Why are you sleeping? Luke 22:39 – 46
Jesus and his followers have moved from the upper room they had borrowed for the Passover feast, where bread had been blessed and broken and wine blessed and divided between them. Luke has told the story in detail for hospitality is at the heart of his narrative, the gathering of the gloriously diverse people Jesus called. And there had been a tussle over the pecking order in the group and a warning from Jesus about the events of the coming hours and an allusion to buying swords. And they went out to the Mount of Olives and Jesus said ‘Pray that you may not come into the time of trial’.
The time of trial. That evocative phrase from the prayer that Jesus taught us. The decisiveness moment is near and Luke will reveal his account of the truth. And his telling of the passion begins and end in darkness.
In so many ways ministry for me has been framed and formed by the gospel of Luke.
As one of the first women ordained in the church or England the witness of the women who accompanied Jesus affirmed my own vocation.
And my imagination was stimulated by all Luke’s stories of sometimes uncomfortable newness. …the woman who carries the anointed one of God into the world, and into the heart of the established religion, the woman who intrudes on the Pharisee’s dinner party, the women at the cross and at the tomb.
And throughout ministry there has been the framing of Luke’s two great parables. The the deep attentiveness of the Samaritan, a stranger, a foreigner, (potentially to the Jewish people the enemy) to an injured fellow traveller. . and then the extraordinary welcome home offered to the profligate younger son by a father who had contrived all rabbinic teaching and divided his inheritance and undermined his family life.
As a Diocesan bishop I was given a formal charge, which indicated the need to reframe and review and remap in a Lucan sort of way. I was asked by the church to have the fascination that Luke has with the world of politics. Luke situates the story of Jesus within the rulers, Herod, Augustus, Tiberius, Pilate, Annas, Caiaphas and the magnificently obscure Lysinias of Abilene (might Luke be playing a little at this point)..and he will continue in his narrative of the early church to tell of Peter and John hauled up by the priest’s court, and Peter arrested by a member of Herod’s family and Paul’s appeal to Caesar.
But I was also charged with bringing into the foreground of the thinking of the diocese those not then at its heart Those who did not have power and do not have power, or have been excluded from power because, as Luke tells it, it is amongst them that God’s kingdom is appearing. So I was asked to ensure that our most resource deprived communities were not further marginalised, because we had so much to learn from them.
Those were the big themes. There was e was mention of racism and there was mention of safeguarding. But they were peripheral.
But then I encountered witnesses to stories of the diocese had not been in the Diocesan profile.
Gloria Daniel invited herself to my office, bringing Bishop Joe Aldred with her from Birmingham She had a plan to erect black plaques in the churches of Bristol to tell of the estimated 760 000 taken and enslaved African people, and their descendant, of whom she is one. She wanted her plaques also to tell of the compensation paid to slave owners, of which her ancestor, the plantation owner Thomas Daniel, was one and who was memorialised in several places in Bristol Cathedral. And she and Bishop Joe expected a response quickly.
And Bishop Ray Veira of the Church of God of Prophesy asked to meet me to tell me why his family, newly arrived from the Caribbean, and also descendants of those transported from Africa had arrived in the city to rebuilt it after the second world war bombing, had arrived as Anglicans but were gently but firmly barred from parish churches by priests and churchwardens. And then barred from work on the buses, with unions and the bishop at the time spoke against their campaign for equal access to employment describing them as trouble makers.
And then I was asked to meet two women who each told me falteringly but determinedly of how clergy, clergy who held or had held the bishop’s licence, had abused them repeatedly and sacrilegiously..
Racism. Safeguarding. The charge to me made these important but peripheral. But thanks to these witnesses it would become central.
And the abused ones who told me their stories had been treated kindly, but in the end were also regarded as a threat to the Diocesan perception of its own virtue.
It is to their still hidden story that I turn next. Yesterday, at the first of many retirement farewell moments, the Dean spoke of my reputation for speaking things the church was reluctant to say, to speak of the unspeakable. To shake the church into life.
On the Mount of Olives the disciples slept.
What follows is the story of my own trial of faith, a story of learning to look, learning to see and find the way to act. Having the energy and courage to stay awake and to trust that the darkness would not be final.
So I pray for all in this holy space as we too look and see and find how we may be called to act.
Visit I pray this place and drive from it all the snares of the evil one. May the holy angel who was a companion to the abandoned Jesus be our companion through this time.
Is it with a kiss? Luke 22: 47 – 62
While he was still speaking a crowd came and the one called Judas, one of the twelve approached Jesus to kiss him. But doesn’t. The dynamic shifts immediately to violence. Which Jesus halts.
Then we hear that the chief priests, the officers of the temple police and the elders have come out with Judas. The enforcers of order under delegation from imperial authority. And ahead will lie accusation, and three tails and torture and death by crucifixion. And it begins with a the offer of a kiss..
Roman crucifixion was more than the punishment of an individual. It was the instrument which was within a context of state terror to maintain political control. Crucifixion was used mainly against the outsiders who Luke’s gospel brings to the foreground as insiders, those who might rebel or be the focus of rebellion. Luke would have understood the realpolitik. The effectiveness and security of the Roman troops in Palestine was maintained by back up forces in Syria and beyond, and crucifixion demonstrated the sort of reprisals there would be. Individual crucifixions were both an individual punishment and an example to others.
Crucifixions were therefore inevitably public and essentially shaming, an attack on the human spirit. And for those of Jewish heritage the shame was heightened by the belief that anyone hung on a tree is under a cruse, a curse which Paul then refers to in Gal 3.13. And that vivid phrase describes the very intention of crucifixion. It was intended as an end to life, but prior to death it was (as in so many state punishments) intended to reduce the victim to something less than human in the eyes of the community.
Is it with a kiss? Perhaps an allusion to customary greeting between male peers. Or perhaps something more. And here I turn to a theological theme which is currently being considered particularly in places where violence is pervasive. I consider it now with some care because it is so sensitive.
We are surely now aware of how sexual abuse is intrinsic to the maintenance of control in war. Testimonies is the systematic use of rape literally to take over a people have been reported by the United Nations for many years. In every conflict currently reported from Ukraine to the Middle East to Sudan there is accusation of the use of sexual humiliation and sexual assault as a weapon of war.
What has proved so common in recent torture cannot I now think be entirely ruled out in crucifixion generally and in the torture and crucifixion of Jesus particularly. And yet the church has hesitated to consider that openly. David Tombs,[1] a theologian informed by South American liberation theology and South American violent crime has reflected deeply on this hesitation, even resistance. He notes that to say that Jesus suffered is written into the Apostles’ Creed. He notes that very word excruciating connects the cross with the acute suffering of the passion narratives. And that has been at the heart of church teaching. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 considered whether Jesus only seemed to suffer and rejected it as heresy. Jesus suffered.
Was Jesus tortured? Increasingly pastoral theologians, particularly from peoples experiencing war, have spoken of Jesus’ suffering as torture, inferring this from the intentional cruelty and violence of parts of the passion. Though the gospels didn’t use the word, No doubt didn’t have the cultural concept. Christians I think are unlikely to see the use of the term as morally shocking or morally objectionable.
But to acknowledge Jesus as a victim not just of physical abuse but sexual abuse prompts, in my experience, a very different reaction, and a shift from surprise to offence.
Those who have worked with groups in academic and church contexts notice that there are often stages to the reaction.. At first the idea is seen as speculative, without biblical or historical basis, or it is regarded as reading into scriptural text rather than sitting under its authority. And that remains in debate.
But there are deeper dynamics at play as resistance is often based on the idea that the thought is absurd, insulting, offensive and blasphemous.
The final session of the Council of Trent [2]sent down requirements for holiness and devotion in religious art. All lasciviousness was to be avoided and nothing was to be displayed which was disorderly or unbecoming. The ruling increased the already established representation of the crucified Jesus clothed in a loincloth.
But at the very least the forced stripping and naked exposure of Jesus on the cross is sexual abuse within the current definition the laws of many communities. Except we do not often see images of Jesus unclothed.
And as Jesus is covered so is the impact of the shame which he endured.
Perhaps it with that offered kiss that we are jolted into seeing and acknowledging the shame Jesus endured.
Visit I pray this place and drive from it all the snares of the evil one. May the holy angel who was a companion to the abandoned Jesus be our companion through these hours..
Who is it that struck you? Luke 22: 63 – 23: 12
Australia’s Royal Commission into the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults[3] uncovered one of of the consistent and shocking tendencies of leaders of religions and church communities. It was the tendency to cover up. Partly because of the drive to prevent scandal being focussed on the church, perpetrators were moved on, reports were kept secret and victims were patronised at best, blamed at worst. This was also because of the complex dynamics of human groups which privilege the insider rather than the powerless victim, which privileged those marked out as idealised leaders with power because they are seen as transformational or holy.
This is not a recent phenomenon. As the Australian biblical scholar Michael Trainor has noted[4], It goes back to the roots of our faith and to the behaviours of members of the Jesus movement through its history.
In the earliest gospel account, in Mark, written around 70 CE, Jesus was one who was himself subject to maltreatment and abuse, naked and shamed.
In Luke we see a very different portrait. Luke presents Jesus as much more dignified, playing down the abusive treatment of Mark’s passion narrative and instead of nakedness and shaming, describes Jesus as elegantly clothed by a glorious robe a gift of Herod who found Jesus intriguing.
To check this out in a little more detail. Mark’s gospel begins in the wilderness and the call those to repent. To open their hearts to what is about to unfold. To open their eyes to a different point of view.
And that different point of view has at its heart the place of children. For Mark the reception of children becomes a touchstone of their openness to God and the disciples don’t yet see or understand. As some bring children for Jesus to touch, the disciples rebuke them. Is the rebuke (and the Greek word is very strong from the language of exorcism) there is an implication of perceived evil. To whom is the rebuke directed? There is an ambiguity: perhaps the carers, perhaps, the children themselves. Jesus responds with indignation for the children are such as belong to the kingdom of God. The scene ends with Jesus wrapping his arms around them and blessing them.
Then Mark’s narrative of the trial of Jesus emphasises how the religious authorities seek to discredit him, to define his scandalous claims by various and contradictory testimonies. So the physical abuse begins. Mark has already told of the unnamed woman who anointed Jesus’ head, an affirmation of his regal and prophetic status. This identity becomes central to his trail before Pilate and the violence aimed at his head and face. He is crowned with thorns. he is subjected by the soldiers to a mock crucifixion. He is stripped naked, clothed in a purple robe in mockery, and then stripped of that. The soldiers divided his garments among them. Jesus dies alone and abandoned, even by God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?. Mark’s gospel tells of a misunderstood, isolated and abused, as so many prisoners have been through the ages.
Luke’s gospel depicts Jesus a very different Jesus who appears at the age of 12 to instruct the very teachers in the temple. Rather then drawing people out of the religious establishment and demanding a change of perceptive, Jesus is present to that establishment.
This Jesus has a very different encounter with children, or, as Luke describes them, infants, emphasising their vulnerability, and the disciples learn from Jesus’ rebuke and the moment passes without the intensity and even aggression of Mark’s account. What in Mark is about repentance, at this point for the disciples, becomes hospitality, so often at the heart of his gospel. Luke’s gospel has edge, particularly social edge, but Jesus is also depicted as culturally elegant, responding with sophistication to the political tensions he encounters.
So the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus is a sinner who anoints Jesus’ feet, not his head, and so becomes a lesson on forgiveness and inclusion. And as the trial and passion unfold in Luke, Jesus continues to have agency and seems almost without emotion.
In the scene of his maltreatment by his guards Luke records ‘Now the men who were holding him began to mock him and beat him. They also blindfolded him and kept asking him ‘Prophesy! Who is it who struck you?.
Mark is much more direct and the attack more physical.
Some began to spit on him and blindfold him and to strike him saying to him ‘Prophesy! The guards also took him over and beat him.
Luke’s focus in thesis trail before Pilate is, as in Mark, is Jesus’ threat to imperial authority, but Pilate twice asserts Jesus’ innocence and in the third trial before Herod, Herod says he has longed to see Jesus because he has heard so much about him. Despite the vehement accusation of the religious leaders in the first trial Herod places a shining robe around Jesus, no doubt for Luke’s audience revealing the radiance of God before the authority of Rome. This dazzling robe echoes the radiance of the mountaintop of transfiguration and it remains with Jesus. It is never taken off but clothes him to the cross and to the grave. Lots are cast by the guards, but Luke’s Jesus remains clothed. Luke literally covers up the nakedness of Jesus.
Whatever the reason for Luke’s editing of Mark’s account, the covering up in Luke of Jesus’ nakedness, and abandonment, the sheer horror of Mark’s account, screens us from the graphic and perhaps sexualised violence of Roman execution.
Whatever reason for Luke’s alteration of Mark’s account ….was it to create a more palatable story or was it to reduce scandal?…, Luke’s gospel shows how soon the tendency to conceal emerged. At the heart of the history of the church is an instinct to reduce the offence of the gospel, and therefore reduce the credibility of those who have been maltreated in the name of the church.
When did we see you naked, the question from Matthew’s gospel confronts us. May we be given strength to face that question’s compelling scrutiny.
God our redeemer and sustainer, we pray for the survivors of violence, abuse and neglect. Be with them in confusion and pain. Give your power to the powerless, your fullness to the empty of spirit. Heal their wounds, free them from fear and restore them to true health. Strengthen them to face the future with faith in you. We ask this through Jesus your Son, who was himself a victim of abuse and yet triumphed over its oppression.
Likewise, God of justice, judge of all the earth, we bring before you those who abuse and mistreat others. Turn the hearts of the exploiters from the way of evil. Open their eyes to the truth of their conduct and full them with hatred for the damage they do. And so by your Spirit bring them to true repentance and amendment of their lives.
What will happen? Luke 23: 26 – 31
So that last journey to the cross and to those who walked it with him. To those innocently and unexpectedly caught up in the procession, to Simon the African who had come for a festival, not an execution. To the wailing women who were anticipating the execution and to whom Luke’s Jesus speaks in riddles.
As a bishop my life is connected to the cross in new ways. I preface my signature with it. I lift my hand to sign it. And I walk in its shadow.
I have spoken of the abuse that Jesus endured and that there is a gap between what we know and what we acknowledge. We now acknowledge that the rational for stripping, enforced nakedness and sexual humiliation constitute sexual abuse because they are deliberate attacks. They derive their power and impact because they were and still are understood to have a sexual dimension.
And for many the question is why this has been hiding in plain sight. For some the answer is anthropological and rooted in stigma. We find it hard to acknowledge sexual abuse because of its its shaming and defiling nature in so many cultures.
And I have experienced that for myself.
Twenty years ago I was attacked and raped by a stranger, a prisoner out on parole. I was in clericals. I was attacked because he had had an argument with his probation officer and I was just another female authority figure.
My initial reaction was to tell no-one and that remained my coping mechanism was to insist that the story was not told. The police, the judge at the trail readily complied. I had, as the only woman leading a Church of England cathedral, a role which leant itself to public scrutiny. My own deep sense of insecurity about my place in the ministry of the church, and the profoundest sense of shame, made it impossible to consider giving up my right to anonymity.
I did not want to be seen. I could not cope with being acknowledged. And so I had few networks of care and support. And it has taken many years before I could find a theological frame for what had been done to me as slowly, very slowly beginning to absorb the impact.
Jesus was stripped. Jesus was put on display. Jesus was violated. He had said ‘this is my body’ but they treated his body as if it was theirs and that they had every right to do what they pleased.
I do not say that it is necessary for Jesus to have been sexually assaulted for me to rebuild faith just as it is not necessary for Jesus to have experienced female form or Gentile form to save me. But the mere possibility that Jesus might have been so attacked, with all the consequential shame and derision is consoling.
And now, knowing so much more of the prevalence of sexual abuse and assault how might seeing Jesus as a survivor of sexual abuse offer a resource for pastoral care? Some small scale research projects[5], conducted over time by interview, have enquired about this of female and male monastics across the world church who are survivors of sexual abuse. They were invited to comment on the difference it made to them, and the difference it might make to the church. The responses are careful and carefully weighed. The responses differ, as was expected. But some themes emerged.
The first was the theme of Jesus’ innocence. Several survivors reported that the innocence of Jesus reinforced, rebuilt their certainty in their own innocence. In a culture where victims are so readily blamed. acknowledging Jesus as an innocent victim of sexual abuse is likely to require not just a minor adjustment of thinking but a radical shift of a bundle of deep seated attitudes.
Of course the longstanding theological and anthropological view of sex as impure makes a discussion of Jesus in relation to anything sexual very difficult. The unspoken issue of defilement means that even to consider Jesus as a victim of abuse is to render him a saviour less worthy and the concept unspeakable, and mostly unthinkable. Discussions around the innocence of Jesus and the innocence of survivors can help to reveal feelings which remain unexamined and troubling.
One sister said ‘this thought is a help, a comfort, and source of consolation for me. This no way devalues my own painful experience. Quite the contrary. ..knowing that Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, has really been the bearer of all our sufferings and all our diseases, even in the intimate and almost unspeakable area of sexuality, becomes in my view a source of comfort for the victims of abuse…especially those who have been abused by priests and religious.
And another
I have been raped, and my reaction is that I feel Jesus’ solidarity and I feel solidarity for him and it feels good. Spiritually I feel I know Jesus more. I feel he can walk with me more closely because he knows what I have gone through. Spiritually I don’t care to what extent he was abused because it is enough for me the he has lived through some abuse. For some it is a positive and deep way to interpret your own experience.
The second theme which emerged was an understanding by all those victims surveyed that seeing Jesus as a survivor of sexual abuse was important not just for survivors but for the whole church. One of the critical conversations that is therefore needed in the church is around the widespread negative perception of survivors which survivors themselves internalise.
As one sister voiced it ‘this is a topic that is usually silenced it would be like an alert…imagine a prayer saying ‘Lord you who were manipulated in your own sexuality, protect us…..I think it would be very helpful.
Another said “I think it would be useful for those who have not been victims….I think that if people of the Church identity Jesus as a victim of abuse, they would be more able to see Jesus in those who are victims and love us more…[cries]
And another. ‘I see such horrible things. That lack of identification with the victims by clergy, priests and bishops is so painful. They identity with the perpetrator. Many of the perpetrators have been priests and the priests are set apart as powerful. But if you see Christ in this light, as a victim, it would be easier for them to feel solidarity with the victims, to be more understanding and more on their side’.
The third theme voiced by some survivors was less positive, that Jesus’ experience might be misappropriated by the church, that, for instance, the silence of Jesus in some gospels might become a paradigm of discipleship for survivors. The themes of glory which are the subtext of Luke’s passion, and the full blown triumph of the cross in John’s gospel can be deeply depressive to those who cannot yet move on from the degradation of the abuse they have endured. They know what it is to keep silence as they suffer. But that silence continues to imprison them
God our redeemer and sustainer, we pray for the survivors of violence, abuse and neglect. Be with them in confusion and pain. Give your power to the powerless, your fullness to the empty of spirit. Heal their wounds, free them from fear and restore them to true health. Strengthen them to face the future with faith in you. We ask this through Jesus your Son, who was himself a victim of abuse and yet triumphed over its oppression.
Likewise, God of justice, judge of all the earth, we bring before you those who abuse and mistreat others. Turn the hearts of the exploiters from the way of evil. Open their eyes to the truth of their conduct and full them with hatred for the damage they do. And so by your Spirit bring them to true repentance and amendment of their lives.
Unforgiveable? Luke 23: 32-43
As I have said, for most of my life Luke’s gospel has been central. I have lived in ministry through an era where we have attempted to learn from the Good Samaritan. My first ministerial post was in Liverpool, deeply divided along denominational and racial and of course footballing lines, yet slowly discovering, through the work of church leaders, that the call to turn away from our tribes, recognise as neighbours those who scared is by their difference and be a better people together.
And I attempted to practice the forgiveness which the father offers to his long estranged son as told in the story of the prodigal son.
And so to the core of the passion of Jesus, to his crucifixion between two bandits and his prayer ‘father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.
I was Canon Pastor for 6 years at Coventry where each Friday we would pray the litany of reconciliation with its response ‘Father Forgive’ reiterating Provost Howard’s assertion of forgiveness. Speaking from the smouldering ruins of his bombed cathedral and his determination that the cathedral community would endeavour, through the power of forgiveness, ( father forgive, not father forgive them) to create a kinder, simpler, a more Christ-like sort of world in the days after the 1940 firestorm.
And later I was deeply affected by meeting Desmond Tutu at the beginning of the end of apartheid and, in his joyful impishness, teaching of his perception that in conflict of any sort the perpetrator and victim are locked together and though the anger of a victim is a great engine of change, the power of forgiveness is that it changes both victim and perpetrator.
And I have seen that in the lived faith of my colleague Bishop Guli Francis-Dehani and of the priest Mina Smallman the extraordinary healing power of forgiveness in the witness of those whose families have been the victims of the most horrific violence.
But I remember the moment about 20 years ago when my own response to the parable began to change. Shortly after I had been attacked and not knowing what he did, a colleague preached a sermon on the prodigal son and the priority and the necessity of forgiveness. Afterwards two members of the congregation came to me in tears. In the weeks afterwards I listened to the reason for the pain each continued to endure. They had both survived sexual abuse and had been sinned against in ways that they felt were unforgivable.
And I realised that my focus was shifting from the forgiving father to the unforgiving son. And ‘they began to celebrate’ ….we are told In the middle of the story after the lost son has returned. They. Two members of the family, but not three. But to tell the whole story we continue through to this scene of angry son and his father emerging from the party going on in the house.
The elder son speaks. He had even had to ask a slave what was going on when he heard the noise of the party from his place of work in the fields.
The father speaks ‘We had to celebrate’. At that’s it. An end. Not a conclusion. And of course parables are not meant to tie everything up or down with every detail interpretable and applicable. As Dr Paula Gooder puts it[6] in rabbinic teaching it was said over and over again, do not alienate your estate. With sound practical wisdom the teachers said on no account divide your estate before you die. And the parable plays out the consequences.
The younger son (in his claim on the estate ‘give me the share of the property that will be mine’) is behaving as if he is wishing his father dead.
The older son grieves for lost family stability, and is aggrieved at the unexpected and unequal treatment. As wise teachers would have pointed out, the father has behaved both foolishly towards the younger son and unjustly to the elder son.
And so I wonder about the father in his foolish ways whose weakness multiplied his family’s dysfunctionality. And I wonder about the younger son who had no doubt established a pattern of impetuousness and dissolute living and enjoyment of city life. He had turned around. But would this penitence stick?
And I wonder about the elder son, his brother now home, his role shifting once again, his family shaken to the core. What was his future?
The great narratives of our salvation, narratives of failure and repentance, of forgiveness and new life (and the parable of the prodigal son is one of these narratives) and the witness of those who have themselves lived out that narrative…. and even in the worst moments have brought hope and possibility….I see that played out in the liturgy and drama of every confirmation service I take where testimonies tell of new, and already profound faith in those who have turned to Christ.
In my re-reading I have become still more grateful for both the simplicity and the complexity of the parable of the return of the lost son. Simple grand narratives of forgiveness and reconciliation do inspire, and convict and convert .
For me, and for so many victim survivors, forgiveness is a process, and a lengthy one which cannot be hurried or its stages edited.
I am also grateful for the complexity of the parable of the prodigal son which is also the parable of the dysfunctional family for which there are no neat endings.
I and grateful that Jesus tells the story of this family with an inadequate father, and two damaged sons and so many broken dreams and which has prompted me to ponder so much more deeply the nature of the motherly God who gives all of us the time and space to be drawn in to the celebration around his table and in the joy of forgiveness to feast in trust and hope.
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,
Father forgive.
The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,
Father, forgive.
The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth,
Father, forgive.
Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,
Father, forgive.
Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee,
Father, forgive.
The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children,
Father, forgive.
The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God,
Father, forgive.
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Who are you? Luke 23: 44-49
The sun’s light failed.
We have talked about abuse and shame. And now, Luke tells us, the light failed, a physical manifestation of the Jesus’ life, a physical manifestation of so much of the experience of the abused. . And then the centurion in charge of the execution party said ‘surely this man was innocent’. Who are you Jesus? Not what the centurion assumed.
I have talked about those who have witnessed in my diocese to abuse and shame. But there are also witnesses to forgiveness and innocence and the return of light and hope.
Refer back to the two witnesses with whom I began, those who made me see, acknowledge the neighbours I had passed by.
Gloria, who has now negotiated her plaque in the cathedral. Her great great grandfather was born into chattel slavery on a plantation owned by Thomas Daniel. There are numerous monuments to Thomas Daniel and his family in Bristol Cathedral. But this new memorial is the first dedicated to the people they enslaved.
The new and utterly beautiful plaque was created by Marcia Bennett-Male a stone carver of African ancestry working partially with images cherished by the Fante people of Ghana. It is located under the rose window at the west end of the Cathedral, and honours John Isaac born into chattel slavery on Thomas Daniel’s estates and acknowledges the lives of at least 4,424 African and Caribbean people who were enslaved and exploited by the Daniel family. The Daniel family claimed financial compensation from the British government under the Abolition Act of 1833, after decades of profiting from money lending, banking, and the sugar trade.
The plaque was erected the inscriptions states, by the descendants of John Isaac acknowledged these innocent men women and children. It states straightforwardly that Tran-Atlantic slavery was a crime against humanity. Black lives matter yesterday today and tomorrow. Gloria continues to devise plaques to set alongside other monuments to slave owners.
Who are you Thomas Daniel? Not who we thought. Who are you John Isaac? Not who we though either. If we thought about you at all.
My second witness was Bishop Ray Veira who told me his family’s story and also of Paul Stephen son who had coordinated the Bristol Bus boycott after discovering that drivers and conductors who had been recruited and trained on London buses were barred from the Bristol Bus Company when they joined families in Bristol.
Inspired by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and David facing Goliath Paul Stephenson led the black workers who abandoned travel by bus and began to walk to work, whether to the docks in Avonmouth of the factories in Filton, and were passed by bus after bus filled with white passengers.
My predecessor Bishop Oliver Tomkins, a friend of Paul’s came out against him and called him a trouble maker. Paul forgive him, saying he was a good friend and a lovely man who was misled.
Paul now has his memorial on one of the four new windows replacing the Edward Colston window in St Mary Redcliffe.
The story of the Good Samaritan has been a theme through these hours. It is for me a painful irony that the original Colston window was captioned, in Jesus words in response to the parable and as an instruction to his questioner ‘Go and do thou likewise’. But the caption as a memorial to a man who masterminded the English slave trade it was a malign instruction.
The new windows include one to Paul. He stands along with other boycott leaders, with Jesus is the group. Other windows depict Jesus calming the storm, and standing in a small inflatable boat crowded with refugees. A final window depicts an image of the Bristol the young designer, a Bristol medical student longs to see, of a multitude of people from east and west and north and south gathering around Jesus. In none of the windows is Jesus white.
I dedicated the window on the 40th anniversary of the ending of the bus boycott as the bus company conceded and the first Punjabi and Caribbean staff were appointed. And around me were the last survivors of that boycott as I offered my deep apology for the actions and words of my predecessors. And they blessed me.
The work on the legacy of Bristol slavery is now being led by the descendants of those who were enslaved, the descendants to came to Bristol in the 1950s to rebuild the city. Those who were in the margins are now no longer standing at a distance, but are making Bristol’s future.
Who are you Edward Colston? Not what we used to think. Who are you Paul Stephenson? Not what the Bishop of Bristol once thought.
But those were were witnesses to clergy abuse are still silent in our churches. I long for the time when their stories can be heard, their innocence endorsed, their guilt assuaged, their shame removed. But they and I wait for that day when they can stand confident in the love of Jesus who had endured the cross and disregarded its shame for him. And for them.
Who are you my abused and beloved sisters and brothers? We wait, as we move into Holy Saturday, for your restoration to the heart of the church’s life and love.
[1] David Tombs, ‘Crucifixion, State Terror and Sexual Abuse’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review 53: 1-2 (1999) pp 89 – 109
[2] 1545 – 1563
[3] www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au 2027
[4] Trainor, Michael The body of Jesus andSexual Abuse: How the Gospel Passion Narrative Informs a Pastoral Approach, Eugene, OR Wipf and Stock Publishers 2014
[5] Figueroa R and Tombs D Seeing His Innocence I See My Innocence in When Did We See You Naked? Jesus as a Victim os Sexual Abuse London, SCM 2021
[6] Preaching and the Parables at Festival of Preaching 2019
