The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, 11 September 2022
Austwick, Keasden
The closest I ever got to Queen Elizabeth was when I was privileged to stand alongside our churchwarden emeritus, Bob Matthews, in Liverpool Cathedral in April 2004 as The Queen presented him and 77 other men and 78 women with purses containing Maundy coins, as was her annual practice: the 78 representing her age in years at that time. As she came alongside us The Queen acknowledged me with a brief glance, appropriately so, for all her attention was rightly on Bob, who was there in recognition of his many years of faithful service to the church and community of Croxteth, the housing estate where he’d always lived.
Like many in Croxteth Bob’s family life revolved around the massive English Electric factory which had employed so many in the area in its heyday in the middle years of the 20th century. An electrician, he’d worked hard to carve out a respectable life with his family in their council house with well-tended garden, helped his children grow up into good careers, and as the factories began to close and the people began to experience the losses of decline as he drew nearer to retirement he committed himself to his churchwarden duties - conducted faithfully and well - and to organising social events for older people: Bob’s Bingos were legendary in the area.
So on the day that the Electrician met the monarch, what struck me about The Queen’s brief exchange with Bob was the sincere respect she showed him in the way she spoke and presented herself towards him. In that moment Sandringham estate met Croxteth estate - as equals. It was the first sign for me that this monarch with the grandiose title of Defender of the Faith did truly get what that faith was about - that God loves and values each person equally, whatever their station. She showed it in the way she held Bob’s hand, held her eyes to his, listened well to him, and blessed him with her words of genuine affirmation.
I was reading this week about The Queen’s keen sense of humour, with Angela Kelly, The Queen’s dresser saying that Elizabeth was a talented mimic, and liked to tease Kelly by imitating her Liverpudlian accent. So I imagine The Queen enjoying picking up more Scouse expressions in the talks she had in Liverpool Cathedral on Bob’s special day.
Our nation is in mourning at the loss of one who ruled us with genuine love and high regard. Each of us understood this at some level, and that’s why monarchists and republicans alike are moved today by the emotion of this moment in our national life.
Loss comes to us all, in different ways. For many people, losing The Queen is bringing back to the surface their own bereavements, the pain of being without their lost loved one is keen again just now. Bereavement is the greatest loss - for however strong may be our hope of eternal life, the hope of resurrection and the reunion to come with those we love, the physical loss is irreversible. Our prayers are with all who feel this deeply today.
There are other losses in life, of course. None of them trivial. I remember once joining with others in a motorway service station cafe to help a young woman find a lost earring. When a plasterer found it in a corner seat by the TV and returned it to the woman, she was deeply grateful, even though we could all see that the earring was very ordinary, nothing special at all. "I know it's only a cheap thing," she explained, "but it belonged to my best friend, you see. I was with her when she bought it, it cost her six pound fifty. But she loved it. It really matched the colour of her eyes. And she died last month. Cancer. But when she was ill she gave this to me. It means a lot to me.” [1] This felt for me like a ‘Kingdom of Heaven moment’. For it can feel like we’re never as close to glory as in those moments when we rediscover something precious we’ve lost, and we share, with others, the joy in finding it.
Now what bothers most people most of the time are things like how to find the way back to the train station in a strange town, how to recoup the lost income from those weeks spent off work ill, how to lose - weight! and find - health and fitness! What most people are looking for daily are things like food and drink and shelter. Loss is all around us, and in hard times, increasingly palpable.
When I think of the widow on her hands and knees looking for that lost coin it reminds me of that other widow Jesus talks about in Luke - the poor widow who he saw put two small copper coins into the treasury, of whom he said, ‘out of her poverty she has put in all she had to live on.’ [2] Losing a coin - for a widow, that was a very big deal indeed. Just as losing a sheep is a big deal to a shepherd.
Jesus’s descriptions of heaven are always rooted in earth; salvation is like those moments of celebration where lostness gives way to found-ness, moments we all know and feel from time to time. Just as The Queen was always keenly present in the company of ordinary everyday people, so also Jesus is always seeking redemption in the company of those who know they’re lost.
Now the religious people facing Jesus in their self-righteousness want to separate out the lost and the found; they drive a wedge between the spiritual and the physical, the holy and the profane. But Jesus is having none of it, for he never does. He knows that every single person is sometimes lost and sometimes found, and sometimes in that holy moment where lost and found collide and a hint of heaven flashes forth. We well know that even The Queen had her lost times - that traumatic flight home from Kenya on her father’s sudden death; her Annus Horribilis; the last two years without Philip and many other hard times. She taught us to understand where she always went to begin to be found again. She always went to her saviour in prayer.
Where is Jesus at our times of loss? It’s the cry of many people’s hearts at times such as these. Well here he is, on his knees alongside the widow on her kitchen floor looking for that elusive coin; there he is, hacking through brambles on the hillside with that sweating shepherd searching for the one lost sheep; he is right here with you, the lost one, looking for a way out of your lostness, searching for that heavenly moment when you will be found again.
You have to know you’re lost before you can be found. Loss and lostness may be painful, challenging, draining, but embracing our lostness is the first step towards our rediscovering ourselves; our, if you like, redemption.
God values the lost. And considers no loss insignificant. Even seemingly small losses, in the most ordinary places, God knows are important. This is the good news Elizabeth always celebrated and lived: that if we look we’ll find Jesus, out here, on this lost earth where the lost things and lost people are, find him looking with us for those moments where lost and found collide and we get a glimpse of heaven.
Notes
This talk draws from Living where lost and found collide preached in Somerset in 2016.
[1] One of my contributions to the compilation Wise Traveller: ‘Loss', also included in my talk Heaven in Ordinary, Greenbelt Festival, Cheltenham,August 2007.
[2] Luke 21.3-4.
Comments