The Queen: ruling and serving

Almost unbelievably it is 60 years since the accession of Princess Elizabeth to the throne on the sudden death of her father, King George VI. I am an admirer of the Queen and have appreciated her quietly stated but firm Christian commitment, but reflecting on her long reign I find myself particularly struck by the seriousness and faithfulness with which she has fulfilled her responsibilities. This responsibility and commitment is even more striking when you consider that she did not choose to become Queen, but had the solemn duty thrust upon her. I wonder whether she has ever found herself identifying with Frodo in Lord of the Rings who, as the one entrusted with the ring of power, finds himself forced to bear an appalling burden alone. Three thoughts about her reign come to mind.

First, the Queen has had a demanding reign. It has probably never been easy to be a conscientious monarch of Great Britain but the last sixty years have been particularly tough. To look at films dated in the early Fifties, to read accounts of this time and hear stories from those who remember the period is to revisit a strange, vanished world. During our Queen's reign the world has changed and much that was once taken for granted in terms of certainties and values has disappeared. In addition, the monarchy itself has been challenged in a way that it has not been for centuries. The old saying, found on many a war memorial, ‘For God and King (or Queen)’ reflected the certainty that the Christian faith and the monarchy were the twin pillars that together upheld the British nation. With the erosion of religious belief in Britain over the last half-century it has increasingly become the monarchy which has had to take on that task alone. Indeed in this time of shifting values and cultural turbulence the Queen has provided one of the few fixed points and for that we should all be grateful to her.

Second, the Queen has had what, in all honesty, must be termed a frustrating reign. For a start the powers as a British constitutional monarch are very limited, being restricted (in a famous quote) to ‘the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn’. I have no doubt that there is much that she would like to have done and said that she was not able to. She has also suffered from the problem of unrealistic expectations. The accession of Queen Elizabeth the Second to the throne sixty years ago came at a time when a nation was still recovering from the Second World War. (The wartime food rationing did not end until 1954!). The Queen’s accession gave rise to unwise and utterly naive expectations of a glorious ‘new Elizabethan age’. The reality, of course, has been otherwise and in this time Britain has declined from an empire spanning the globe to a small European nation with a painfully struggling economy. Yet if the Queen has felt frustrated by her reign no word of it has reached the public.

Thirdly, the Queen has had a wearying reign. Who would have imagined in 1952 that the young Princess would still be Queen in 2012? Most of us in difficult jobs can console ourselves with the thought that, sooner or later, we will be pensioned off and be able to shed our responsibilities. The Queen has had no such option yet has borne her responsibilities with care and diligence. Whatever weariness she feels (how many tedious banquet speeches has she had to endure?) she has continued to serve with grace and determination.

There is much to be grateful for in the reign of Her Majesty and we should be those who continue to pray for her and her family. Yet can I point out that there are lessons here for us who are Christians? Like the Queen we have been called and appointed to serve; we have all been given responsibilities. Yet many of us have taken on board the way the contemporary world views things and have been inclined to impose our own desires and expectations on our Christian service. So it is all too easy to assume that our responsibilities as believers will be easy, no more than some light task, carried out under comfortable conditions. The reality may be different: we may find like the Queen, that our responsibilities may be very demanding. Equally, we may assume that our service will be rewarded with fulfilment; that here on earth we will be honoured and praised and all that we do will be marked out by success. Yet like the Queen, we may find that we have been called to serve in frustrating times and that trying to fulfil our responsibilities is like running up the down escalator. We might assume that our service, even if it is hard, will at least be short-term and that, sooner rather than later, we would be released from our responsibilities to go and do what we want to do. Yet here too we may need to remember that it may not be so. What we had assumed to be a mere hundred meter dash may turn out to be a marathon.

The Queen has ruled over Britain for sixty years. I would suggest that she has also served for that time and her service is a challenge to all of us who serve the King of kings.