The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson went on the Oprah Winfrey show in the States this week to apologise for the recent ‘error of judgement’ uncovered by the News of the World. We woke up a week past on Sunday to the paper’s exclusive revelations. It seems that Fergie promised its investigations editor Mazher Mahmood, posing as a tycoon, to deliver in exchange for cash access to her former husband, Prince Andrew who has wide links with the international business community.
We can only begin to imagine what she must have felt like in the aftermath of the article’s appearance. But a piece on the Duchess in June’s Readers’ Digest reveals that she felt ‘total despair’ as a result of previous criticism from press commentators. She says ‘I went into a church and told the priest I didn’t think I could cope with it.’
Sarah Ferguson’s attempt to benefit personally from her relationship to the Duke has some specific lessons for us as Christians. For which of us can say honestly that we have never sought to make the relationship with God we claim to have work to our advantage?
‘It wouldn’t be about him, it would be about me. I could bring you great business,’ said Fergie to Mahmood, rather ambiguously. The central challenge of Christian faith is to focus all our living on God, and not on ourselves, on ‘him’ rather than on ‘me’. But while we cheerfully commit to this in church, in practical terms we often sideline God, living as thought it was all ‘about me.’
For example, do I entrust myself to God because I have glimpsed the breath-taking wonder of his love for me, or because I want the blessing and security which he promises those who follow him? How much of my motivation in writing this column is to sing God’s song and encourage others to join in, and how much to gain fulfilment and recognition?
When I take part up-front in church, how much of my motivation is to praise God and help others praise him, how much to raise my personal profile? When I help others, am I serving Jesus, or simply fulfilling a deep personal need to be needed?
We criticise Sarah Ferguson’s self-seeking. And yet how many of us, behind the smiles and the spiritual words can say honestly ‘It’s not about me. It’s about him.’
The Duchess claimed to be a gate-keeper, introducing people to the Prince. As Christians, we are called to be gate-keepers, issuing an invitation to people to meet Jesus. The challenge to us is to be faithful in this – not to present the faith in such a light that people think they need to accept our way of doing church and buy into our church culture before Jesus will accept them. We are called to joyfully point people to Jesus in an honest and self-effacing way.
The Duchess claimed that Andrew knew all about her offer to Mahmood – that she was acting, if not in his name then at least with his knowledge. But Andrew later denied this. Similarly, it is possible for those of us who claim to follow Jesus to assure ourselves and others that what we are doing is done in his name and in dependence on him when in fact God is not present in our actions.
Four evenings after Sarah’s fateful dinner with Mahmood in Mosimann’s club in Mayfair, the News of the World hit the streets, the soundtrack of their conversation was on the internet, and words spoken in private were listened to around the world.
On judgement day all secrets will be revealed. Jesus imagined some folk proudly listing on that day the things they’d done in his name and being devastated to hear him say ‘I never knew you. Away from me.’ These folk may have been passionate and zealous, but within them was an absence of love, an absence of obedience to God, an absence of humility and grace. For all their fine words and actions, their’s was a self-driven religion, not a glad entering into God’s song.
If Sarah makes her way once again in despair to that priest, we pray he reminds her that there is a greater news than the News of the World – the news of God’s spiritual kingdom, the news that Jesus is God’s gatekeeper, the news that we need not pay him for access to the Father, since he has already paid the price for our admittance.
The millions who listened to Sarah Ferguson’s confession on American television this Tuesday may be slow to forgive her. But all who approach in a spirit of repentance the paygate Jesus has opened hear the Father’s welcoming voice saying ‘Come on in! You are forgiven!’
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