July 7 brings the first anniversary of the terrible atrocity when four fanatical suicide bombers blew themselves up on the London transport system killing many innocent people.
Since that horrendous event I have often pondered the story of the Rev. Julie Nicholson who lost her daughter Jenny in the Edgware Road attack. In March it was reported that she had resigned her post because she found it too hard to forgive the murderers. ‘It is very difficult for me’, she said, ‘to stand behind an altar and celebrate the Eucharist and lead people in words of peace and reconciliation and forgiveness when I feel very far from that myself.’ One feels both the greatest sympathy for her and at the same time real admiration for the transparent integrity displayed in her decision to resign.
I do not know Julie Nicholoson’s theological views so I cannot comment on this particular case. But I do wonder whether generally the watering down of the biblical gospel with its understanding of Christ’s death as a penal substitution for sin actually makes it harder for us to forgive others and act as Christians. Penal substitution is rejected as presenting a barbaric view of the cross. The idea of a coming day of judgement and a God who metes out his wrath on sin is dismissed as beneath contempt. How do such opinions make forgiveness harder?
How big is too big?
During the depths of lockdown I was out walking having a pastoral conversation when we bumped into someone who went …