Hollowell ( Matins)  & Guilsborough ( Evensong) 18[th] August 2013.

"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."  
I saw a cartoon in a magazine last week of a clergyman seated in front of a computer staring disconsolately at the screen.   Behind him stands his wife saying   " Still suffering from righteous block ?" 
When I looked at our readings for today  I confess that I felt that I was rather inadequately qualified to interpret them. 
[  Hollowell : The image of Jesus coming to change things   " I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled. "  The divisions of the family  of father against son  and mother against daughter. " 
[ Guilsborough The story of the man who hires two groups of workers at different times of day but pays them the same for the different hours they worked.  The first shall be last and the last first .] 
So under the threat of righteous block I looked around for inspiration.  And then a newspaper obituary of a childhood hero. 
When I was about 9  when my school's games master decided I was the right height to go in goal for  into the  Under Eleven team .  Not because I wanted to be a goalkeeper, but  being taller than most of the other boys I could get in the way of the ball better.  
 I started to follow professional football, not least because my mother did the football pools and I always lived in hope of that Pound75,000 windfall.   
  Things have changed a bit since then.   Grimsby were in the First Division  -  admittedly relegated at the end of the season   Players  Mortenson  (  hat trick)  Mannion my heroes on cigarette cards Stanley Matthews.   Matches on the wireless. And the Saturday evening football scores and comment on them given by Charles Buchan 
Battle of the Somme // Mortensen's bomber crash. 
Not pampered jades who strut around on Twitter. 
But my special hero was Bert Trautman,  the Manchester City goalkeeper, who died at the age of 89  -  the obituary I read.  
One of my cigarette cards.  His photo was in my scrapbook. 
Later the hero of the 1956 Cup Final  broke his neck diving at the feet of a Birmingham City forward. 
What I didn't know as an aspiring young goalkeeper,  was Trautmann's  service on the Easter Front in the War; one of only 90  out of 1000 volunteers who survived in his regiment.  Prisoner of war. Brought to the UK. 
The 20,000 who signed a petition asking Manchester to let him go  -  a former member of the Hitler Youth and holder of the Iron Cross. anathema to Manchester's large Jewish community. 
A rabbi called Dr Altmann appealed to the protestors saying one man should be blamed for the ills of a nation. Trautmann should be given a chance.  500 games for the club determined to show that Dr. Altmann was right. 
Anglo- German reconciliation. Work
Maureen Greaves, widow of Alan Greaves killed on Christmas Eve 2011
Marueen Greaves, the widow of Alan Greaves the church organist battered to death on his way to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve 2011, has spoken of her forgiveness for the two young men who did it. 
" My prayer is that they will come to understand the love and kindness of the God who made them in his own image and that God's great mercy will inspire both of them to true repentance. "  T. 
Maureen Greaves felt a deep need to be able to forgive, following the example of Jesus who forgave his killers almost  with his dying breath or  Stephen on his martyrdom.   
Forgiveness is no soft option.  Maureen Greaves described it as the hardest things she had ever done. Act of forgiving is an act of release for those who grieve. . But this does not mean we have to suppress anger or avoid the need for justice and punishment
What we are doing is seeking the best interests of those who have committed the wrong.
God's desire to forgive, and the Bible shows us that we need to do the same.   The God who forgives knows our hearts better than we do. 
Rwandan student who said  " If you hear anyone talking about forgiveness lightly, it means he's never forgiven. 
We do not know whether those two young men who killed Alan Greaves will come to repentance .  But I remember being told by someone with experience of these things that  many men sent to prison for life will contemplate suicide.  And the first thing that anyone working with such people has to do is to help them to forgive themselves and to put themselves in God's forgiving hands. 
I pray that none of us will be confronted with the need to forgive in the kind of circumstances that  that Maureen Greaves has done.   But learning from her example,  we can be,  in our own day to day lives,  more tolerant of those who have, we may feel, offended us, to less prone to find fault and perhaps use that fault finding as a way to assert our own so called moral superiority   It involves getting out of our comfort zone. 
St Matthews Gospel:   " If you love only those who love you, what reward can you expect? Surely the tax-gatherers do as much as that ?  And if you greet only your brothers, what is there extraordinary about that? Even the heathen do as much. There must be no limit to your goodness, as your heavenly Father's goodness knows no bounds."
Well, Rabbi Altman and Maureen Greaves show us what the spirit of forgiveness can do.  In one case helping to bringing about reconciliation, and in the other setting a shining example for us of what Christianity is all about.  Forgiveness and Mercy ....
"  The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. 
Just a thought to take with us on our journey this week. 


