wrote that Christian faith sometimes focusses rather heavily on the state of a person’s soul, neglecting the state of their body. I hoped to enjoy some beautiful cycling, to re-engage with physical-prayer, and to worship God with my heart, soul, mind and strength in a whole body way. Racing cyclist Jens Voigt famously said, “Shut up legs” when the lactic acid began to burn, but what if my legs are speaking a non-verbal language understood by their creator God? Then let them shout: let the hydrolysis of adenosine triphosphate be my body praying ceaselessly, without words.

The beginning of my pilgrimage took me south and east along the edge of the Peak District. In my planning I had relied on cycling heat-maps to find the roads cyclists preferred. As I climbed a steep hill, I remembered that cyclists are a stupid bunch who often go out and find the hardest roads to cycle. I paused for breath at the top of the climb from High Bradfield; where the Agden, Dale Dike, and Strines reservoirs were stacked up into the distance, and the call of peewits pierced through the noise of the wind. I love the isolation of these high places, the wilderness-ness; it is a place for crying out, and place where only God is listening.

Bolsover castle was the last serious climb of the day, and from this point on the landscape became a lot gentler. Along the ridge after Bolsover, skirting around the west of Mansfield, I noticed the call of Skylarks, and that the fields had changed from drystone walled moorland to green and yellow crops, surrounded by hedgerows. Houses now had thatched roofs rather than the slate tiles of West Yorkshire. I also began to notice churches: Cottage-core villages with pretty gardens and pubs-on-the-green, their church buildings that seem well-kept, giving rural communities a sense of identity. It was around 7pm when I reached a Peterborough hotel.

Pilgrimages are often built around the destination, but I’ve found a real joy in the interim moment; the time between setting off and arriving.

Getting up in the morning after a long day of physical exercise is not easy. Although this day would bring an end to my mini-pilgrimage, I was looking forward to the symposium and meeting other pilgrims. Evensong at St Paul’s Cathedral was to begin at 5pm, and needed an early start to make sure I would arrive in time.

I passed a roadside marker with the distances to Huntingdon and London painted black on a white stone. The Milestone Society’ seeks to preserve these way markers which have a history stretching back to Roman times. I felt a sense of historical connection to those who would have travelled before me.

There was next to no traffic and I was alone with my thoughts and the songs I sing to myself when I’m happy. One of the lovely things about cycling is the activity itself: we’re doing the thing we want to do, and when we’ve finished we will no longer be doing the thing we want to do. Pilgrimages are often built around the destination, but I’ve found a real joy in the interim moment; the time between setting off and arriving.

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Graeme Holdsworth

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01 January 2024

3 min read

The traffic was increasing as I closed in on London, and I noticed another change in the housing. Here in the home counties the houses were getting a lot larger, further back from the road, and protected by gates and security systems. The sense of community that came from closely packed thatched cottages around an ancient church building was disappearing. Then suddenly there was an exponential shift in the cycling experience as I entered Enfield: cars, scooters, cyclists, motorbikes. The sound, and visual intensity of city living humanity swamped my senses.

I’m glad I didn’t just catch a train to London. I felt that I’d remembered the diversity of English countryside, the freedom of long-distance cycling, and made connections with like-minded pilgrims. I also refreshed my spiritual practice of physical prayer, and time alone with God in the wilderness.

It was about 2:30pm when I checked into my hotel near Kings Cross, unpacked the clothes I’d brought with me and freshened up before taking a walk south to the Thames embankment. After a pie and pint in a London boozer, on the banks of the River Thames, I walked to St Paul’s Cathedral for Evensong, then joined a walking-pilgrimage back to St James in Clerkenwell. St James Slaithwaite to St James Clerkenwell completed, arriving in time for The British Pilgrimage Trust’s symposium of talks and singing. Among the wonderful speakers, it was a delight to hear historian Tom Holland as he spoke to the apocalyptic call: to be a pilgrim.

He spoke about Chaucer, pandemics, black death, and the community aspect of pilgrimages. He joked that academic historians tend to be squeamish about attributing too much credit to religious or spiritual experiences as driving forces behind historical events. However, spiritual and religious drivers are significant: in 1033 there was a massive pilgrimage from all over Europe to the holy land, which came with an apocalyptic anxiety as 1,000 years had passed since the death and resurrection of Jesus. I reflected that contemporary anxiety of apocalypse is less focussed on the return of Christ and more on trigger happy world leaders in Russia, Israel and Iran…but I wonder if there will be a similar Christian pilgrimage in 2033.

Read a full account of Graeme’s pilgrimage ride on his blog.

Find out more about the British Pilgrimage Trust’s routes and resources.