Sermon for Sunday 29th March 2009

One of my favourite books has the brilliant title ‘Finding God in Unexpected places’. It’s by Christian journalist, Philip Yancey.

In it he writes ‘ As a Christian journalist, I have learned to look for traces of God. I have found those traces in unexpected places: in atheistic nations, slums and a health club…in prisons, orphanages and even in the plays of Shakespeare. I have found malaise in the midst of plenty and stirring hope in circumstances that should have produced despair. I have found evil in the most unexpected places and also God’.[Yancey P. (2002) ‘Finding God in Unexpected Places’, London:Hodder & Stoughton]

The TV reality show Big Brother will celebrate its 10th anniversary later this year. I have a feeling that many of you have not seen it.

It’s the kind of programme that many will probably opt out of seeing. Or perhaps you’re like me. Find it objectionable in principle but can’t help but watch a bit now and then to keep in touch with what a lot of people are talking about!

Philip Yancey wrote that he often found God in unexpected places. Could God be in the Big Brother house? Would Yancey find him there? I suspect he would.

Jade Goody, who sadly died last Sunday, is perhaps one of Big Brother’s biggest celebrities. She entered the house in 2002 became ridiculed by the press for thinking that Cambridge was in London and East Angula (as she called it) was overseas.

But she became popular with the public and went on to become a celebrity.In 2007 she returned to the Big Brother house in an annual version known as Celebrity Big Brother. There she put her foot in it again. This time not through some lack of knowledge, but by making racist remarks which led to her eviction and outcry across the world.

But Jade Goody was a likeable, who sought forgiveness for her racist remarks and received it from her victim, Shipla Shetty.

Jade’s life was to have further dramas when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer but she launched a campaign to make more young women aware of the dangers of not having regular smear tests, and then set to fulfil her desires to marry and to be baptised alongside her two boys.

But it was the way in which she embraced dying and that have been an inspiration to many people.

In a recent Church Times article , Giles Fraser, Vicar of Putney, wrote that most of us don’t want to think and talk about death much and as a result we have lost the idea that we ought somehow to prepare for death.He wrote “If you ask people these days how they want to die, they invariably say that they want to go quickly and painlessly, and preferably in their sleep.

Perhaps most of us want death to visit unexpectedly so that we do not have to think too much about it. As a consequence of this philosophy, one of the things we have lost is the idea that we ought somehow to prepare for death”.

Giles Frazer goes on to remind us that throughout most of Christian history, the popular idea was that one’s death was something for which one got ready. He says that the “Litany, for example, asks that we might be delivered from “dying suddenly and unprepared”. Thus the medieval soldier spent the evening before battle in prayer and confession, so as to get himself ready for what might be his last day.

This idea of preparing for death makes sense. You say your goodbyes; you set your affairs in order; you make your peace with God; you tell your nearest and dearest that you love them. This is all important stuff, and it is too often bypassed in the conspiracy of silence that surrounds the dying — a conspiracy with which, as one theologian powerfully points out, the medical profession is all too keen to collude by using its endless rhetoric of cure”.[Giles Fraser, The Church Times, 6 March 2009]

We in the church are sometimes guilty of colluding in it also. Some of us avoid using the word “dead” – as if somehow the bereaved will feel better if use alternative phrases like “passed away”. According to Jim Kuykendall a psychologist who ran a session about bereavement here a couple of weeks ago – there are 400 alternative ways of saying ‘dead’ – most used sensitively but all too often avoiding the reality of death.

Jade Goody was notorious for her use of the media. Silence and shyness were not in her nature and so over the past few weeks we have been the audience in a very public death.

She put her affairs into order – she fulfilled her ambition to marry and to be baptised alongside her two boys. On baptism she said that she wanted her boys to know Jesus and for them to know that she was in heaven. Her wedding speech was deeply moving.

Though totally accepting that she was going to die she said that she prayed that her guests would return in the months to come for a service of blessing. Sadly, there was not to be another gathering as she died a couple of weeks later.

Lent began with a reminder that we are all dying. On Ash Wednesday we received ashing with the words ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ’. As we look ahead to Palm Sunday and the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, so we will be reminded that Jesus was to endure suffering and death – the truly human experiences we will all share.

But Jesus reminds us clearly in our Gospel reading this morning that his death will result in much fruit – fruit that we can all enjoy with the promise of eternal life. It’s a real reminder that death is not the end. Dead we will one day be but through Jesus we will be raised to new life.

In her final days Jade Goody apparently clung to a particular passage from Jeremiah. “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known”.

She said ‘ I don’t know why those words mean so much to me – why they move me. But they do.

“Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known”.

A b rated celebrity has been responsible for putting death in the public eye these past few weeks. A b rated celebrity was able to put baptism on the pages of every national newspaper just a couple of weeks ago and to have bible verses printed in all the tabloids.

God can be found working in unexpected places and through unexpected people.

God has indeed been found working in the Big Brother house.

Amen

© Revd Renos Pittarides March 2009