I have a copy of a most remarkable book called ‘I you sit very still’ It’s by a woman called Marian Partington who’s sister Lucy disappeared one night on her way home. What had happened to Lucy remained a mystery for almost 20 years until her remains were found in the cellar of a house inhabiited by Fred and Rosemary West. She was still wearing the gag that had kept her silent in her last minutes of life.
Marian Partington is a Christian – a Quaker. She described her journey of forgiveness from murderous rage aimed at the whole world outside herself – to a place of compassion where she has come to care deeply about Rosemary West – that she will not spend the rest of her life in a state of self delusion and self ignorance. I think the turning point for Marion came when she recognised that the enormous rage which she discovered within herself could have lead her down a similar road to the Wests if her upbringing and circumstances had been different. The Wests inflicted on Marian’s sister Lucy some of the things that had happened to them as children – they were repeating a pattern of abuse. David Holloway the Bishop of Edinburgh was then called upon to comment on the theological and moral tools required to break the cycle of abuse – he talked about forgiveness and promise – forgiveness to set us free from harm done to us, linked to a promise that our own lives and actions will be conducted differently. So the cycle of abuse is broken – something which the Wests had failed to achieve.
Forgiveness is a strange thing. Some people seem to be able to forgive easily, others hold on to their pain and bitterness for years – sometimes over the pettiest things, sometimes over things which have devastated lives and relationships. And what about our attitudes to wrongdoers – not those whose crimes have affected us directly, but those who exist to us only through the television and newspapers. What is our attitude towards them?
The story in today’s gospel reading is a good example of one very common attitude towards what the bible calls sinners. Simon is disgusted because Jesus allows a woman of ill repute to anoint his feet with oil and dry them with her hair. ‘If this man were a prophet he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him – that she is a sinner’. Jesus, reading his thoughts, tells the story of two people who owe money but who could not pay. One owed a little, the other a lot. When their debts are written off, who would be the most grateful – why the one who owed most, of course. And so it would have been with this woman – the woman of ill repute. Upright, self righteous Simon just didn’t feel the same sort of gratitude.
But there is a loop hole in today’s story – a touch of irony perhaps. If Simon didn’t need to feel the same sort of gratitude to Jesus as did the woman, why did he have to be so stuck up and judgmental?
Like many people – perhaps especially like many Churchgoers – Simon felt the need to be better than other people – or at least better than someone. He had to have someone to look down on. How many of us are like this? We may be like it as individuals – I think we are also like it as a society. We seem to like it when there is someone who we can label as the Scum of the Earth – be it the paedophile we think might be living around the corner, anyone or anything connected to Islam, East Europeans living and working in the UK, or refugees at Calais trying to get to the UK. Some of the media campaigns have fed on this need we seem to have to demonize people and stirred up real hatred against individuals or groups – usually with disastrous consequences.
This sort of attitude and behaviour is completely against the spirit in which Jesus lived his life, and what he taught – it is completely against the Christian Religion. Why? Because Jesus taught us clearly that God loves us as we are – God is ready to love us now, not waiting until we are as we should be. It is God’s love that moves us to change, not the threat of his wrath. It is a failure to recognise that we are loved NOW, AS WE ARE that drives us to turn others into scapegoats or to look down our noses at them. It is a failure to love ourselves. It is a failure to love God – for we are made in God’s image.
Loving ourselves even sounds a bit wrong doesn’t it? It sounds rather too much the hedonism and self-centeredness that is the lifestyle of the rich and famous. A lifestyle emulated by many today who think only of themselves and are selfish and often rude as a result. There is a difference, I think, between loving ourselves and indulging ourselves. Think back to the woman in today’s gospel. What might it have been like for her to find she was loved and was given permission to love herself, perhaps for the first time? Can you see how the result would have been humility rather than arrogance? This is why the first thing she did was for someone else rather than for herself. This suggests that so called celebrity lifestyles are born not of the assurance of love, of self worth, but of an inner emptiness – a hollow feeling somewhere deep down inside.
A French country priest once wrote this – ‘It is easier than one thinks to hate oneself. Grace means forgetting oneself. But if all pride were dead in us, the grace of graces would be to love oneself humbly, as one would any of the suffering members of Jesus Christ.’
To love oneself humbly as one would any of the suffering members of Jesus Christ.
AMEN
Rev’d Anne Morris
Cproper6
