During the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict a couple of weeks ago, I listened to a range of speakers, from Zainab Bangura, the UN's special representative on sexual violence in conflict to US Secretary of State John Kerry, make the point that perpetrators of sexual violence must be caught and punished and that systems and capacity need to be in place to enable that to happen. It was the sort of comment that elicited woop-woops from the audiences. Of course they were absolutely right. Ending impunity is a vital step, though only one step among many others that are needed to end sexual violence, whether it be in times of conflict or of peace.

Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi was the only person I heard at the Summit say something about what you do with perpetrators once they are behind bars. During a ministerial dialogue he said “Even a perpetrator was made in the image of God. When judged and imprisoned he also needs opportunity to be transformed. He also is someone to be redeemed. And we need local and international collaboration for this.”

A brave man that Archbishop Ntahoturi – some might say that he was a foolish man to say such a thing and in such a context. And hadn’t he read Matthew’s Gospel, 7 v.23? The language is stark and uncompromising, Jesus saying, “Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me; you evildoers’”

It’s always a mistake to lift a few verses out of the Bible without understanding their place in the rest. The more we read about Jesus and reflect on what he was all about, the more we ponder, the more we can see that he never saw the world simply in terms of its brokenness and badness. Matthew’s Gospel also gives us the parable of the sheep and the goats, and images of fiery hell and the gnashing of teeth. Yet Jesus didn’t spend his earthly ministry consigning people to hell. Yes he hated hypocrisy, but he saw the world and he saw people in terms of the indestructible mystery of God's presence buried in them like a treasure buried in a field. He told stories about it. The mystery of God’s presence, gleaming and precious like a pearl of great price. Constantly at work like yeast in bread. Loaded with possibility like a mustard seed. Pearls, seeds, treasure in fields, yeast in bread, the human heart, all of these things carry within them the potential for goodness, a promise of human flourishing.

The world is a difficult and fragmented place. There is corruption and cruelty and the rape of children. And in that world, as Christian people it’s our business to stand with Jesus even in the shadow of the cross, and see things as he sees them. For underneath the brokenness of our experience, underneath the brokenness of the world and of people, there is still the mystery of God's presence buried within like a treasure buried in a field. Gleaming and precious like a pearl of great price; at work like yeast in bread; full of possibility like a mustard seed – in our world, in our communities, in individual men and women.

So Archbishop Bernard has read the Gospel after all, and he wasn’t being foolish when he said that we must work with perpetrators once they are imprisoned because they are redeemable too. There were no woop-woops from the audience, but sometimes silence has its place.

Let’s continue to pray for everything that Anglicans are doing in the Great Lakes region of Africa and all over the world, in partnership with others, to end and prevent the horror and trauma of sexual and gender based violence and to restore all who are caught up in it.

The Revd Terrie Robinson is the Women's Desk Officer at the Anglican Communion Office