I’ve never taught English to someone as a foreign language. But if I were in that situation, I would suggest that the person hoping to make his or her way in England make liberal use of one word: Sorry.
Even better I would suggest they preface everything they say to anyone they don’t know with the word ‘Sorry’. This applies to anyone of any status, high or low.
To a waiter:
“Sorry, but can we get a menu, please?”
To your local MP:
“Sorry, but I didn’t vote for this.”
To a ticket inspector, while rootling through pockets:
“Sorry, I’ve got it here somewhere.”
To a customer service manager”
“Sorry, but this just isn’t on.”
As nation, as a people, as individuals, we English folk are sorry.
PJ O’Rourke captures it beautifully in this British Airways advert from the days when adverts were smart, expensive and watchable:
Did you watch it the end? I recommend it. There’s that word again.
This obsession with ‘sorry’ must be very strange if you come from a culture where elders are respected, politicians are honoured and the wealthy are held in high esteem.
We might be asked “When do we ever honour someone?” Easy. We don’t. Apart from occasionally lauding sportsmen and women for a momentary success, we do not raise up others. We only honour others by laying ourselves lower. We do not flatter. We self-flatten. We find it difficult even to compliment someone, lest it sound like ingratiating or insincerity. Or, worse, it inflates their ego.
We would never say to the electrician in our hour of need:
“Oh, bringer of light, wielder of screwdrivers and wizard of fuse boxes! Aid us, gallant one, in our hour of need. Please don your overalls of electric blue, unstable your glorious white van and ride to our rescue, noble one.”
He would assume we were being sarcastic and hang up. We would say:
“Sorry, but we’ve totally lost power. I’m sure you’re busy but is there any chance you can help and idiot like me get my head around the fuse box without electrocuting myself?”
The Coronation is a curious event and mercifully infrequent since it does something that we Brits find profoundly uncomfortable. We honour a human being. Singing God Save The King when the king himself is standing right there? Awkward. It’s like singing happy birthday to someone and they just don’t know what face to pull.
Sorry, where is this going?
Why are we like this? Why do we think self-deprecation is so very important? The only reason I can think of this:
Good Friday, celebrated in this country throughout the ages.
Yes, it’s been celebrated in other countries which don’t see self-deprecation as national sport. But it does seem to have gone particularly deep here where Good Friday has been royally celebrated since Anglo-Saxon times, as we shall see.
The first Good Friday is the day in which the worthiest of kings did not allow hymns of praise or anthems of glory. He allowed himself to be wrongly accused, humiliated, flogged and nailed to a cross. In so doing, Jesus Christ sets the standard for leadership. Therefore, no-one can ever be worthy of true praise and honour when our sinless saviour became the suffering servant.
This is why early Christians were persecuted. It was not for worshipping Jesus of Nazareth. The Romans didn’t give a jot about that. But you must honour and praise the Emperor with the tiniest pinch of incense. No deal.
The Cross of Christ
On Good Friday, we celebrate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. But do we? The symbol of the cross is so embedded in our society that it remains exactly and merely that: a symbol. We are no longer repelled by it. Almost every Church of England church is not only festooned with crosses, but the entire structure is laid out on a cruciform pattern.
Popular historian Tom Holland has helpfully reminded us of the reality of crucifixion in his recent book, Dominion:
“Everything about the practice of nailing a man to a cross – a ‘crux’ – was repellent. ‘Why, the very word is harsh on our ears.’ It was this disgust that crucifixion uniquely inspired which explained why, when slaves were condemned to death, they were executed in the meanest, wretchedest stretch of land beyond the city walls; and why, when Rome burst its ancient limits, only the world’s most exotic and aromatic plants could serve to mask the taint. It was also why, despite the ubiquity of crucifixion across the Roman world, few cared to think much about it…. Some deaths were so vile, so squalid, that it was best to draw a veil across them entirely.”
The cross of Christ is not just a death sentence. It’s a painful humiliation that makes us turn away.
But we turn our faces towards the cross on Good Friday. We commemorate, mourn or reflect on our sin that place him there. To aid that, all kinds of forms of worship have been employed in the Church of England – and still are in many other churches, like Creeping to the Cross.
Creeping to the Cross
This tended to happen in larger churches or Cathedrals in which a cross – often covered in gold was placed in an Easter sepulchre, normally constructed in the church for the purpose out of wood. It might be draped in clothes – and candles placed around. People, especially higher status ones or monks, would crawl up to the cross and kiss it. Offerings might be made, called ‘creeping silver’.
The more Reformed readers of this blog are, at this point, beginning to twitch. I get it. Kissing golden cross in wooden sepulchres doesn’t seem quite right to me either, but it’s not biblically illiterate or bizarre.
Moreover, many of us might benefit from the humiliation of getting on our hands and knees before Christ. We readily lay ourselves low before waiters or doctors with an instinctive ‘Sorry’ at the start of our conversation. Perhaps we have now overused the word so that is emptied of meaning and power.
Lights Out
One thing about this ceremony I rather like is what happens to the candles. As the night drags on, people sit and watch the sepulchre. Some say it’s to mimic the Roman soldiers guarding the tomb. Others would argue it’s to ensure the candles don’t set fire to the drapes. It’s probably both. There are parish church records of watchers being given food and drink. But at some point, the candles are snuffed out, as Christ was himself snuffed out. The Light that had come into the world was put out.
But not for long. Candles are relit as Christ rises from the dead, and the joy of Easter Day comes. I’m not a huge fan of modern choruses but See What A Morning by Keith Getty takes some beating for a rousing Easter Morning hymn.
There is so much art and music that surrounds Good Friday that to even summarise it would take far too long. Here’s something from The Visual Commentary on Scripture with a two minute audio commentary.
But here’s something I found that you may not have encountered, or ever even considered.
The Dream of the Rood
In Winters in the World, Eleanor Parker takes us through the Anglo-Saxon year. In it, we see how truly, thoroughly and deeply Christian England had become. Alfred the Great was so insistent on the proper celebration of Easter that he declared a two-week holiday for labourers either side of Good Friday – known as Long Friday, back then. This fortnight eclipses even the Twelve Days of Christmas.
Since then, Good Friday, at least, is the only consistent holiday other than Christmas Day for more than a thousand years. (And yet, I still managed to get a parking ticket during a Good Friday service as it wasn’t, technically, a Bank Holiday Monday, so the single yellow line wasn’t free.)
Parker writes about The Dream of the Rood, an Easter poem, seen through the eyes of the cross. Yes, you read that right: the cross. The story of Good Friday, already familiar back then, was given a fresh perspective.
“The cross tells how it was cruelly uprooted from its forest home to be made a tool of execution, and how in anguish it witnessed, without being able to prevent it, the suffering of the ‘young hero, God almighty’, who willingly climbed upon it.”
What an astonishing thought, that nature itself moaned and wailed as Christ was crucified. What about the stones that Jesus said would cry out in praise if others did not praise him during his triumphal entry (Luke 19:40)? Did they weep tears of grief and sorrow as the religious leaders jeered and one of the thieves heaped abuse on the Lord Jesus Christ?
So that’s Good Friday. Sorry, but there it is.
I haven’t finished reading this yet, but I’m copying your paragraph about calling the electrician to come to my house and fix whatever is wrong!
I remember hearing someone read 'the dream of the rood' at an evening service at church when I must have been about 8, I was definitely under 10. I totally captured my imagination because it was so creative.