Sermon: Easter VI 14 May 2023
Readings: Jn.14. 15-21
Theme: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”
Let us pray:
O Saviour Christ, in whose way of love lies the secret of life and the hope of all people. We did not choose to be born or to live in such an age but, let it’s problems challenge us; its discoveries exhilarate us; its injustices anger us; its possibilities inspire us; and its vigour renew us. For your kingdom’s sake. Amen.
Like many in Australia and around the world, I was glued to the telecast of the Coronation of King Charles III Saturday week ago. Like many, I was uplifted by the beauty and joy of the liturgy and especially the music, Zadok the Priest, and the Te Deum being standouts for me. I have spent most of the last week reflecting upon the coronation and reading many interesting and at times quite contradictory analysis of what it all means for the Church of England and for Anglicans more generally. There was much to relish and enjoy. As one writer has put it, “there is no doubt that the whole Coronation is deeply shaped by Christian rhetoric, liturgy, and symbolism. The fact that it is the Archbishop of Canterbury who leads, anoints, and crowns the King are among countless ways that show that the authority of the role is one granted by God. And Justin Welby’s clear emphasis on the centrality of service (‘love in action’) enhanced this further.” More on Justin’s sermon a bit later. I didn’t know beforehand that Pope Francis had given King Charles III fragments believed to have come from the cross on which Jesus was crucified. The shards had been fashioned into a tiny cross, encased by a rose crystal gemstone in centre of King Charles's Processional Cross. Inscribed on the back of the cross were words from St David's last sermon in Welsh, which translated read, “Be joyful. Keep the faith. Do the little things." I also didn’t know beforehand that the chrism oil, central to the coronation rite, was made from olives of the Mount of Olives at the Monastery of the Ascension, and the Monastery of Mary Magdalene - This Monastery of Mary Magdalene is the burial place of Charles’s grandmother, Princess Alice of Greece. It was pressed in Bethlehem. This chrism was consecrated in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre (where Jesus died and rose again).
It was consecrated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III, and the Anglican archbishop in Jerusalem, Hosam Naoum. While there is that personal connection for the King with the Monastery of Mary Magdalene, the symbolism should not be hard to grasp in terms of what is expected from the sovereign. The Mount of Olives was the place of Jesus prayer before the crucifixion.
It is expected the sovereign will embrace a deep sense of service. Clearly it was this spirit that defined the life of Queen Elizabeth. There can be little doubt Charles is underestimated, and equally underestimated is the burden he undertook to carry at his coronation. There is no reason to doubt he will take these oaths as seriously as did his mother, Elizabeth ll.
Two key symbols at the coronation are orb and sceptre. The orb represents the spiritual dimension of existence and the sceptre its material dimension. Retired bishop George Browning writes, “To what I consider to be our considerable loss, we Australians appear to have abandoned any meaningful sense of life’s sacred or spiritual dimension. Perhaps worse, many who do acknowledge such dimension are territorial, using dogma to exclude, ambitious for superiority, even domination. Spirituality necessitates humility, awe in the presence of that which is greater than self. It also requires that we acknowledge we are but a small part of a greater whole that deserves our service. Charles is right to have included all dimensions of religious expression in his coronation. While being an Anglican Christian by conviction, he recognises that spirituality is inevitably part of ethnicity, place of birth and culture. His Anglicanism is authentically that.”
King Charles has said that he takes this oath as a fully committed and devout member of the Church of England. He also said that while this solemn duty is his constitutional obligation, there were other duties he has, less solemnly expressed but also sincerely fulfilled. He explained that these are his duty to maintain the practice of religious freedom in the United Kingdom and its welcome to people of other and all religious faiths.
In one of the most important innovations of this Coronation, the King prayed publicly, for all to hear.
This prayer follows immediately the taking of the Oath. The King prayed: “Grant that I may be a blessing to all thy children, of every faith and conviction, that together we may discover the ways of gentleness and be led into the paths of peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
But the coronation was not without its critics. One writer has made much of the visit of the American writer Jack London to England, over a hundred and twenty years ago, in 1902 to write about poverty and homelessness, whose visit happened to coincide with the coronation of King Edward VII. London’s book The People of the Abyss captured the ambivalence, even then, around the role of religion when fused with State power. London quotes the words the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Frederick Temple, spoke to the new King when handing him the same sword that King Charles III received at his coronation, “With this sword do justice … help and defend the widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay.”
But these fine words do not seem to mean much in reality. That very evening, as celebrations for the Coronation rage, London writes about the many men, women and children sleeping rough in those same Westminster streets.
He meets a young woman who became homeless when her father died in an accident and was now stranded on the streets. She says forlornly:
‘There’s no ‘ope for me I know, but I’ll die on the streets. No work ’ouse for me, thank you. This author of the article acknowledges that we don’t live in the same world as 1902 and acknowledges that King Charles III has promoted, with integrity, many great causes for many years and that the bank holiday in the UK in honour of the coronation is being used to promote community volunteering. But he writes quite critically that the Christian words and symbols at the coronation are “overpowered by militarism, pomp and religious opulence. The liturgy and music may contain great content, but they are drowned out by what seems like an archaic celebration of nationalism. For the writer of the article it means the whole event feels a very long way from the humility and simplicity of Jesus Christ. He writes, “Let’s be honest, how many people really take home a message of ‘humble service’ from such an event?”
I want to put to one side such critiques of the coronation for I believe they are over the top and are missing the real point, and I want us to take at face value the integrity of the Christian symbolism on display at the coronation of King Charles III and take a particular look at the sermon preached by the Justin, Archbishop of Canterbury.
He said quite rightly that, “What is given today is for the gain of all. For Jesus Christ announced a kingdom in which the poor and oppressed are freed from chains of injustice. The blind see. The bruised and broken-hearted are healed.
The King of kings, Jesus Christ, was anointed not to be served, but to serve. He creates the unchangeable law that with the privilege of power comes the duty to serve. Service is love in action. Each of us is called by God to serve. Whatever that looks like in our own lives, each of us can choose God’s way today.” But the part of the sermon which struck me most and that leads to where we are today in our Scriptures proclaimed this morning is when Justin said, “The weight of the task given you today, Your Majesties, is only bearable by the Spirit of God, who gives us the strength to give our lives to others. With the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the King is given freely what no ruler can ever attain through will, or politics, or war, or tyranny: the Holy Spirit draws us to love in action.” The weight of the task given to us is only bearable by the Spirit of God who gives us the strength to give our lives to others. We believe our lives are caught up in God’s life, joined to the risen Jesus even though we don’t see him anymore, gathered by the Holy Spirit who is being given to us. The problem we find ourselves in is however this world we live in, that can’t make sense of what is happening to us and why we would want to live these lives of self-offering service. It’s on a different wavelength but the truth of the Gospel proclaimed is as Justin rightly pointed out at the coronation – it is that we no longer have to make meaning and stick up for ourselves, because God is making meaning and enlisting us as witnesses. This is why the Holy Spirit is described in our Gospel today as an Advocate—God’s lawyer for the defence, as René Girard puts it, against all those advocates for the prosecution out there and in here who blight the human story with their toxic version of reality. The power of God’s spirit in lives lived out in service is the witness to the truth of the symbolism on display at King Charles III coronation.
The philosophers may not get it, in our day as in Paul’s day; the world will not understand, as we’re told in our Epistle and Gospel today, but we know that Christ is alive through the Holy Spirit, and we are empowered by that same Spirit to do exactly what 1 Peter calls for today: living together in Christian love, tender and united, giving an account of the hope that’s in us, but with gentleness and respect. So, friends, the King’s vocation to serve is our vocation, too, baptised into the love and life of God, empowered by the Holy Spirit as witnesses to a remarkable freedom and living this out in lives of service, putting the world on notice, and made fearless by the Gospel of Easter, of Ascension, of Pentecost.