Forgiveness and love

Reflecting on today's gospel (Luke 7. 36 - 8.3) for a sermon, I began thinking about contemporary parallels to the experience of the woman who poured perfume on Jesus' feet.

I've had Johnny Cash's Unchained album on this car recently and the song, 'Kneeling Drunkard's Plea', is one possible parallel. This is a song about an alcoholic prompted to cry, ‘Lord, have mercy on me’ through the death of his mother. Johnny Cash, of course, had his own experiences of addiction to overcome - I've also been reading the Steve Turner biography The Man Called Cash (Bloomsbury, 2006) - and, for Cash, returning to his Christian faith was one of the factors that eventually made that possible. The song comes from the series of albums called American Recordings that Cash made towards the end of his life in which he sings honestly and affectingly of sin and the salvation that comes through repentance.

Another parallel story would be that of my friend Mandy Fenn from St Margaret's Barking. By giving her life to Jesus, Mandy has moved from self harming to setting up groups that give support and help to others who self harm. The work she now does is an expression of her gratitude for all that Jesus has done for her.

The story that I eventually used in my sermon is about the artist Peter Howson and his painting, The Third Step. Howson became a very successful painter at a young age but for a number of reasons was not a happy person. An alcoholic and a drug user, he would drink and drug himself into a stupour. One night, when he had done just that, his 13 year old daughter Lucie packed a suitcase, let herself out of the house and for several hours wandered through a Glasgow park frequented by drug addicts and tramps. Howson said, “you have to reach your own personal gutter before you ask for help.” Realising how he had failed Lucie was that moment for Howson.

As part of his rehabilitation he joined Alcoholics Anonymous. In AA, Howson explains, the Third Step comes when alcoholics have “made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.” The Third Step, then, is about his “conversion to Christianity and giving up the booze.” In the painting a man has been stripped and is crawling out of a grave towards a church and the light of Christ. The painting shows the moment when a person in torment realises that it doesn’t have to be that way. Like all of Howson’s work it is a dark picture but, while dark, it is a painting of hope, not despair. This is the way of Christ, the way of darkness endured in order to reach the light, the way of salvation.