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.

In recent years we’ve heard quite a lot of criticism of American presidents, haven’t we? It would be difficult to catalogue the number and range of criticisms that were levelled at Donald Trump during his presidency and now it seems the knives are out for President Joe Biden as his competency, trustworthiness and not to mention his handling of the situation in Afghanistan are all being questioned. But no matter what people may think of Messrs Trump and Biden, the one who is widely regarded as the worst, and certainly, I think, most infamous of all Presidents of the United States, at least in living memory, is Richard Nixon.

Most of us here will remember Nixon, I’m sure, but for those who don’t, Nixon was forced to resign from office during his second term of office as President to avoid impeachment for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that Nixon fully lived up to his nickname of ‘Tricky Dick’ and ended his term as President and his political career in disgrace, and yet for many people, including myself, he remains a fascinating character. He is widely regarded as a man who had the ability to be a good, perhaps even great President of the United States. He can be credited with some notable achievements, opening relations between the United States and China, negotiating the first nuclear arms limitation treaty with the Soviet Union and ending American involvement in the Vietnam War, for example. And yet he ended up being regarded as one of, if not the, worst Presidents ever and a disgrace to himself, the Presidency, and his country because of his shady way of doing things and attempts to cover up his involvement in illegal activities carried out on his behalf. So why was Nixon like that? I think the answer lies in his own words.

Towards the end of his farewell speech to his Cabinet and Staff, Nixon said this,

“Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.” 

I don’t anyone has ever given a more accurate epitaph to themselves than Nixon did in those words. Nixon could be extremely petty. He believed people were always trying to put him down, so he tried to put them down. He believed people were out to destroy him, so he tried to destroy them. He believed that people hated him, so he hated them. And in the end, he did destroy himself. 

I’ve chosen to speak about Nixon this morning because I think he is a very high-profile example of what can happen to us if we don’t take the lessons of this morning’s readings to heart and try our best to live by those lessons. In our both our Old and New Testament readings this morning, we’re urged to live as God intended us to live. We’re urged to keep God’s commandments and, in the Letter of St James, not to let ourselves be contaminated or stained by the world. And that’s a message that’s taken up and reinforced in our Gospel reading, in Jesus’ own words:

“Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”  

On one level, this is a teaching about ritual purity. It’s a teaching that eating without washing our hands first, whilst it might not be very hygienic, doesn’t damage our relationship with God because that is based on the kind of people we are in our hearts, not in our stomachs. And although this morning we don’t read the verses that actually say this, it’s also a teaching that there isn’t really any such thing as ritually unclean food because again, the food we eat simply goes into our bodies through our mouths, through our stomachs, and then out of our bodies.

But on another level, this is a teaching about what can enter into a person from outside and can contaminate and stain us. Jesus says,

“What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts…”

some of which Jesus names before he says,

“All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

I’ve spoken before about the ancient understanding of the heart. For people of ancient times, it was the heart, not as we understand, the brain, where decisions were made. For the ancients, including the people Jesus was speaking to, everything that a person experiences in life entered the heart. It was in the heart where everything was considered and where the appropriate response was formulated. And so it was from the heart that actions came. And if these actions, and the thoughts that created them, were contrary to God’s commandments, it was these things that came from within a person, from their heart, that defiled a person. What this morning’s readings are telling us then, is that we mustn’t allow what we experience in the world to corrupt us by leading us away from God and abandoning his commandments.

The case of President Richard Nixon is an example of what can happen to a person if and when they allow the world to make them angry and bitter. His example shows us what we can become if we choose, and it is a choice, if we choose to repay people in kind for the insults and injuries and hurt they’ve caused us, or we think they’d like to cause us. His, is a high-profile example but it can happen to all of us in so many ways. I remember, for example, saying one time to an old school friend of mine that he wasn’t very nice to his girlfriend at times. His answer was that his last girlfriend had done the same things to him, so he was just getting his own back! But how many people have we met who’ve been through a bad experience and then treated other people, people who had nothing to do with the experience in question, badly as a result of that experience. Treated them as though either they were responsible for what had happened or as though they would do the same thing if they got the chance? It’s something we’ve probably all experienced, and probably all done at some time, and when we’ve done it, we’ve probably excused it by calling it the ‘baggage’ we’re carrying with us. 

It is easy to allow the world to make us like this because there are so many things that happen in the world, and to us, as we go through life that can make us angry and bitter. But if we do allow the world to make us like this, and that is our choice, these things damage our relationships with one another as individuals. They can damage relationships between groups of people. They can damage relationships between nations. And they damage our relationship with God too because being angry and bitter at others for what has happened to us, is allowing the world to contaminate or stain us, not least because it stops us from loving our neighbour as God intends us to.

Whatever the world throws at us, and whatever enters into our hearts as a result, Jesus calls us not to let these things turn us to evil thoughts because from evil thoughts spring evil actions. Whatever the world throws at us, and whatever enters our hearts as a result, we’re called to remain uncontaminated and unstained by them and faithful to God’s commandments and Jesus’ teaching. We know the rewards both for faithfulness and unfaithfulness to God and Christ and I’m sure we all want the reward that faithfulness brings. So whatever the world throws at us and whatever enters into our hearts as a result, we have to do our best to remain uncontaminated and unstained. Perhaps then, we could do a lot worse than take those words from Richard Nixon’s farewell speech and apply them to our own situation as Christians:

“Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”

Amen.

---

The Propers for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.

As I go about the daily business of being a priest, I quite often have the chance to meet and talk to people who don’t usually go to Church. That gives me the opportunity to find out both what they think about the Church and the Christian faith and also what some of the prevailing attitudes towards the Church and the Christian faith are in society generally. Perhaps one of the most surprising things about this is that I never have to bring the subject up. Invariably, it’s the people I’m speaking to who want to talk about the Church and the faith.

Usually these conversations start in one of two ways. Sometimes they start when the person I’m speaking to tells me that they used to go to Church.  People who start the conversation in this way usually then go on to tell me what the Christian faith is all about and they often end when I tell them that being a Christian is about a bit more than they’re saying it is. (These are the people who often use that old chestnut ‘You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian’ which they often do to end the conversation). Or the conversations start when people ask how things are in the church? By that, people almost inevitably mean how many people are going to a particular church. When I tell them, I usually get a response that goes something along the lines of how much the world has changed and quite often something about how the Church needs to change its ideas and ways to fit in with the world. Another thing people who start conversations in this way often say is how many other things people can do on Sundays now that they couldn’t do in years gone by when going to Church was pretty much all you could do on Sundays. The implication being, it seems, that people only ever went to Church because there was nothing else they could do on Sundays. 

I know, that in the vast majority of cases, the people I have these conversations with are very well intentioned. Occasionally I do come across people who have some kind of issue with the Church and who want to have a bit of a rant and rave at a vicar about it, but those people are few, and far between. Some people who tell me what they think being a Christian is all about are perhaps trying to excuse the fact that they don’t come to Church, or don’t come anymore, by saying that they’re good, nice people, nonetheless. But most people I have these conversations with, I’m sure, mean well and are perhaps even trying to be helpful. But, in the vast majority of cases, they’re also quite wrong in much of what they say.

One way in which people get things wrong is in believing, as many seem to do, that being a Christian is about having good morals, about doing right, doing good, and, as many also say, about being nice. But what are good morals? What is right? What is good? What does being nice entail? The problem with trying to express the Christian faith, and especially the Christian life, in these terms is that they’re far too subjective to be of any use at all. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

At the moment, the coronavirus pandemic has been ousted from the news headlines by events in Afghanistan and the return to power of the Taliban. From our western, democratic and at least nominally Christian outlook, the Taliban are seen as wrong, bad, perhaps immoral, and certainly not very nice. But I’m equally sure that to the Taliban and people of a similar outlook to them, it’s us in the west who are wrong, bad, immoral and not nice. And if that example is too extreme, then simply look at it this way: if we were to come across anyone doing something that we thought was immoral, or wrong, or bad, or just not very nice, and especially if what was happening was hurtful and causing harm to someone else, we would probably think the moral, right, good and nice thing to do would be to stop what was going on. Those we were looking to help or protect would probably agree, but would those whose actions we’d interfered with or stopped agree? I’m sure they wouldn’t and that they’d rather see us as interfering busybodies, at least, and to them we’d be the ones who were in the wrong and they’d hardly be likely to regard us as nice people.

As the saying goes, one man’s meat is another man’s poison, and so morality, right and wrong, good and bad and perhaps especially niceness, are far too subjective to be the basis of faith. Those things are far too closely linked to the society we live in, the way we were brought up and the people we associate with to be of any use to us in describing how to live as Christians. In fact, being a Christian, living out the Christian faith, is about one thing and one thing alone; it’s about following the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. And if you think that’s all about being moral, right, good and nice, then just look at a crucifix. The priests, Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ day sincerely believed themselves to be moral, right, good, and probably very nice people too. So if you’re ever tempted to think that being a Christian is about these things, look at a crucifix and see just what moral, right, good, nice people can actually be, and do.

Another way in which I think people get what they say and think about the Church wrong is in attributing the low number of people who go to Church nowadays, to the fact that there is much more to do on Sunday now than there used to be in the past. There’s no doubting that the world has changed nor that, as part of that change, people can do much more on Sundays now than they could in years gone by. But whilst that has had a negative impact on Church attendance, I don’t think that’s all there is to it. The world has changed but so has people’s attitude to life, and I think that has had just as much, and perhaps even more impact on Church attendances than the increase in what we can now do on Sundays.

When I took some time out from full-time ministry and returned to the secular workplace, one thing I found very noticeable, and very different, about the workplace to that I’d known before I was ordained, was the change in people’s attitude to being told what to do. I was very surprised at the number of people, especially younger people, though by no means only younger people, in the workplace there were who seemed to think that they could do what they wanted to do, when they wanted to do it, that they didn’t have to do anything they didn’t want to do, and that no one could make them do anything they didn’t want to do. Again, this is something I’ve also picked up on in conversations I’ve had with people, especially people in supervisory or managerial roles. So it would seem that this is a prevalent attitude, perhaps especially amongst younger people, in society generally. And it’s an attitude that spells trouble for the Church.

I’ve already mentioned that to be a Christian is about following the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. But the two things we need to do that are obedience and discipline. To put it very bluntly, we need to do as we’re told, and we need to do as we’re told even when we don’t want to. In other words, to be Christians, we need two attributes that seem to be in very short supply in our society. And if this is a problem that’s particularly prevalent amongst younger members of our society, it’s a very big one for the Church because it’s amongst the young that we need to find our future congregations.

I think we all accept that to attract new, younger people into the Church, we probably need to change some of the things we do so that younger people will want to come to Church.

But what we can’t do, and must never do, is change what we teach and that includes the need for Christians to have obedience and discipline.

The Christian life isn’t an easy one, but Jesus never said it was. This morning’s Gospel is an example of Jesus teaching his followers something that was hard for them to accept. It was so difficult in fact, that many of them couldn’t accept it and stopped following him. Reading between the lines of this Gospel story, it seems that Jesus may have thought that everyone was going to desert him on account of what he was teaching because he asked the twelve if they wanted to leave him too. But, as Peter said,

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

And that, I think sums it up in a nutshell; if we don’t follow Jesus, to whom shall we go? He has the words of eternal life and so we have to follow him no matter how difficult what he asks us to do might be. And so, whatever we change in and about the Church in an attempt to fit in with the world and attract new, younger people into the Church, we cannot and must not change Jesus’ words. We cannot and must not change his teachings to make them easier to follow. And if what the world, or at least our part of the world, our society, or any individual in our society thinks is moral, right, good and nice doesn’t comply with Jesus’ teaching then we’ll just have to let world and society and those individuals make of that what they will.

Neither the world, nor anyone who follows what the world says has the words of eternal life, but Jesus does. So let’s have the obedience and discipline to follow him, no matter how difficult that might be and no matter how much we’d rather follow the world. And let’s make sure too, that we tell people that this is what being a Christian means. Because if we don’t, we’re leading them astray and away from the words and path of eternal life and, however nice and easy that may be in worldly terms, it is not the moral, right, good, or nice thing to do in Christian terms.

Amen.

---

The Propers for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.