Let us look
together today and see what only a very few were able to glimpse, even as it
occurred; let’s read Brian Barker’s perception of Elizabeth II, moments away
from her coronation. There were eight
thousand royal and other invited guests in attendance, ringed about on the
streets of London by three million more, but Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was alone
before God and His representatives, receiving beautiful and priceless relics of
coronation antiquity. In fact, she was
accepting something much, much more beautiful and without price.
Elizabeth was
accepting responsibility before God.
Hers was to
care for a nation, the answer to a calling that some say has become more
emblematic than emphatic, yet her calling makes England . . . England! Those who meet her on the street bow or
curtsey to her, some wearing business
suits and some in blue jeans. When she
smiles at them, they beam a happy, privileged response. They did then; they do still.
Brian Barker
wrote . . . “The silence in the Abbey was intense. The Queen was sitting stiffly upright in the
old high-backed chair, a figure of shining gold with the jeweled Sceptres in
her hands. At that moment we saw her as
no one would ever see her again in her lifetime. She was remote from any familiar conception
of royalty . . .
“The still
figure in strange golden vestments seemed to have receded into a time far
remote from our own. She was like an
image in a hieratic ikon, a page from an old richly illustrated manuscript . .
.”
May the
Abbess suggest? Elizabeth was clothed in
an actuality of earthly consecration that none of us ever will ever experience,
sartorially or ceremonially, but she was not gowned or vested with more
salvation, more unction (anointing,) or greater responsibility than is ours for
the calling with which we have been called.
We are vested with the promises of God, clothed in Jesus Christ and
robed in righteousness.
As was true of
Elizabeth in that moment, our splendor may not be seen by all, and seldom is
our consecration put on view, but it is as real as the life that is ours in our
Lord Jesus Christ. In His Majesty, and
in His humility, we bear the glory of royal and eternal love and sacrifice.
Blessed be the name of our glorious God and King, both now and forevermore! Amen.
Rotherham Web
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