Who is My Neighbour? Introducing Mr. Perkins

Who is My Neighbour? Introducing Mr. Perkins

by Daniel F. Graves

I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine.  His name is the Rev. William Perkins. Now, I should be perfectly clear that he resides only in the landscape of my imagination. Mr. Perkins, for so he liked to be called, was the parson of a small rural Ontario town which I shall call Hampton's Corners.  Hampton's Corners is one of those places that has escaped becoming a completely depressed rural town because it is in within commuting distance of the city.  It is not a bustling place, but neither is it a sleepy hollow.  Mr. Perkins has been the rector of that parish for a few years now, and this is a story from his early days in the parish.

            First off, I should tell you something about Mr. Perkins.  He is a man of diminutive stature, of slight build, and full head of blond hair, somewhat greying due to the effects of ministry, but barely noticeable because of its blondness. He wears round glasses, which give him a studious look, which he likes for he something of a scholar.  Not only is he diminutive in stature, he is somewhat diminutive in nature. He is shy man, something of an introvert; a pleasant man to make conversation with, but not the sort of fellow who enjoys working the room.  He likes being called "Mr. Perkins".  While he grew up in the city, in a church known for pomp grandeur in its liturgy, the use of epithets such as "Father" in that place were considered "Romish." He had a “high church” season in his life when he attended Trinity College, but that soon passed. Although he would never correct anyone for calling him "Father", and some did, he preferred the old fashioned "Mr." as the appropriate address for an Anglican clergyman.  And as he was somewhat diminutive in stature and shy in person, he felt is gave him an air of authority that his personal presence lacked.

            On the particular day on which this story took place, Mr. Perkins was in his home study preparing his Sunday sermon.  The text was from Luke 10, the parable of the Good Samaritan.  You will likely remember it well.  A lawyer tests Jesus by asking him what he must do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus asks him in return, "What is written in the Law?" and the lawyer responds with the Summary of the Law, "You shall love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself."  Jesus commends him for his answer but then the lawyer takes it a step further and asks "who is my neighbour", to which Jesus offers the parable of the Good Samaritan, you know the one, in which a man is injured along the road and both a priest and Levite pass him by, but the reviled Samaritan stops, binds up his wounds, puts him up in an inn and pays his bills until he is well again.  Clearly, the Samaritan is the neighbour.  The only problem is, Mr. Perkins hated this parable.

            On the day in which we have dropped in on our clerical friend, he is once again feeling frustrated that he has to preach on a text that makes the clergy look bad.  "Clergy get enough bad press" he thought to himself, "why do we have to get up in the pulpit every three years and preach about this lousy priest who passed by the man in need?"  To be fair, Mr. Perkins struggled with the sort of clerical guilt that most ordained clergy struggle with.  During his periodic visits to the city he would find himself passing by numerous street people on the way from the subway to the Diocesan offices.  Sometimes he would drop a loonie or twoonie in a cup, often he would offer a word of 'hello', but more often than not, he was in a hurry and would simply pass by on his way to a meeting with the bishop, pretending not to see the panhandlers, fully aware that we was playing the part of the priest in the parable, and passing by not just one person in need, but several.  God, he hated this parable. "Perhaps I should preach on Colossians, this week," he bargained with himself.  But just at the moment he had stirred up the courage and written but a single line, his phone rang.  It was Julia, the local funeral director.

            "Mr. Perkins," she began, "are you available to take a service on Friday?" 

            In spite of the sad occasion, the interruption was a welcome one and Mr. Perkins jumped at the opportunity, "Why yes, I am indeed free.  Give me the details," he said perhaps a little too enthusiastically.

            "Well," she began, "it's a social service funeral." A social service funeral is a funeral that is paid for by the government when the individual's estate has no means to pay the expenses.

            "I see," he continued, seeing his stole fee shrink considerably, but nonetheless still keen to undertake the distraction from his sermonizing.

            "The man's name was Harvey," she said, "He lived at Hampton House."

Hampton house was a kind of half-way house for people who had been in trouble with the law and were working their way back into the world.  It was a pretty rough place and generally seen as a blight on the community.  Occasionally, residents would show up at Mr. Perkin's church, sometimes asking for assistance, sometimes wanting to pray in the church at odd hours. "He died suddenly of a heart attack" Julia continued, "He was 56. I've spoken with the staff, and they say he had only lived there for a month and they can find no next of kin.  You can speak to Sandra, the case worker there.  She's handling the arrangements, but I don't think she can tell you much more than I have."

            Mr. Perkins got the information, made the call to Sandra, the caseworker, and Julia was quite right. Harvey had only been there a month, was something of grump who didn't make any connection with any of the other residents, and there didn't seem to be any close family.

            Now, it was widely recognized that Mr. Perkins was very skilled at conducting funerals.  He was quite popular with the local funeral director and was frequently called upon to officiate at the funerals of people who had only the most tenuous of church connections.  Mr. Perkins had that rare gift of listening to the memories of the family, for he was an excellent listener, and in his homily reflecting back those words, along with some heartfelt encouragement derived from the gospel, so that at the end of a service, people would invariably say "you really caught Gertrude's character", or "it was just like you knew Raymond."  Mr. Perkins took a lot of pride, perhaps even a bit of unhealthy pride, in this gift and ability.

            But today, the task was a bit more challenging. Nobody knew Harvey.  He had just shown up recently and then ad died. There was no one to tell Harvey's story. There would be no eulogy from family or friend, or even someone he had lived briefly with at the half-way house.  There was no one who could tell Mr. Perkins anything about Harvey aside from the worker who said he was a grump who had difficulty making connections, which was hardly the stuff for eulogizing an man's life.

            Friday came and Mr. Perkins found himself standing at the podium in the funeral home chapel. In a chapel that would normally seat about seventy-five people, there were three: Mr. Perkins, Julia the funeral director, and Sandra the case-worker.  And of course, before them, the earthly remains of Harvey. Mr. Perkins followed the funeral liturgy to the "tee". "I am the Resurrection and the life," he began, reading the sentences.  He proceeded to the collect, then the readings, first the 23rd psalm and then the text he had chosen to preach from, Psalm 139:

 

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down,

and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,

O Lord, you know it completely.

You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is so high that I cannot attain it.

 

He paused for a moment under the weight of these words and then continued,

 

For it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

that I know very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

In your book were written

all the days that were formed for me,

when none of them as yet existed.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

I try to count them—they are more than the sand;

I come to the end—I am still with you.

 

And then he began to preach.  The homily was not a long one, it had a single purpose and it was this.  Let us hear it from Mr. Perkins, himself:

"None of us here knew Harvey.  I don't know where he was born, or where he grew up. Or what his parents’ names were.  I don't know if he ever loved anyone, or was loved by anyone.  I don't know what sort of things he liked, or did not like.  I don't know what he worked at in his younger days, or if he worked at all. I don't know what made him happy, or what made him said.  I really don't know anything about Harvey. The reality before us is that Harvey was forgotten by the world. It must be said and acknowledged that we have failed him.  But what I want to say is this: there is one who has not forgotten Harvey, who knows him intimately, who knew him before he was fashioned in his mother's womb, whose eyes beheld his unformed substance, who never ceased to walk with him through this life, who searched him out and knew him, who continues to know him, who made the journey with him through the valley of the shadow of death, and now leads him home.  That one is our Lord and God. He who created him, knows him intimately, and will never forget him, it is in his house that Harvey rests today. Where we have failed, O loving God, be faithful in your purposes. Amen."

            Mr. Perkins concluded the service with the prayers, the commendation and then the blessing.  Following the service he quietly removed his vestments, made his good-byes to the funeral director and case-worker and headed back to his study in the rectory to resume work on the sermon he barely started two days earlier.  Sunday was drawing close and he needed get his sermon written.  He sat at his desk, and turned on his computer, and opened his document at the place where he had left off, having written the words, "Who is my neighbour?"

c. 2016 - Daniel F. Graves