Kingship and Shepherding

 Trinity 13 - Year C – Eucharist – 11.ix.2022 

Following the death of HM Queen Elizabeth II 

(Exodus 32.7-14; 1 Timothy 1.12-17; Luke 15.1-10)

Each of the two churches in which I serve has two windows depicting the same subjects – windows which I love and which we should all take note of. One is a window depicting Christ enthroned in majesty – it’s Christ the King, the central window behind the altar in St. John’s Church and high up surmounting all the other windows in the west wall of St. Cuthbert’s Church. The other window is of Christ the Good Shepherd. It’s the window nearest to the pulpit in St. John’s Church. In St. Cuthbert’s it’s the central panel of our great east window behind the High Altar. I could simply ask you to look at these windows, ask why they are there and why they are placed where they are. What do they say to us? What do they say to you?

We’re in the midst of a period of national mourning following the death of Her Majesty the Queen. It’s a time of sorrow, but also yesterday we had the solemn celebration of the Proclamation of our new monarch, His Majesty King Charles III. Sorrow goes together with new hopes and expectation. We have a new Government as well, a new Prime Minister entering into office only two days before the reign of our new King began. Politicians get a bad press, often deservedly, and whatever they do people will argue over. That’s why it’s good that we have a Head of State – the King, and before him, the Queen – who can lead the nation in a way that is beyond political wrangling and controversy. Monarch and Prime Minister, Head of State and Head of Government, both need our prayers. But it’s the Crown – King or Queen – who can unite the people of our nation.

That’s why it’s good that each of our churches has its window of Christ the King – what does it mean to call him that? And good that each points us to Christ the Good Shepherd also – the one who cares for the flock, who calls us his people.

So much of the news coverage following the Queen’s death has been about the encounters which individual people have had with the Queen. I said at the time of her Platinum Jubilee that 45 years after it happened I still find myself most moved by the occasion I saw her in my home town of Hartlepool – not in the distance with the dignitaries and crowds as she opened the Civic Centre; but as she drove out through one of the poorest and most deprived estates, and stopped her car to open her window and take from a little girl a ragged posy of flowers that she’d picked. We’re touched most profoundly when someone reaches out to us. And this was the nation’s monarch reaching out to a little child who was sobbing because her parents had told her not to be so stupid as to think she could give those flowers to the Queen. She’d noticed this small child and she stopped her limousine and slowed the royal progress.

Yesterday’s Proclamation of the new King was very much about ceremony and protocol. They’re important because they make things happen – and we see that they have happened. So it can be all the more telling when something disrupts the protocol. I still remember hearing the surgeon, David Nott, speak of a meeting he had with the Queen. He’s a senior vascular surgeon, but for years he has given his time to work as a doctor in the most war-torn and needy countries. He’d been working in Aleppo in the midst of all the violence inflicted upon the residents of that city by the Syrian regime. It left him traumatised and his mental health had suffered. When he came home he received a letter inviting him to meet the Queen for lunch at Buckingham Palace. In his words:

So I did, and of course it was only a week after I'd come back from this carnage, and the contrast between the carnage and the beauty of Buckingham Palace was just a bit too much for me to cope with.

And then not only that, sitting next to the Queen was something I couldn't cope with, I really couldn't.

I suddenly was unable to speak, I didn't know what to say to her, it was very difficult. I felt I just wanted to get out. I wanted to run.

And she was very nice and she understood this.

She looked at me quizzically and touched my hand. She then had a quiet word with one of the courtiers, who pointed to a silver box in front of her. I watched as she opened the box, which was full of biscuits. ‘These are for the dogs,’ she said, breaking one of the biscuits in two and giving me half. We fed the biscuits to the corgis under the table, and for the rest of lunch she took the lead and chatted about her dogs, how many she had, what their names were, how old they were. All the while we were stroking and petting them, and my anxiety and distress drained away.

‘There,’ the Queen said. ‘That’s so much better than talking, isn’t it?’

It was quite remarkable. I felt like she was like my mother and of course she's the mother of the nation and she looked on me as someone who needed help immediately.

With the image of Christ the King we need that reminder that he is also the Good Shepherd, the one who is prepared to leave the flock to seek out the single lost sheep. 99 sheep would be enough, but he goes out of his way to find the one which has gone astray. Jesus is the one who can sit at fine meals with the lawyers and religious leaders, but who also has a place for the tax-collectors: ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ This Jesus has a place for us.

What more can we say? St. Paul, in his first letter to Timothy calls Jesus, “the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, to whom all honour and glory are due for ever and ever.” But he knows, as well, that this is a King who reaches out to us, who wants us to find our place among his people: “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the foremost.”

That, says Jesus, is because “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” And if we haven’t had an invitation to lunch at Buckingham Palace, then remember that in this Eucharist Jesus invites us to eat and drink with him at his table. The bread and wine we take to the altar are given back to us as his Body and his Blood. They’re given to us by the one who reaches out to the lost sheep, who welcomes sinners and eats with them.