SOUL SURMISE

FORGIVENESS - OUR DAMNING NEGLECT

At the very heart of God is a penchant for forgiveness. At the very heart of discipleship is God’s desire that we would be shaped into the character of God.

The apostle Paul calls us to this in Ephesians 5: 1 & 2 -

 

Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

 

Right from the moment of human rebellion, as The Bible describes in the early chapters of Genesis, God was readying for forgiveness. That “fragrant offering” is hinted at as early as Genesis 3:16. 

Many Old Testament heroes knew God’s forgiveness, perhaps best of all King David who after he had committed adultery with Bathsheeba and then had her husband Uriah murdered. In Psalm 51 he seeks forgiveness -

 

Have mercy on me, O God,

    according to your unfailing love;

according to your great compassion

    blot out my transgressions.

 

Wash away all my iniquity

    and cleanse me from my sin. (v 1 & 2)

 

In the New Testament, Jesus appears on the scene as “The Lamb Of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God’s forgiveness became a reality in the incarnation, the redemption and resurrection of Jesus. 

Peter, Paul and John preached and wrote about forgiveness as the early Church was being born.

God is love. That love works itself out in forgiveness. God is forgiving in his most inner attitude.

So… God forgives us. That is a caress of grace. We all love it. Forgiveness. It has all the cleansing energy of new birth.

Forgiving others. We all seem to have a problem with that. We are very quick to accept forgiveness but not so quick to forgive.

That is of course understandable. Forgiveness is difficult. Ask God!

For the follower of Jesus, it is no easier but it seems we are much more complicit.

The deal with the followers Jesus is that we follow Jesus. Follow God’s example says Paul in Ephesians 5. We are forgiven to become forgivers. Right at the centre of any authentic following of Jesus will be forgiveness.

When people used to tell me that Northern Ireland was the greatest hindrance to Christian mission. Here is why. 

A divided community, both sides meeting every week around the same Jesus, were in a prime position to prove the power of God’s love and Jesus cross. 

Forgiveness has always been at the heart of both communities’ theologies. It has always been almost exclusively absent from our praxis. If forgiveness was held up as the way to judge our credible faith we could cut the order for the Sacrament of the Lords Table to half a bottle of wine and a scone! It is Our Damning Neglect: -

 

“Father forgive us our sins

As we forgive those who suit against us…”

SURRENDERING TO A NOTION OF A GLORIOUS KIND

 

“The beginning and end of every wish
Is balanced in the center of a vision like this
Maybe my emotions are inclined, yeah
To surrender to the notion of a glorious kind”

-      from I Found Love by Lone Justice

Maria McKee fronting Lone Justice in the late eighties was simply a breath taking rock n roll thang! It was this lady at her peak that Deacon Blue wrote Real Gone Kid about. McKee was charismatic and gorgeous, with a gifted voice and a raw Christian faith. In the slip stream of U2’s exuberant  confessionals she released this as a single and I remember one Friday night on Channel 4’s coolest rock show on the planet, The Tube, when she ripped the place up with a tent revival type spiritual passion throwing her hands in the air with shouts of redemption and faith.

The song is a testimony about not so much someone finding God as God finding someone when they were “minding their own business.” This verse somehow encapsulates all my excitement about the vision that it is to follow Jesus. At the heart of finding or being found is that missing hole in the heart being filled. Yet, it is not an ethereal filling. In this vision of being part of God’s new Kingdom coming in we humans find our purpose and thus our inner needs met.

It is a glorious vision that McKee is inclined to yearn after – me too! It is over twenty years ago but I still love the blend of poetry and energy. It expresses in word and heart pumping sound the faith that have been committed to for 40 years.

MARTYN JOSEPH - HERE COME THE YOUNG

I might have said before but a Martyn Joseph comes guaranteed to be a collection of good songs. For thirty years he has not let me down.

The trouble with his consistent consistency is that you can become complacent. I listened to Here Come The Young and ticked the box of another good record.

Then I listened again. It might have even taken the third listen before I heard on of Martyn Joseph’s best records yet .

Now, that doesn’t mean it has the very best songs though it might have. This Glass has already been a main stay of his lobe show for a couple of years now. I can hear Loves Majority being around for some time and Driving Her Home To London might replace the classic Cardiff Bay as a grown up version of a song from father to child. 

What lifts Here Come The Young above Martyn’s twenty previous albums is Gerry Diver. In the most modest of touches Diver from a very folk tree background, he studied under Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, an Irish music legend for goodness sake, adds deft touches of banjo, mandolin and particularly violin.

Diver’s folk sounds are unmistakable but they never gets in the way of the songs or ever makes you feel that this is Martyn Jospeh’s trad record. That is the genius. There are noises here that you will never have heard on a Martyn Joseph record. They add beauty, drama and intrigue. Yet it is still a Martyn Joseph record. 

To be fair Pete Flood’s drums and percussion deserve a shout put too. Almost an acoustic guitar record gets some beats that lift the songs with energy.

Whatever journalist in Melody Maker suggested that Martyn made Leonard Cohen sound like Julie Andrews simply wasn’t listening. on this record the glass is, as the song suggests half full. A songwriter often bemoaning American Presidents and British police might have been tub thumping here but no... it is a record full of hope. 

Martyn is particularly taken by the young. The title track looks across the world to Malala campaigning for girls education in Pakistan or the youth in America protesting gun laws or the school children in Europe leaving school to campaigning for environmental issues. 

If you are looking for hope some of these might do you very well indeed. There is a lot of active hope. across these songs.  Where there is hope Martyn Joseph is singing.

YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE

I’m driving through Nakasongola

My favourite word in the world

How did I come to love Africa

I look across and wink at you girl

Roads we take can all be decided

In the trigger of the very first kiss

I'm smiling at everything I've seen

And wondering what I would have missed.

 

Only with you I could have come here

And done all these things that we have done

Only you could make who I’ve become

You’re the only one.

 

The wind’s blowing through the window

My hair’s all over my face

I put it back in a pony tail

Tie all the freedom I am into place

It’s your heart that drives my direction

It’s your love that fills up my sails

Like God’s little helper beside me

Allowing all I can be be unveiled.

 

Only with you I could have come here

And done all these things that we have done

Only you could make who I’ve become

You’re the only one.

FR GREG BOYLE, HOMEBOYS, ELVIS, GRETCHEN PETERS AND SELF FORGIVENESS

photo: Bernie Brown

It was an emotional night in Skainos. I imagine not many in the packed out Church left without at some stage of the evening, wiping a little tear from their eye. 

It was the 4 Corners Festival 2019 event Compassion, Radical Kinship and Forgiveness and Fr Greg Boyle was introducing us to his trophies of Compassion - his Homeboys. Steve, Hector and Jose were tough men, who had lived through the poorest most violent childhoods. It was tough listening.

The Homeboys took me back to a night in Cape Town. I had a team of students in town and they got broken into. We were there to build houses. We were serving that city and some of its wee thugs had come out from underneath that beautiful mountain and hit us. I was angry.

The next night we went to a Ronan Keating concert. Not my scene, you can imagine. The students loved it and my friend Steve was in Ronan’s band! Surprisingly prophetic, Keating sang an Elvis Presley song. One that the Colonel wasn’t that happy that he sang. Surely one of Elvis’s few songs on social justice - In The Ghetto.

What a beautiful piece of heartache In The Ghetto is. A baby born into poverty, growing up without help, ending up on the street and eventually killed. The question in the heart of it is a tough one, for an Elvis song:

 

People, don't you understand
The child needs a helping hand
Or he'll grow to be an angry young man some day
Take a look at you and me,
Are we too blind to see,
Do we simply turn our heads
And look the other way

 

Fr Greg wasn’t too blind to see. He didn’t turn his head. As a priest in the ghetto, he did something about it. He gave the children in the poorest LA ghettos hope and a job and ultimately a home.

Steve, Hector and Jose’s stories were the same as Elvis’s song apart from the ending. What was the key in their transformation or redemption was beginning to believe in themselves. Fr Greg would describe it as knowing the person God had created them to be. All three of them spoke about forgiving themselves of the shame and hopelessness they felt inside.

That bounced me across my playlists to a new song by Gretchen Peters. To a myriad of people among them prostitutes, drunks and homeless people she sings:

 

Say grace - say grace 

Forgive yourself for all of your mistakes 

You might find salvation in your neighbor's face 

Come inside and set yourself a place 

And say grace

 

“Salvation in your neighbour’s face.” I love that. Very 4 Corners Festival. If only we in Belfast could look across the corners and find that “good neighbourliness” as Alan McBride coined it, at the Guardians Of The Flame event.

Gretchen tweaks each chorus. The last one goes:

 

Say grace - say grace 

Forgive yourself for all of your mistakes 

You are not a loser, you are not a hopeless case 

Come inside and set yourself a place 

And say grace

 

That could actually be written above the door of every Homeboy Industries building. Losers and hopeless cases are what Fr Greg works among. Having them forgive themselves and then find their place in the world. That is what Steve, Hector and Jose had found. Say grace!