Luke 10.1-12

We’re celebrating Black History Month in our midweek services during October, taking the time to reflect on black experiences in our history, and the dynamics of British life in society and the church. Today, I’m going to talk to you a little bit about the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott.

As with many cities, there was widespread racial discrimination in Bristol in the 1960s. One of the more glaring examples of this was the Bristol Omnibus Company. The bus company was experiencing a shortage of conductors and drivers, but it refused to employ anyone who wasn’t white in any customer-facing roles. Senior leaders talked quite openly of white men being unwilling to work under black people, and of white female conductors fearing for their safety if they worked with black men at night.

One young man, Guy Reid-Bailey, had recently arrived from Jamaica, and had fallen in love with England’s double-decker buses, which he hadn’t seen in the Caribbean. Applying for a job, his qualifications were sufficient to get him an interview, but as soon as he arrived at the depot and was seen by the managers, they falsely told him the vacancies had been filled.

In response, a small group led by Bristol’s first black social worker, Paul Stephenson, organized a boycott of the buses until they changed their hiring policy. The boycott lasted four months, receiving the support of many people from both the city and more widely, and was ultimately successful. Bristol’s first non-white bus drivers began work in September 1963, and the publicity that the action created was instrumental in leading to the first national Race Relations Act, outlawing discrimination, in 1965. Paul Stephenson would go on to work for the Commission for Racial Equality and to create community groups documenting the history of West Indian people in Bristol; Guy Bailey would go on to found a black housing association, caring particularly for elderly people facing housing discrimination and penury in retirement.

One of the important parts of the Bristol bus boycott story for us is that the role the church played is rather an equivocal one. While many church groups came out in support of the campaign, their Bishop sided openly with the bus company, and the local Council of Churches even delivered a public statement decrying what they described as the provocative actions of an unrepresentative group.

We need to ask ourselves what role we play, as a church and individuals, when questions of social injustice arise today. In our Gospel reading, Jesus sends out the 70 disciples to proclaim the approaching kingdom of God, the kingdom which he has already told us is good news for the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed. This kingdom – God’s kingdom – will come whether they or we take part in it or not, but Jesus chooses to create a community to further his mission. He calls on them and us to work together, to collaborate, in pursuit of a fairer world, helping to realise God’s kingdom on earth.

In his instructions to the disciples, he indicates some of the challenges that this involves. They are sent out like lambs in the midst of wolves. This is not a call for Jesus’ disciples to submit themselves to the slaughter, but rather to align themselves with the powerless, to use the methods of peace in the face of those who would use force and violence to establish their position in society.

But in spreading the gospel of peace, Jesus does not mean peace at any price. If the disciples share their peace but find rejection, that peace returns to them and does not rest on those who won’t welcome Jesus’s message. This is a real challenge to us, one that the Bristol council of churches failed in speaking out against the Bristol bus boycott. They were hoping to prevent conflict and promote harmony, true Christian ideals, but they did this only by ignoring the conflict and disharmony which already existed in the form of rampant racial discrimination. In the words of the prophet Jeremiah, they were saying “’peace, peace’, when there is no peace.”

In the same way, Christians now often find ourselves ill-at-ease when facing situations of conflict, both large and small. We rightly seek peace and reconciliation, but if we assert the need for this without taking account of the circumstances, we all-too-often risk siding with the powerful against those who seem to be causing trouble by challenging the status quo. When someone creates tension by complaining about unfairness, or a group upends our schedule with a demonstration blocking the roads, for example, we must step back and reflect on the underlying situation before we react. If we refuse to side with anyone too provocative, or are unwilling to risk provocation and inconvenience ourselves for the sake of justice, we may fail the cause of true peace and healing.

There is good news, as always, in today’s Gospel. The disciples are sent out to tell the world that the kingdom of God has come near. The question that faces our churches, and each of us, is whether we are ready to be fellow workers for the kingdom, or whether its apostles will be ushering it in in spite of us.