Cries for a Lost Homeland: Reflections on Jesus' sayings from the cross

By Guli Francis-Dehqani

Guli Francis-Dehqani was born in Isfahan, Iran, to a family who were part of the tiny Anglican Church established by 19th century missionaries. Her father, a Muslim convert, became the first indigenous Persian bishop. As the Islamic Revolution of 1979 swept across the country, church properties were raided, confiscated or closed down. Guli’s father was briefly imprisoned before surviving an attack on his life, which injured his wife. Soon after, whilst he was out of the country for meetings, Guli’s 24 year-old brother, Bahram, a university teacher in Tehran, was murdered. No one was ever brought to justice and the family were advised to leave Iran. Guli was 14. They eventually settled in England with refugee status.

Drawing on the riches of Persian culture and her own dramatic experience of loss of a homeland, Guli offers memorable and perceptive reflections on Jesus’ seven final sayings from the cross, opening up for Western readers fresh and arresting insights from a Middle Eastern perspective.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canterbury Press Norwich
• Release date: Aug 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781786223852

Guli Francis-Dehqani

Guli Francis-Dehqani is the Bishop of Chelmsford and formerly the Bishop of Loughborough. Prior to her ordination, she obtained a doctorate from Bristol University and worked as a BBC producer.

Book preview

CRIES FOR A LOST HOMELAND

CRIES FOR A LOST HOMELAND

Reflections on Jesus’ Words from the Cross

Guli Francis-Dehqani

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© Guli Francis-Dehqani 2021

First published in 2021 by the Canterbury Press Norwich

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The Author has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work

Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

‘The Diamond Takes Shape’ and ‘A Great Need’ are from the Penguin publication The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, by Daniel Ladinsky copyright 1999 and used with permission.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78622-383-8

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

Contents

Foreword by Samuel Wells

Introduction

Acknowledgements

1. ‘Father, forgive’

2. ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise’

3. ‘Here is your son … here is your mother’

4. ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

5. ‘I thirst’

6 & 7. ‘It is finished’ … ‘Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit’

‘The Tree of Knowledge’ by Pádraig Ó Tuama

Afterword from Holy Saturday by David Monteith

Notes

Dedicated to the faithful remnant of the Church in Iran

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The diamond takes shape slowly

With integrity’s great force,

And from

The profound courage to never relinquish love.

Hafiz, version by David Ladinsky¹

Foreword

BY SAMUEL WELLS

‘Who are you?’ It’s a question habitually asked two-thirds of the way through the film, when the spouse of the time-traveller finally wakes up to the fact that hitherto unexplained absences are all due to their being in a different century for long periods at a time. It’s a question Pontius Pilate understandably asks Jesus when he realises that what he’s dealing with is no ordinary rabble-rousing Palestinian peasant. It’s a question the disciples are entitled to ask when Jesus calms a storm without breaking sweat. It’s a question that occupies many people’s thoughts about themselves today, as identity becomes the focus of so much searching, controversy and dispute, particularly when old binaries and tired stereotypes are being moved aside.

It’s a question one might ask of Guli Francis-Dehqani. Yes, we know, she is the Bishop of Chelmsford. There was a time when that would have been all one needed to know – because to be in such a role would have meant a person had been to a certain kind of school and a particular kind of university and doubtless have come from a family whose course in life had traversed a very limited number of professions or social locations. Today, mercifully, one can no longer assume any of those things; but one can still expect that this is a person the Church considers worthy of people’s trust, and – not to raise the stakes too high – full of the Holy Spirit.

But she’s also a person from what’s clumsily known as a minority ethnic background. She’s spent a lot of her life outside England, where it turns out that the ways of the Church of England are not universally admired or imitated, and where the issues are not identical to those that furrow the Anglican brow, and tend to be more pressing and more significant. She knows what it means to be in a minority and sometimes in danger because of her faith. And yet she has also spent a lot of her life in England, and has had to learn how self-absorbed this country and its established Church can be. And here she’s discovered something different: what it means to be in a minority and sometimes in danger because of her race. When she speaks of the poignancy of the word ‘paradise’ in Jesus’ phrase, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’, she speaks as a Persian woman spotting a Persian word – ‘paradise’.

But are these things at the heart of who Guli Francis-Dehqani is? Is not the defining experience of her life the terrifying and devastating upheaval of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and the kidnapping and murder of her beloved brother? She is a survivor of extreme danger and hovering oppression. When it comes to lived experience of circumstances not unlike those in which Jesus was arrested and executed, she’s near the front of the queue. Would not such a life event transform, damage or at least shape the rest of one’s life – such that, when asked, ‘Who are you?’ one might reply, ‘I am a traumatised and bereaved refugee.’

So many identities. But when you meet Guli Francis-Dehqani, you realise