'Too many times in my job have I needed to sit with clergy in the ruins of their life and ministry . . . sometimes it was drink, sometimes it was fraud, sometimes it was an affair, sometimes it was mental illness, sometimes it was struggles with sexuality. The underlying reasons so deeply complex and the outcome so catastrophic." So writes the Rev Judy Hirst, in her book Struggling to be Holy.
Judy is a priest in the Church of England diocese of Durham who serves as ministry development officer; previously she was director of ministerial formation at St John’s College in the University of Durham. She has a wide experience of working with clergy both in training and in service and she feels deeply for those for whom things go wrong. “I always found such times unbearably sad and my heart was filled with compassion for the clergy themselves and for all the many others who inevitably get caught up and hurt in such a maelstrom. A hard situation but made so much harder by the press laying siege to the house, desperate for ‘the story.’ What rewarding news it seems to be when someone has been unable to live up to their promises and our expectations. How the mighty are fallen.”
Tomorrow in the gospel reading we read about the lost sheep and the lost coin, two parables that represent people who have lost their way in life yet are still valued. They are searched for and found, much to the delight of those who sought them. This is how God deals with individuals who have failed and given a second chance, people like John Newton, notorious slave trader, who in later years was ordained. He describes the experience in his hymn Amazing Grace: "I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see".
But these parables take us further. We are told that the shepherd and the woman, having reclaimed what they had lost, quickly invited friends and neighbours to celebrate with them, underlining the fact that acceptance by the community, by society, is an important, if not essential, part of the process of restoration. But we are not good at that because our social structures are not for granting pardon, making past failings and deficiencies count for nothing. We resent the suggestion that we might consider making those who have failed, especially clergy, equal to those who have achieved, and yet that is precisely what Christian living can demand.
Bishop John Pritchard tells how he once explained in a sermon how God’s forgiveness works. He handed a £10 note to a young man who was bemused by this unexpected gift. When the bishop said he didn’t want it back, the man was initially confused but gradually began to grasp that it really was a gift and he didn’t have to earn it in any way, nor would he be asked to do anything in return. It was a difficult message for that young man to accept and for others to accept too. Bishop Pritchard makes the point that accepting a gospel of grace is a major challenge to a culture that values everything in terms of financial exchange.
Judy Hirst again: “The importance of forgiveness is that it releases us from the past into our present and offers us the possibility of a different future. As Desmond Tutu put it: ‘True forgiveness deals with the past, all of the past, to make the future possible’ . . . We all too often see forgiveness as a kind of transaction: sinner repents, makes restitution and is therefore forgiven. What is actually the case is that we are transferred into a different world altogether, the Kingdom of God, which wreaks havoc with our notion of fair play.”
The prophet Isaiah explains: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, And my thoughts than your thoughts.”
That has to be good news.
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