Wells Cathedral 12th June 2016. Her Majesty’s 90th Birthday
Sermon preached by The Archdeacon of Taunton, The Venerable John Reed
On an occasion like this, what can one say about Her Majesty the Queen that has not been said a million times over by people much better qualified than me? Cliché, repetition, deviation and hesitation are cardinal sins of the pulpit as well as in the media. But, herein this place we can speak of the Christian faith of our Queen, because that is the subject the media mention the least, for some strange reason. Indeed the media’s avoidance of the subject is noticeable. They are happy to fill pages and pages and hours and hours commenting on Her Majesty’s hats, dresses and shoes, on the Civil List, her family and their imaginings of her preferences for this and that: but there is little honouring or celebration of her personal faith. Are those in the media worried about political incorrectness or of offending those of other faiths or none? I think not: they seldom demonstrate such sensitivity. Surely they know that Her Majesty’s knowledge and experience of other faiths is unparalleled as Head of the Commonwealth and as a world leader so that she is both comfortable and confident to say of other religions, “This spirituality can be seen in the teachings of other great faiths. Of course, religion can be divisive; but the Bible, the Koran and the sacred texts of the Jews and Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs are all sources of divine inspiration and practical guidance passed down through generations”. And having said this, Her Majesty reveals why she has no fear or difficulty in expressing her unifying embrace of all people when, in her celebrated 2012 Christmas speech she said, “Christ’s example has taught me to respect and value all people, whatever faith and none…”.
It is Christ who is Her Majesty’s Lord and her pattern for servant leadership. Again from that same speech, you will be familiar with her Christian profession, “I know just how much I rely on my faith to guide me through the good times and the bad. Each day is a new beginning. I know that the only way to live my life is to try to do what is right, to take the long view, to give my best in all that the day brings and to put my trust in God. I draw strength from the message of hope in the Christian Gospel”.
So, firstly, we join in the thanksgiving of our Queen’s faith and Christian witness.
Secondly, I am greatly helped by her example: and, without being too personal about the age of the majority of this congregation, most of you may be helped. Long before her crowning and anointing as Monarch, Her Majesty will have become familiar with the famous prayer attributed to Sir Francis Drake:
O Lord God, when Thou givest to Thy servants to endeavour any great matter, grant us also to know that it is not the beginning, but the continuing of the same to the end, until it be thoroughly finished, which yieldeth the true glory; through Him who for the finishing of Thy work laid down His life, our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
She inspires us to keep fresh and committed. I am 25 years younger than Her Majesty and in 18½ days time I shall retire from full time stipendiary ministry. (That’s in 444 hours’ time – not that I’m counting). Many of the kind cards I have received have pictures and words which depict retirement as a state of indolent, slothful self-indulgence. Sun-loungers and deck chairs feature widely! I will have much to learn about a new way of living in which getting up in the morning is worthwhile because God still loves me and can use me. The opportunity to have less quantity of busy-ness and better quality of Christlike prayer, attention and love is worth getting up for. Her Majesty’s testimony spoken at the age of 86 is worth remembering, “Each day is a new beginning. I know that the only way to live my life….is to give of my best in all that the day bringsand to put my trust in God”.
This lesson, lived out daily by Her Majesty, is one for all of us at any age, in any situation or condition: it is a lesson born out of Christian belief and faith.
Thirdly and lastly. Her Majesty has spoken often of the compassion of Jesus Christ. In her Millennium broadcast she said “Many will have been inspired by Jesus’ simple but powerful teaching: love God and love your neighbour as yourself – in other words, treat others as you would like them to treat you. His great emphasis was to give spirituality a practical purpose”.
This was beautifully brought to life theother day in an episode of “Desert Island Discs”. You may have heard it. Kirsty Young was with the surgeon David Nott – one of Britain’s top vascular surgeons.
For more than 20 years he’s taken time away from his role in the NHS to work in the world’s crisis zones amongst them Sarajevo, Gaza, Darfur, Sierra Leone, Syria. The official term for his operating theatre in the war zones is a ‘surgically austere environment’.
KirstyAs it happens you have been given an OBE for your work and I know that you had - was it 2014? - that you had lunch with the Queen?
DavidYes
KirstySo this was when you had just come back from Aleppo and were suffering from post traumatic stress disorder: so how was lunch?
DavidI came back around October 15 2014 and ten days later I found myself sitting in Buckingham Palace with the Queen and she was sitting on my right and I was sitting on her left. And when it came to my turn to start talking to her, she said ‘I heard you’ve just come back from Aleppo’ and I said ‘yes I have’ and if you consider where I had just come back from – the hospital was being blown, everything around me was being shelled and I was coping with children who had been damaged, really badly damaged, and she must have detected something significant because I didn’t know what to say to her. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to speak to her: I just couldn’t. I could not say anything. She picked all this up and said ‘shall I help you?’ and I thought ‘how on earth can the Queen help me?’ and all of a sudden the courtiers brought the corgis and the corgis went underneath the table and she went to one of the courtiers and said ‘could we open up that please’ so she opened up this lid and there were a load of biscuits and so she got one of the biscuits and she broke it in two and said ‘why don’t we feed the dogs?’ And so for twenty minutes the Queen and I, during this lunch, just fed the dogs and she did it because she knew that I was so seriously traumatised. You know, the humanity of what she was doing was so unbelievable.
KirstyAnd did it help you?
DavidVery much so, you know stroking animals, touching dogs, feeding them. And we just talked about her dogs, and how many she had. And she was so warm and so wonderful, I will never forget it.
May God continue to bless and inspire Her Majesty. And may God bless you and me as we grow older and hopefully grow deeper in faith and understanding: that, for whatever length of life we are given, and at whatever age, we may approach each day as a new beginning and give of our best in all that the day brings, putting our trust in God who loves us and needs us to be Christ in the world today.
Then can be said for us, as we say for Her Majesty, the words of St Paul to his fellow Christians in Ephesus so long ago, “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints; and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers”.
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