Sermon given at Sung Eucharist on Sunday 11th March 2012

11th March 2012 at 11:00 am

The Reverend Andrew Tremlett, Canon of Westminster and Rector of St Margaret's

Depending on your point of view, it was either the greatest act of catharsis in English history, or alternatively, among the worst acts of posthumous revenge.

As you leave St Margaret’s this morning by the West Door, take a moment to look at the monument on the outside west wall. It records what, by any standards, was a gruesome period in our national story. It is a list of twenty-nine people, men and women, whose bodies were disinterred from Westminster Abbey at the time of the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. They were all linked to the fifty-nine Commissioners, the Regicides, who had signed the Death Warrant of Charles I eleven years earlier and whose wax seals had been appended.

In the period of ‘cleansing’ that followed Charles II’s restoration, these fifty-nine were sought out. As Alan Marshall, 'Somebody had to suffer and so they were chosen as scapegoats'. The dead were disinterred and heaped unceremoniously into a communal burial pit here in our own churchyard. Those still alive were hunted down.

This weekend marks a particularly unappetising episode in that story and associates the name of ‘Downing Street’ with an act of what we would now call ‘extraordinary rendition’.

Three of the Regicides had fled to Delft in the Netherlands where Sir George Downing was the Ambassador. A few years later, he was to use the considerable wealth he accumulated to invest in property, creating the street which bears his name.

Downing arranged for the three regicides in Delft – John Barkstead, John Okey, and Miles Corbet – to be arrested and held in jail. The local magistrates and people acted to prevent them being extradited for which there was no treaty. Downing recalled, 'The bailiff said that he did very much apprehend some rising in the town if there were but the least notice of our intention to carry them away'. So Downing circumvented the city magistrates, appealed to the Dutch Estates and under cover of darkness spirited them away to a frigate waiting in Hellevoetsluis. From there to London, to be hung, drawn, and quartered.

In fairness to the Prime Ministers and Chancellors who have lived there, I should say that naming Downing Street after a diplomat and spy responsible for extraordinary rendition, is no more or less questionable than my Parish church in Sussex being re-built in the 1830’s with the proceeds of compensation Parliament under the Slavery Abolition Act.

But here’s the point: it’s about how we bring about catharsis, cleansing the national consciousness; how we deal with absolute morality, confronting injustice and reconciling divided factions. And it is a thoroughly modern question, though – thank God – not one on the scale of the Civil War. Here are just a few examples:

• Should those who took part in the riots of last summer be regarded as social renegades, criminal opportunists or victims of a broken society?

• Should the bankers responsible for the near-collapse of the financial system and consequent economic contraction be held accountable or should society as a whole accept that we were pleased to gorge ourselves on easy credit?

• Should those who fiddled their expenses in Parliament be banished to political outer darkness, or is there a place for repentance and reconciliation?

We can think of so many other examples where the public appetite for blood, for those who transgress to be (metaphorically) ‘hung, drawn and quartered’, that it brings into question whether we have any agreed means to deal with repentance and reconciliation, itself a keystone of the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

So let me give some indications from Scripture about how this might look. Scripture, as always, speaks from a breadth of experience - a library rather than a book – and shies away from slick answers.

If we think of our three readings this morning, taken in totality, from Exodus, St John’s Gospel, and the Letter to the Colossians.

Exodus portrays Moses’ reception of the Ten Commandments, which has become the cornerstone of moral absolutes, enshrined for Jews and Christians, and attested to in the Qu’ran. This bedrock of moral action is one which many claim to want proclaimed from the rooftops, but which equally many find perplexing and difficult in their entirety.

If however we want a moral starting-point, a plumb-line by which to measure our individual and corporate actions, there is no better place to begin.

But then look again, because being morally religious is not enough: Jesus’ actions in the Temple are powerful and dramatic. He is incandescent with what is often called, rather hopefully, ‘righteous anger’. Nothing like the ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ of story-book Bibles. This is Jesus confronting the injustice of institutional religion – and let’s be clear about this, the buying and the selling were a necessary part of the Temple practice, so Jesus’ actions were against those who thought themselves religious, that is, against many of us here this morning.

And finally, St Paul writing to the early Church in Colossae is trying to navigate the choppy waters of personal disputes and petty in-fighting. 'Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive'. If you read St Paul elsewhere, the tone is less than forgiving, but here we see him as the reconciling pastor, the one who puts the body corporate ahead of the grievances of the individual.

So let’s try to put this together and think about how people of faith should handle these complex issues about how we deal with those individuals and institutions who have 'transgressed'.

Well, to begin with, the moral absolutes of the Ten Commandments teach us, if nothing else, that none of us are above reproach or reproof. The same commands apply to each of us, regardless of race, gender and standing. More than that, it is central to the Christian faith that we have all fallen short of the glory of God and are in need of forgiveness. There can be no standing in judgement.

And secondly, Jesus’ actions in the Temple, so often taken as a strike against mammon, are in fact an act of Reformation, reclaiming Holy Ground for a holy purpose, reminding the established religious community about its central calling. So, I suggest that the Church should remember to reform itself before there is any thought of reforming of others.

And thirdly, Paul’s letter commends the practice of reconciliation as a living-out of the Gospel, the rooting-in-experience of what otherwise could be vague and vacuous.

But let me end by returning to 1662 as the Downing episode provides a surprising example.

George Downing had himself been a Chaplain in Colonel John Okey’s regiment. This same Okey was among the three regicides whom Downing later arranged to have abducted. On the scaffold, Okey is recorded as saying: 'There was one, who formerly was my chaplain, that did pursue me to the very death. But both him, and all others, I forgive'.