On 20th April 2005 Abigail Witchells was walking in the village of Little Bookham near her home, with her 2 year old son Joseph. She was attacked from behind and stabbed in the neck, paralyzing her and leaving her son unhurt but traumatized.
A statement was released on her behalf which read, "The staff here are wonderful and I am making progress every day. I have sensation over most of my body and the pain is less now. I can move my head, but as yet I cannot move my arms and legs. I can breathe and speak on my own for short periods. Please pass on my thanks to everyone for their support and prayers. God is doing beautiful things."
Much has been made of the Witchalls' strong Christian faith, and that of the whole family. her attacker was publicly forgiven by her, her mother and her husband. Her mother said, “Just being with her makes me feel better and I am immensely proud of her and her husband, Benoit, and of how much I have learned from them. Abigail's life is a triumph of the Cross. Not the world's usual triumph of strength, but rather one of vulnerability and love.
It seems to me that Abigail Witchells, along with Gee Walker (mother of Anthony murdered in Huyton), Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Gordon Wilson (who’s daughter Marie died in the Enniskillen bombing) - all of whose stories (or parts at least) we have heard this week, have an Easter faith - a faith that trusts God to do, not just the improbable but the impossible. Have we?
Easter to many people is about chocolate, hot cross buns, bunny rabbits and two long over due Bank holidays. Easter is REALLY about Jesus Christ’s passion for a hurting world. In recent days we have journeyed with Jesus into Jerusalem shouting our hosannas, to the Last Supper, to betrayal by kisses in Gethsemene, to trial and torture by Ciaphas and Pilate, and then standing watching the death of a traitor on a cross, dying the death of a failed man. As a we stand close to the garden where the tomb is, where we have been waiting since last night, the sun gently pinking the early morning sky, some figures are seen making their way in the half light.
It’s Mary and the others. These women, have been faithful to Jesus through it all - after desertion and betrayal - and here they are, after the Sabbath coming to the Garden Tomb to anoint his body as is the custom. Although they are doing what they can to be faithful to Jesus, the women like the other disciples never really heard Jesus latterly, not really. Here they are, despite talk of resurrection, coming to embalm a decomposing corpse.
They are chattering as they pass us, who will roll the stone away? The women are clearly expecting to find what you would expect to find at a new grave. The women are still live in a predictable world. If you roll a stone in place on Friday it will still be there on Sunday. These women demonstrate enormous courage and faithfulness coming ot the garden tomb, but they come expecting, despite what Jesus has said, that death still has the final word.
Throughout his ministry Jesus taught and revealed a new order that God was bringing in. A new order where things are not always necessarily one of cause and effect but one where the topsy turvey values of the Kingdom of God break through.
As they near the corner of the garden, near the small outcrop of trees, where the tomb is located, this new order of things begins to break through. As we follow them to the tomb, we all notice that the stone has been moved to one side. Whilst there are many explanations for this, a sense of something just being wrong overcomes us all.
Out of concern? Out of curiosity? The women look, we look too - inside there is only a shroud in the tomb and no body. What is going on? ‘Do not be alarmed!’ says the young man sitting over to one side of the tomb. Do not be alarmed?! They were now terrified - was this the grave robber himself that they have disturbed? ‘Do not be alarmed, you are looking for Jesus who was crucified - he has been raised, look here is the place where they laid him, ‘ he says as he points to the shroud. ‘Go and tell the others he is going ahead of you to Galilee, and there you will meet him..’
If something as predictable and inevitable as death is not longer inevitable or predictable then the world has changed dramatically. Frighteningly so. The body has not been stolen but the grave clothes are lying there as if Jesus has just stepped out of them... If stones can be rolled without help, if Jesus is really alive, what other certainties in life are now up for grabs. Life is suddenly awe-inspiring and terrifying. What else can and will God do in our lives?
One of the women with Mary said it later - that Jesus is now just loose in the world and coming to meet us, not on our terms, with our expectations, but on his. We can no longer deal with Jesus compartmentalized as a dead body in a tomb, as a story told by Mary and the other women, but we meet him here as a living reality and there is absolutely no avoiding him in grief, sentimentality, in liturgy. Business as usual in our day to day or Sunday lives is no longer safe because Jesus is here wherever we are, whatever we are doing calling us to be his disciples again and again and simply to come and follow him.
The women stand, as if suspended in treacle for a second that seems to last an hour, and then Salome screams. She screams and screams and screams. Immediately they are off in the directions of the four winds, running like they are being chased, running to who knows where, but not in the direction of Galilee. Leaving us - at this strange and empty place. They have seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears the truth of all that Jesus taught - he has been raised.
This easter story does not have a happy end so that we can all heave a sigh of Lent-is-over-relief. Jesus’ Easter story ends where it began, in Galilee - back in the ordinariness of the everyday routines. Our Easter story ends where it began, in Leverstock Green - back in the ordinariness of everyday. But it is now the Risen Jesus meets us in the ordinary and everydayness of things - on his terms, whenever and wherever he wants to, calling us to follow him.
The disciples abandoned Jesus to death in the garden as he was arrested and then crucified, and these women abandoned him in as yet unseen new life. There is only one group of people who can take the news that Jesus is risen, back into the ordinariness of every day life - us. But will we?
Here with a version of today's Good Friday address...
Just over a year ago, a bright, vivacious young man was waiting at a bus stop with his girl friend. Some lads appeared over the other side of the road shouting racist taunts. The young couple decided to avoid confrontation by walking down to another stop. The lads followed. The chase ultimately led into a park where the young man was confronted and beaten to death with an ice axe. The young man was Anthony Walker.
As she left the court flanked by her daughters following teh tiral of her son’s killers, Gee Walker said, ‘Do I forgive them? At the point of death Jesus said, ‘I forgive them because they do not know what they do’. I have got to forgive them. I still forgive them. It will be difficult but we have no choice but to live on for Anthony. Each of us will take a piece of him and will carry on his life.”
I knew a couple once whose son had died in a tragic military accident several years ago. They never spoke of the detail of what happened but the emotion was aleays only just beneath the surface. Years later, their son was still spoken of very highly, he could still do no wrong. Both parents were so caught up in the tragedy of the past that they failed to see that their focus on their dead son was alienating them from their other children and their friends and they remained locked in the angry and bitter past, unable to move on into the future, our present.
Today is about the grief of a parent, whose cry of anguish at the death of their son still resonates in the empty caverns of eternity. Today is about the grief of a parent - not just at the death of their son - but that they willingly allowed them to die feeling abandoned, alone, in the darkest abject hell.
Today is about a father that knows the depths of unimaginable grief in the death of a child. We underplay the horror of what was going on for Jesus and his father on this day at our peril. Jesus’ cry of ‘My God! My God, why have you forsaken me?’ is not the cry of a child who knows that despite having been lost in the supermarket, a call for their father has been put out on the tanoy, and he is on his way. This is the cry of someone completely alone. This cross is a dark and desperate place because here we witness the distance between God the Father and God the Son. Jesus has known and people have witnessed the pressence and power of God in him throughout his life and ministry. But here at the cross, God is torn in two. The distance between God and humanity normally present because of our fraility and sinfulness is revealed on this cross in Jesus the man as an unimaginable gulf in God himself. Today God stands speachless with Gee Walker, and millions of other parents worldwide who’s hearts have been torn from their bodies in the death of a unique child, their love, their flesh and blood, gone...
The cross is the ultimate darknes. And yet according to the Gospel, that darkness is not tragic. The gospels show Jesus not as a tragic figure haunted by fate, but as a faithful and trusting though at times terrified figure who moves towards his death with courage and conviction. He enters this darkenss of his own free willI and in full awareness of the outcome.
In the cross, we discover a God acting with finality and surety, yet with a tear streaked face. The cross is not God’s last ditch rescue mission of humanity, but part of the mystery of salvation for the whole world, formed in the mind of God since before Creation itself was and there was only God. The cross also does not explain away the suffering of Gee Walker and countless others. But on the cross God bears in his broken heart all wounds. So desperate and dark is our situation that God has to it enter to begin to see it transformed into a place of healing. Christ’s wounds are ours; his pain is mine. Our Father loves this hurting world this much - there surely must have been a calvary in the heart of God before it was planted on Golgotha’s hill.
Today we are called not to imitate Christ. Today he imitates us. He enters our suffering, our brokeness, our pain, our death. Until we meet the forsaken, sorrowful, and mutilated Christ of Good Friday here there will be no facing up by us to the sorrow, forsakenness and mutilation of real people in society, nor will we be capable of a passionate love affair with a God who really knows us.
The cross is a paradox - 'para' meaning near to and 'doxa' meaning glory because somehow through the cross we are innaugurated into the new life of God. The cross stands between our fallenness and our fulfillment, between the dust from which we come and the glory towards which we move, between Eden and the New Jerusalem, between that which is good and that which painful and broken in us. And yet we know too well that these are not different places: for sin and grace, hate and love, dust and glory, Eden and Jerusalem make up each one. The cross of Christ meets us at these points of conflict of our own fragmentation and longing for wholeness. It is the point of our most profound brokenness, at the shaking of the foundations of our being, that Christ’s cross becomes for us forgiveness for hurt and hope in the face of brokenness and death. Here we are indeed close to glory.
Today we are called not to imitate Christ. Today he imitates us. He enters our suffering, our brokeness, our pain, our death. ‘I have got to forgive them. I still forgive them.... It will be difficult but we have no choice but to live on for Anthony. Each of us will take a piece of him and will carry on his life. Gee Walker may have imitated the Christ of Good Friday in her forgiveness of her sons killers. Today God imitates Gee Walker and others, knowing the pain of the loss of a son, forgiving and in the face of death offering life.
Just over a year ago, a bright, vivacious young man was waiting at a bus stop with his girl friend. Some lads appeared over the other side of the road shouting racist taunts. The young couple decided to avoid confrontation by walking down to another stop. The lads followed. The chase ultimately led into a park where the young man was confronted and beaten to death with an ice axe. The young man was Anthony Walker.
As she left the court flanked by her daughters following teh tiral of her son’s killers, Gee Walker said, ‘Do I forgive them? At the point of death Jesus said, ‘I forgive them because they do not know what they do’. I have got to forgive them. I still forgive them. It will be difficult but we have no choice but to live on for Anthony. Each of us will take a piece of him and will carry on his life.”
I knew a couple once whose son had died in a tragic military accident several years ago. They never spoke of the detail of what happened but the emotion was aleays only just beneath the surface. Years later, their son was still spoken of very highly, he could still do no wrong. Both parents were so caught up in the tragedy of the past that they failed to see that their focus on their dead son was alienating them from their other children and their friends and they remained locked in the angry and bitter past, unable to move on into the future, our present.
Today is about the grief of a parent, whose cry of anguish at the death of their son still resonates in the empty caverns of eternity. Today is about the grief of a parent - not just at the death of their son - but that they willingly allowed them to die feeling abandoned, alone, in the darkest abject hell.
Today is about a father that knows the depths of unimaginable grief in the death of a child. We underplay the horror of what was going on for Jesus and his father on this day at our peril. Jesus’ cry of ‘My God! My God, why have you forsaken me?’ is not the cry of a child who knows that despite having been lost in the supermarket, a call for their father has been put out on the tanoy, and he is on his way. This is the cry of someone completely alone. This cross is a dark and desperate place because here we witness the distance between God the Father and God the Son. Jesus has known and people have witnessed the pressence and power of God in him throughout his life and ministry. But here at the cross, God is torn in two. The distance between God and humanity normally present because of our fraility and sinfulness is revealed on this cross in Jesus the man as an unimaginable gulf in God himself. Today God stands speachless with Gee Walker, and millions of other parents worldwide who’s hearts have been torn from their bodies in the death of a unique child, their love, their flesh and blood, gone...
The cross is the ultimate darknes. And yet according to the Gospel, that darkness is not tragic. The gospels show Jesus not as a tragic figure haunted by fate, but as a faithful and trusting though at times terrified figure who moves towards his death with courage and conviction. He enters this darkenss of his own free willI and in full awareness of the outcome.
In the cross, we discover a God acting with finality and surety, yet with a tear streaked face. The cross is not God’s last ditch rescue mission of humanity, but part of the mystery of salvation for the whole world, formed in the mind of God since before Creation itself was and there was only God. The cross also does not explain away the suffering of Gee Walker and countless others. But on the cross God bears in his broken heart all wounds. So desperate and dark is our situation that God has to it enter to begin to see it transformed into a place of healing. Christ’s wounds are ours; his pain is mine. Our Father loves this hurting world this much - there surely must have been a calvary in the heart of God before it was planted on Golgotha’s hill.
Today we are called not to imitate Christ. Today he imitates us. He enters our suffering, our brokeness, our pain, our death. Until we meet the forsaken, sorrowful, and mutilated Christ of Good Friday here there will be no facing up by us to the sorrow, forsakenness and mutilation of real people in society, nor will we be capable of a passionate love affair with a God who really knows us.
The cross is a paradox - 'para' meaning near to and 'doxa' meaning glory because somehow through the cross we are innaugurated into the new life of God. The cross stands between our fallenness and our fulfillment, between the dust from which we come and the glory towards which we move, between Eden and the New Jerusalem, between that which is good and that which painful and broken in us. And yet we know too well that these are not different places: for sin and grace, hate and love, dust and glory, Eden and Jerusalem make up each one. The cross of Christ meets us at these points of conflict of our own fragmentation and longing for wholeness. It is the point of our most profound brokenness, at the shaking of the foundations of our being, that Christ’s cross becomes for us forgiveness for hurt and hope in the face of brokenness and death. Here we are indeed close to glory.
Today we are called not to imitate Christ. Today he imitates us. He enters our suffering, our brokeness, our pain, our death. ‘I have got to forgive them. I still forgive them.... It will be difficult but we have no choice but to live on for Anthony. Each of us will take a piece of him and will carry on his life. Gee Walker may have imitated the Christ of Good Friday in her forgiveness of her sons killers. Today God imitates Gee Walker and others, knowing the pain of the loss of a son, forgiving and in the face of death offering life.
Here's tonight's third address on forgiveness...
In a speech, shortly following the setting up of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela said, ‘The feeling of freedom that infuses every South African heart at last liberated from the yoke of oppression underlines the fact that we have all in one way of another being victim to the system of apartheid.... In no activity is this more lucidly captured than in the heart rendering evidence being led at the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission... It is only natural that all of us should feel a collective sense of shame for the evils that as compatriots, we have inflicted upon one another. But even in the few days of these hearings we can all attest to the cleansing power of the truth. It is to this that this Commission is committed. We are committed to the truth so that we can all be free. We are committed to the truth that we can all become reconciled one to another. There is a very long road ahead. We are only just starting...’
In the forward to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report, Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes, ‘We have been privileged to help to heal a wounded people, though we ourselves have been, in Henri Nouwen's profound and felicitous phrase, ‘wounded healers’. When we look around us at some of the conflict areas of the world, it becomes increasingly clear that there is not much of a future for them without forgiveness, without reconciliation. God has blessed us richly so that we might be a blessing to others. Quite improbably, we as South Africans have become a beacon of hope to others locked in deadly conflict that peace, that a just resolution, is possi bl e. If it coul d happen i n Sout h Africa , then i t can certainly happen anywhere el se. Such is the exqui site divi ne sense of humour...’
Very powerful words reminding us that forgiveness is not just to be given and received between individuals, but if brokered carefully can be for the benefit of all, for the greater good of all, and freeing for all concerned into the future.
On Monday evening evening we reminded ourselves that Jesus teaches that forgiveness is something that must come from the heart - it must be freely given - over and over again. It is not just a matter of forgiving or loving those whom we like, because even ‘sinners’ do that but forgiveness must extend to those whom we object to. We must not judge or condemn, but forgive and we will be - not by our enemies - but by God. We also remembered that the majority of the time Jesus talks of forgiveness in relation to sin. Sin being the things that we do and say that build barriers between us, God and other people. Jesus came not to rescue humanity from sin, but to complete God’s work of creation, as in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection the barriers that we build between us and God come down once and for all. Forgiveness for Jesus it seems is about receiving assurance of that fact, repenting, and living this new way.
Last night we recognised that forgiveness is sometimes very hard to give. We cannot do it under our own steam even though we know we should. Thinking in relation to the story of the rich young ruler we remembered that we can forgive no one, but for God all things are possible. We looked again at the story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well, where he offers her living water springing up and giving eternal life. We remembered that Jesus refers to this living water again in John 7 - whoever believes in Jesus shall have ‘streams of living water flowing from within them,’ clearly that Jesus is referring to the Holy Spirit which believers would later receive. The forgiveness of which Jesus speaks in the Gospels, which we are to give, must flow from us like streams of living water - the new life of God. In that sense forgiveness is not ours to give, but God’s forgiveness flowing through us because of the presence of the Holy Spirit given in the living waters of Baptism.
Living the new way that Jesus inaugurates and allowing God’s forgiveness to flow through us is freeing and liberating for all.
In John 8, Jesus has been debating with some Pharisees about his ministry and teaching and some of them clearly believe him. He assures them that if they follow his teaching they will know the truth of the presence of God in his ministry, and that will free them from the legalism of their own traditions into living the new life that God offer. Jesus makes a clear link between seekers after truth and freedom - those who search out the forgiveness of God, the new life that Jesus inaugurates are freed from the effect of sin - from guilt and from pride, and freed to be people through whom God’s forgiveness can flow, not just to us but from us - reconciling us to God, but also us to each other.
Later in John 14, speaking to his disciples of his immanent death, Jesus links this search for truth to the idea of journey and of life. If the truth of God, revealed in Jesus is to bring forgiveness and freedom to blossom in us we need to be ready to change. As searchers after truth we are on the way towards God, moving from being the people we were to the people God is making us to be - forgiving, being forgiven, and free to live life.
An inability to forgive rests like a yoke on us, as individuals, as a community. Yokes are used on animals and people in traditional communities when working the land. They are heavy, and their burden restrains and directs us to walk one way or another. The power of forgiveness is to lift those burdens from us - and if you have ever been forgiven you will know what a relief that feels like. The forgiveness that Jesus offers - God’s new life - frees us from the oppression that divides us. In Matthew 11:28ff Jesus offers to the weary, the sinful, those feel that they are unforgivable, another yoke in exchange for theirs - a light one - of love for ourselves and others. This yoke of forgiveness, of new life, frees the wearer. Instead of being bowed down with the weight of our burdens, only able to focus on them, constantly dwelling on their impact on our past and present, God’s forgiveness in Jesus liberates us to focus on God, and on our present and future with each other and Him.
We are all a work in progress - Christ’s forgiveness, his new life in us, enables us to be Christlike - to be reconcilers and to use Desmond Tutu’s words ‘to help to heal a wounded people, though we ourselves have been, in Henri Nouwen's profound and felicitous phrase, ‘wounded healers’. When we look around us at some of the conflict areas of the world, it becomes increasingly clear that there is not much of a future for them without forgiveness, without reconciliation. God has blessed us richly so that we might be a blessing to others.’
In a speech, shortly following the setting up of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela said, ‘The feeling of freedom that infuses every South African heart at last liberated from the yoke of oppression underlines the fact that we have all in one way of another being victim to the system of apartheid.... In no activity is this more lucidly captured than in the heart rendering evidence being led at the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission... It is only natural that all of us should feel a collective sense of shame for the evils that as compatriots, we have inflicted upon one another. But even in the few days of these hearings we can all attest to the cleansing power of the truth. It is to this that this Commission is committed. We are committed to the truth so that we can all be free. We are committed to the truth that we can all become reconciled one to another. There is a very long road ahead. We are only just starting...’
In the forward to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report, Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes, ‘We have been privileged to help to heal a wounded people, though we ourselves have been, in Henri Nouwen's profound and felicitous phrase, ‘wounded healers’. When we look around us at some of the conflict areas of the world, it becomes increasingly clear that there is not much of a future for them without forgiveness, without reconciliation. God has blessed us richly so that we might be a blessing to others. Quite improbably, we as South Africans have become a beacon of hope to others locked in deadly conflict that peace, that a just resolution, is possi bl e. If it coul d happen i n Sout h Africa , then i t can certainly happen anywhere el se. Such is the exqui site divi ne sense of humour...’
Very powerful words reminding us that forgiveness is not just to be given and received between individuals, but if brokered carefully can be for the benefit of all, for the greater good of all, and freeing for all concerned into the future.
On Monday evening evening we reminded ourselves that Jesus teaches that forgiveness is something that must come from the heart - it must be freely given - over and over again. It is not just a matter of forgiving or loving those whom we like, because even ‘sinners’ do that but forgiveness must extend to those whom we object to. We must not judge or condemn, but forgive and we will be - not by our enemies - but by God. We also remembered that the majority of the time Jesus talks of forgiveness in relation to sin. Sin being the things that we do and say that build barriers between us, God and other people. Jesus came not to rescue humanity from sin, but to complete God’s work of creation, as in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection the barriers that we build between us and God come down once and for all. Forgiveness for Jesus it seems is about receiving assurance of that fact, repenting, and living this new way.
Last night we recognised that forgiveness is sometimes very hard to give. We cannot do it under our own steam even though we know we should. Thinking in relation to the story of the rich young ruler we remembered that we can forgive no one, but for God all things are possible. We looked again at the story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well, where he offers her living water springing up and giving eternal life. We remembered that Jesus refers to this living water again in John 7 - whoever believes in Jesus shall have ‘streams of living water flowing from within them,’ clearly that Jesus is referring to the Holy Spirit which believers would later receive. The forgiveness of which Jesus speaks in the Gospels, which we are to give, must flow from us like streams of living water - the new life of God. In that sense forgiveness is not ours to give, but God’s forgiveness flowing through us because of the presence of the Holy Spirit given in the living waters of Baptism.
Living the new way that Jesus inaugurates and allowing God’s forgiveness to flow through us is freeing and liberating for all.
In John 8, Jesus has been debating with some Pharisees about his ministry and teaching and some of them clearly believe him. He assures them that if they follow his teaching they will know the truth of the presence of God in his ministry, and that will free them from the legalism of their own traditions into living the new life that God offer. Jesus makes a clear link between seekers after truth and freedom - those who search out the forgiveness of God, the new life that Jesus inaugurates are freed from the effect of sin - from guilt and from pride, and freed to be people through whom God’s forgiveness can flow, not just to us but from us - reconciling us to God, but also us to each other.
Later in John 14, speaking to his disciples of his immanent death, Jesus links this search for truth to the idea of journey and of life. If the truth of God, revealed in Jesus is to bring forgiveness and freedom to blossom in us we need to be ready to change. As searchers after truth we are on the way towards God, moving from being the people we were to the people God is making us to be - forgiving, being forgiven, and free to live life.
An inability to forgive rests like a yoke on us, as individuals, as a community. Yokes are used on animals and people in traditional communities when working the land. They are heavy, and their burden restrains and directs us to walk one way or another. The power of forgiveness is to lift those burdens from us - and if you have ever been forgiven you will know what a relief that feels like. The forgiveness that Jesus offers - God’s new life - frees us from the oppression that divides us. In Matthew 11:28ff Jesus offers to the weary, the sinful, those feel that they are unforgivable, another yoke in exchange for theirs - a light one - of love for ourselves and others. This yoke of forgiveness, of new life, frees the wearer. Instead of being bowed down with the weight of our burdens, only able to focus on them, constantly dwelling on their impact on our past and present, God’s forgiveness in Jesus liberates us to focus on God, and on our present and future with each other and Him.
We are all a work in progress - Christ’s forgiveness, his new life in us, enables us to be Christlike - to be reconcilers and to use Desmond Tutu’s words ‘to help to heal a wounded people, though we ourselves have been, in Henri Nouwen's profound and felicitous phrase, ‘wounded healers’. When we look around us at some of the conflict areas of the world, it becomes increasingly clear that there is not much of a future for them without forgiveness, without reconciliation. God has blessed us richly so that we might be a blessing to others.’
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