Civic Service: 8 June 2014 at Leicester Cathedral
“Love your neighbour as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbour, therefore love is
the fulfilling of the law”
Lord Mayor, it is always an honour to welcome Leicester’s first citizen to this Cathedral, but
especially so this year when the point of the partnership between City Council and
Cathedral is bearing visible fruit in the Cathedral Gardens project soon to be opened as a
major civic amenity. We honour you today Lord Mayor, and through you the vision of our
civic authorities in seeing the potential of this really significant public space and the way it
creates common ground for our Cathedral – as a place for people of all faiths and none. A
place which points to the spiritual and transcendent dimension of all our city’s life and
establishes Leicester as a cathedral city to rank alongside the other great cathedral cities
of England.
But we also greet you Lord Mayor as a man of Leicester, educated at Crown Hills School
and Charles Keene College – a tool maker, businessman, sportsman, President of the
Leicester Railways Men’s Club and a lifelong Socialist and Trades Unionist who has
served the City Council since 1995 representing Charnwood and Belgrave Wards. We are
delighted to mark your mayoral year in this place and we assure you and the whole City
Council of the prayers and support of the Christian community in all your endeavours
during this year.
We know that the prospects for Local Government throughout the country are becoming
ever more challenging.
As budget cuts bite even deeper in 2015 and beyond, the
responsibility for maintaining front line services with reducing means will become
overwhelming. We know that the increasing demands of Adult Social Care will place
greater burdens on Local Authorities and the NHS as people of my generation live longer
and require more support over the next 25 years. We know too that the post-war vision of
universal State provision through a comprehensive Welfare State system is no longer
affordable: and that since the financial crisis of 2008, the 1979 vision of an unfettered free
market as the solution to society’s ills has collapsed too.
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What vision then of a just society does the Christian tradition have to offer to your civic
authority at a time like this? The passage read to us by the Deputy Mayor is from St
Paul’s letter to the Christian community living in Rome at the centre of the greatest
imperial power in the world at that time. Paul advises a very conformist agenda – “be
subject to the governing authorities” he says. See the authorities as instituted by God: pay
them due respect and pay your taxes as a way of respecting human society as the arena
of God’s action.
But then he adds life changing words – words which have been repeatedly described as
the most radical and transformative agenda for social change the world has ever seen:
the words of Jesus Christ “Love your neighbour as yourself.”
Could this ever be practical politics? Does this not belong to the fantasy world of idealism
and ideology – far removed from the cut and thrust of Council Chamber or Committee
Room?
Well let’s pause before we immediately draw a too cynical conclusion. On this week of the
D Day commemoration, Nick Robinson, the BBC political editor remarked on air:
“Whenever the world makes you cynical, whenever you doubt that courage and good news
is possible, stop and think of these men.” Many of them laid down their lives out of love for
their country, inspired by a vision of a just and fair society. Their sacrifice wasn’t in vain as
we now know. Within two generations Europe has evolved into a voluntary association of
28 democratic States living in peace. That surely is an outworking of the commandment to
“Love our neighbour as ourself”.
“Love your neighbour as yourself”.
So today we ask how might that fundamental
expression of Christian living find it’s way into the thinking of our City Council in the year
ahead? Mr Mayor, I dare to offer you three answers to that question.
First, we need our City Council to be leaders of a sense of place for our communities.
Although we increasingly live in a digital world, there is overwhelming evidence that one of
the things people care most about (including their family and friends) is the place they live
in.
In Cathedral Gardens, Jubilee Gardens, the Cultural Quarter and Connecting
Leicester, we see this attention to place – recognising that people lead loving lives when
they feel their place matters. Where their story, their narrative and their character is
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attended to and celebrated. As well as prosperity and prospects, people need identity and
our Local Authority can do so much to enhance it.
Second, we need our Local Government to be good at partnerships. On the Cathedral
Quarter Partnership Board we are beginning to learn how to do this. But it requires new
learning from all of us. The days of the Town Hall as the place from which the whole City
was run and all service delivery provided are, of course, gone for good. Our citizens need
to see themselves not just as service consumers but as partners with the City Council in
working together for the Common Good: whether in schools, NHS, business, voluntary
sector and the churches, mosques and temples. We shall learn to “love our neighbour as
ourself” when we rediscover personal responsibility for our neighbour’s well-being.
And thirdly, our City Council needs to share leadership with all of us, in articulating a
purpose for our common life. What is the purpose of our City? Is it more than a clustering
of human beings for endless economic growth – is there a greater purpose – a common
vision of human flourishing around which one of the most diverse cities in Europe can
unite?
Learning to “Love our neighbour as ourself” provides the highest possible ideal for urban
living we could think of. It suggests we belong to one another; that Muslims, Christians,
Hindus and people of no faith can share a space and a common vision. It suggests that
the strong have a responsibility for the weak, and the rich for the poor. It suggests that
relations with the County Council and our regional neighbours are vital to the well-being of
the City.
Place: partnership and purpose. Three words worth reflecting on at a Civic Service. In the
year ahead we in this Diocese and Cathedral look forward to working closely with the City
Council to give practical expression to them in all our planning and preparation for the
reinterment of Richard III.
May God bless you, Lord Mayor, and all of us in this task together.
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