PASTORAL REFLECTIONS - September 2008


Earthquakes on the Inside

Dear Friends:

In July 2005, a bomb exploded in a London subway station.  Among the 56 people killed was 24-year-old Jenny Nicholson, a gifted musician who had just completed her master’s degree and was about to begin a new job in publishing.

Jenny’s mother Julie is an Anglican minister who was serving a small inner-city parish in Bristol.  Her daughter’s death at the hands of Muslim suicide bombers led to a collision of faith and rage in Julie: In the wake of the tragedy, she could not bring herself to officiate at any services.  

A few months later, the Rev. Julie Nicholson resigned her parish.

“I did not feel there was any integrity in standing in front of a group of people week by week leading them through words of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness when I felt so distanced from those things myself . . . Can I forgive them for what they did?  No, I cannot.  And I don’t wish to . . . So for the time being, that wound in me is having to heal.”

The Reverend Nicholson describes her grief as an earthquake: “In an earthquake, everything is shaken to the core.  The foundations are split and everything is exposed and you can’t start rebuilding until you have sifted through the rubble and the muddle.  Issues of faith are part of that rubble and muddle.”

In an editorial, the London Times wrote that some may consider the Rev.  Nicholson’s decision a missed opportunity to be an example of forgiveness and reconciliation, but while “Mrs. Nicholson’s loss in great and her faith troubled . . . her integrity is intact.”  Julie Nicholson believes too deeply in Jesus’ words of forgiveness and reconciliation to speak them without being able to live them; her decision to leave the ministry she loved mirrors every believer’s struggle to live our their baptism with integrity and courage. Jesus’ teachings on justice, reconciliation and love must be the light that guides us, the path we walk, the prayer we work to make a reality.  

I meet many people who admit times when faith is empty because of circumstances of misfortune. And there have been times when my own has seismic dimensions. When faith is shattered or destroyed, I choose compassion over criticism. I believe that there is enough corporate faith and encompassing love in the world to include the Julie Nicholson’s of the world and all who who have faced depletion of spirit because of tragedy. True discipleship, I believe, begins not so much with confidence of faith as with a heart of compassion. Is that not where God begins with all of us?

Pastor Ron