Sermon preached by the Rector and Mayor's
Chaplain on 22 May 2005THE
SUN AND THE SONIn
navigating the newspaper stand on Friday, it was difficult to avoid the
rather striking image on the front page of The Sun. It was a picture of
Saddam Hussein in his Iraqi prison cell - dressed only in his
underpants. How the mighty are fallen. Not surprisingly, the
publication of these pictures has led to a row.
In
response,
yesterday's Sun was less than apologetic. The first paragraph in their
'What The Sun Says' column puts it like this:
'It is
typical of
the curious culture in the BBC newsroom that they should get into such
a tizzy about our pictures of Saddam Hussein. One reporter asks a Sun
executive if we have humiliated Saddam. What preposterous nonsense.
Only someone recruited via a job advert in the Guardian could have such
a partial and polluted view of life...'
And so it
continues. But
then, a few sentences later, the Sun's comment column goes on to say
something about the recent attack on Becky Smith. Becky is a 16-year
old schoolgirl from Manchester who was beaten unconscious by a gang who
filmed it on their mobile phones and then sent the pictures to their
friends. Here's what The Sun says about this:
'We
have bred a generation of wild teenagers who have no respect for others
and no fear of the law.'
I'm
struck by the connection between these two stories, a connection which
the paper seems curiously unaware of. It seems to me that the act of
publishing pictures of Saddam in his Y-fronts falls way short of the
respect that is due to our fellow human beings - even allowing for the
fact that his own sense of humanity has been so much less than it ought
to have been. And the thing is this. If we allow ourselves to gloss
over the relatively trivial lack of respect that has been shown to him,
how can we complain about the much more serious lack of respect for
others shown by some of the teenagers of Manchester? What else would we
expect of them?
When it comes to influencing
impressionable
teenagers - or indeed anyone else in our community - each of us is on
one side or the other of an enormous tug of war. A tug of war in which
we can choose the direction in which we are pulling. Towards a tomorrow
which is better than today. Or towards a tomorrow which is worse.
Towards a world where things like respect, honour, care, trust and love
are flourishing. Or towards a world in which such qualities are
attacked and trampled underfoot.
As I say, in
this tug of
war each of us is on one side or the other. But as we all dig our heels
in, the fact is that some of us exercise a bit more leverage than
others. I'm thinking of those in our community who offer themselves for
different roles of leadership, especially today, of course, our
newly-elected mayor and her fellow town councillors. The attitudes you
take and the things you say carry more weight than the rest of us in
the tug of war that is going on in our society.
Which
is why
it's so good to be able to welcome you to this civic service, to thank
you for the gifts you offer our town and to pray for you. To pray for
you particularly in the light of the reading from the Bible we heard
earlier.
I want to draw our attention to just two
phrases in the
first sentence of what the apostle John writes here. Here it is again:
'Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.' The
first phrase to focus on is this. 'Let us love one another.' It's as
if, in the tug of war we're all part of in this world, John is urging
us to really put our backs into it. Rather than letting ourselves slip
forward in dull apathy or quiet resignation, let's lean back and pull
hard. Let's do what we can where we can to really love one another.
The
second phrase is this. 'Love comes from God.' First, let us love one
another. Secondly, love comes from God. The Christian claim is that the
most concentrated display of love this world has ever seen stems from
God's gift of his Son to die for us. That's why every place of
Christian worship focuses on the cross. I officiated at a wedding
yesterday and was able to say, as I do at most weddings, that God's
love is the breeze which fans ours into flame. The more we focus on how
much God loves us, the more we're able to pass it on to others. 'This
is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into
the world that we might live through him.'
In the
tug of war for
our society, each of us is on one side or the other. We choose the
direction in which we pull. The challenge is this. Who are we going to
be guided by? The Sun with a 'u' or the Son with an 'o'?
©
2005 David
Stone
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