Breaking The Cycle of Violence

On this day a year ago, I stood with countless others outside King's Cross Station and prayed.

At the time, some thirty meters below, bodies were still being removed from the hell of the Piccadilly line. Posters of the lost - images of ordinary people, smiling and happy, were taped to the back of a nearby bus shelter. The ticket clerk summed up the feelings of many: ‘I hope they find them and string them up.’ As a priest, I just couldn’t agree. But I nodded back nonetheless. His words were the authentic voice of an anger that I couldn't deny, even in myself.

So what am I to do with Jesus’ commandment to love our enemies? After all, it’s one of the central commandments of the Christian faith. You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you... if anyone strikes you on the right cheek turn the other also.’ What can it mean to speak of forgiveness in a situation such as this? Is it not an insult to the dead to speak too quickly and too cheaply about forgiving those who have murdered them?

I wonder, however, whether the real problem is that we have misunderstood a great deal about what forgiveness means because we have over-sentimentalised it. For we all too often think about forgiveness as coming to have warm and affectionate feelings for those who have done some terrible harm.

Now if this is forgiveness, I'm with the ticket clerk - for a sentimental rendition of forgiveness is surely an emotional impossibility for most of us, and worst still, comes close to the moral outrage of pretending that wickedness is acceptable. The sentimental model consequently turns the religious into pious frauds and offers others a convenient alibi to avoid the challenge that real forgiveness presents.

Jesus suggests something very different. Forgiveness is a means of breaking the endless wheel of revenge, violence being answered by yet more violence, which, in turn, provokes yet more. That's the problem with an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth - it responds to one outrage by repeating it and thus perpetuating the cycle. Not only that, but those who respond in kind end up reflecting their enemies. All we have to do is look at the past weeks’ mounting crisis between Israel and Palestine to see this in action.

Those who think that the best response to the horror of the bombings is to torch a Mosque or beat up Muslims become a mirror image of the criminals that they hate.

Turning the other cheek is therefore a form of defiance, a refusal to answer back in the same language, a refusal of the idea that the only way to answer violence and terror is with more of the same. Our anger may cry out for a satisfying show of strength, for getting even - but it's only ever peace that will finally honour the dead.

And today, as our nation came to a standstill, to honour those who lost their lives in this needless tragedy, our prayers must continue.

God of Salvation, liberate our hearts from the deadening memory created by hatred and the desire for revenge. Bless us with memory, which inspires and guides us to find forgiveness. By your Spirit, let us always be Your servants, bringing good news, healing, freedom and comfort. Bless those who start their travel to work in fear this week. Protect them. Give comfort to all who have suffered and have lost loved ones from this needless tragedy. Give patient strength to all who survived and have struggled so much over the past year. And Lord, in Your mercy, bring clarity and love to those who may be contemplating an act of hurting others, that their lives may be filled with a purpose of kindness instead. In Your name we pray. Amen