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Good morning. To say that the transatlantic slave trade was one of history’s most egregious wrongs is hardly controversial. To establish what should be done to atone for it, by whom, and to whom, is more complicated. Recently a report made clear that the funds used throughout the eighteenth century to support clergy were drawn from investments in a company that transported slaves across the Atlantic. And that those same funds have now evolved into the portfolio managed by the Church Commissioners. This week in issuing the first of a series of reports of the Archbishops’ Commission for Racial Justice, Lord Boateng pointed out how ‘the response to an examination of racism and the exposure of injustice is often one of denial and defensiveness or obscuration and delay.’ At the beginning of the first gospel, Jesus’ first speech is a call to repent. But what does repentance mean in a case like this? Can you repent for the crimes of your forebears? The perpetrators and victims are, after all, long dead. You can start by taking an inventory of what you can and can’t do. You can’t prosecute those responsible. But you can recognise that, while 40% of the national budget in 1834 went on compensating former slave holders, not a penny went on compensating former slaves, then or since. You can’t easily identify what kind of compensation might be appropriate, or equitably evaluate the wrong suffered compared with other terrible wrongs. But you can, if you’re a government, invest in the infrastructure of a Caribbean island, and you can, if you’re an institution or a descendant of slave owners, establish bursary schemes or other ways to make a future bigger than the past. Only when you’ve named and owned and begun to address the truth about the past can you turn to the even more important work of transforming the present; because there are parts of our lives today where the past isn’t simply the past, but infests the present in ways that mean the terrible crimes are still in some sense going on. Repentance means admitting past wrongs, recognising ongoing injustices, and working together with the one you’ve damaged – not as a form of punishment but as a joint investment in a better future. It’s hard in some cases to identify exactly what justice demands, but rather easier to perceive what dignity and integrity entail. Half of repentance is making amends for past wrongs. The other half is facing up to present complicity. You can’t do one without the other. Repentance in the end isn’t trying in vain to change what happened 300 years ago. It’s about individuals, institutions, and governments changing what happens today – and tomorrow.