A sermon preached at St. Andrew’s Dawson Street,
Crook by Ray Anglesea on the occasion of HM The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee
It was The Spectator train
advert on the Southeastern rail network from Earlsfield to Vauxhall last Monday
that caught my eye – “In 1952 a woman knew her place – in 2012 she’s still
there.” It was the magazine’s way of honouring and paying tribute to the Queens
achievements in this her Diamond Jubilee Year. Today in our service we too honour
the Queen’s achievements, her dedication, duty and service to this country and
the commonwealth.
Much
has happened in 60 years. In 1952 Britain was still the hub of an empire so
vast that its new monarch could circle the globe alighting only on lands she
ruled. In
today’s world we have bade farewell to Empire abroad, the
Queen has presided over 60 recessional years of deimperialisation,
deindustrialisation, and de-Victorianisation. But put more positively, this
also means that during the past 60 years, and notwithstanding the current
economic downturn, which the Bishop of Durham alluded to in his maiden speech in
the House of Lords on the 16th May 2012, and despite the current
Chancellor’s fourth policy u-turn in two weeks, Britain has become a more open,
a more diverse, a more liberal, a more mobile, a more tolerant and a more
prosperous society. Although Queen Elizabeth herself may not have had all that
much to do with these developments, this is surely cause for some form of
thanksgiving in her Diamond Jubilee year.
When the English comedy actor, film director and
star of the silent films Charlie Chaplin visited London from California 60
years ago in 1952 he was struck by its affluence. “I thought England was
broke,” he said, “but the whole city is crawling with Rolls-Royces, Bentley’s,
Daimlers and expensive blondes.” Britain was then burdened with the lingering
costs of the Second World War and the new ones of the welfare state. Not so the
west end of London; the West End was experiencing its golden prime, on a single
night, May 18th 1952 the following were performing in London’s
theatres, Tony Hancock, Vera Lynn, Alec Guiness, Mary Martin (in South Pacific,
the year’s runaway hit), Peggy Ashcroft, Michael Redgrave, Edith Evans, Sybil
Thorndike, John Guilgud, Paul Scofield, Norman Wisdom, Arthur Askey, Joyce Grenfell, Peter Ustinov and Richard
Attenborough. On the other hand television was barely functioning, reaching
just 4% of the population, petrol cost “four and thruppence (that 21p, kids) a
gallon, one home in three had no bath, one in twenty didn’t have piped water.
That weekend the Liberal party held its conference “We are determined to
maintain our independence,” said Clement Davies the Liberal leader!
One of the great
strengths of our culture and way of life is our new multicultural identity. Britain
has been transformed into a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society; and no one does
interfaith better that the Royal Family, starting wit the Queen herself. This identity may not be so obvious in Crook,
but riding on the top deck of the no 44 bus service along Garret Lane through
Earlsfield, Wandsworth, Battersea en route to the Chelsea Flower Show last
weekend one immediately became aware of how much Britain has embraced people
from all over the world. London, our capital city, has become a magnet for
foreign wealth, but also for strivers from every continent. However many medals
Team GB wins at the Olympics, the host city will always be the first in which
every language spoken by the competitors was already spoken by its residents. 60
years ago we lived in a deferential society, The Queen’s subjects were deferential,
to her, to social rank generally, to the church and her government. Sir Edmund
Hillary climbed high, Sir Roger Banister ran fast, Watson and Crick thought outside
the box. But even they could have little inkling of the social revolution or
the economic upheavals that the next half century had in store. Our Christian
monarch too has watched over a changing church, sadly the erosion of
traditional social bonds and the decline of religious observance. In an age of
doubt and pluralism the church has had to accommodate different theological
currents whilst the Reformed and Methodist traditions still maintain a
repository of great historical legacies.
Fast forward to
2012 and the sixth series of Britain’s got talent - a television phenomenon based on the joke
that we have to remind ourselves of something we once took for granted and took
seriously. The demise of the old world and the arrival of the new, has involved
sometimes painful adjustments. In all this change and upheaval, the quiet
dignity of the Queen has provided a focus for continuing national self respect
and so has assisted the peaceful transformation of our national identity.
Our sovereign was called sixty years ago in tragic
circumstances to very great responsibilities. Like King David in the Old Testament, she was the
unlikely child who became a monarch. Until the abdication of her uncle,
Elizabeth was not destined for monarchy and did not seek it. Yet for 60 years
she has served the nation with a dedication and sense of duty that is
unquestioned. One might argue that the monarch embodies a vocational approach to life,
lived, not as a self promoter with personal gratification as the supreme good,
but as a servant of God whose role is to strengthen the whole community. That
community embraces our memories and the values for which previous generations
have fought and died and these memories and values unite the living and the departed.
Monarchy has ancient roots and biblical
reverberations ever since
Zadok
the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon King and all the people
cried “God save the King”. But
the jubilee also gives us pause for thought. The jubilee is an opportunity to
revisit important questions: what do we expect of leadership? what do we want
from monarchy? And how is the reign of God expressed in our national life? Ian
Bradley, a Scottish theologian, argues in a book called God Save
the Queen that
monarchy provides a storehouse of symbols and rituals to feed the nation’s
imagination and maintain its sense of the transcendent. He believes that our
rich ceremonial tradition with its feel for the numinous and the spiritual
gathers up and ritualises the ‘soul’ of our national identity. Christian
constitutional monarchy makes visible, he says, God’s rule and claim upon us,
even in a modern democratic state. The monarch then gathers up and symbolises
what we are as a nation.
And
perhaps this says something important about leadership and how, according to
Christian insight, it should be exercised. At her coronation, the Queen was
presented with the Orb of State and told: ‘Receive this Orb set under the
Cross, and remember that the whole world is subject to the power and empire of
Christ our Redeemer.’ All institutions, however well they serve us, are
provisional and made up of mortal beings. They are accountable to the rule of
Christ the King; they are set under the cross for he is a king whose throne is
Golgotha. One day they will be no more, for the kingdoms of the world will
become the kingdom of God and of his Christ; and he shall reign forever and
ever. So the monarchy is not only a symbol of a temporal society but can point
beyond itself to the city whose builder and maker is God.
In
the Old Testament reading, we heard about the part wisdom played in the
creation of the world, and which our Durham boys, Will Young and Michael
Hampbell had a hand in, presenting in a musical form to the Queen at her
cathedral service on Tuesday. ‘When he established the heavens I was there,
when he drew a circle upon the face of the deep, when he marked out the
foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master-worker, and I
was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.’ It may not have been clear
to you that the speaker is a woman, Lady Wisdom. Not only is she God’s agent in
fashioning the creation; she is also the inspiration and companion of all who
want to live wisely and well, who intend through life to contribute to the
fashioning of the world as a good and properly-ordered place.
We
could make the obvious connection between wisdom personified as a woman and the
fact that both our longest-serving monarchs have been women. We could also reflect
that our church is wiser and better because of the tender and rich ministry of
its women. All that is good, just, wholesome and right springs from divine
wisdom. As we enacted in our service this morning, like the the coronation
service, the sovereign is presented with a Bible and told ‘Here is wisdom, this
is the royal law, these are the lively Oracles of God’. Lady Wisdom again: ‘by
me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just’.
So the Monarch, the
head of our state is not just a successful partisan who has emerged out of
struggles about political issues and the exercise of raw power but a human
being, a woman, mother, grandmother, great grandmother with the kind of
relationships with which we can all identify. She embodies the themes in our
common life together which are more fundamental than this or that new idea or
policy taken from her annual Queens Speach at the state opening of parliament,
seated on her throne in the House of Peers; I mean the themes of birth and
death, love and loss. To place such a person, as we have done, the Queen, at
the heart of our life as a nation is to honour humanity above all things and
above all divisive theologies and ideologies. And here in the UK we honour
humanity with some very definite characteristics of the kind which bind a
community together.
For a Christian
monarch, the whole community which includes our own community here in Crook includes
people of different faiths and none. This is because a profound relationship
with God can only be developed by those who have freely chosen to respond to
his call. There can be no place for coercion and contempt. It is Christian to
be tolerant not because we believe so little about God but because we believe
so much in the importance of the free response to God’s call which the monarch
exemplifies at the Coronation service.
The Queen embodies
the truth at the heart of our life as a nation that the kingdom of God and a
humane society is built not by raw political power and programmes alone but by
the human touch, loving and unwearied service, attention to others. Christian monarchy
today embodies not a programme but a life, a fully human life, lived in the
presence and calling of God who dignifies all humanity. Such a life which is
open to us all is the essential ingredient, the mustard seed from which the
Kingdom, God’s plan for the human race, grows.
When
we come to the overall theme of the gospel, however, it is clear that Jesus’
kingship is not demonstrated in palaces and panoply, but in love and
self-abasement. His purple robe is died with blood and his throne is the cross.
He calls us his subjects, and invites our allegiance and our love. It doesn’t
look much of a kingdom, this clutch of nobodies - the peasants, fishermen,
prostitutes and tax-gatherers Jesus gathers round him, some of the people we
mentioned in our Wesley Day Circuit worship a week last Thursday night. He does not promise that if we go with him,
his way will be glorious, nor lead to wealth or success. On the contrary, he
foretells afflictions, ridicule and trial. Yet he invites us to be faithful
unto death and to seek rewards beyond this life. He is concerned not with
outward appearances but the heart, and looks there for loyalty, truth and love.
He calls all who lead to disdain privilege and the pursuit of honour. He
summons the powerful of this world to lay aside the seductions of glory and
wealth and wash the feet of the poor, which we did symbolically at the
beginning of the service by bring a towel and jug of water to the communion
table.
In
the Old Testament, ‘jubilee’ is the celebration of cancelled debt and freedom
for slaves. It promises a world that is more just, more equal and more free.
Institutions have awesome power to destroy, but at their best they can help
shape the future for good, something never more needed than in today’s
precarious world, we pray that as the church moves forward into the 21st
century it will do so in a spirit of love and justice. No doubt the monarchy will have changed much
before the next time we celebrate a diamond jubilee. It will need to travel
more lightly, stand back from our obsession with celebrity and image, shed the
culture of deference.
But
as we give thanks today for the service of our Queen over 60 years, we can, I
think, loyally pray that the monarchy and indeed all entrusted with public
office will embody more deeply the royal way of wisdom, humility and
self-emptying. This is how Christ’s strange work is achieved in the world.
Jesus comes among us not to be served but to serve. He lays down his life for
us, not only teaching the greater love but living it. And whether we are simple
or wise, strong or weak, rich or poor, leader or led, he speaks to us these
words and summons us to make them real in our time: ‘Whoever would be great
among you must be your servant, for I am among you as one who serves’.
This
anniversary then is a time to speak about those things which may once have
seemed obvious but which if they are not affirmed will pass into oblivion. In
the words of St Peter - Honour Humanity, Love the Community, Fear God and
Honour the Sovereign.
Amen
Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St
Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist
Circuit
