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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