Thought for the month with The Rev Tim Hanson

10:10am Sunday 17th August 2008

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Last week I met a man who’s great (x 4) uncle was, 150 years ago, the first man to climb the Eiger in the Swiss Alps. (If you haven’t heard of it..... it’s a big one).

He was George Barrington, an Irish landowner and an adventurer. He was helped by two locals and, apparently, when they got near to the top one of the locals ran ahead to try to be first.

George, later Sir George, took out a gun and threatened to shoot if the man didn’t return to this correct place in the climbing party – behind George. As you can imagine, he did as he was told.

There’s a great pride in being first isn’t there? Sometimes that desire is to be applauded. We will applaud when the first man or woman crosses the line in the Olympic races, we will applaud when Manchester United are first in the Premiership in May 2009 (well, some of you will).

At other times, though, there is something ugly about wanting to be first. It means that we grab when we could give, we hoard when we could help, we push ourselves forward when we could pull others up.

Jesus said: “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.”

He didn’t mean that it is wrong to win. He did mean that we should give to every other person who we meet the dignity that God gives to them.

A person’s age, race or background doesn’t take away this responsibility. We hear a lot of talk about people’s rights, we perhaps don’t hear enough about people’s responsibilities towards each other.