George Pitcher

This article is an edited version of a sermon delivered by George Pitcher at the Episcopalian Church of St John's, Selkirk, on 2nd September 2007

I've long been fond of a passage in Matthew's gospel, when Jesus returns from a first-century equivalent of a lecture tour and goes home to Nazareth and does a gig in his own family synagogue. The response is far from the adulation he's enjoyed from his fan-base on the road: "Isn't this Mary's boy, the carpenter's son up the road? We know his brothers and sisters - but isn't he a bit, well, up himself?" A doubtless somewhat stung Jesus pouts and says: "A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house", more popularly paraphrased as "No man can be a prophet in his own land or in his own home."

As I say, I've admired that story because I've never had a hope of exercising my ordained ministry at home, where sceptical and satirical teenagers are wholly unimpressed by my prophecy. As are the communities where I've lived in south London and now in East Sussex - in the chillingly appropriate village of Cross in Hand, where the crusaders mustered. People in places like this know too much of George up the road, who used to be a journalist and a businessman of some kind and now fancies himself as a priest.

Far better, surely, for me to address the congregation of St Bride's, the journalists' church, where my sacramental insights might be appreciated, or to travel to Scotland, as I did recently, to "prophesy" at a wedding of friends and to preach in an Episcopalian church.

Happily for all of us, I've had cause to recognize the arrogance of this attitude in the light of some recent experience - and, indeed, in light of some scriptural passages that have led me to revise my opinion of the nature of prophetic practice away from home. One of those passages comes from the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews. Probably written before AD 70 - within touching distance of witnesses of the risen Christ - this letter encourages steadfastness, perseverance and watchfulness for those observing the new covenant and the nascent Christian faith: Be careful to be kind to strangers, instructs the writer, because that way people have entertained angels unawares.

So much for scripture. Now the experience. Recently I took my elder sons, Tom and Fred, who are 19 and 17, to New York for their first trip to the States. I'm an old NYC hand from my journalism days and I told Fred, particularly, to be careful with his possessions, to keep his valuables in his belt bag zipped up, to be alert because this could still be a dangerous City. To watch me and learn from my vast experience.

We took a cab, with a typically truculent New-Yorker driver of some sort of middle-eastern origin, from JFK in to our hotel in mid-town Manhattan, where we jumped out, paid off the cabbie and went in to check-in. At this point, Fred announced he'd left his bag on the back seat of the cab. There was a horrible inevitability to this and it flashed through my mind that I'd have a job explaining to his Mum how I took my eye off the ball so early in the trip. The concierge meanwhile was asking for our passports. I looked down for my bag and realized that I'd left it on the back seat too. With our passports in it. This old New York hand, showing his sons how it's done, headed dolefully for the security desk and the prospect of long phone calls to the British consulate.

The story could end there, an object lesson in my hubris and pride, a little Greek tragedy, in which the fates conspired to bring the proud protagonist low. But there's more. In my room, I knew we'd seen the last of the bags - I know enough of New York cabbies to know that they are poorly paid and back-seat booty is part of their weekly haul. And British passports are highly marketable. An alternative view was just as bleak; Fred had a mobile phone and an MP3 player in his bag - who was going to turn in three passports and invite questions about where Fred's technology had gone? No, it was all gone, for sure. The sacramental me offered up a prayer of penitence for my lack of faith, while the secular me faced the truth.

An hour later the front desk called my room. There was a man from transportation in the lobby with some possessions of mine. I ran downstairs, barely touching them. There was a man nervously waiting by the door with three passports in his hand: "Are you from the cab company?" I asked. "I am the cab" he replied. I'd only seen the back of his head and hadn't looked at him properly when I paid him off. At least he had the passports. But then he led me to the car - there were the bags too. He hadn't even opened Fred's. He only had the passports out in his hand because he'd discovered the bags about three fares later and needed to know who they belonged to.

I called him to run us out to JFK a week later and paid him double the fare, but in truth it wasn't the money that had motivated him to cross Manhattan to return our possessions. He had two sons himself, he said, and he knew what it was like. His name's Haddi and he's from Ethiopia. I knew two things about Ethiopia before I met him - it's very, very poor and it was a very, very early country to convert to Christianity in the fourth century. I know a third thing from this Ethiopian now: Be careful with strangers; people have entertained angels unawares. I might add, but with a different understanding now, that no man can be a prophet in his own land.

What is the nature of that changed understanding? What is it about the way we treat strangers that informs Christian prophecy - if prophecy means interpreting the will of God? For me, it's a switch from a prophetic tradition among strangers of telling to one of listening - switching from transmit to receive.

I went to Scotland - a foreigner as it were - to preach at the wedding of old colleagues and continuing friends. I spoke about passion, about self-sacrificial love. At the celebrations afterwards, I tried to follow the rubric of Luke's gospel, sat down-table and waited to be moved up. That didn't happen, of course, but I was more than happy where I was. I'm no angel , but they entertained me unawares nonetheless. I met a young woman who works for a sort of swat team in disaster zones in developing economies, which was clearly a way of living her witness to the gospel. She has worked in places like Pakistan and Sudan. And Ethiopia.

I had come to preach, to prophesy, to transmit. And I received, listened, learned. I have tried to discern wider lessons for Christian mission from this altered state of prophecy. At the macrocosmic, national and political level, I would venture to suggest that it's the greatest folly to believe that Christian culture and secular democracy can be delivered at the barrel of a foreigner's gun. To be truly prophetic, we as western nations should be taking the risk of putting ourselves among strangers and looking for angels.

At our everyday, personal level, I suggest the same applies. No one can be a prophet in their own home. So we should be taking the risk of putting ourselves among strangers, listening and learning from them, for they may be angels. That is to say, we may see God in them. To prophesy, to interpret the will of God, is to look for the divine in strangers, not to proselytize at them. We may be called to make disciples of strangers. But a good place to start is to be disciples with strangers. That's a risk with strangers that we can all take in life.

My youngest son, Charlie, who didn't come to New York, is 12 and was starting his new school when I returned from Scotland. I knew he was anxious. He doesn't like change or new places. I thought of telling him some version of "No one can be a prophet in his own home". To encourage him into this strange land, I thought of what to tell him about presenting himself. Just be yourself, perhaps, do your best, say you want to be friends. But I've learned enough lately to know it's not about what he transmits about himself that matters, it's what he allows himself to receive of others. So, on that first morning at his new school, I told him to look out for angels.