Sermon-Keeping Up Appearances?

Hyacinth and Richard aboard the QEII (BBC)

A sermon given during Holy Communion (BCP) at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 12th October 2025 based on readings from Ephesians 4.1-6 and Luke 14.1-11.

St Paul urges the church to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love.” And in the gospel reading Jesus has some wry observations about how we position ourselves in relation to others. The scriptures today turn our minds to the themes of unity and humility as hallmarks of the Christian life. 

Not concepts that would come easily to Hyacinth Bucket - or Bouquet as she insisted on being called - whose lack of meekness and constant social climbing formed the basis of the long running sitcom Keeping Up Appearances.

Dame Patricia Routledge, who played Hyacinth, said in an interview before she died last week that her favourite episode of all time was “Sea Fever” - the 1993 Christmas Special, in which Hyacinth has finally managed - at vast expense - to secure tickets for a luxury cruise aboard the QEII.

The episode opens with Hyacinth asking her postman to redirect her mail to the liner while she is away, a request she makes loudly enough for all her neighbours to hear. She even phones the local paper suggesting her holiday is headline news. Because of course to her, it is. It seems as if her whole life has been building up to this voyage. Finally, she will be able to escape the riff-raff of West Midlands suburbia and be able to mingle with refined, cultured, upper-class, quality people. It’ll be like a two-week long version of one of her famous “candlelight suppers”.  

She’s bought a huge “set of matching executive luggage with genuine leather embellishments and initials” which her long-suffering husband Richard lugs around from scene to scene. A physical manifestation of all the psychological baggage they are carrying?

The pinnacle of the cruise is to be dining, nightly, at the Captain’s table. An honour that “not everyone receives” Hyacinth explains. She doesn’t let the fact that she hasn’t actually received an invitation from the Captain dampen her spirits!

As they tour the ship she points out to Richard the seats in the dining room where they will be placed that evening. 

But when they arrive, after many changes of outfit, she is aghast to see her sister Daisy and brother-in-law Onslow seated with the Captain, chatting and laughing. Hyacinth cannot believe that her slobbish relatives from the wrong side of the tracks have secured the most prestigious seats on the ship - and what’s more, they seem to be fitting in - by being themselves! It turns out they have won a competition run by one of the tabloids, they have free run of the ship, the ear of the captain and their cabin is much better appointed than Hyacinth’s - whose face is a picture!

The close-up of which frames not just a moment of comic genius – the proud brought low, the humble lifted up – but, we might say, is the whole gospel in two seconds of slapstick.

Behind the canned laughter lies a truth as old as humanity itself: our endless desire to be at the centre, to be recognised, to be seen to have “made it.” And how utterly absurd that desire looks when viewed through the eyes of heaven.

Even today, that longing for status and recognition is woven through our culture. 

A few weeks ago, St George’s Hall in Windsor Castle was bedecked with gleaming silver and glittering glassware as King Charles hosted a state banquet for President Trump’s second official visit to the United Kingdom. 

The seating plan had been the subject of meticulous negotiation by Buckingham Palace, the British government and the White House. At the centre sat President Trump, between King Charles and the Princess of Wales. Opposite were Queen Camilla, the First Lady, and the Prince of Wales. Seated around them were those holding high office - positions in the world of politics, business and the arts. 

The newspapers went into overdrive, commenting not only on the grandeur of the occasion and the orchestral accompaniment, which included ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ by the Rolling Stones - and devoting several column inches to analysing what the guest list and seating arrangement might mean. 

Because who sits next to whom and who is nearest the host is a mirror of worldly power. 

It was ever thus. In the time of Jesus, to recline close to the host was a great honour. Being placed further away a position of less importance. 

Luke tells us that one Sabbath, Jesus was invited to dine at the house of a leading Pharisee, and he watched closely as the guests chose their places. Then he tells a story: “When thou art bidden to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room… but go and sit in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”

This isn’t advice about manners or how to win friends and influence people. Jesus knew that where guests are placed - or place themselves - around a dining table is a mirror of the world’s pecking order. So he points the mirror to another world. The world as God intends it to be.

Where honour is not claimed or a commodity to be traded in the hands of a few, but given by God to all. A Kingdom where greatness is expressed not through power and proximity but through humility and loving service. 

Hyacinth learnt that lesson the hard way. The episode closes with her dancing off her pent-up angst in a vigorous Excuse-Me with none other than her brother-in-law Onslow; setting aside her pretensions for a brief moment and sharing a moment of joy with him.

We laugh at her vanity – perhaps because deep down we know that we all carry seating plans in our minds that haunt us from time to time. Occasions when we feel slighted or aggrieved about our place in the pecking order in our families, workplaces, social circles and yes - even the church. Regular members here will know all too well of course that wearing one of these (a clergy collar) doesn’t turn you into the Messiah! Some of the best Hyacinth impersonators I have ever met are men of the cloth! Many of them in overdrive at the moment after recent announcements of who has clinched the number one spot. It is all rather exhausting. Like carrying around a huge “set of matching executive luggage with genuine leather embellishments and initials.”

“Comparison is the thief of joy” as they say - a phrase incidentally often misattributed to another US President, Theodore Roosevelt. 

And as our Epistle today reminds us, freedom - freedom from comparison, from competition, from the exhausting drive to be noticed, to be on top - is supposed to be the hallmark of the church; shining as brightly as those polished candlesticks in Windsor. The church is the body called to follow Christ, to model his Kingdom on earth. Paul explains there is “one body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.” In that unity, worldly position and hierarchy have no meaning. No substance. They are nothing. 

Today’s Collect in the Prayer Book puts it like this: “Lord, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works.”

Pre-vent here means “go-before”. It’s a prayer that God’s grace will lead us and follow behind, surrounding us on every side, protecting us from the temptation to measure ourselves against one another. It is this grace, not our achievements or positions, that holds the Church together.

And so, part led part driven by that grace, we come to the Lord’s Table — the true Captain’s table, if you will, where striving and jockeying for position is set aside. We see Onslow and Daisy seated beside the Captain, enjoying themselves by being themselves. And where we can all do the same. Including Hyacinth. Free from the wearisome burden of a life of continual comparison, with our executive baggage left behind. Gathering to share one bread and one cup. Not because we have earned our place - or gained it through some form of corporate or diplomatic horse-trading; but because of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who humbled himself to the lowest place — even to death on a cross — has invited us to share in his risen life as his guests, where and none are greater than another — and where all shall find rest.

Amen.