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James Haire the Kindness of Strangers

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James Haire the Kindness of Strangers 1 The Kindness of Muslims I worked for many years as a missionary and theological lecturer of the Presbyterian Church in Indonesia. I served in the eastern part of the country in the North Molucca Islands, the fabled Spice Islands of old. In the 1980s, these islands were very remote, and required, at that time, four flights followed by a boat journey to reach there from Jakarta, the capital. After serving there some years, I became seriously ill as a life-threatening tropical illness. It was necessary for me to seek medical attention urgently in Australia. I was a semi-permanent resident of Indonesia. After a long a difficult journey, I arrived at Ternate, the administrative centre of the North Molucca Islands, and lay in a house while my colleagues went to arrange for my papers to be prepared for me and my family to leave for Australia. It was a Friday morning, the Muslim day of prayer, when all government offices normally opened at 8am and closed at 11am. The only plane for the next four days left on that Friday afternoon. Usually it took two to three days to prepare papers for a resident with my status to depart from and return to Indonesia. The five staff of the Indonesian immigration office were all Muslim. They would normally have closed the office at 11am and gone to pray in the mosque. Shortly after 8am, my colleague came back to the house and told me that he had lodged all my papers and those of my family for our departure, and that he had been told that I should just wait. I assumed that we would not be able to leave for three or four more days and this greatly worried the nurse looking after me. Suddenly, about 1pm, two jeeps from the immigration office arrived at the house. In them were three of the Muslim officials from the immigration office. My papers and those of my family were all ready. They had done about two to three days’ work in just over an hour, all five working together. Moreover, they had kept the office open past normal closing time and would not now be able to attend prayers in the mosque. They came into the house, helped pack the remaining cases and drove me and my family to the airport. Not only had they stayed behind to work, they had also telephoned the airline to make the necessary reservations for us to leave. Here was I, a Christian leader, being cared for by a group of devout Muslims. In the jeep to the airport I asked them why they had acted in this way, and they told me that, in their faith, mercy and compassion needed always to take precedence over religious practices and administration. That compassion probably saved my life. 2 The Reverend Professor James Haire AM KSJ MAOxon GradDipMissLeiden PhDBirm HonDDBelf HonDLittUlster HonDUnivGriffith is Professor of Theology, Charles Sturt University (CSU), Canberra; Executive Director, Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, CSU; Director, Public and Contextual Theology Strategic Research Centre, CSU; Past President, National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA); Past President, Uniting Church in Australia (UCA); a Member of the Executive and General Committees of the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA); and a Consultant to the World Council of Churches (WCC)..
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