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Good morning. To be a survivor of predatory activity from a person in a position of trust is in many cases to experience hurt, anger, shame and confusion. For that trusted person to be one through whom you had sought understanding of God can be a bewildering and mortifying experience. To be a child in such a situation can make things multiply more painful. Then to seek help and action from authorities to stop the harm, protect others and bring the perpetrator to account – yet to find that pursuit gets nowhere, and your persecutor prospers – may add a further, almost unbearable layer of fury and distress.

In the grievous cases beleaguering the Church of England in recent weeks there’s a disconnect between the clarity of natural justice, in which criminals are held to account and prevented from causing further damage, and the long grass of legal process and organisational procedure, which can seem mystifying, and can thwart and betray those in some cases carrying lifelong wounds.

The church is an institution, and, like many institutions, can find itself tangled in contradictory commitments, and humiliated when it fails in the most basic expectations of care, transparency and justice. The church can certainly look pompous, with glorious architecture, fine robes and self-important ceremonies.

But beneath those appearances, and too often hidden, lies a much humbler hope. This hope is that the energy at the core of the universe knows exactly who we are, sees through our pretension and hypocrisy, and nonetheless wants to be in relationship with humankind – however much our well-intentioned schemes are poisoned through malevolence or fail through clumsiness.

Furthermore this hope trusts that this relationship will prevail and the energy that animates all things will ultimately bring justice, liberation and joy. Those who’ve been hurt and harmed will be vindicated, and all will in the end be redeemed.

The part that’s hard to grasp is how all that hope is embodied in a tiny baby. Christianity isn’t really about institutions and grandeur. Neither is it about being powerful and global. It’s about what we behold at Christmas: God in a vulnerable baby, laid in our arms. Vulnerable to harm. At risk of hurt. Liable to exploitation. Born as a displaced person, to a family exposed to shame, shortly to become refugees, first greeted by the socially excluded. The baby says, ‘This is who I am: and this is who you are.’

I trust that the oppressed will be upheld, those who’ve caused harm face the consequences, and any found to have inhibited justice held to account. But I also trust that this crisis brings the church closer to its true identity: in the fragile face of the baby entrusted to us.

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