What do you see when you look?

In this week’s Gospel, workers in a vineyard are paid exactly the same wage, regardless of the number of hours they have worked to gather in the harvest. Jesus – through Saint Matthew – is teaching us that late arrivals at the Salvation Ball – the new Gentile churches founded around the Mediterranean by Saint Paul, for example – are just as authentic as longer-established Jewish churches, notably in Jerusalem. Or perhaps he is saying that the faith in his Way that will come to be called Christianity is just as seaworthy a vessel for salvation as its parent-religion Judaism. Or that although the religious elites of his own day look down their noses at the prostitutes, sinners and tax collectors whom he himself is all too ready to befriend, in the eyes of God they are just as precious as the apparently unimpeachable priests and scribes and Pharisees.

This reading is paired with the familiar story of Jonah, who flees from God’s command to preach repentance in the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. He tells God that this is because it is a pointless errand: God will just relent and let them all off anyway, so why not cut to the chase and leave the middleman in peace. But maybe it’s also because his prophet’s antennae are twitching at the thought of showing mercy to Assyrians, who will, after all, invade and subjugate Israel just a few years down the line. Is it really wise to be cosying up to them now? If there is to be mercy for anyone – and one gets the distinct impression that Jonah is more comfortable with fire and brimstone than with milk and honey – then surely it should be reserved for Israelites, and denied those pesky Gentiles, ‘people in faraway countries of whom we know nothing’.

Of course, God views the Ninevites as neither strangers nor aggressors, but simply as other children of his creation who are in a bit of a mess, not knowing their right hand from their left, and in great need of a merciful new beginning. In a sense, they’re both. It all depends on what you see when you look.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has been the target of much intemperate invective and condemnation this past week, courtesy of the usual discourteous assortment of malcontents and malevolents, following a frank débâcle in which a fundamentalist Muslim cleric, Mr Tahir Ashrafi, was awarded a Lambeth Palace honour in recognition of his defence of Christians in Pakistan, something only a fundamentalist cleric could plausibly attempt in that context. Unfortunately it was then discovered – the Lambeth Palace Google Machine having presumably been out of action for some time – that he had also in the past himself honoured Osama bin Laden and said predictably partisan things about the struggle against the West.

That all of this should have come to light on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 was a stroke of inexpressibly bad luck, or atrocious judgement, depending on how you look at it. And the fact that Mrs Ashrafi attended the ceremony swathed in black from top to toe was, predictably enough, the reddest of rags to those stalwart liberals and closet Islamophobes who seem willing to defend freedom of expression only if it expresses itself according to their own concept of freedom. Certainly, no one seems to have asked Mrs Ashrafi if she joyfully embraces the niqab as part of an honoured tradition, or if she finds it a symbol of appalling oppression and a hated encumbrance. Neither have Dame Sarah’s critics noted that the award was all settled during her predecessor’s tenure, nor that her interfaith advisor died in post, leaving her understandably at sea in this particular area of her bewilderingly vast and still very new responsibilities.

But that is of no interest to the culture-warriors who wish only to be unpleasant about Muslims, tacitly reinforce the image of all of them as a universal threat, and condemn the Church of England – which they appear to wish silenced, relegated and extirpated, perhaps as one of those institutions likely to put up a fight against their own cherished agendas – and which they consequently and constantly batter as a bastion of wokeness and all other namby-pamby vices. The fact that the Archbishop is a woman simply widens the appeal of the pile-on to include constituents as diverse as misogynists and traditionalist Catholics. But there we are.

What do you see when you look?

If our passages from Jonah and Matthew 20 teach us anything it is that what we think we see – especially when looking at people rather different from ourselves – may not (perhaps cannot) be what God sees. We are always ready to look with eyes of judgement, suspicion, even hostility. And no doubt that has been in some ways a very useful evolutionary instinct, protecting us from foes and defending us from invasion.

But God’s instinct – celebrated by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike – is to forgive, to look with mercy, to show patient loving kindness. And while that may not flush out our enemies, it must give us a better chance of making friends. And if Christ, in his sinlessness, is unwilling to cast stones even at those caught in the very act of sin, then even his nominal followers should think twice about their deeds and words every time they switch on their phones.

The raging controversy surrounding Takir Ashrafi and his withdrawn award undoubtedly reflects a failure of the Archbishop’s office to research thoroughly a course of action that was always going to be fraught with danger and the possibility of malicious misinterpretation. Perhaps it reflects an ill-advised desire to be seen acting on the world stage, or an over-fondness for media limelight. Perhaps it illustrates a no-longer charming but dangerous amateurishness that needs addressing and repairing.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this sad story may be, nothing justifies the populist pile-on and the personal vilification of an Archbishop who, though perhaps on this occasion not knowing her right hand from her left, is nonetheless an infinitely beloved child of God, redeemed by Christ’s precious blood, and destined by his mercy for eternal salvation.

What do you see when you look at her? At yourself? At anyone?