VICAR'S LETTER

17 Sundon Road     
Streatley      

October, 2005      

Dear All 

During September we have been reflecting on the subject of Christian justice. We have seen that this justice is distinctive. It is distinctive in its aims. It is distinctive in its methods. It is distinctive in its ultimate goal.

While the product of earthly justice is all too often to imprison, the goal of Christian justice is to liberate. In particular it seeks to release individuals, families, and communities from two forms of bondage. It seeks to break through the chain of cause and effect that binds people to the past. It tries to make possible a new start, a future not totally determined by the past. It seeks also to release people from that cycle of deprivation in which so many of the world's population live and from which there seems no escape.

The key methods which Christian justice deploys in pursuit of these goals are forgiveness and generosity. Forgiveness has the effect of breaking the chain of cause and effect. It arrests the endless giving of tit for tat. A classic example of such action in recent times has been the Truth and Justice commission in South Africa. Generosity reaches out to break the cycle of deprivation. A modern example is to be found in the efforts being made to lift the burden of debt that condemns so much of the third world to unending and ever deepening poverty.

All too often, the effect of earthly justice is exclusion. The imprisoned are excluded from society and offered precious little help when, their sentence served, they seek to return. The poor find themselves on the wrong side of an expanding gap that separates them from the wealthy of the world. The ultimate aim of Christian justice, by contrast, is reconciliation. Its goal is to restore and make whole families and communities by drawing back together all their members. Its goal is to restore and make whole the family of man by eradicating the most conspicuous gap that currently divides it.

No-one would claim that Harvest Festival is going to accomplish either of these aims, but, for all that, it is very much in harmony with them. Through the harvest gifts it will try to say to those whom sickness and infirmity confine to their homes, you are not forgotten. Through the donations sent to the work of the Mercy Ships it will help to ease for at least some of the world's poor, the consequences of their deprivation.

All best wishes

Roger

Back to top       Back to Vicar's Letters