A few days ago, I had a visit from my daughter and her children. In many ways it was a visit that said a lot about how different generations of people like and do different things. When I used to visit my grandparents, myself and my sisters would talk to them and play board games or cards and dominoes with them. This week, within 10 minutes or so of arriving at the vicarage, and starting with the youngest, who’s 9, my grandchildren started to make their way to one of the bedrooms where they all sat, in separate chairs, playing on their mobile phones for the rest of the visit, while my daughter and I sat downstairs talking.
One of the things we talked about were some of the films and TV programmes we each like to watch or have watched. I must admit that I’d never even heard of some the TV programmes my daughter mentioned, and most of those I had heard of I’ve rarely, if ever, watched. One of those programmes that came up in the conversation was Big Brother. I know that Big Brother was a very popular programme for many years, but I only ever watched a part of one of the early episodes before I decided that there must be lots of better things I could do with my time. My daughter, who used to watch it regularly, asked why I didn’t like it. I told her that I didn’t really have any interest in watching people act in an outrageous, and often obnoxious, way simply because they wanted to draw attention to themselves in their pursuit of celebrity and all that goes with that. My daughter agreed with my summing up of what the programme seemed to have been about, but said she liked to watch it, nonetheless.
I think that a programme like Big Brother could have been made, that there were plenty of people wiling to ‘enter the house’, as I think the saying went, and that it was so popular, says something about the society we live in. It used to be said the Britain was a ‘class-ridden’ society, a society that was ordered and run according to social status and in Britain’s case, there were 3 social orders of people which were known as the upper, middle, and working classes of people. I’m sure we all know that. But today, I think our society is more concerned with celebrity than anything else. And I think there’s very good reason for that.
In a society run and structured on social class, it’s quite natural that those in a lower class would aspire to be a member of one of the higher classes. For one thing, that brings the higher standard of living that I’m sure we’d all like. At one time that would have been very difficult if not impossible for most people to achieve but in today’s society, people can achieve a very high standard of living no matter what class they were born into, and one way to do that is by becoming famous. Because, in today’s society, fame can bring great rewards and give people a standard of living that, in the past, only the higher classes of people could ever have hoped to enjoy. And so, we have what’s often called a cult of celebrity in today’s society and we have programmes like Big Brother and no shortage of people who are willing to do whatever it takes, regardless of how unpleasant it might be, to achieve fame and fortune by becoming a celebrity.
But as well as fame and fortune, something else that comes with celebrity, something that again, was reserved for the higher classes in the past, is the amount of influence in society it can give to a person. And I think, in today’s society, celebrity seems to be more important than anything else to those who want to influence society. The rise of populist politicians is one way to see that. How many people, for example, when they voted in the last general election, said they voted for the Tories or Conservatives? And when they talk about what’s going on in the country today, how many people talk about the Tories, or the Conservatives, or the government? When they voted and when they talk about these things, don’t most people rather simply say Boris? They voted for Boris: Boris has done this; Boris has done that. One example of the cult of celebrity.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that the rich and the famous, what we once called the higher classes, and these days, celebrities too, are treated differently, and far better, than other people in our society. In addition to the greater wealth and better standard of living they enjoy; they’re listened to more than others in our society. That may be understandable when it happens in society generally, it’s less understandable when it happens in the Church. And yet both historically, and still today, it has and does happen.
Historically speaking, I think the Church’s attitude towards social status and class can be summed up in a verse from a well-known hymn that is never printed in hymn books today. The hymn is All Things Bright and Beautiful and when it was originally written, in 1848, it contained this verse:
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
The implication of those words is clear; whatever state, or social class a person was born into, that is how God intended them to be. That person then, was not to seek to improve their lot, but to simply be a good Christian and to be happy in whatever social position God had put them in. By implication too, any social climbing, any attempt to change your lot in life, was to go against God’s will and purpose and to invite divine retribution on yourself.
As I said, we don’t sing that verse of the hymn these days but that doesn’t mean the Church has rid itself of this kind of attitude towards social status. All Things Bright and Beautiful was written over 170 years ago. I was ordained less than 20 years ago and yet I’ve been in parishes where they still reserved pews for people based on their social class. And if any member of the hoi polloi should sit in one, even by mistake, they would very quickly and be told by a churchwarden to move and sit somewhere else.
That’s one parish, but the wider Church can still be every bit as prejudiced when it comes to social class and status. Another parish I know well went into interregnum this Easter when their vicar retired. They had a new vicar by July, so the parish was in interregnum for about 3 months. How long was this parish in interregnum? Could the urgency with which the appointment of a new incumbent for the parish I’m talking about was treated possibly have something to do with the fact that it has a mega bank balance (and I use word mega in its true sense, let the reader understand), and where the congregation is predominantly made up of professional people such, doctors, barristers and solicitors, teachers and architects, of business owners and senior managerial staff?
And in recent years, it seems that the Church has also succumbed to the cult of celebrity too. There have been a number of TV programmes such as A Country Parish in 2003 and An Island Parish that was shown between 2012 and 2017, that have followed the lives of the clergy, and made minor celebrities of at least some of them. But some clergy have become real celebrities and have appeared on all sorts of TV shows, most of which have had nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity and the Church. Quite how a priest can do this and run a parish is a mystery to me and many other clergy I know. No doubt he has a very understanding bishop, and congregation too. But I, and others, do wonder whether this would have been allowed if the priest in question hadn’t already been a well-known musician before his ordination.
But whatever the reasons for these things happening, for the Church to treat people differently, and especially to treat some better than others because of who they are or what their social standing and status is, is particularly bad because it’s completely contrary to the Gospel.
As we read this morning, St James tell us,
‘… if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place”, while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there”, or, “Sit down at my feet”, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become corrupt judges/judges with evil thoughts?’
And didn’t Jesus say,
“Judge not, that you be not judged.”?
Whatever we think about others, and whatever the Church may think about them, or us, we must always remember that, in God’s eyes, we’re all poor and undeserving. So, as Christians, we really can’t afford to make distinctions between people and especially, we can’t afford to look down on people and treat them badly or as inferiors, no matter who or what they are. If we do, then we have Jesus’ own warning that we can expect the same kind of treatment to be meted out to us. As he said,
“For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye’, when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
So let’s ask Jesus to help us take those logs out of our eyes. Let’s ask him to heal our blindness so that we can see both ourselves and others as we, and they, really are, through God’s eyes and not through the eyes of human prejudices about social class and status. There should be no room for these things in the hearts of Christians, or in the life of the Church because there is no room for them in the kingdom of God. And if we do carry these things in our hearts and show them in our lives, how can there possibly be room for us in God’s kingdom?
Amen.
The Propers for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 14) can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 