Restoring relationships

Here is my reflection from today's lunchtime Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The rock band Good Charlotte have a song called 'The Story of My Old Man'. It begins like this:

‘I don’t know too much, too much of my old man.
I know he walked right out the door and we never saw him again.
Last I heard he was at the bar doing himself in.
I know I got that same disease, I guess I got that from him.

This is the story of my old man,
just like his father before him.
I’m telling you do anything you can,
so you don't end up just like them.’

In today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 18: 15-20), Jesus says the church is like a family and he is realistic and recognises that in a family brothers (and sisters and parents will fall out). The song was about a real family and in the song it is the Dad who has broken up the family. In all these situations there is real hurt and when people are in these sorts of situation they react with anger saying “don’t end up just like them” or treat them “as though they were pagans or tax collectors.” In other words don’t have anything to do with them because of the hurt they have caused.

Good Charlotte also have a second song on this same theme which is called 'Emotionless':

'Hey Dad, I'm writing to you
not to tell you, that I still hate you
just to ask you how you feel
and how we fell apart, how this fell apart …

I remember the days, you were a hero in my eyes
but those were just a long lost memory of mine
I spent so many years learning how to survive
Now, I'm writing just to let you know that I'm still alive
And sometimes I forgive.
Yeah, this time I’ll admit that I miss you.
I miss you. Hey Dad.'

You see the difference between the two songs? They’re both about the singer’s Old Man. In both he’s been hurt by the things that his Old Man has done. But in the second song, he’s writing to try to restore the relationship, even, at the end, to say that he forgives and misses his Dad. It’s clearly not easy because of the hurt but it’s also very much what he needs to do.

And it’s a similar story in our Gospel reading. Jesus is not giving the disciples these instructions so that they can reject those brothers and sisters in the Church who do something wrong. He is giving these instructions so that these brothers and sisters can be won back; so that the relationship can be restored.

When Jesus says treat people like pagans and tax collectors, he doesn’t mean reject them. Matthew was a tax collector. He knew from personal experience how Jesus treated tax collectors and outcasts. He went to their homes, ate meals with them and said that he had not come to call respectable people, but outcasts. He did all he could to restore the relationship and heal the wounds.

And that is also what we see in the parables before and after these instructions. In the parable of the lost sheep, the point is that we do everything possible to find those who are lost and the parable of the unforgiving servant was told to illustrate the point that we should not put limits on forgiveness but forgive again and again, just as God forgives us.

This is not easy. Another songwriter, Leonard Cohen, has said that, “Of all the people who left their names behind, I don’t think there’s a figure of Christ’s moral stature. A man who declared himself to stand among the thieves, the prostitutes, the homeless. His position cannot be comprehended. It is an inhuman generosity … (which) would overthrow the world if it was embraced.”

There is a divine generosity in Jesus which we are called to emulate. We will find it hard to forgive, just as the person in the two Good Charlotte songs found it hard to forgive his Dad. But that is where Jesus wants us to do and that is the point of these instructions that he gave to the disciples. They are about restoring relationships not about rejecting those we think are in the wrong. When we struggle to forgive, struggle to restore, struggle to reconcile then we are coming together in the name of Jesus and he is right there with us.

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Good Charlotte - Emotionless.

Restoration! St John the Divine Richmond

There was a full house yesterday for a Victorian Society event at St John the Divine Richmond on 'Restoration!'. Paul Velluet and Peter Cormack led the event which highlighted the history of the church, its artistic and historical significance as well as its recent restoration. Additionally, there were presentations on the organ and the church textiles.

The Church of St John-the-Divine was built between 1829 and 1831 under the Church Building Commission’s funded programme for new churches as a chapel-of-ease to the Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene to serve the growing community of ‘New Richmond’.

Designed by the early Gothic Revival architect Lewis Vulliamy, it is a fine but much altered example of a Commissioners’ church – economical in design and construction, but distinguished by some delicate ‘Gothick’ features inside and out. The particular significance of the church lies in the reconstruction and major extension of its ‘eastern’ end carried out in 1904-1905 under the direction of designed by Arthur Grove and its enrichment in subsequent years with fittings and furnishings by leading designers, artists and craftsmen of the Arts and Crafts tradition including Nathaniel Westlake; stained glass artists Christopher Whall and Mabel Esplin; Henry Wilson; Eric Gill and Macdonald Gill; Ernest Gimson; William Bainbridge Reynolds; sculptors Richard Garde and A.G. Walker; and painter Dorothy Smirke.

Later works of note include the low-relief Stations of the Cross along the lower aisle walls carved by Freda Skinner who studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art under Henry Moore and Alan Durst.

Major works for the refurbishment and re-planning of the body of the church, the creation of a glazed narthex, the building of a new church-hall attached to the ‘north’ side of the church, and the construction of residential accommodation above the sacristy and vestry were undertaken in 1980-1981, designed by Dry Hastwell Butlin Bicknell, Architects. More recent redecoration of the interior has been undertaken under the direction of the Parish Architect, Peter Bowyer, and the very recent restoration of the reredos in the Lady Chapel undertaken by Howell and Bellion.

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Peter Garvey - A Clear Midnight.