A sermon by The Reverend Wendy Carey
Sunday 15th July 2012
‘Have you been injured by an accident that was not your fault?’ Or ‘Have you been mis-sold insurance in connection with a loan from a Bank?’ If so, you are a victim. And being a victim today, appears to call for one of two things – anger, or compensation, or perhaps both.
Over many years of work in prisons I have thought a great deal about victims. When I was often asked to speak outside the prison of my work as a Chaplain, a common comment was to chide me that in showing so much concern for convicted prisoners, I was failing to be aware of, and respectful to, the needs of victims. This was a rather simplistic comment, as it failed to recognise that dealing with the needs and the motivation of current prisoners was an effective way of ensuring that the number of future victims of crime was reduced. But a more compelling reason that the comment is too simple, is that a community of criminal offenders is likely to contain a much greater proportion of victims of crime, than does the general population. The matter is complex. Being a victim of crime, can never excuse or support becoming an offender, a perpetrator of crime, but it can go a long way to explain the matter, and that is a first step towards a solution.
These thoughts were prompted by reading our Gospel passage for today, St. Mark’s account of the beheading of John the Baptist, following the conspiracy of Herod and Herodias and her daughter. At first glance, this story seems quite simple, we have a victim, John the Baptist, and we have three perpetrators of varying culpability, Herod, Herodias, and her daughter, Salome. Surely this is a straightforward story of good and evil. But wait a minute, think again about Salome, is there not a case for viewing her as in some ways a victim as well? Is she a victim of the subservient role of young unmarried women at this time? Is she a victim of Herodias’ implacable hatred and desire for revenge? Is she simply a victim of poor parenting, and the lack of what has sometimes been called a moral compass? And what of her mother? Is she purely a perpetrator of crime, or is she a victim of circumstance, or treatment by others. Is Herod her victim, or she his?
If we think deeply about any situation, small and personal, or global and of major significance, we will see this complex web of perpetrators and victims. Court cases and judicial enquiries devote themselves to searching out whose fault lies at the bottom of any issue, but searching for such an answer may be just too simple. In a situation where journalists feel the need to tap phone calls and hack into emails, is there no recognition of the culpability of a society which loves to read a bit of scandal or gossip, and in general doesn’t much care how it is gathered, until the chance arises to become sanctimonious.
The complexity and interweaving of cause and effect, victims and perpetrators is bewildering, and almost inexplicable. But it can be, and is explained by a word we shall use several times in this and in most of our worship. It is, on the whole, an unfashionable word, but it lies at the heart of our Christian understanding. The word is sin. I suppose very few preachers set out to preach about sin in our times, but today you can go home and report that the sermon was about sin.
This evening, at St Mary’s church Bletchley, eight people, teenagers and adults, from the Parish of St. Frideswide, Water Eaton, where I now minister, will be confirmed. They will confirm the promises made by themselves, or on their behalf at Baptism:
‘Do you repent of your sins?’
‘I repent of my sins’.
Our Confirmation candidates have been preparing together using the ‘Start!’ course, led by two lay people. One young teenager had not been baptised, so last Monday evening at her baptism, I asked her that question: ‘Do you repent of your sins?’ How can one explain and help a young person to understand what is being asked? One way would be to point to this complicated and interminable web of victims and offenders, stretching back through time, to a root cause that can be explained by the word sin. Janet Morley wrote a collect for the readings that centre on the story of the Fall of humanity in Genesis chapter three. She writes: ‘Holy God, we are born into a world tissued and structured by sin....’ So where do we find an answer?
Before I began to write this sermon, I looked up the word Victim in the dictionary. Its earliest use in English is in the late 15th Century, denoting a creature killed as a religious sacrifice. So here we are, taken straight back to those words of a much used Good Friday hymn, whether or not you agree in detail with its account of Jesus’ sacrifice:
There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin
He only could unlock the gate of heaven, and let us in.
And here it is, the answer to our questions about how we untangle and begin to cleanse that unending trail of victim and perpetrator, of accusation and counter accusation that so besets our life as a community. Jesus, the ultimate Victim takes upon himself in crucifixion the sins of the whole world. Soon we shall recall again Jesus words at the Last Supper: ‘this is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sin’.
One of the most worthwhile things we can do for one another is to begin to break the unending chain of sin, of victim and offender, of action and reaction, of offence and response: ‘he hit me, so I had to hit him back’ that begins in the playground, and can continue into, and even dominate our adult life. Supporting those who decide to stop this chain of action and reaction, by absorbing the hurt rather than passing it on, is one of the most vital and the most privileged tasks of the Prison Chaplain. It is in the conscious decision not to pass on the hurt, not to create more victims, that we ourselves can become Christlike. But we cannot do this alone.
And that is precisely why in Baptism, in Confirmation, and in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we turn to Christ, the Victim, and the Victor.
So we pray Janet Morley’s prayer:
Holy God, we are born into a world
tissued and structured by sin.
When we proclaim our innocence,
and seek to accuse each other,
give us the grace to know that we are naked;
that we may cry out to you alone, through Jesus Christ, Amen
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