Hollowell  Easter 4 2009 

I have been feeling rather uninformed recently about some aspects of our national life, and as result I worry that I might be getting disconnected from the mainstream.   True I read a broadsheet newspaper and take three weekly magazines, judiciously maintaining a balance with one right of centre, one left of centre and one right in the middle of the political spectrum.  I am also a regular radio listener   But I am under no illusion that what I read, hear and enjoy on TV is anything more than very much a minority interest The interests of most people are quite different to mine and as a Christian I ought to be paying more attention to them.   As John Donne put it "No man is an island unto himself every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. "  
So when I bought the magazine OK recently it was out of character.  True, I had from time to time had a surreptitious glance at this glossy in the semi-anonymity of the Surgery's waiting room.   But it is not the kind of reading that I would take to work.   For a celebrity gossip magazine is not something that so called serious people are supposed to be interested in.  Instead, more often than not, we deplore the brittle celebrity culture of to-day, epitomised in the Jonathan Ross  -  Russell Brand sense of humour or the shopping habits of footballers' wives.  
I bought this particular copy OK, however, because it was described as the Jade Goody Official Tribute and I wanted to know more about this shooting star that briefly crossed the firmament of celebrity.  And the more I read the more fascinated I became.  For Jade Cerisa Lorraine Goody's life was, putting mildly, a roller coaster and for the last six of her 27 years most of that rolling and coasting was in the public eye.  In short it was not like yours or mine. 
She had a most inauspicious childhood ( Jade herself used a  rather stronger adjective than that to describe it) being brought up in a dysfunctional family in Bermondsey with a largely absent father who was a drug addict, spent time in prison and died of an overdose at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.  She shoplifted in Selfridges, drifted around various jobs and then became a dental nurse.  Her breakthrough came when, selected as Miss Ordinary she rocketed to stardom in television reality show Big Brother, essentially because she said what she thought usually without thinking, and based on almost endearing ignorance of the world.   
Along the way two boys were born. There was a miscarriage   By early 2007 she was described by one magazine  -  though how on earth that judgement was reached is a mystery - as the 25[th] most influential woman on the planet  Then  the row about her racist comments to another contestant on Big Brother   After that the stick came out of her rocket and she became a figure of revulsion and hate.  The perfume that bore her name disappeared from the shelves. She was dropped by her agent. 
 But she repented publicly, reinvented herself and clambered back into the public eye. Along the way her ignorance (whether real or feigned) and Jadeisms endeared her to a large constituency of young women with similar aspirations to stardom "They were trying to use me as an escape goat";   "Rio de Janeiro ain't that a person?"  "I thought Cambridge was in London" 
Last year came the appallingly public diagnosis of cancer and the consequences of that played out in the full glare of publicity, followed by her marriage to a man let out of prison to exchange vows, and her death last Mothering Sunday   But what made me sit upo and take notice however, was the fact that had professed herself a Christian and had her two sons christened.   Well, the cynics may say, if you are facing the unknown you might as well cover all the bases.  
As Christians we believe however that God loves each of us and has a plan for our lives.  Not all of us can leave footprints in the sands of time as the poet said.  But Jade Goody did in her own very idiosyncratic way and it would be wrong to mock or dismiss her life as worthless tinsel.  
In thinking about her story as I read OK in the train, I wondered what Jesus would have made of Jade. The best indication perhaps comes in St. John's gospel and the story of the woman taken in adultery. The Pharisees, pointing out that the Law of Moses demanded her death by stoning, asked Jesus what he would do. He writes something in the sand.  And says nothing.  But they keep asking him and Jesus then makes that telling comment "He that is without sin among you let him cast the first stone" 
"Little children let us love not in a word or speech, but in truth and action". Is our Gospel's message of to-day  
The Christian's duty, then, is clear. And I would argue that in the closing period of her short life this young mother, whether consciously or not, did her best to fulfil it.  
First, she was solicitous for her children's future welfare, doing what she could to ensure that they did not suffer the childhood that she had.  
Second in having them Christened and getting married she made a very public statement about her own family values and their lives. . 
Third s a result of her death, the demand for better cancer screening at a younger age has grown and the numbers of  those applying for it has increased enormously  
Fourth in facing death in a very public way (which I concede most of us would never dream of doing) she showed a bravery of spirit that was remarkable and an example to others. 
Finally, by her public penitence about her racist remarks and attitudes she took the beam out of her own eye, restored herself and was forgiven and made a wider pub;oic conscious perhaps of the moats in theirs and conscious of the harm and hurt that word can cause.  
  She set an example, then, that as you may be able to tell, I found inspiring and I  hope many others.  And in doing that in a practical, albeit rather glitzy way, she has been able to exert more influence in a few months than many a politician or preacher in a lifetime of exhortation.  
It's good that Our psalm to-day touches on what she did, walking under the spotlight through the shadow of death and fearing no evil.   The details of her life may  be largely forgotten by the public in a few years time: what she was able to do and the example she set may well live on in the lives of others.  She showed as C S Lewis once wrote, that no amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking up ourselves each time.  It's when we notice the dirt that God is most presenti n us ; it is the very sign of His presence. 
The conclusion that I draw, then, through the life and death of this young woman is that all of us have God's purpose in our lives however unpromising the material for that purpose may seem at first glance.   We too can make a difference even if we don't want to get into the Big Brother house.  What we must not do is stand aside like Pharisees in educated isolation and in our learning, secure in our own little world and determined not to try to comprehend that of others   As the Gospel has taught us :  "This is his commandment that we should believe in Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us".  

Teach us Good Lord to serve thee as thou deserves according to our talents. . To give & not to count the cost;  to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and to seek for no reward save that of knowing that we do thy will." 
