Forgiveness (anchored in Jesus Christ) and the new Cathedral Vision

Sermon preached by Dean Anthony.

A few years ago I met a man named Kemal Parvenic, who had been horrifically tortured in a concentration camp during the 1990s Bosnian war.  I was hosting a talk in which he described being imprisoned and treated appallingly, in many cases by those who had been his neighbours, including former teachers and even classmates. He witnessed terrible suffering and many deaths.  After his release, he was given sanctuary in this country, and then ten years later, he decided to return to his village to ask former neighbours why they’d taken part in the violence. ‘I managed to meet up with two of my former teachers,’ he said, ‘One of them had been an interrogator in the camps and had clearly enjoyed the job. He wanted me to say that I forgave him, but at that time I couldn’t do that because he showed no remorse.’

Parvenic returned to the UK, and more time passed.  Then, unexpectedly, came a moment of grace.  He put it like this, ‘One cold January morning, I was in the shower when suddenly I found myself saying, ‘I forgive you’.... when this moment came I felt a huge release...  I didn’t decide not to hate because I’m a good person.  I decided not to hate because hating would have finished the job they started so successfully.  It would have poisoned me.’

Such is an authentic story of forgiveness, that might assist us in reflecting on today’s Gospel, in which Jesus tells Peter that he must forgive not seven times, but seventy seven.   Clearly Jesus does not mean that on the seventy eighth occasion, forgiveness is to be withheld: the point, rather, is that forgiveness cannot be quantified or calculated; it has no numerical limit.   We learn from this passage and others like it, and from the Lord’s Prayer, that we ought to forgive those who injure us.   But knowing that doesn’t mean we are able to do it; note that it took Kemal Parvenic well over ten years to get to that point – and when it did, it took a combination of his own intentions, the passing of time, and that unexpected moment of grace.   C.S. Lewis spoke of a hurt that stayed for thirty years before forgiveness came, and for others the moment never arrives.   The danger is that Christian teaching on forgiveness can load an extra layer of guilt on to those who are already hurting and suffering. 

With that in mind, let’s turn to that vivid parable in our Gospel, in which the king forgives one servant an impossible debt, but then that same servant cannot do the same for a colleague owing a much smaller amount.  Is this servant simply a heartless ogre?  What is going on here?

I said earlier that forgiveness cannot be quantified or counted, and the first servant would need several lifetimes of wages to pay a debt of ten thousand talents.   And yet on hearing of his release from this terrible situation, in which his entire family are released from impending servitude, there no gratitude or rejoicing.  All we hear is that on the way out he refuses the pleas of a colleague.  

The first servant has plainly not grasped what forgiveness means.   The problem starts in his first words to the king.  Rather than, ‘have pity on me and my family’ he makes the ridiculous promise to pay everything he owes.  What he receives, but fails to understand, is not justice, but compassion and mercy.   He leaves thinking that indebtedness and forgiveness are a power game in which he is still a player; when really, it is about responding to what we have undeservedly been given.  And being able to forgive, as we learn from the last line of the Gospel, involves an inner transformation: it needs to come from the heart.

This is a pretty good description of what it means to be disciple of Christ, and what it means to be the Church.  As individuals and together, we are called to a life of gratitude and rejoicing, of recognizing all that God has given; we are called to a life in which we are constantly seeking grace and assistance in all that is testing and hard – such as forgiving others in the way that God forgives us.  We are called to a life in which our hearts are transformed by God’s grace, however long it takes. 

Today the Cathedral is launching a new Vision and Strategy.   When you read it, I hope you will agree that it is both ambitious and realistic, and describes both what we are, and what we could be.   It rightly contains a number of measures by which we will hold ourselves accountable.  But for all that, the heart of the matter lies in four words that come both at the beginning and the end: ‘anchored in Jesus Christ’.  The imagery is suitably nautical, as befits the Cathedral of the Sea; what it expresses is crucial, for if our life is not so anchored, the fine words of the Vision will mean little. 

When Kemal Parvenic spoke of how he came to be able to forgive, he mentioned both his own decision making, and the moment of grace that transformed him.  It was tough, but he came through his suffering to a place of thanksgiving.  His experience speaks vividly of the nature of Christian discipleship, and of the life of the Church.   As for our new Vision, we pray that in the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, our decision making may be blessed, and the life of our Cathedral, anchored in Jesus Christ, may thrive and flourish to the glory of God.  AMEN