O God, you declare your almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity: mercifully grant to us such a measure of your grace, that we, running the way of your commandments, may receive your gracious promises, and be made partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
The Collect for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity
On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.
When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honour, he told them a parable. ‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honour, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, “Give this person your place”, and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honoured in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’
He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’
Luke 14. 7-14
Reflections from Reverend Sue Northcott
Etiquette can be a mine field, can’t it?
On Sunday at Coelbren, Jon Howard reminded us of the importance of etiquette at formal dinners in the Royal Navy, and how those commanders who bend the rules and chose to occasionally sit with the lower ranks are often better respected by their crews than those who are more formal.
I grew up as part of a working-class household in a council house. We rarely had guests from outside the family at meals, so where to sit was never an issue, and one knife, fork and spoon each was all we had, so there was no chance of getting the cutlery wrong. Our social training was basic, but made mealtimes bearable for one another. We were told to sit up straight, no elbows on the table. To chew with our mouths closed. “No one wants to see your dinner, thank you!” We were to ask nicely for things to be passed across the table. If food needed to be divided up whoever did the cutting got last dibs, so they couldn’t grab a bigger piece for themselves.
Then there were things that were allowed within the close family, but were strictly forbidden in wider company. Eating with your hands, mopping up gravy with your bread and dunking biscuits were all big no- nos that would bring shame on your parents.
On my first trip to the gastronomic heights of a Bernie Inn at the age of about 10 I remember Dad whispering to me that the cutlery on the opposite side of my plate was for my sweet, and those on either side of the plate should be used from the outside in. The little side plate and knife on the side were for bread and butter. To this day I can’t remember which side plate is mine and I’ll wait for someone else to use theirs first. That was pretty much the extent of my training in table manners.
We were brought up to be polite and courteous, within the rules of our social circle. However, anyone attempting to be ‘posh’ was ridiculed. Alongside my grandmother’s statement that someone was “all fur coat and no knickers”, was “Who does she think she is? The Queen of Sheba?” People who got above themselves, or gave themselves airs and graces, a la Hyacinth Buckett, were mocked.
I suppose this was because of the nature of their lives in an industrial town. Men in my family were mostly steelworkers or miners. They needed to rely on one another completely to be safe at their work. They needed to have one another’s backs. The women of my grandmother’s generation were mostly working in the home after marriage, but times could be hard and they two needed to support one another. Borrowing a cup of sugar, keeping an eye on the kids, you never knew when you would need help.
Their etiquette and social rules helped to build community.
It wasn’t until later in life that I discovered that other people had different rules, and that if I wasn’t aware of them I might cause serious offence, make a fool of myself. or be identified as someone who wasn’t part of the right group. Etiquette can be weaponised to weed out the undesirable.
In 1954 linguist Alan Ross categorised English phrases and words as U, meaning upper-class, and non-U, middle and lower class. This was popularised by socialite Nancy Mitford. The upper classes used words such as Lavatory and Napkin, where the lower orders would say Toilet and Serviette. Yet another barrier to inclusion, never mind accents!
I‘m glad to say that there is evidence that the late Queen made much more effort to make her guests comfortable than some of her courtiers seem to have. There are stories of her noticing someone eating a particular food in the ‘wrong’ way, and instead of pointing this out she copied them, so that anyone criticising them would be speaking about her too. That’s a real lady.
So, the rules that are laid down around behavior in social situations can be two edged swords. On one hand they can be used to build a cohesive community, where everyone knows what is expected of them, and relationships can run smoothly without a jockeying for position. On the other, they can be used to keep people in their place, to exclude and humiliate.
The meal to which Jesus was invited was in the house of a Pharisee, a leading member of society. It is likely to have been a men only affair, with the women merely there to wait at table. There would have been no chairs, the guests would have reclined on mats or benches around a low table. The most important guest would be placed at the centre of the gathering, with the host on his left. (Hence the phrase “to sit at God’s right hand”).
Our reading says that everyone was watching Jesus. Was this because they were using the rules of the society as a weapon? I think so.
We aren’t told if Jesus had been seated already when he spoke, or if he was standing back and watching the fun. Either way, he didn’t have the concerns about his position in the pecking order as some of the others seem to have had.
This is another ‘Consider the lilies of the field’ moment. Why are we worrying about how important other people think we are? In the short term, if we have too high an opinion of ourselves, this will lead to the pain of humiliation. In the long term the opinion of other people means nothing.
The man Jesus included those considered outcast by the etiquette of the society he was born into. He spoke to kings and governors as equals, but also to the woman at the well in the same way. You might say that it is all very well for an incarnate God to be more comfortable with his place in society than we mere mortals might be, but remember that when we enter this kingdom it is this same all-powerful God who will act as our servant and friend. And before that day we should follow his example and be servants and friends to those who our society shuns, the foreigner, the prisoner, the poor, the sick and the marginalised of all sorts. Use our rules to include rather than exclude. That is how we bring the Kingdom of God among us.
Below are the Bible Readings, prayers, and a reflection based on the Bible Readings from Passion Sunday, 2024, prepared by Rev Canon Tim Hewitt.
Most merciful God, who by the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ delivered and saved the world: grant that by faith in him who suffered on the cross we may triumph in the power of his victory; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
The Collect for Passion Sunday
Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.
Isaiah 43. 16-21
Reflections from Canon Tim Hewitt, Ministry Area Leader, about new things, change and the choices we have
Based on the Reading from Isaiah
What kind of feelings come into your mind when you hear the word ‘new’? I’m saving a lot of money in energy costs now I live in a house that is quite new compared to the old house I lived in for a number of years. However, having changed the car two years ago, I needed to learn how some things had changed completely from having a petrol car to a hybrid car with electric and petrol. So, as we think about hearing this word ‘new,’ we may not be talking about feelings for new things, but the change to our circumstances that comes with new things.
Furthermore, we may be thinking of something else that relates to new things, namely, choice. With some things, we choose to change something because we believe that what is new is better than the old thing. Having said this, as we know, as we think about our own lives, we are not free to choose between what is old and new with everything in our lives: We think that we are free to do whatever we choose, but this is not entirely true. With some things, there was no choice, we needed to adopt something new because the old thing had come to an end. Here in Wales, we understand everything about these feelings when we use the word ‘hiraeth’ literally meaning ‘long gone’ for places and times.
Yet, sometimes, we need to tell ourselves to be stronger with ourselves and for us to look forward and not backward. We have an example of this in our reading from the Old Testament for today, where the Prophet Isaiah received a message from God that he told the People of Israel and Judah, ‘Don’t think about the former things, or consider the things of old. Look, I’m doing a new thing.’ Before we think of Isaiah’s words further, we touch on something else that comes into our minds here as we think of feelings about the word ‘new’ in comparison to the word ‘old.’
Some of us, including myself here, believe that it is impossible for us to understand the present correctly without remembering what happened in the past. When we understand history well, we also understand why the wisdom of the past is important in the present. For me, that’s the bridge between the past and the present. We need to ask: ‘what has happened in the past that is forcing us now to do something new? That is the question that sheds light on Isaiah’s words that we should look forward to now instead of looking back with nostalgia. We believe that God has acted in the past, and here we return to the things that I mentioned last Sunday: How God had swept away the oppressors of Israel, and this is mentioned in our reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah today with Isaiah talking about the chariot and the horse. Nevertheless, Isaiah speaks here of a time and circumstance that was entirely different from the Exodus. In our reading today, Isaiah speaks of a nation that was sent away as slaves to Babylon in captivity. It is not the journey into captivity that is described here, but the journey back, decades after this. Although the Exodus and the return are mentioned here in our reading, they are very different, but God is at work in both.
The thing that becomes forgotten is the way God was doing something that was completely new and different, leading the Israelites through the Red Sea on dry land and drowning the Egyptians who were coming after them. When we look at the past, God has always done things that were new and different at the time. As we look at how God has acted in the past, a pattern appears that is unexpected at first, but as we think about God’s actions in the past, yes, there is a clear pattern that is obvious, but we may not notice the nature of the pattern because we focus on the things that are extraordinary and big, similar to Israel leaving Egypt. When God chose a boy working as a shepherd named David as King and the Anointed One, God was doing something that was different and new because everyone expected to see someone who was more suitable like one of his brothers, and not him. Everyone was looking for a king, not a boy. When God sent Jesus as the Messiah for him to walk along the way of the Cross and for him to rise from the tomb, this was different and new to the past because in the eyes of the Jews, the word Messiah meant a victorious leader in war. However, the fight was different from their expectations. In the act of redemption that is described by Isaiah today, God is doing something that is different and new again.
Although the People of Israel were led through the desert as before to the Promised Land, now, the journey is different from the past. There are no miracles now. There were no waters across rivers or seas being separated now, just a long journey through the desert with God providing water for their thirst along the way. The thing that is being described in our reading from the Old Testament today is the journey back to the Promised Land from captivity in Babylon, and again the beginning of the journey was new and different from the past because, instead of God saving his people from the captivity of their oppressors, their oppressors themselves had given their freedom. No one insisted that they stay in Babylon. This act of redemption would be so unremarkable in itself, this act might not be recognized as an act of redemption by the People of Israel. That is why Isaiah appeals to the people to look around them to see how God is doing something new. Due to the fact that we remember the stories of extraordinary and great deeds, as I said, we fail to see how God carries out his redemption in our lives.
There is another reason why Isaiah appeals to the people to notice how God was doing something different. The descendants of the People of the Promised Land were returning to the home of the People of the Promise, but times had changed. They were returning to the same place, but not to the same time, and that was what was essential for them to remember along their journey home. As we think about our feelings about new things and the desire for change and the choices that come our way, it’s important that we don’t think that returning to a familiar place means returning to a time from the past. When we remember this, we see why there is a warning in Isaiah’s words for the people not to think about the former things. In every area of life, whether Church life or some other area of life, we have not travelled hundreds of miles across some desert like the People of Israel in this story from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, but time has moved on, and we have a feeling that that we are perhaps captives of time, We had been driven away from things that were familiar and dear and comforting. There is no doubt that there is a great deal of truth in these feelings, but reflecting on the story from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah that we have today is helpful. The circumstance is new and different, which may be why God always does things that are new and different from the things before the present.
Prayers
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, you promised through your Son Jesus Christ to hear us when we pray in faith.
Strengthen John our Bishop and all your Church in the service of Christ. In the Anglican Communion we pray for the Anglican Church of Chile. In our diocese, we pray for the Churchwardens of our diocese. May those who confess your name be united in your truth, live together in your love, and reveal your glory in the world.
Bless and guide Charles our King; give wisdom to all in authority; and direct this and every nation in the ways of justice and peace. We pray for all who have been displaced because of conflict or natural disaster or poverty or climate change; that they may have strength to carry on along the journey of life. May we honour one another and seek the common good.
We pray for those who have a long journey towards the things for which they long: For justice and freedom; for stability and security of circumstances; from distrust to trust; from anxiety to confidence in themselves: May your Son who bore the Cross for all peoples be their companion on the way.
Comfort and heal all those who suffer in body, mind or spirit; We pray for all who have a long journey ahead of them towards good health and the management of their illnesses. Give them courage and hope in their troubles and bring them the joy of your salvation.
Give grace to us, our families and friends and to all our neighbours. Grant us the wisdom to see the true worth of material things and the riches we gain through being redeemed by the Cross. May we serve Christ in one another, and love as he loves us.
Hear us as we remember those who have died in the faith of Christ. We give thanks for those who care for those who are dying and in their last days and hours. May your Son who bore the Cross be the companion of those who are dying and those who care for them. According to your promises, grant us with them a share in your eternal kingdom.
Rejoicing in the fellowship of all your saints, we commend ourselves and the whole creation to your unfailing love. Merciful Father, accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
Cwmtawe Churches 