In whom may we trust? Peter the rock, and Lucy Letby
11.00am, Sung Eucharist
27 August 2023
If you walk along the Portsmouth seafront towards Southsea, you can see tonnes and tonnes of Norwegian rock piled up just offshore. It’s being stored there ahead of incorporation into the massive sea defences currently being constructed. I’ve learnt that the rock is called Anorthosite, and that it has a density of more than 2.6 tonnes per cubic metre. This makes it incredibly heavy and durable – both key characteristics for a rock armour defence.
Reading this made me wonder what kind of stone Jesus might have had in mind when he spoke of Peter as the rock on which he would build his church. Having done a little bit of research, I suspect it was not Nubian sandstone, but something rather tougher: perhaps the hard, crystalline rocks of the Archean platform, or – most likely of all – Upper Cenomanian limestone, excellent building stone almost certainly used in the construction of the first temple in Jerusalem.
So Peter, whose very name means ‘rock’, is the limestone of which the foundations of the church is constructed. Although expressing things this way is not quite right; Peter is all too fallible a human being, who only a few verses on from the end of today’s Gospel his moment of insight is followed by a spectacular misunderstanding, and Jesus calls him ‘Satan’ and a ‘stumbling block’. When I say ‘moment of insight’ I mean his response to Jesus’s question, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ when he correctly affirms, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ It is this statement, this confession, that is the true foundation stone, not the inherent brilliance or trustworthiness of Peter.
I’ve been thinking a lot about trust, in the wake of the Lucy Letby trial, and her recent conviction for the murder of seven babies and trying to kill another six while working as a neonatal unit. Who would have imagined that an apparently charming young nurse could be capable of such appalling crimes? I know that the nursing profession is really concerned at the impact on public trust, and more generally it has left many of us wondering about our understanding of human nature, and who we can really rely upon.
I well remember a conversation, not in this diocese, with someone keen to talk about the impact on her family following a court case involving a former bishop, who was convicted of abuse. Her children, who had been confirmed by the bishop, wanted to know if their confirmation was still valid. While at one level this is a simple question to answer – yes of course – at another level it indicated the profound level of disturbance caused by difficult revelations about previously trusted figures.
I suppose I could have referred the person to the final section of the Book of Common Prayer containing the Thirty-Nine Articles, and in particular to Article XXVI. It is called ‘Of the Unworthiness of the Ministers, which hinders not the effect of the Sacrament.’ The article is simultaneously realistic, bracing, and good theology. It begins by recognising that ‘in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good’ but goes on to point out that those who preach the word and preside at Holy Communion do not do so ‘in their own name, but in Christ’s’. The sacraments are ‘effectual… because of Christ’s institution and promise’, whatever the shortcomings of the clergy who administer them.
In my confirmation conversation, I didn’t mention Article XXVI, but I hope I communicated something of its message. And I find a strange kind of comfort in the very existence of that Article. We, it seems, are not the first to be let down by church leaders, or indeed by a Lucy Letby.
I recently finished a remarkable book by a prison psychiatrist, Dr Gwen Adshead, who works with violent offenders, serial killers amongst them. It’s called The Devil You Know – Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry. It’s challenging reading, not least because what she means by her title is that by getting up close to the unknown and feared you learn the painful truth that the ‘monsters’ she works with have much in common with the rest of us. If we really knew ourselves, we would have a better understanding of ‘them’.
All of us, for example, will tend to behave in slightly different ways in different parts of our lives. The way we are at work is in contrast to the way we are with family or friends, which may be different again in leisure activity. I well remember the amazement at a staff event – again, not here! – when a mild mannered member of the team was aggressively competitive in the context of a giant Scalextric track.
A trivial example, but it mirrors the kind of compartmentalisation frequently found in serial killers, who split off their cruelty from their everyday lives, where they are often known as good neighbours and kind friends. Hence the disbelief that follows when someone who doesn’t fit preconceptions about what a killer looks like is found to be guilty.
The Christian faith is realistic about human frailty, and is sometimes criticised for portraying human beings as ‘miserable sinners’. The phrase ‘original sin’ has indeed been much criticised by many within the church. For me, the body of teaching and theology that undergirds what is meant by ‘original sin’, including Article XXVI, is profoundly true, realistic – and hopeful. All of us are shaped for both good and ill by the circumstances of our birth and upbringing, in ways that we cannot fully understand. None of us are immune from primal emotions such as shame, anger, jealousy and hate, or the will to power. All of us are prone to self-deception and blindness about our own weaknesses. All of us need the grace and healing found in God alone in order to live the lives of love and creativity for which we were created, and to properly use the God given-gifts bestowed on each of us, as described in our second reading from Paul.
None of what I’m saying means we should go around thinking the worst of everybody. Far from it. All of us are children of God, all of us, and so it is right for us to be generous and hopeful in our relationships and our community life. But in the ordering of our common life, we also need to ensure that we have safeguards in place that recognise human fallibility, and the fact that none of us can fully know either ourselves, or other people. So, for example, it is right that certain roles in the life of the cathedral, both employed staff and volunteers, are subject to safeguarding checks and training.
The vast, vast majority of people will never commit a violent crime, let alone a murder. Dr Gwen Adshead, the forensic psychiatrist I referred to earlier, offers the metaphor of a combination lock as a means of understanding those who do. There are common factors amongst many of those who kill. Amongst them are poverty, substance misuse, and being abused. The more of these factors that come together in one person, the greater the chance of violence, but it is never as deterministic as this might sound. The release of the combination lock nearly always depends on at least one idiosyncratic or mysterious factor, particular to that person. A lot of Dr Adshead’s work focuses on identifying what the factor was that tipped someone over into violence, and how that fits in to the overall history of their lives.
Perhaps one day we will discover what the tipping factor was in relation to Lucy Letby. But in the mean-time, our primary responsibility is our own lives, our own discipleship; the kind of people we are called to be and to become, by the grace and healing of God working within us. Part of that is learning to identify on what rock we can best find our footing and our orientation. Not, I am suggesting, in Peter himself and the emerging church, but in Peter’s recognition of his Messiah and Lord, and the church’s dependence on that same Jesus Christ.
I have been a priest in Christ’s church for well over thirty years, and seen it do so much good, not least through the hospitality offered day by day to all comers, and its pastoral care. Portsmouth Cathedral, like the other places I have served, is built to the glory of God, and seeks to be a place of healing and hope, despite the frailties of people like me and the others who minister here. I know that by the grace of God, it will carry on being a force for good into the future, protected hopefully by those anorthosite sea defences! I know this, not out any naivety about human nature, but, as Article XXVI expresses it, ‘because of Christ’s institution and promise’. Being founded on the rock that is Christ is the one sure way to keep our bearings through all the changes and chances of this life, constantly inviting him to transform our frailties that me might live lives worthy of the glory for which we were made. AMEN