Welcome to St Laurence Church, Appleton with Besselsleigh
A welcoming and inclusive church serving the whole community
St Laurence church is in the middle of Appleton village, down at the bottom of Church Lane, past the school.
Church Lane turns off Eaton Rd, on the right on the way in from the A420, after the road bends round the Manor.
Joshua 1.1-10, Romans 13.1-10 - with many thanks to Canon Jamie Hawkey (Canon Theologian, Westminster Abbey) for his Gore Lecture on Monarchy, available on YouTube
This evening’s readings for the Accession of the Sovereign focus on our need to obey the word of God: it is to be a source of constant meditation for Joshua; while, for Saint Paul’s readers, it is an obedience best performed either by obeying the Law of the State, or by loving their neighbour, which is the fulfilment of God’s Law.
This is an unsurprisingly Protestant focus, testament to the grave importance, since the Reformation, of maintaining a Protestant head beneath the English crown. Thus the Scriptures are the first symbol and gift with which Monarchs are presented at their coronation: ‘to keep you ever mindful of the law and the gospel of God,’ they are told, ‘receive this book, the most valuable thing that this world affords.’ It contains Wisdom, Law, ‘the lively Oracles of God.’
Some may find it strangely outdated to consider the Christian Bible as ‘the world’s most valuable thing’, and to direct that it should act as guide and counsellor to our Head of State. But, as members of the Church, we should find the relationship between Sovereign and Scripture more coherent, and will explore it here under three headings.
1. The Supremacy of God
From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture presents us with the unassailable primacy of God: God as Creator, Shepherd, King, Warrior, Healer, Father, Consuming Fire; and then, through the mystical workings of the Trinity, God is Redeemer, Saviour, Advocate, Comforter, Friend. Truly, God is All-in-all, and God’s absolute power and primacy, set forth in Scripture, remind those who wield earthly power that their authority is borrowed and penultimate. The King of England knows that he doesn’t have the very last word on anything; which is perhaps why, unlike a mighty President in a Republic, he will never be seen brandishing a Bible just as a stage prop in his own cynical photo opp. Kingship is a covenant, and a King knows himself to be sandwiched between God and the people, operating by divine providence from above and with popular parliamentary permission from below. The Monarch, like us all, is part of a complex ecology under God: God plays his part, the King plays his, we play ours, so that (as another prayer puts it) ‘all things may be ordered and settled upon the best and surest foundations’ (BCP Prayer for Parliament).
2. The Nature of Christ
Scripture presents Christ in a threefold office of Prophet, Priest, and King. As such, Christ teaches, ministers the sacrifice, and rules. The King likewise teaches through his identification with England’s Law-making; he lives out a life of sacrifice, through his Governorship of the Church; and he rules in equity and strength, not least through his Headship of the Armed Forces.
To unpack a little, it is as prophet that Christ teaches the truths of God. The anointed and truth-telling Sovereign imitates this role by his own speech, and through the making and implementation of laws, according to the justice set out in Scripture, to encourage love of God and neighbour.
As priest, Christ is the sacrifice and the altar. For the Monarch, Supreme Governor of the Church, the sacrifice made is that of his own freedom; and although his throne looks and is more comfortable than the throne of Christ’s cross, it is nevertheless a place of sacrifice, of service expressed not only through a crammed diary of engagements which will come to an end only with his infirmity and death; but his sacrifice is also implicit in his absolute recognizability, his being the face on every stamp and banknote, his bearing the name in which all legal oaths are made, his being the life which, in some dimension, contains and expresses the life of an entire nation and Commonwealth.
As king, Christ rules from his Cross as well as from his heavenly throne, to make peace between God and humankind, and to bring about a new heaven and a new earth. As a ruler in Christ’s name, the Monarch, particularly as Head of the Armed Forces, defends the lives of the people so that, as the prophet Micah puts it, each may sit under their own vine and fig tree, and enjoy the sweetness of God’s everlasting peace. We may have been brought up to keep the King’s or the Queen’s peace, but the peace that the Sovereign ensures is in fact the peace of God.
3. The Monarch as Child of God
In an increasingly depersonalised age, with interactions made untrustworthy and frustrating through technology, and with far less face-to-face encounter than ever before, having a monarch largely without political power, but with an inherited spiritual authority, helps enormously to reclaim the personal and human quality of our institutions and interactions. The King can achieve anything only through conversation with his people, as the face on the stamp becomes the face just a few inches away on a walkabout, or the familiar face on the Christmas Broadcast, one that has grown older over the decades as ours have also grown older. It is this contact with a fellow fallible child of God that engenders a sense of belonging to him and to each other, and enables him to lead us as we try to hold fast with him to what is written in the Book of the Law.
As we give thanks for our Monarch, therefore, we commit ourselves to service of each other, that the Law of God may be fulfilled in the actions of men and women; that our nation may walk ever more faithfully in the paths of righteousness, and that we may, as St Peter instructs, ‘Honour all men; love the brotherhood; fear God; honour the King! (I Peter 2.17).
