Sorry, Not Sorry
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Readings: Jeremiah 14:7-10; 19-22; Luke 18:9-14
The best stories keep being re-told. Think of the real-life story of Henry VIII, married six times, a life re-told by Shakespeare in Henry VIII, and in the past hundred years in The Man For All Seasons, The Other Boleyn Girl, Wolf Hall, and in the musical Six, in which Anne Boleyn sings:
Sorry, not sorry ‘bout what I said
I’m just tryna have some fun
Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t lose your head
I didn’t mean to hurt anyone
Jesus’ parables too are stories which continue to fascinate, to touch us 2000 years later: provoking, challenging, inspiring. For example, the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Sower have become deeply embedded in human societies influenced by the Christian faith. But have the parables become too familiar? If we re-tell them in our own context could we hear them afresh, and sense Jesus’ voice anew? And since I am doing a Masters in Creative Writing, why don’t I approach Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector, set as the reading for today, and offer a re-telling?
Graduation day dawned bright and still. Ben strode through the windless streets of St Andrews, but he was unable to enjoy the warm air, the cloudless blue of the sky, and the dense foliage on the South Street trees. It was unseasonably warm, yet another sign of climate change. It wasn’t just that he was already sweating in his kilt, jacket and white bow tie. Ben also knew how fast temperatures were rising in air and sea, at the poles and equator; he had studied the impact of increasing heat on corals, whales and the peoples of the Sahel; he had written a dissertation on the political imperative of transferring large sums of money to the African countries most affected by rapidly changing weather systems. Today he would be receiving his first class honours degree in Sustainable Development.
Hannah was walking too that same graduation morning, in her black skirt and white blouse. She had just arrived in St Andrews the night before, spared for a mere 24 hours from her graduate job in London. Already St Andrews seemed so long ago, a time before her real life began. She knew she hadn’t been the typical student, ploughing her own counter-cultural furrow, launching her own society, the Carbon Critical Society. They never had many members, but over dinners at the Old Course Hotel on the last Thursday of each month, they kicked around ideas which felt as delicious as the medium rare steaks she devoured. Investments in new oil fields. Cutting subsidies to the blight of offshore wind and Stalinist solar farms. The return of supersonic flight: indeed, the society logo was a discrete silhouette of Concorde. Carbon Critical Soc got her a foot in the door with Oil & Gas UK, where she’d been working for six weeks now in a highly rewarded team of lobbyists, internally known as Never Zero. Today, she’d be receiving a 2:1 in Economics and Management.
Hannah collected her gown and hood from the Younger Hall, and made her way to St Salvator’s Chapel. If this was her last time in the Bubble, she might as well make the most of it, going to the Chapel Service before her ceremony, and then her departmental party at the Gateway and flight back to London. As Ben queued for his gown, he was chatting to the excited students around him. Everyone knew Ben, the face of environmentalism during his time here, leading protests and marches, campaigning on the Uni’s carbon footprint, leading a sit-in in the Quad over the proposed use of gas central heating at the new college being built. He was a BNOC – not just a big name on campus, but a brave noise on climate.
Ben was early at the chapel: he had known the Chaplains through his degree. They had offered steady support to his campaigns, while not quite having the courage to pitch their tents on the lawn. He sat in a pew right opposite the fancy seats where the academics in colourful gowns and hoods of silk would take their place. It was the first moment of calm he’d had for days, having just come back from leading a workshop on the Isle of Harris on The Climate Crisis and Island Life. It was his day, a day of recognition of his commitment to the planet. He’d be receiving the Principal’s Medal later that day for his thundering first and outstanding contribution to the net zero agenda. Thank God, he thought, I achieved so much during my degree. He looked around at other graduands taking their place, economists and geologists, students, he was sure, focussed on making a packet in the City or destroying the Arctic drilling and mining. Thank God, he prayed, I’m not like them. I haven’t sold my soul to capitalism like so many people here. I’ve kept the faith.
He noticed Hannah taking her place near the back. God, he thought, she was the worst. Setting up that nasty little group, seducing students into her agenda. How could someone be so stupid any more? Doesn’t she care about the planet? I won’t be sorry for her when the floodwaters rise. You have to take a stand. I mean it must be two and a half years since I last ate beef. Vegan six days a week now – next year I’ll manage without cheese. God, it was a hellish journey from Harris on the ferry and the bus, but at least I didn’t fly. Who could fly with a clean conscience any more? Or use gas? How many other people graduating today will only rent a place with an air source heat pump?
Hannah listened to the organ music playing as she waited. It was pretty. She looked up at the stained glass, her eye caught by a depiction of a helmeted woman entitled Virtue, her tunic a soldier’s breastplate, a spear in her hand. That was her, engaged in the war against net zero madness and other woke folly the University had tried to stuff her full of. But then her eye looked lower. Below Virtue was a smaller image, of a man helping another, putting him on his donkey. It was the good Samaritan, saving an innocent traveller left for dead. And in her mind came images she had often tried to banish – of people in the topmost branches of trees somewhere in Africa, their villages under floodwater. Or of families fleeing fires in Australia, leaving everything behind. Or of people fetching up on the beaches of Kent, huddled together on fragile dinghies. And, in that moment, the foundations of her life, her convictions, her career, began to crumble.
I’m sorry, she thought. She looked around at her fellow graduands filling up the chapel on this day of celebration. They’ll be okay, they’ll find a raft somehow. Never zero will work for them, and for me. But she looked again at the poor man draped on the donkey, and felt his humanity reaching out to her. I’m sorry, she thought. God, I’ve got this wrong. I’ve messed this up. I’m sorry. Can you even begin to forgive me?
How do we feel about Ben and Hannah, our Pharisee and tax-collector? Ben, like Jesus’ Pharisee in his story, gets so much right. He makes decent, positive, self-sacrificing choices in what he eats, how he spends his time, his work, how he travels, even what kind of accommodation he’ll live in. Yes, he’s a bit of a caricature, but so is Jesus’ Pharisee. But is it enough, getting things right, when he is so full of judgment about others, his fellow graduands, and Hannah, the founder of Climate Critical Soc in particular? What do we think of Ben, who’s not sorry for anything he thinks? Maybe we judge him a little for his judgmentalism? Should we?
And what do we think of Hannah? Don’t we think she’s beyond the pale, working to undermine the planet’s future? Surely she’s put herself beyond redemption, her hands guilty of the suffering caused by heat and flood, air pollution and migration? And yet, in the chapel she has an epiphany: she is sorry for what she has thought and done, and she asks God for forgiveness. We may know in our minds that God can forgive the worst of sinners. But what do we feel about God actually doing it? Is that fair of him? Shouldn’t she be punished rather than forgiven? After all she’s made no commitment to live a better life. And if that’s how we feel, aren’t we judging her?
Life is much easier when we can divide people into good and bad, see actions as right or wrong. There will always be stories of goodies and baddies from the Byre Panto to Netflix. But Jesus’ parables often do something different. They recognise the good and bad that run through us, not between us. They see actions as both right and wrong. They recognise that we make our way in life as followers and failures at the same time, like the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector, like Ben and Hannah. We can be sorry, not sorry. Loving not loving. Faithful not faithful.
So is everything relative then? Should we just give up trying to make a difference? I doubt you’d be part of this service if you thought so – surely it’s still worth everything trying to follow Christ. His life was wholly of love, wholly of goodness, wholly of integrity. He told stories in which we recognise ourselves, not wholly anything, stories which show how hard it is to follow the path of love. Hard, but worth the effort. If fiction shows us anything, it’s the effects of our lives on others. Jesus knows this, and says: aim high. Make a difference, flawed though you are. And I will be with you, always, forgiving, and encouraging.
END