Sermon-Forgiveness

The Prodigal Son in Modern Life, James Jacques Joseph Tissot, 1882

A sermon given during Holy Communion (BCP) at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 27th October 2024, The Twenty Second Sunday after Trinity, drawing on the text of Matthew 18.21-35 (The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant).

The bitterness and malice that inhabit the absence of forgiveness are a source of perpetual torment to so many. The testimony of those who have forgiven others of the most heinous crimes shows that the world can be so different when we forgive. May we have the grace to accept and the courage to share the forgiveness we have received. To help to bind together this broken world with God’s love.

Trainee paramedic James Scourfield died at the age of twenty eight from a single punch to the head in an unprovoked attack while enjoying a night out after a cricket match in Nottingham. Jacob Dunne struck him with such force that it caused bleeding on the brain, which doctors couldn’t stop. After nine days, his mother Joan asked for the life support machine to be turned off. 

The police investigation into the attack meant a post-mortem was necessary. Nearly three months passed by before James’ body was released and his funeral could be held. A period which Joan described as “torture”. 

But these feelings didn’t end there. 

Jacob Dunne pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter and was sentenced to four years in prison. But due to his age and his guilty plea this was reduced to thirteen months. 

Joan describes how angry and bitter she felt after the verdict. Wasn’t her son’s life was worth more than thirteen months? Why was the sentence so short? Questions like these plagued Joan’s mind, leaving her unable to sleep. Her health began to suffer.

A Victim Support worker suggested that she might be able to find some answers by participating in a restorative justice scheme. Through a mediator at first, Joan and Jacob began a conversation.

Prison, it turned out, had done little to help him. He was released without a home to go to. The group of friends he was with on the night he punched James had abandoned him and he felt alone. He couldn’t understand why Joan cared about his life. 

They met face to face some years later. Joan remembers thinking how difficult it must have been for Jacob to walk through that meeting room door. As he did so she saw a young man, not the monster she had been expecting. She told Jacob about James’ life - what sort of a person her son was. She could see the remorse through the tears in Jacob’s eyes. 

Jacob explained in a Radio Four documentary that without being challenged by the questions Joan asked, he would have returned to prison and would still be there today. It is extraordinary, he said, that the people he harmed the most were the people to judge him the least. 

After the meeting, Joan described feeling “lighter” and was no longer bitter about the short sentence Jacob had received. She still doesn’t think it was right, but feels Jacob has received more help outside prison than he got inside. It is still hard for her to say the F-word but she is growing to accept what forgiveness means - and that forgiving Jacob does not mean forgetting her son James or what Jacob did. For Joan, forgiveness brought an end to being tormented by questions about James’ death.



Thirty years ago this year, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsi were tortured, sexually abused and murdered by Hutu militias during the Rwandan Civil War.

Jean-Paul Samputu, a well known Tutsi musician had fled the country before the massacre. His father had pleaded with him to do so, fearing his fame would make him a target amidst rising tensions. Despite Jean-Paul’s protests, his father wouldn’t leave the village he had called home for the past eighty-six years.

Jean-Paul left on foot through the forests. News of the massacre reached him while he was on tour in Burundi. Once the violence had stopped, he returned to his village where he was told that his father had been murdered by Vincent, Jean-Paul’s best friend. 

He wanted revenge - but he couldn’t find Vincent anywhere. Looking back, Jean-Paul says that this was the moment that he started to torture and kill himself. He spent the next nine years addicted to drugs and alcohol, consuming both in dangerous quantities trying to blot out what had happened. His career as a performer ground to a halt. He tried everything to get out of this downward spiral - consulting therapists and witch doctors. Nothing seem to work. Then one day, out of the blue, he decided to take a Bible and go on a retreat. It was during this time that a voice inside him spoke - saying that he must forgive the man who killed his father or he would not be able to love himself or others again.

Thirteen years after the massacre, he declared his forgiveness in a very public way. Jean-Paul returned home to his village and spoke at a tribal court. He explained that he didn’t wish to accuse Vincent - but forgive him. He didn’t know it at the time but Vincent was there in the crowd, and he stepped forward. The first time they had met in person since the genocide. 

Vincent said he had prayed many times for Jean-Paul’s forgiveness but didn’t think he would ever receive it. Jean-Paul explained how he felt “healed” and “at peace” afterwards. No longer tormented by the desire for revenge. 


These real life stories of forgiveness may seem larger-than-life to most us. Of course we hope that we are never in Joan and Jean-Paul’s shoes. Faced with the violent death of someone we love. 

But do we hope as earnestly that we would be able to offer forgiveness on the sort of scale that they did? A forgiveness that is beyond measure, almost beyond comprehension? The forgiveness that Jesus describes at the start of today’s gospel reading? The forgiveness he gave to the world as he breathed his last breath on the cross. 

The testimony of Joan and Jean-Paul lays bare the consequences of an absence of forgiveness. The resentment about Jacob’s short custodial sentence that left Joan unable to sleep, her mind plagued by unanswered questions. The unfulfilled desire for revenge that drove Jean-Paul into a destructive cycle of alcohol and substance abuse which cost nine years of his life.

I wonder if these consequences - of the absence of forgiveness - are more real, more relatable to many than the forgiveness itself? 

Conflict around the world, the legacy of slavery, the response to the verdict of the trial of the policeman who shot Chris Kaba -  all stories from the news this past week reporting circumstances where forgiveness is glaringly absent – causing untold torment for so many. 

Maybe we recognise its absence in our own lives, or the lives of people we know? Someone who has experienced trauma - perhaps an accident or relationship breakdown – an event that left deep scars and painful memories, from which there seems to be no escape? 

The effects of which can be diverse and expressed in many different ways - but the result is the same. A cycle of destructive behaviour. Because when we fail to forgive, we find it hard – then impossible – to accept forgiveness ourselves; as the voice that Jean-Paul heard said.  

A life of perpetual torment. That’s the result of the absence of forgiveness. 

As we hear in the rather stark conclusion to the parable of the Unforgiving Servant. The one who had had his debts forgiven by his master, but who refused to forgive those indebted to him. 

In his anger - or wroth - the Lord handed him over to the tormentors - to be tortured until he learnt that forgiveness is a gift to be shared. ‘So [Jesus says] my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’

Joan and Jean-Paul forgave Jacob and Vincent - and they described feeling lighter, a sense of being at peace - being made whole - once they had felt able to do so. They experienced a foretaste of the kingdom which Jesus is calling us to and which this parable describes. Joan and Jean Paul’s experience shows that the world is different when we give and accept forgiveness.

How much more like the Kingdom would this broken world be if we all took heed of this parable of Jesus?

What peace, what wholeness, what rest we would find in ourselves and the lives of those around us without the bitterness and malice that inhabit the absence of forgiveness that torments so many today.

May we have the grace to accept and the courage to share the forgiveness we have received. To help to bind together this broken world with God’s love. 

Lord, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. 

Image : The Prodigal Son in Modern Life by James Jacques Joseph Tissot, 1882.

Links : You can listen to a Radio 4 documentary about the experience of Joan and Jacob and the restorative justice programme they took part in. ‘The Punch’ is at this link.  The Forgiveness Project website contains the full story of Jean-Paul and Vincent and many other stories contributed by people whose lives have been transformed by forgiveness.