Micah 6.6-8, Matthew 5.1-16
Service of Thanksgiving for the 90th Birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Sparkford, West Camel, Queen Camel, 12 June 2016
If you were to think of a list of words that described you - what would it contain? Men, I suspect would start with words like Husband, Father, Brother; move onto words like Farmer, Fisherman, Crossword-addict; broaden into words like Consumer, Voter, Taxpayer; before maybe getting up-close and personal, listing words like Lover, Optimist, Giver. I wonder if your list of words, however long, would contain this word: Subject?
It’s not the most obvious thing about us, these days; not something we usually stop to consider. But this time of celebration of the Queen’s 90th birthday gives us pause to remember that as well as being citizens of the United Kingdom, with our rights as individuals, we are subjects of Her Majesty the Queen - we owe allegiance to our monarch.
Such language may sound positively medieval to you - it may cause you to picture crowned tyrants riding through the land forcing taxes out of any peasant unfortunate enough to be caught by the king on the way; perhaps it conjures up that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where a group of peasants with revolutionary leanings refuse to bow to the king’s commands and question the way he automatically treats them like inferiors: ‘Well I am king’, pleads Arthur in self-defence, but the peasants tell him that as far as they’re concerned the story of Excalibur and The Lady of the Lake is no basis for a system of government.
But we are subjects of the monarch. Do you object to being a subject? If it does sound positively medieval to you, then please allow that our world isn’t as far away from the medieval world as we sometimes imagine, and let’s accentuate, and celebrate, the positive.
I suggest that today, just as in medieval times, we all subject ourselves to outside forces, higher powers, willingly or unwillingly, wittingly or subconsciously. It’s just that the forces and powers in question have changed. I suggest that though it’s fashionable to assert that we are islands, entire to ourselves, we aren’t - but rather, that we are formed by the values and expectations and behaviour of those around us. From the day we first begin to imitate our parents, as tiny children, to the day when we decide what career we should take, or who we should marry, we subject ourselves to the will and the ways of others; our desires are determined by what others desire, our decisions depend on the decisions which friends and family have made around us.
We are subjects to each other, to whom we are tied in a network of desires. Facebook puts it out there - we now publicly list - as ‘Friends’ - those we most keenly associate with, whose values and lifestyles influence at a very deep level, the people we are, those - in other words - who we subject ourselves to.
Do you object to being a subject? Well, get used to it, because at this fundamental level, we are all subjects, without noticing it much of the time. And though we may dislike the idea that we are shaped and formed by others, face it, it’s true: at school you were either in the gang with the playground bully or you were one of the bullied ones, but either way you were subject to the power of the bully; or if you now believe that there’s a price for everything and everything has its price, then you’ve subjected yourself to the values of the market, and live with the moral consequences of that. In a more positive frame, the good bits of us are there because of the good people we’ve subjected ourselves to over the years - the good parents, good teachers, good colleagues and friends whose influences have rubbed off on us.
Now, if you’re still with me on this, I hope you can see that if we’re all moving around in a web of subjectivity then we might as well be conscious about how that web works, and if we’re going to subject ourselves to the influence of others then we may as well make conscious decisions about who those others should be - to try to ensure that those influences are good, positive, empowering ones for us.
Which is why it is good that once again we’ve found occasion to celebrate our allegiance to our monarch - for the monarch we have been blessed with for sixty-four long years now, is a good monarch, one we do well to subject ourselves to, for here is a wise and caring woman, a rock, a person of integrity and firm faith. Maybe that’s what has brought us here today - we want to say that we are happy to be her subjects, for she is a good influence on us. We are happy to be subject to one who cares for us.
The best monarchs are those who manage to save themselves from megalomania, who avoid becoming obsessed with building themselves up at the expense of their subjects. To do this they have to have a sense of something or someone to whom they themselves are subject. And this is why Elizabeth is such an example to us, for she is explicit about her understanding of her dependence on God. In a recent Christmas Day broadcast she said,
‘I know just how much I rely on my own faith to guide me through the good times and the bad. Each day is a new beginning. Like others of you who draw inspiration from your own faith, I draw strength from the message of hope in the Christian gospel.’
Our Queen is happy to be subject to one who cares for her. It’s perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from her, to be a willing subject of God, conscious of being formed in love, of living in hope, of drawing inspiration from a greater power who is for us, not against us, and who makes every day a new beginning.
The £5 coins minted for the Diamond Jubilee in 2012 carry the image of Elizabeth with the Latin words ‘DIRIGE DEUS GRESSUS MEOS’, meaning ‘MAY THE LORD DIRECT MY STEPS’.
Accepting ourselves as subjects of God releases us from the web of subjectivity altogether, puts all our other influences in perspective, frees us from obligations which crush and dispirit us. If our allegiance is to God then we are no longer subject to the demands and desires of others on our lives, no longer tangled up in rivalries. Rather, we are released into a relationship of pure giving love, through which we live generously towards others.
Thus, Queen Elizabeth has consistently advocated tolerance and understanding between people of different faiths, colours and creeds, and in her broadcasts she has repeatedly called on us, her subjects, to care for our neighbour. ‘The need to look after a fellow human being is far more important than any cultural or religious differences,’ she has said. In Elizabeth’s Commonwealth, all are valued, for all are subject to one who is herself inspired by a power of love and understanding that transcends all other allegiances.
Do you object to being a subject? The Queen doesn’t - and look at her. Happy Birthday, Ma’am!
Notes
A slight adaptation of a sermon preached at Services of Thanksgiving for the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Devon, 3 June 2012.
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