The Mulligan Sermon

Report by Master Keith Lawrey

The Revd. HHJ Sarah Whitehouse KC preached the 2025 Mulligan Sermon on 18 May 2025. The full text will be published in Graya 2026 but there follows a short summary of what she said.

The Preacher introduced her sermon by comparing two different approaches to the neighbour relationships: a story of the approach of two Brahmin women who gave alms back and forth between them but to nobody else. This demonstrated an approach that was legalistic but confined to the two of them while the traditions of giving of the Kula people of Polynesia were fluid and generous. The latter passed gifts which had been received on to another, in a form of circular giving. Both the Brahmins and the Kula might be said to be ‘neighbourly’ but their neighbourliness was expressed in different ways with different results.

Jesus, in the Gospel reading of the parable of the Good Samaritan, was speaking of neighbourliness. Neighbours are those who step in to help when the need is perceived. The lawyer, who had posed the original question to Jesus, pursued the matter because his view was that no one person could be a neighbour to all those who were in need at any one time.

Jesus, in his answering parable, told the story of a traveller who was attacked by a rogue who beat him, stole his possessions, and left him to die. There were two passers-by, who may or may not have had urgent reasons for not staying to help but, either way, failed to recognise that, if they did not stop to give life to another, they would not receive life themselves and so would become strangers rather than neighbours.

It was the third traveller who was the neighbour because he stopped to give help. He behaved like the Polynesian people with their ready neighbourliness unlike the Brahmin women who were limited in their outlook and
behaviour. The circle of neighbourliness is endless for those who are neighbours sharing responsibility as part of a continuous and shifting circle with its blurred lines and changing concerns.

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