7 February 2001
Eltham Crematorium
R.I.P. Harry Wilcox
Somebody once claimed that "There is no such thing as society"
Well, it all depends on what you mean by "Society", doesn't it? – as the late Professor Joad would have said.
If by "society" you mean "neighbourhood" then we all know that there undoubtedly are such things as neighbourhoods, and that the Wilcoxes, Harry and Florrie not only lived in just such a neighbourhood for many years, but were largely responsible for its creation and maintenance over those years, and might, without exaggeration, be described as one of its focal points.
For the essence of neighbours who together make up a neighbourhood is that they live "?nigh" or near to each other.
Not so near, mind you, that there is nod distance between and around them. As Robert Frost, an American famously said "Good fences make good neighbours". Kibbutzim and Commonwealths are right for some people in particular circumstances times and places; but neighbourhoods and fences provide the necessary combination of space-and-nearness which most people need if they are to live happy and fulfilled lives together.
Those of us who have enjoyed the privilege of living in the Wilcox Neighbourhood have every reason to be grateful for the example of good neighbourliness which Florrie and Harry set during their lifetimes.
For good neighbourhoods don't just happen. They are the creation of people like them who make it their business to become good neighbours to those amongst whom they live, and in particular to any newcomers from the moment they arrive. Neighbourhoods are not static but dynamic creations. They need static things like buildings and fences to exist at all, but a neighbourhood only becomes a good neighbourhood when the members of it work together to make it actively so.
This reminds us, of course of the question put to Jesus by the lawyer "and who is my neighbour" and the parable of the Good Samaritan with which Jesus gave as his answer. This informs us that "neighbours" are not just the people who live nearby, but anyone else towards whom we can be of service in our everyday lives. We have already heard just how many and how varied were such Neighbours in the case of Harry Wilcox: Scouts, Soldiers, Health Workers, Historians, and no doubt many of those people whom he met as it were by chance on his daily walks along the waterfront and through Greenwich Park. So we need to remember that, whilst charity may begin at home it certainly should not end there.
The Bible, indeed, whilst it begins in a garden with one man living on his own, ends in a city God's City, the New Jerusalem.
This City, you remember, resembles nothing so much as a human body in which, as St Paul tells the churchgoers at Ephesus "is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, grows into a holy Temple in the Lord".
For it is only in Jesus Christ, and through the power of his resurrection, as we heard in that other reading of St Paul, that we can be raised from the dead together with him. Jesus Christ is the unseen neighbour, whose compassion lies behind every neighbourly act; it is he alone who can offer to us the gift of everlasting life; he alone is the resurrection and the life. "In him, whoever believes, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in him shall never die"? as Jesus said to Martha at the funeral of her beloved brother, Lazarus.
So let us now pray for the repose of the soul of Harry Wilcox, thanking God for that good neighbour, and the good neighbourhood which he contrived to create and to be as he passed through this world; and, as Harry's neighbours, pray for ourselves that by our faith in him who is the resurrection and the life we may be united in that one neighbourhood which is everlasting, upon which the sun never sets, whose light is the truth as revealed to us in Jesus Christ, whose Temple is the Lamb of God who was slain "from the foundation of the world" and raised to life on the third day. That is the neighbourhood for which you and I were created – to glorify God and enjoy him for ever. It is called the City of God, the Heavenly Jerusalem.