Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (15 September 2024).
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 7: 31-35 (NRSVA)
[Jesus said:] 31 ‘To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the market-place and calling to one another,
“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not weep.”
33 ‘For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, “He has a demon”; 34 the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” 35 Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.’
Today’s Reflection:
When we were looking at the Gospel reading yesterday, which told the story of the widow of Nain grieving her son at his funeral, I said how funeral stories and the stories of children being raised to life, are not always the most cheerful Bible readings, and I recalled how that reading was particularly difficult when I was preaching one Sunday morning when I was baptising a little baby boy.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus compares ‘the people of this generation’ with children sitting in the market-place calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep’ (Luke 7: 31-32).
I have often stayed up late at weddings, at the receptions after funerals, and enjoying late night sporting events, especially rugby and football. Each time, in ways that were appropriate to the occasion, I have entered into the spirit of the event, and where possible, moving from being a mere spectator to being a full participant.
When we go to weddings and funerals … and as a priest I got my fair share of both … when we go to weddings and funerals, the attitude we go with makes a world of difference: do I go as a spectator or as a participant?
Imagine going to a funeral and failing to offer sympathy to those who are grieving and mourning.
Shortly after my ordination, I was asked to officiate at my first wedding. Initially, I declined the invitation to go to the reception afterwards, until someone chided me gently and asked me: are you at this wedding as a spectator or as a participant?
Perhaps, as a new curate, I was too worried about sending out the wrong signals. If I stood back, would I be reproached for not eating and drinking with the people I was there to serve (see Luke 7: 33)? If I went, would I be seen as being too interested in eating and drinking (verse 34)?
But it was never about me, surely. It was only ever about the couple getting married.
A student in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute was telling me once about her parish placement as an ordinand. Initially, she was uncomfortable with the style of worship and the theological emphasis of the parish she was placed in. But the parish reacted to her warmly and gently. And as the weeks rolled on she realised she had moved from being an observer on Sunday mornings, to being an engaged visitor, to being a participant.
When we join in waves and chants at a football match, join in the dance at weddings, sing the hymns and enter into the prayers at another church, cry and hug those who are grieving and mourning, we move from being observers and spectators to being participants. And the great opportunity for this transformation is provided Sunday after Sunday here, not at the Liturgy but in the Liturgy.
If you have been to the Middle East, or have just seen Fiddler on the Roof, you know that dancing at Jewish weddings was traditionally a male celebration. I have seen at funerals in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean that the open mourning and weeping is usually expressed on behalf of the community by women in particular.
Indeed, we know since classical times how a man’s worth in life was once counted by the number of women crying at his funeral.
These traditions were passed on through the generations by children learning from adults and by children teaching each other.
In today’s Gospel reading, we see how Christ has noticed this in the streets and the back alleys as he moves through the towns and cities, probably in Galilee and along the Mediterranean shore.
He sees the children playing, the boys playing wedding dances, and the girls playing funeral wailing and mourning.
He notices the ways in which children can reproach each other for not joining in their playfulness:
We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn. (verse 32)
Even as he speaks there is playfulness in the way Jesus phrases his observation poetically. There is humour in the way he uses Greek words that rhyme for dance and mourn at the end of each line of the children’s taunts:
Ηὐλήσαμεν ὑμῖν
καὶ οὐκ ὠρχήσασθε·
ἐθρηνήσαμεν
καὶ οὐκ ἐκλαύσατε.
Perhaps he was repeating an everyday rebuke in Greek at the time for people who stand back from what others are doing. We might put poetic rhyme on his lips here:
A wedding song we played for you,
The dance you did but scorn.
A woeful dirge we chanted too,
But then you would not mourn.
The boys playing tin whistles and beating tin drums are learning to become adult men. The girls wailing and beating their breasts in mock weeping are learning to become adult women. Each group is growing into the roles and rituals that will be expected of them when they mature.
Like all good children’s games, the point is the game, not who wins.
The games we played as children may now seem silly and pointless. But when we were children they mattered as a communal and community experience. The fun was not because there was anything to win. The fun was in taking part. And in taking part we were helped in the process of growing and maturing and making the transition from childhood to adolescence, and from adolescence to adulthood.
To and fro, back and forth, these boys and girls in the market place play the games of weddings and funerals.
The music they play shifts and changes its tones and tunes. This endless, pointless, repetition is their inherited way of learning and socialising. Their playfulness ensures their tradition and culture is reinforced and is handed on to the next generation.
But if the boys make music and the girls do not dance, if the girls wail, and the boys do not weep, how can they have a shared story, a shared adulthood, a shared culture, a shared future, a shared humanity?
When we refuse to take part in the game, in the ritual, we refuse to take part in the shaping of society, we are denying our shared culture.
When reciprocity collapses, we are denying our shared humanity.
We can become paralysed by our inability to enter into the game of others. And then the game turns from song and dance to what we might call ‘the blame game.’
It is so easy when I withdraw from the social activities of others to blame them.
Yes, there is a time for dancing and a time for mourning: each has its proper place, and they flow into each other, like the children’s game when it is working. But when vanity gets in the way, there is a breakdown in our understanding of time and of humanity.
If I stand back detached, and remain a mere observer of the joys and sorrow in the lives of others, I am not sharing in their humanity.
And in not sharing in your humanity, I am failing to acknowledge that you too are made in the image and likeness of God.
But when we rejoice with people in their joys, and when we mourn with people in their sorrows, we are putting into practice what the doctrine of the Trinity teaches us about us being not only made in the image and likeness of God individually but communally and collectively too as humanity.
The ‘Bottle Dance’ at the wedding in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 18 September 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The 5-finger prayer from the Diocese of Kuching, Malaysia.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday in reflections as told to Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 18 September 2024) invites us to pray:
Tall Finger (enemies): Heavenly Father, I’m sorry that I find it difficult to pray for those who curse me. Knowing your forgiveness and grace, I want to change. Help me to love my neighbour as myself.
The Collect:
O Lord, we beseech you mercifully to hear the prayers
of your people who call upon you;
and grant that they may both perceive and know
what things they ought to do,
and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil them;
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 Post Communion Prayer:
Almighty God,
you have taught us through your Son
that love is the fulfilling of the law:
grant that we may love you with our whole heart
and our neighbours as ourselves;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Lord of creation,
whose glory is around and within us:
open our eyes to your wonders,
that we may serve you with reverence
and know your peace at our lives’ end,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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