The Servant Queen and the King she serves

On 21^st April, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will be 90 years old. From this date until her official birthday celebrations from 10^th-12^th June, people in this country and around the commonwealth will be organising and participating in a wide range of activities and events. Although the celebrations will be similar to the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of 2012, this occasion gives us the opportunity to look not just at how she has fulfilled the rôle of Queen but to think about her as a person.

Any objective account of the Queen's life would give a prominent place to the rôle of her Christian faith in her life, which is illustrated by the title of a book published by the Bible Society, churches' group HOPE and the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity to mark her birthday. The book is called “The Servant Queen and the King she serves”. Jesus, the King of kings, said that those who wish to be great should be the servant of all. The Queen has embodied this way of being great; she could have revelled in her position and abused it for her own purposes, but instead she sees it as her duty to serve the people the God had made her monarch of. In the Book of Common Prayer Communion service we pray that the monarch, knowing whose minister they are, may above all things seek God's honour and glory, and the Queen is an example of just that.

In her 2014 Christmas broadcast the Queen said “For me, the life of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, whose birth we celebrate today, is an inspiration and an anchor in my life. A rôle-model of reconciliation and forgiveness, he stretched out his hands in love, acceptance and healing. Christ’s example has taught me to seek to respect and value all people of whatever faith or none.” In her 2002 Christmas broadcast the Queen said “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 of 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.”

The message of hope in the Christian gospel is that we are more sinful than we ever imagined, but more loved than we ever dreamed. So even though we mess things up God still loves us and will forgive us and help us to change if we ask him. In the foreword to the book, the Queen writes “I have been – and remain – very grateful to you for your prayers and to God for his steadfast love. I have indeed seen his faithfulness.” Perhaps you need an anchor in your life or freedom from past mistakes and the chance to start again. The Queen has found these in the King she serves, Jesus Christ, and the Christian gospel; I pray that you will too.

The importance of dating Easter

Here's my article for the March magazines:

“When's Easter this year?” is a question I often get asked (Sunday 27^th March in case you're wondering!). The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is in talks with the leaders of other churches to try to fix the date of Easter, but until then it will vary considerably year after year. This is because Easter is the original 'moveable feast', with the Council of Nicea in 325AD deciding that Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after 21^st March (the Church's approximation of the vernal equinox). This means that Easter can be quite disruptive, especially to the school calendar where the length of the school terms are affected by the date of Easter.

But all this is quite appropriate because Easter, like the Christian faith, is supposed to be disruptive. At the beginning of February we celebrate the time when, as a forty day old baby, Jesus was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem by his parents and dedicated to God. They were met there by Simeon who, full of the Holy Spirit, declared that Jesus would cause the falling and rising of many and would be “a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed” (Luke 2:34-35). Right from the start it was clear that Jesus' work would be disruptive, most of all by shaking the establishment out of their cosy religious traditions by exposing their hypocrisy of saying they believed in God but not letting it affect their lives. Jesus' message was also disruptive because he said that God loves everyone and that all are of equal value in his sight.

But Easter is most disruptive of all as it marks the beginning of a whole new reality. By rising from the dead Jesus defeated the power of death and opened the way to everlasting life and so the old order of life and death is disrupted. No longer can we live with the philosophy of 'eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die' because our death is not the end. If death were the end then life itself would be pointless so we might as well make the most of it, but this too would ultimately be meaningless. Richard Dawkins says in his book 'River out of Eden: A Darwinian view of life', "In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice”. But Jesus' death and resurrection have changed everything and have disrupted our cosy worldview.

And that is what Lent is all about – allowing the voice of Jesus to disrupt our assumptions, our innermost thoughts and our lives, and opening ourselves to receive God's love so we can be re-shaped to be more like him. However, this is not a meaningless or self-indulgent exercise because the choices we make in this life will profoundly affect what happens to us after death. But Easter reminds us of Jesus' promise that whoever listens and responds to his voice will have eternal life.