Last weekend, I had the pleasure and privilege to conduct a wedding at St Gabriel’s and, as is very often the case at Church weddings, the Bible reading we heard was chapter 13 of St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. I’m sure that’s a reading that we’re all familiar with. In it, St Paul speaks about love; he speaks about the indispensability of love, and says that whatever we do, even the most supreme acts of self-sacrifice are worthless unless they stem from love. And he speaks about the nature of love saying,

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Those words are very fitting for a wedding, any wedding, not just a Church wedding because, as I always say to the happy couple when this reading is used, if your love for one another can be like that, you’ll be well on the way to enjoying a long and happy married life together. But, as well as being very fitting for a wedding, I think those words fit in very well with the theme of our readings this morning.

Strictly speaking, the theme of our readings today is wisdom, the wisdom that comes from God. The Scriptures tell us that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. To fear God means to know and follow his ways and those ways are made known to us most clearly through the teaching and example of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who summed up those ways in the Great Commandment to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves. So wisdom and love go hand in hand. We could say that the beginning of wisdom is to know that we’re called to love, and the wise, those who have and practice wisdom, are those who do love, whose lives and actions are motivated by love.

In speaking about love in his First Letter to the Corinthians, St Paul is addressing his concerns about the less than loving ways of the Corinthian Church. He seems to be particularly concerned with the pride and arrogance that some members of the Corinthian Church are showing, and the divisions, arguments, snobbery and one-upmanship that this is causing in the Church. Essentially, St Paul is saying that this is not the way true Christians behave because this is not what it means to love as Christ taught us to love and showed us to love by his own example. And isn’t this very similar to what St James is saying in our New Testament reading this morning?

In this morning’s reading from St James we hear him speak about jealousy and ambition causing disharmony and wickedness, and he contrasts this with the pureness of heavenly wisdom which makes for peace and is kind and considerate, similar qualities in fact, to those which St Pauls says are indicative of love. And St James is in no doubt about the cause of such troubles for he says,

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

And we see the same thing at work in the disciples in this morning’s Gospel reading. There we read that the disciples had been arguing amongst themselves about who was the greatest, the most important. They must have known what they were doing was wrong because when Jesus asks them what they were arguing about, they won’t say. And so Jesus takes a little child and tells them,

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”

What Jesus was saying to them was, no matter how important you might think you are, none of you are any more important to God than this little child, and so you should treat each other, and everyone else, even little children, with equal importance.

In St Matthew’s Gospel, we find a slightly different version of this story. There Jesus tells the disciples that if they want to be great in the kingdom of heaven, they must become like little children. In fact, he tells them that, unless they do that, they will never even enter the kingdom of heaven. So we know that, as Christians, we’re called to be like little children. In other words, we’re called to be humble because, just as a child needs the guidance, help and support of parents, grandparents, teachers and so on, so we have to accept our need of the help, guidance and support of God, our Father, of Jesus, and of the Holy Spirit. Just as a child trusts what parents, grandparents, teachers and so on tell them, we’re called to trust what God tells us, whether that be through the Scriptures, especially the words of Jesus, or the guidance of the Spirit. And just as a child is vulnerable, we’re called to make ourselves vulnerable, because loving others always does make us vulnerable. It makes us vulnerable to being hurt when our love is rejected and it makes us vulnerable to being used and abused when our love is taken for granted, when our love is taken but not returned, or when our love is taken but repaid with malice, hatred and evil.

We do have to make a distinction though, between being child-like and childish. Children, because of their humility, trust and vulnerability tend to be very loving, especially when they’re very young. As they grow older and less humble, trusting and vulnerable, they tend to become less loving, or at least more partial in who they love and more particular in who they show their love to. For example, in every school I’ve ever been in as a deacon or priest, I’ve had lots of young children running up to me shouting ‘Fr Stephen!’ and throwing their arms around me. But that only happens with the very young children. As the children become older, those innocent, child-like displays of love tend to be replaced with a ‘Hiya Fr Stephen’ and a smile.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that, as people get older, they tend to become less childlike. Unfortunately, we can’t say that as people get older, they always become less childish. We all know how selfish children can be. We all know that children very often want their own way and not getting it can end up in either a sulk or a tantrum. But, as children grow older, they can become even worse. In the ‘Terrible Teens’ they can have still have sulks and tantrums but, at that age, they seem to lose the ability to speak, and so we don’t even know what the sulk or the tantrum is about half the time! And adults can be every bit as bad as babies when it comes to petulance if they can’t have their own way. We have a saying that sums that up very well, don’t we? It’s a saying that applies to something babies do but we apply it to adults when we say that they’ve ‘Spit their dummy out!’ And doesn’t all this usually stem, among older children and adults at least, from a belief that they know best?

If we think about this kind of petulant, childish behaviour though, impatience, arrogance, irritability, resentfulness, aren’t all these things the very opposite of the way St Paul describes love? Aren’t these the very things that St James says are the cause of disharmony and wickedness, even of wars and battles between people? And aren’t they the very things Jesus is warning us against when he tells us to be like little children, to be child-like?

When he writes about love, St Paul says,

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

So it is childish ways we’re called to give up, not child-like ways. It’s the cocksure arrogance that we’re right and should have our own way, and the petulant attitude we can all too often show if we don’t get it that we need to give up if we’re going to even enter the kingdom of heaven, let alone be great in the kingdom. We need to give up childishness and replace it with child-likeness; with the humility to accept that we don’t always know best, and with trust in God, that his ways are better than our ways.

And with love. The courage, and the wisdom, to love in the way St Paul describes in his First Letter to the Corinthians. If we can do that, then we have Jesus’ assurance that we will be worthy of a place in God’s heavenly kingdom. Who knows, we might even be great in that kingdom. But then, if we are truly child-like in the way Jesus says we should be, we really won’t care about greatness. Will we?

Amen.

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The Propers for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.

 

During the time that I was thinking about offering myself for ordination, the diocese of Blackburn, under whose jurisdiction and care I was then under, were running an educational course called God our Rock, subtitled, Foundations for Christian Living. It was a course that anyone could enrol on and take but it was especially recommended to anyone who, like myself at that time, was thinking about offering themselves for any kind of authorised ministry, whether that was lay or ordained. It was a course you could take in two ways. You could either simply attend the weekly sessions or you could take the course with assessment. The latter option was the one recommended for those considering putting themselves forward for Church ministry and so that was the way I decided to take the course.

The course itself was split into 3 parts; God’s People, God’s Church, and God’s Book and for those who were being assessed, there was an essay to write for each part of the course. There was no marking involved but there was feedback given on the essays and at the end all those who’d completed the course received a certificate which stated that they’d either completed the course, or that they’d completed the course with assessment. I still have the essays I wrote for that course at home and so it’s quite easy for me to remember that the essay I wrote for the first part of the course, God’s People, was in answer to the question, ‘Does being a Christian mean being a doormat?’

A doormat, of course, as we all know, is a small mat that people place immediately in front of the doors to their homes; they’re there for people to wipe their feet on so that they don’t bring dirt they’ve picked up on their feet from the street, into people’s homes. But in the sense in which it was meant in that essay question, a doormat, as again I’m sure you all know, refers to a submissive person who allows other people to treat them badly without complaining or attempting to defend themselves. In that sense, it refers to someone who allows other people to walk all over them in the same way that everyone who enters a house, walks on the mat in front of the door. 

I don’t know what your immediate reaction was to that question. But even if you answer was the same as the answer I gave in my essay, ‘No’, it is a question that does, sometimes, need to be asked and answered. It needs to be asked and answered because some people, both inside the Church and outside the Church seem to answer that question with a ‘Yes’.

I’ve met people who’ve criticised Christians for being ‘doormats’. People who, in a sense, have despised Christians for being ‘doormats’ and for not standing up for themselves. People who have said that if being a Christian is about letting people walk all over you, they’re not interested because there’s no way they’d ever let anyone treat them in the way that Christians let others treat them. I’ve also met people in the Church who, whilst I’m sure they would never have thought of themselves as ‘doormats’ have, to all intents and purposes, allowed themselves to be used as such because, no matter how badly others treated them, they would never complain or stand up for themselves. And invariably, in my experience, people who allowed themselves to be treated in this way have allowed it because they wanted to avoid conflicts and arguments.

I’m sure that none of us wants conflict, especially in the Church. I’m sure that none of us want to get into arguments with other people, again, especially in the Church. But does that mean then, that to be a Christian we have to be a ‘doormat’? Does it mean it’s ok for Christians to allow themselves to be treated as ‘doormats’?

To be a Christian, of course, means to be Christ like. So if we want to know if being a Christian means being a ‘doormat’, we have to ask whether Jesus himself was a ‘doormat’. And for some people, in a sense, the answer seems to be ‘Yes’. There’s no doubt that Jesus did allow himself to be misused and abused in the most terrible way. There’s no doubt Jesus did that without complaint or any real attempt at self-defence. But, before we think that makes it necessary, or even ok for Christians to be ‘doormats’, we have to look at Jesus life, his ministry and example as a whole. And we have to put his suffering into its proper context.

In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus teaches his disciples about what is going to happen to him:

‘… that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.’

And Peter, at least, isn’t too impressed by what Jesus has told them. In fact, he tells Jesus in no uncertain terms that he’s wrong. Perhaps we could say that Peter was having a go at Jesus for suggesting he was going to allow himself to be treated as a ‘doormat’. But Jesus tells Peter that he’s the one who’s got it wrong because he’s only thinking in human terms, not in God’s terms. In fact, Jesus actually calls Peter, ‘Satan’, the evil one, the devil.

If we look at this encounter between Jesus and Peter as a simple story, what do we see? It’s an argument. Jesus says something Peter disagrees with, he tells Jesus he’s wrong, and in response Jesus tells Peter it’s him who’s got it wrong, and in the process, he resorts to name-calling, to abuse and insult.  That’s hardly the response of a ‘doormat’ is it? And if we look at the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry as a whole, how many times do we find him arguing with people and engaging in name-calling and trading insults? How often did Jesus, in response to some attack or criticism from the Pharisees respond with an extremely erudite answer, but one that was laden with biting insults? Just think of what Jesus called them.

Fools, although a more accurate translation of the Greek would be ‘moron’ and, given what the Scriptures say about fools, that they say there is no God, immoral morons at that. Snakes and brood of vipers, people today might express the same sentiment by saying someone was ‘poisonous’. Hypocrites. That was a common insult Jesus used but the original meaning of the word isn’t what we often think it is. Originally, a hypocrite wasn’t someone who didn’t practice what they preached; a hypocrite was an actor. So, when Jesus called the Pharisees ‘hypocrites’, he was probably saying that they were people who were all show and no substance. People who didn’t really take their faith seriously but just liked to play the part. So they were ‘whitewashed sepulchres’, all white and lovely on the outside, but full of death, filth and corruption on the inside.

These are hardly the words and actions of a person we would call a ‘doormat’ are they? In fact, Jesus was anything but a ‘doormat’. He was perfectly capable of standing up for himself against anyone, and he was perfectly willing to do it too. And as we look at Jesus’ ministry as a whole, we find that only once did he allow himself to be used and abused without any complaint or attempt at self-defence. That was in the final hours of his life; when the time that he’d often called ‘his hour’ finally came. Only then did he allow himself to be used as a ‘doormat’, and then, only to fulfil the Scriptures in obedience to God. When the time had come for him to be the ‘Suffering Servant’ of Isaiah’s prophecies whom we read about this morning, of whom Isaiah said,

The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backwards. I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.

The one of whom Isaiah also prophesied,

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. 

I think sometimes, some Christians, perhaps many Christians, look at those final hours of Jesus’ life and take that as the only example we’re called to follow; an example to suffer abuse and misuse without complaining and without any attempts at self-defence. And so, sometimes Christians do allow themselves to be treated as ‘doormats’. But that is only part of the example Jesus gave us and it’s not an example to suffer in silence for the sake of it, but to suffer in silence only if our suffering in silence brings about some greater good. Jesus also left us another example to follow; an example to stand up for what’s right and to speak out against what’s wrong; an example to defend ourselves against malicious and unwarranted attacks from others, even if that means having to argue with them, and if their ways are human ways and not God’s ways, to criticise them for their ways.

Christians are not called to be ‘doormats’ because Jesus himself wasn’t a ‘doormat’, for anyone. And so, far from simply enduring wrong and suffering in silence, we’re called to stand up for ourselves and speak out in protest whenever and wherever we see God’s ways ignored. And, while we may not want to be involved in or see conflict and arguments within the Church, it is perhaps especially in the Church where we need to do that. To do as Jesus himself did and speak out in complaint and protest whenever and wherever we see people, especially in the Church, and even the Church itself, thinking and acting in human ways rather than God’s ways.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 15) can be viewed here.

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.

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The Propers for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 14) can be viewed here.