Forgiveness is key theme at Greenbelt
FORGIVENESS was a recurring theme of this year’s Greenbelt festival with two headline speakers examining the subject.
Canon Giles Fraser, parish priest at St Mary’s Newington in South London, spoke with emotion about his opposition to assisted dying. Fraser was staying with his mother, who lives near the festival site at Boughton House, near Kettering, in Northamptonshire, and the night before she had told him that when the time came she would like to go to Dignitas, the Swiss clinic that caters for those wanting to take their own life.
Fraser had only that week written in his weekly Guardian column, ‘Loose Canon’ about his opposition to such a course of action.
He said: “This is where liberal individualism has got it wrong. Augustine was so right, we’re not self-fixers, we cannot save ourselves, we require a thing called grace. We’re called to be agents of God’s grace together.
“We as a group have to say we will care for you and ask that you care for me. We need to express that helplessness. We come stamped with the mark ‘Fragile: handle with care’, our mission is to be that grace to each other.
“When I’m old I want to be a burden to my family and I want my Mum to be a burden to me.”
He added: “Helplessness is not a curse but a gift. That’s our mission, to say this to the world. I need you. Happy are those who know their need of God the kingdom of God is theirs.”
Moving on to the subject of forgiveness Fraser defended the reputation of churches where people smiled at each other through gritted teeth.
“Forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian enterprise but I think we get it wrong when we treat it as just internal,” he said.
“If you hurt my children I would never forgive you in a nice fuzzy feelings kind of way. But that doesn’t mean that I couldn’t forgive you. I think forgiveness is more about refusing to take revenge, breaking the cycle of violence. I refuse to model your behaviour, I refuse to do to you what you did to me. I won’t imitate you, I will imitate Christ.”
He said negative undercurrents that play out in some churches and the charges of forced bonhomie were not necessarily bad but instead were the symptoms of forgiveness.
He said: “This can often be a consequence of us not doing our Christianity properly. There are all sorts of complex emotions towards the people we forgive. The cost of my triumph in forgiving you and breaking that cycle is me muttering like Muttley under my breath.”
John Bell of the Iona Community also engaged with the theme of forgiveness in his talk, touching on how the Israelites, who had been attacked and held captive by the Babylonians, began to wish for revenge and for the same suffering that had befallen them should befall their oppressors. Psalm 137:9 reads: “Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.”
Bringing the passage into the modern day Bell wondered how Iraqi refugees might feel who had had children killed by bombing raids, bombs that in some cases had been dropped from Britain’s own Royal Air Force.
He said the passage gives us an insight into their own anger and grief and marvel when such victims show forgiveness and grace in the face of suffering.
Big issues of political and spiritual significance were also addressed by Claire Mathys, codirector of Christians in Politics and the head of the Lib Dem Christian Forum. Speaking at a seminar in the Christian Aid venue she said political engagement in churches was currently low but was growing and had huge potential.
She said: “Politics is about people. It affects people’s lives. If we care about people we need to care about politics. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God and the second is to love our neighbour.
“We’re finding Christians coming to us saying we’re loving helping with the local food bank but why are these things needed, why are there so many debt counsellors needed and what can we do about it?
“The Bible is highly political, it has a huge amount to say about seeking justice, defending the poor and the immigrant. Esther, Obadiah, John the Baptist, Paul and Joseph are just a few of the many political figures from the Bible.”