Sermon on the death of HM Queen and the Feast of Our Lady’s birthday

 Sermon given at St John the Divine, Kennington

Fr Charlie Bell

The Feast of the Nativity of the BLM, in time of mourning for Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

 

There is a tension to today’s Mass – a tension, perhaps a contradiction. Like so much of the human condition, we hold what seems like an impossible, an incongruous paradox in the palm of our hand, and despite everything, this paradox makes more sense of the world than any neat and simplistic attempt at an overarching and unifying human narrative. The world we inhabit is live, is fizzing with contradiction, however we wish it weren’t. And in our hearts, we know that that is – and has always been – the life of the Christian.

 

For today, after a tumultuous week, there is not only one but two queens in our mind’s eye. We gather today to celebrate the birthday of the Queen of Heaven, Mary our mother, Mary the virgin, teenage mother of Bethlehem, of no human account and yet destined to be the Queen and mother of us all. And we gather, too, in a time of national mourning which few – if any – in this country have ever seen. We remember before God the late Queen Elizabeth – herself, never expected to be Queen when she was born ninety-six years ago.

 

There are tensions, too, in the crowds we saw over the weekend. For not only were there crowds to mourn the Queen, but there were crowds too to mourn Chris Kaba, fatally shot by police in Streatham Hill on Monday – crowds marching with anguish, with anger, with the tired, weary, ever-present disappointment that nothing seems ever to change. Despite the narrative that we must all pull together as a nation, our divisions stubbornly refuse to go away.

 

We live in this time of mourning, and yet we meet this morning in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection. As the Queen said, ‘as dark as death can be – particularly for those suffering with grief – light and life are greater’. And we know this to be true – and yet we feel this contradiction and we look to heaven for help, we look to one another in search for solidarity.

 

We find that solidarity modelled in the life of Mary of Nazareth, Mary of the Magnificat. How easy it is to lose sight of that Mary, to focus on the glory she now inhabits and to lose track of the Magnificat she proclaims. For in the Gospels we find Mary not amongst the humanly high and mighty, yet we do indeed find her at the mightiest place of all, at the cross of Jesus, holding his broken body, mourning him as mothers today mourn their sons, and as many across the nation mourn all that the Queen stood for in our common life. For, despite all the pomp and ceremony, at the heart of what drew so many to her was service and duty – duty and love. People are not mourning the grandeur or the privilege – they are mourning the humanity.

 

We should not look back on the Queen’s reign, then, and focus on the pomp and ceremony, and nor do we – nor can we, nor should we – try to whitewash the uncomfortable parts of her reign or indeed of earthly monarchy, or the challenges of living in post-colonial world where much of the past, and sometimes the present, that we see may disturb us to our innermost selves. We must not ignore the contradiction we see between monarchy and meritocracy – we must, instead, look for the thread of humanity that holds us together, that points us ever more towards the incarnation and the reality of God’s renewal and redemption of our humanity. 

 

For it was duty, love and service that touched the heart – duty, love and service which is at the heart of the story of Mary, too. It is duty, love and service that is found at the heart of the story of creation and recreation, the story clothed in garments of redemption and salvation.

 

When we think of Mary in her apparitions at Lourdes, at Fatima, one thing is clear - she doesn’t appear to the high and mighty – she appears instead to those of no account, children, poor, those ignored by society. Mary herself is Queen of Heaven not because of something she did, but simply because she said ‘yes’ – she is taken to the heights of heaven body and soul not because of who she is, but because of who God is. Mary is someone who makes heaven attainable for us – someone who is called nothing by the world, and yet who all generations will called blessed. It is in the life of Mary that we see grief and joy so carefully intertwined – the sword piercing her heart as she looks on her innocent child, the nails piercing the skin of her son as the world is redeemed.

 

Grief is the price that we pay for love. And grief is never the end. For grief can point us towards the things that matter most to us – grief can make clear those things which are so well hidden by the changes and chances of the world. In mourning the monarch, we can celebrate the – as yet unfinished – transformation of this country and the commonwealth during her reign, and commit ourselves to a continued stripping away of the trappings of power, and wealth, and privilege, and prejudice. We can choose to dedicate our lives to participation in the recreative and redemptive action of God. And we can hear the Magnificat in our ears, encouraging us along our way.

 

For the Magnificat tells us what the world must be – must surely become. We get glimpses of that world – in people we meet, in people we admire, in the love and solidarity of this church and community. We know this world is imperfect – we still see a country and a world riven by racism and violence and anger and division and injustice and poverty. Yet we know that another world is possible.

 

At her coronation, the late Queen committed herself to justice and mercy. In the seventy years of her reign she went about that task with a sense of humanity – and a sense of humour. She was, too – like Mary – a woman in a man’s world – something all too easy to forget, yet something we forget at our peril. For despite all the bluster and self-importance of the men who surrounded her in her early years – and who have continued to dominate the country’s institutions and politics – she was able to show the world that another way was possible. She showed – in her role as monarch, yet as a monarch with no human power – that at the heart of leadership is not power, but service.

 

In her message during the ravages of Covid, she described the importance of the ‘attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve and of fellow-feeling’. And throughout her life she used her position not for self-aggrandisement, but for quietly – subtly, carefully – reminding us of that fellow-feeling, that love of neighbour that we proclaim each day of our Christian life. In a Christmas message given as the Cold War ended, she was clear: ‘It would be splendid’, she said, ‘to think that in the last years of the twentieth century Christ's message about loving our neighbours as ourselves might at last be heeded.’ She remained – to the end – a window onto what might be possible, however imperfect she and the institution might have been as vessels of that grace.

 

Mary, too, is a window onto the love and saving grace of Christ – for in her womb – full of grace – itself was found heaven and earth in little space; heaven and earth that sprung forth into the joyful birth of the saviour of all mankind, her son and yet also her God. Mary, full of grace because she gave herself willingly to become an agent of the God who she sang and prayed to in heaven, in her womb, in the manger, at the wedding feast, on the cross – and now in heaven. 

 

We follow Mary today not because she is the goal, but because she accompanies us on the journey towards the true goal – the one in whom her and our heart can truly rejoice and find its rest. She is truly favoured, but we too share in that favour through following her example and through asking for her intercessions at the throne of grace. She is blessed, because of the superabundance of the grace, mercy, justice and love of God. And she continues to sing the Magnificat.

 

What, then, is that Magnificat demanding of us today, whilst we still have time here on earth? What are we called to do, to participate in the redemptive love of God, as we celebrate the birthday of a woman of no account yet who is Queen of Heaven, and mourn the death of a woman who – despite all the trappings of privilege – was still an imperfect icon of the love of God? What might we do to cultivate those shoots of righteousness?

 

For that is what we are all – whoever we are, whatever our station, however important or irrelevant or useless or glorious the world tell us we are – what we are all called to do. We are called to be people of the Magnificat. We are called to live that song.

 

And once our journey here is finished, let us pray that we will indeed meet again in the heavenly Jerusalem where our Lady and Our blessed Lord wear the crown, where all is brought to completion, where there will be no ends nor beginnings, no death or mourning or tears or pain, where contradictions cease, where all is redeemed and renewed and restored and reconciled and forgiven, where we will feast with joy, where indeed angels will bear us to our rest, and where we will all – from the highest to the lowest, in the love and mercy of God – hear those words – you are a child of God, and if a child then also an heir of our dearest Father in Heaven.

 

Amen.