Sermon Archive
Myra Hindley - Beyond Retribution
Sermon preached by John Armes at Matins on 17 November 2002
Myra Hindley has gone to meet her maker after 36 years in prison. As she is called to account for her deeds we are left to ask some pretty basic questions about what her sorry case reveals about our society and how our faith might enlighten it.
The Moors Murders understandably stirred strong emotions. They were worse than cold-blooded for they were committed with relish. Utterly premeditated. If you want the details read the newspapers.
And the human costs have been well documented too. It is not just the victims whose lives were destroyed. Their families too have been left shattered, embittered, some still searching forty years later for the remains of their little children. And whole communities are overshadowed by the memory. The house where Brady and Hindley lived long flattened but its very absence a reminder to the neighbours. Many working at Ashton market, where the victims were selected, still remember the children, the deception, the loss of innocence. For many of these people the question was never 'when should Hindley be released?' but 'Why was she allowed to live?' And Saddleworth Moor, for all over a certain age, is now no longer merely a bleak and deserted place, it is a place of tears.
These emotions must be acknowledged. They are part of the cost of human sin and failure that our faith must take seriously if it is to claim any relevance to this life at all. But having said this, though our emotions may be our first words on the matter they cannot be allowed to dictate the final word.
For to indulge our emotions is, ultimately, to let ourselves off the hook. I have been troubled over the years at the hysteria and the mob mentality whipped up by the press aimed at paedophiles and others. That human beings collectively so love to hate is something that should cause us disquiet. And there has been ample evidence of this in the way that Hindley has been presented. She was for many the personification of evil. We all recognise that photograph - peroxide blonde, unexceptional, yet used by the media as a kind of photographic shorthand - an icon of the she-devil. More recent photographs of a middle-aged, dark haired, ordinary looking woman would tend to undermine this sensationalism.
But the trouble with the claim that someone personifies evil is that it makes them into a scapegoat for our own failures. All have sinned, says St Paul, and all require the redemptive love of God. And Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount calls us beyond the external act and asks us to consider that even anger and hatred of another human being is akin to murder. Of course there are people, and Hindley may have been one, who allow this propensity to sin to corrupt their humanity to such an extent that they lose sight of good altogether. But our faith must lead us to ask: 'If God can overcome sin, are not these people therefore still redeemable?' This can sound glib. The cross indicates that redemption is costly for God and not just for God. But are not murderers too to find their hope in the cross?
As I understand it the business of sentencing those found guilty involves various considerations. The crime must be punished and the length of sentence must reflect the seriousness of the crime. In this way it acts as a deterrent to others but more than this, it makes a clear and public statement of what society finds unacceptable.
But also fundamental to our sentencing policy, and I would argue that this is where our faith has something important to say, must be to build in the opportunity not merely for repentance but for reform, rehabilitation and transformation. This is why conditions in prison are of such concern. Criminals are punished by being sent to prison, losing their freedom, not by being in prison.
There was much evidence that Hindley herself was a reformed character, that she had found through faith and education a new purpose in living. If so, then by the end of her life far from being a personification of evil she actually represented an example of hope for us all.
This is not to say that she should have been released - we will all have different views on that - although whether such decisions should be left in the lap of politicians or worse of the tabloid press is another matter. Nevertheless, just because a character has reformed does not in itself preclude us from saying that their crimes are so heinous that the only way of making clear public disapproval is to let life imprisonment mean life.
Of course, none of this is to broach the subject of forgiveness. Who am I to forgive you for the murder of someone I never knew? We know, and we understand, that forgiveness was beyond the resources of some of the families of Hindley's victims. We also know, and are in awe of, some deeply wronged individuals who have found it possible to forgive. And more than this we know too that the act of forgiving our enemy is itself redemptive for ourselves, never mind our enemy. This is why we would see forgiveness ultimately belonging with God. We are back with the cross, a God who can show mercy and carry the cost of that mercy in himself.
We are speaking here of the transcendent. A state can set the rules and apply the rules, our faith points us to a God who can transcend the rules, and who can offer the hope that beyond the rules there is transformation and the possibility of new life not just for Hindley but for the families and the children whose lives her actions destroyed.
Perhaps we find hints of this in our second reading. Jesus heals the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath day. He is breaking the rules because healing is technically work and therefore should be left to the other 6 days of the week. Of course, if the man had been dying or if the need was urgent, like a sheep or ox in difficulty, that would be permissible, but the truth was that he could have waited until the next day. So the answer to Jesus' question, 'Is it lawful to save life or to kill on the Sabbath?' is obviously that the Sabbath is for saving life. Jesus and the Pharisees would have been in agreement on this. Equally, no day of the week, Sabbath or otherwise, is for killing, for killing is against the law.
So what is Jesus getting at? One of his strong messages is that the kingdom is imminent and we are to be ready for it. Mark's is the gospel of wakefulness. Be alert, be ready, be awake for the day of the Lord will come when you least expect it. The final battle with evil is underway. And this battle does not stop for the Sabbath. In other words, if Satan is at work 7 days a week so the Son of Man must counter evil and do good 7 days a week.
Rules, in other words, are secondary. Indeed, they can obscure the truth and deafen people to the calling of God. In the end, however painful it may be, the demands of mercy take first place for God.
In this case, the man had a withered hand. Rules required him to go unhealed but mercy tells him to stretch out his hand and be healed. In the same way we might hear Jesus calling us to stretch ourselves beyond the desire for retribution, for punishment, for blood and pray that God will forgive. Recognizing that some things are so imponderable, so complicated and beyond our abilities to comprehend never mind resolve that only God is left, and even then not within history but in an age to come.
'Well,' you might say, 'if in the end God will resolve it why not hasten the end and reintroduce capital punishment?' Three reasons. The first is that, as I have suggested, Myra Hindley's case offers us some hope. Secondly, I do not believe ritualised slaughter is a function of a civilized state. And thirdly? Well, it is an irony isn't it that in the same week Myra Hindley died somebody else walked free from a British prison after serving twenty-five years for a murder he did not commit!
Human beings, all human beings and all human institutions are fallible.
Worship >> Sermons >> Sermons