Giving thanks for the life of Queen Elizabeth II
11 September 2022
‘Nothing that can be said can begin to take away the anguish and the pain of these moments. Grief is the price we pay for love’. These poignant words come from our late Queen’s message of condolence to the families of victims lost in the 9/11 attacks in New York in 2001, exactly twenty one years ago today. At that point she had reigned for nearly half a century, living through an extraordinary array of world events, providing a unique sense of continuity, constancy and compassionate wisdom.
She may have been a young woman of twenty five at her coronation, but she had been through a war in which those of even more tender years had piloted Spitfires and Hurricanes, served in the Royal Navy, and been on the Normandy beaches at D-Day. And in the seven decades since then, Queen Elizabeth became a vital part of our nation’s subconscious, woven into the fabric of our lives in a whole variety of ways; and indeed not just this nation and the countries of the Commonwealth, but pretty much every place on earth. She was just who we needed after the upheavals of war – a calm, feminine presence, deeply committed to public service, imbued with the mystery of royalty and yet somehow someone with whom we felt a personal connection.
So when the moment of parting finally came, the sense of grief and loss runs deep because she had become so much a part of who we are. Grief is indeed the price we pay for love, and as I sat in the Cathedral on Thursday night, near our prayer globe ablaze with candles, and a solitary bell tolled out over Old Portsmouth, the reality of her passing started to hit home and I felt bereft and close to tears.
I cannot claim any special knowledge of our late Queen to inform this sermon, but ten years ago, in her diamond Jubilee year, I did deliver a series of lectures with the title ‘The Queen’s Speech’. In preparing for these, I immersed myself in the text of every single one of her first sixty Christmas broadcasts. And having done that, for the decade since then, every Christmas I’ve noticed the return of familiar themes, such as the enduring importance of the Commonwealth, alongside her response to new challenges such as the pandemic.
The Queen has been an inspiration to us, and our new King has said how much she inspired him. And from all those broadcasts, I came away with a clear sense of who had inspired her. Over those seven decades, for all the many occasions she thanked groups of people – health workers, for example – for their work, she singled out just four named people for particular praise.
The first is mentioned in her 1967 Christmas broadcast: Francis Chichester, recently knighted for his achievement in becoming the first person to sail solo round the world in Gipsy Moth. She said this: ‘I am sure that the reason his great feat of seamanship so warmed our hearts was that we recognised in his enterprise and courage the very qualities which have played such a large part in British history and which we in these islands need just as much today and for the future.’ She astutely placed her praise just before what she described as the ‘formidable problems’ faced by the Britain of that time: the virtues Chichester exhibited were not only to be admired, but to be applied and lived out more generally.
Twenty years later, in 1987, our late Queen spoke of the Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen, carried out by the Provisional IRA. She praised Gordon Wilson, interviewed by the BBC on the day of the explosion. An anguished Wilson described his last conversation with his twenty year old daughter: ‘She held my hand tightly, and gripped me as hard as she could. She said, “Daddy, I love you very much.” Those were her exact words to me, and those were the last words I ever heard her say.’ To the astonishment of most, Wilson went on to add, ‘But I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life... I will pray for these men tonight and every night.’
The Queen paid tribute to Gordon Wilson’s ‘strength, and that of his wife, and the courage of their daughter’, which she attributed directly to their Christian conviction. ‘All of us,’ she said, will echo their prayer that out of the personal tragedies of Enniskillen may come a reconciliation between the communities.’
Five years later, the Queen’s 1992 Christmas broadcast came at the end of the year she had already described as her ‘Annus Horribilis’. ‘It has… been a sombre year… [she said], but ‘Curiously enough, it was a sad event which [helped] me put my own worries into perspective. Leonard Cheshire came to see us with his fellow members of the order of Merit. By then, he was suffering from a long drawn-out and terminal illness. He bore this with all the fortitude and cheerfulness to be expected of a holder of the Victoria Cross.’
Cheshire commanded the legendary 617 ‘Dam Busters’ Squadron, and was the official British observer of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki, in August 1945. Overwhelmed by this, after the war he sought to reorientate his life, and informed by a deep Christian faith, founded an international family of independent Cheshire homes, doing pioneering work with those living with disabilities. When the Queen met Cheshire he was in the advanced stages of motor neurone disease. She commented, ‘What struck me more forcibly than his physical courage was the fact that he made no reference to his own illness, but only to his hopes and plans to make life better for others. He embodied the well-known lines: ‘Kindness in another’s trouble, courage in one’s own’… Perhaps this shining example of what a human being can achieve in a lifetime of dedication can inspire in the rest of us a belief in our capacity to help others.’
And then, in 1996, the Queen spoke as follows: ‘…I shall never forget the State Visit of President Nelson Mandela. The most gracious of men has shown us all how to accept the facts of the past without bitterness, how to see new opportunities as more important than old disputes and how to look forward with courage and optimism. His example is a continuing inspiration to the whole Commonwealth and to all those everywhere who work for peace and reconciliation.’
These are the four named people our late Queen saw as a personal inspiration.
But in fact there is a fifth person interwoven through the broadcasts, whose influence, always there, becomes more explicit with the passing years. In 1978, the Queen said this: ‘The context of the lives of the next generation is being set, here and now, not so much by the legacy of science or wealth or political structure…, but by the example of our attitudes and behaviour to one another... Christians have the compelling example of the life and teaching of Christ and, for myself, I would like nothing more than that my grandchildren should hold dear his ideals which have helped and inspired so many previous generations.’
And then in 1993: ‘There is no magic formula that will transform sorrow into happiness, intolerance into compassion or war into peace, but inspiration can change human behaviour.’ In fact what most inspired her was human lives that expressed the divine, beginning with Christ but also taking in people such as the four individuals I have mentioned.
‘How to see new opportunities as more important than old disputes and how to look forward with courage and optimism…’: this is what the Queen admired in Nelson Mandela, but such also is the spirit she has embodied and lived out herself. It is an approach that works with the grain of history, always seeking to transform rather than condemn: and it is an approach rooted in Jesus Christ, reflecting how God chooses to work with the grain of human beings as they actually are, redeeming rather than them writing off, for, in the words of the Gospel, God wishes to lose nothing of all that God has given.
For our much loved and late Queen, it is the case that, in the words of our second reading [1 Timothy 1.12-17], ‘the grace of our Lord overflowed for [her] with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.’ In the language of the Gospel [John 6.37-40], she has sought to follow not her own will, but the will of her creator and redeemer. And it is surely the case, to refer also to our first reading [Isaiah 25.6-9], that she is now with the God who wipes away the tears from all faces, and in whom there is gladness, rejoicing and salvation.
In our grief, God in Christ meets us with love. In Christ is inspiration worthy of the name, in which, as the reign of Charles III begins, we can root and ground our lives, in the manner of his remarkable mother. Thanks be to God for all that has been, and by God’s grace, for all that will be as we look forward – like her – with courage and optimism. AMEN.