April 1, 2023

 

Reading:       Ezekiel 37:21b-28

One verse from today’s passage in Ezekiel – verse 23 – stands out as a succinct articulation of a persistent hope in the Lenten season.

            They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols, nor with their     
            detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions; but I will deliver them
            from their dwelling places in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them.
            Then they shall be My people, and I will be their God.

This verse speaks to personal forgiveness, the promise of divine grace, and a resurrection of individual purpose for anyone grappling with failures or personal disappointments.  Contemplating the promise of God’s grace, and the hope of redemption, I often am brought to the example of John Profumo.

Those of us “of a certain age” may remember that name from a fading era of British politics.  After distinguished service in the Second World War, John Profumo eventually became a high-ranking Minister in the government of Prime Minister Harold MacMillan.  In the early sixties, John Profumo, while still a Minister of the Crown, became involved in a dalliance with a young woman who was not his wife.  Even worse, the young woman was carrying on at about the same time with the senior naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy.  And what was even worse than that, in the peculiarities of British Parliamentary tradition, is that John Profumo lied in the House of Commons about his affair.

Ultimately, Profumo resigned in disgrace – it appeared that the best he could hope for in his shame was obscurity and eventual oblivion.

However, that was not the end of John Profumo’s story.  In very short order after leaving the House, he signed on to volunteer with Toynbee Hall, a charity concerned with poverty in the East End of London.  He spent the rest of his working life as a volunteer for that organisation – never taking a salary for his work there.  And while the scandal that drove him from Office was not forgotten, the redemptive power of his work since then, helping the poor, was recognised and honoured.  In 1975, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

John Profumo stands as an object lesson for redemption – for the notion that we do not need to have our lives singularly defined by our worst mistake.  That, to paraphrase the verse from Exekiel, whatever has brought us down, whether misjudgment or simple misfortune, we can still be delivered, we can still be cleansed, we can still serve God, and we still belong to Him.

- Lee Cutforth