You may have seen the photo in last week’s “Crediton Courier” - a few of us stood two metres apart around the recently defaced statue in Newcombes Meadow. It was good.
I’ve especially missed singing with others and so after we had sung Jim Causley’s Boniface song I asked if we might sing another. Ann Varker suggested "Amazing Grace". Do you know "Amazing Grace?"
This hymn is the go-to song for situations like this - in fact for nearly any situation. "Amazing Grace" works at a wedding or a funeral when most people there are not church-goers.
It works when something special is happening in a church service and you need a way to express gratitude.
I’ve even used it in prison - a couple of verses of "Amazing Grace" flowing out of a Coldplay song with everyone joining in.
It’s a song that is deeply loved by those within our churches and well-known by those outside of our walls: "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see."
It’s an incredibly honest story about human selfishness and brokenness colliding with the glorious possibility of forgiveness, and the hope of change.
This week a friend suggested to me that we should stop singing "Amazing Grace".
The hymn was written by John Newton, the captain of a slave ship.
Newton was not a religious man until he found the forgiving grace of Christ in a fierce storm.
After his Damascus road he tried to reform the slave trade from the inside; it was many years before he committed himself whole-heartedly to the abolitionist cause. No-one knows for sure when he wrote "Amazing Grace", but it’s suggested he may have penned it on deck with slaves in chains below.
Why is it that our supposed heroes so frequently turn out to be phoneys? Why do "great men" so often have skeletons in their closets, awful secrets in their private lives? Why have despicable people been celebrated in sculpture? Can we not find better role models, better exemplars?
Those essential questions are not the only ones I should be asking.
We do need to rage against the terrible wrongs others do. But I must be careful that my rage does not foster in me a sense of self-righteousness; that I could never do anything so awful as they have done.
I need to allow the light of truth and justice to shine upon me too. A few years ago Tearfund ran a campaign about the clothing industry, shining light upon the pay and conditions of those who made our clothes.
The global clothing industry can sometimes be like a form of modern day slavery - slavery in which consumers like me are implicated.
How many of us pulling down statues are wearing clothing that implicate us in that injustice? And isn’t that irony indicative of the moral ambiguity of all of our lives?
We need proper debate about whose lives we mark in our public spaces. But let’s not allow important discussion blind us to the moral greyness of our own lives.
The great challenge of a hymn like "Amazing Grace" is not only in its unhindered celebration of undeserved forgiveness offered to those who have acted despicably.
The challenge is also for me to own the word "wretch" in some way. Am I still a perpetrator in need of rebuke and guidance?
Are there any attitudes in my heart and actions in my daily life that a future generation will find wretched?
How can I keep my heart open to the grace that comes to me as others see my own blind spots and invite me to change?
How can I listen well to those who are accusing me of wrong right now?
It is often important to call out another’s wrongdoing but I must also find ways of staying alert to the plank in my own eye.
For now, I think I will keep singing "Amazing Grace".
It points to the tension of life in a conflicted world. A world which we should work together to make better.
A world in which to offer grace to others. A world in which we can find the grace for ourselves which causes us to grow.
James Gregory
Pastor, Crediton Congregational Church