God Save the Queen
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| Queen Elizabeth II, Seated Alone at the Funeral of Her Husband of 73 Years, Prince Philip |
Introduction
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, the Sunday where we celebrate the work of Shepherding that Christ does in our lives, the work that our faithful bishops do in imitation of Christ’s work, and the shepherding and caring that all of our parents and elders in the Faith do in each one of our lives. It is a wonderful remembrance of this most biblical of all analogies.
We also remember the love and care shown by Her Majesty the Queen and her family, as they mourn the loss of a spouse, a father, a grandfather, and great-grandfather, and pray for their consolation in this time of grief. In many ways, the Queen has also been a “Shepherd” to many of the nations within our missionary diocese, and so it is appropriate to remember her today.
We also pray for the repose of Prince Philip’s soul, as a baptized Orthodox Christian who lived out his life within the Anglican Patrimony, and ask God to forgive him of his sins and accept him into eternal rest. Memory eternal! (Memory eternal!)
Scripture Readings
In Psalms 23, we hear about how the Lord is like a Shepherd to us…
"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”
The Psalmist was prophetic here, because this Psalm points to the character and person of our Lord, Jesus Christ. There are many important aspects that point to Him in this passage. The “Still Waters”, the preparing of a table, the anointing of the head with oil, and the pouring of a cup of wine that flows out into the world through us and reconciles the Creation to God, all point to the manner in which Christ reaches us through His Incarnation and in the earthly ministry of the Church - Baptism, Eucharist, Anointing. When we have this kind of relationship with Christ, goodness, mercy and dwelling in God’s House always ensues as the necessary end result of such a sacramental process.
Today’s Epistle reading is from 1 St. Peter 2:19-25, continuing with the theme of Christ as our Shepherd, also showing that He is the First Bishop, the prototype which all Christian “Pastors” must struggle to become like in our process of sanctification -
“THIS is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls."
And, then, in the Gospel Reading, found in St. John 10:11-16, we see the ultimate revelation of how Christ’s character connects with the role of Shepherd that we see playing out within all of the Scriptures -
“JESUS said, I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; and know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock, and one shepherd.”
The Queen as an Icon of the Faithful Shepherd
I have recently taken the time to watch the Netflix series, “The Crown”, in part fueled by an interest in the life and times of Prince Philip, and also because of the week of sickness we have had due to the spread of Covid in our Easter Sunday liturgy. While it has been a uniquely unpleasant experience to contract the dreaded Coronavirus, I have enjoyed watching this series (with substantial fast-forwarding) for the context it gives to the great change experienced in the Anglican world over the last half a century.
The breakdown of the family life and the focus on only having two or three children over the last 70 years is unconsciously showcased, discreetly showing the success of birth control in strangling the Western society and channelling energies towards social interactions and professional venues, away from the hearth and home, and it also forms a startling subtext in the post-war, post-imperial English setting. In the lives of some of the less traditional royals, who were not committed to the raising of future generations, we can see how such sensual laxity and wantonness leads ultimately to unhappiness and ruin. One can only wonder what would have happened if the Lambeth Conferences of 1930 and 1958 would have taken a biblical and conservative stance against contraceptives, like the Catholic Church did, rather than opening up the flood-gates of anti-family practices, which washed the foundations out from beneath the Church and destroyed the overflowing and abounding Christian family in the Anglosphere. Certainly, the Western world would have a different attitude about birth control, abortion, divorce, fruitless unions such as we see in Gay marriage, and immigration. In the dismissal of the “Fruit of the womb is His reward” (Psalm 127:3) we have also rejected our own culture and heritage and have turned our lands over to strangers, who replace the one true God with the gods of the pagans. This is the Old Testament’s understanding of “losing the glory” and being enslaved by one’s enemies. This is our Babylonian Captivity.
Into all of this context comes the consideration of Prince Philip’s funeral. In the funeral homily we heard words like “faithfulness”, “unfailing” and “long-lasting.” One of the things that makes Her Royal Majesty, the Queen, so special, along with the legacy of the Prince Consort, is the length of time that she has served and the precision with which she has kept her obligations as monarch. The “unchanging” nature of the Queen’s reign, although mostly an illusion and actually presiding over one of the most revolutionary times in history, is what serves as an icon of Christ’s “Shepherhood”, His unchanging love towards us, and His ever-faithful and constantly available nature. If we repent, He is always near us, faithful to hear us, and loving as our Shepherd to catch us up in His arms and take us where we need to go. As Richard Hayes and NT Wright so famously point out: “faith is unchanging allegiance, not a fancy or a feeling.” We are saved by Christ’s unchanging compassion and loyal love, and we reflect the nature of God in the Presence of the Holy Spirit through our constancy and loyalty to Him and one another. In their mortal faithfulness, the royal family illustrates a small reflection of the nature of God's immortal and unfailing faithfulness.
Loss of Grace in the Anglican Tradition
It deeply pains me to say, but when we see what is being taught in English and American Anglican seminaries, what is taught as being “Anglican” is no longer truly “Christian.” Secular values of tolerance and multiculturalism, woke politics and radical individualism have replaced truth, beauty, wisdom, and righteousness. I was recently asked to read through “Pastoral Counseling” for one particular Anglican Seminary. In this course, I was amazed to find that it argues for the validation of every possible thing the Scripture negates, out of a “concern for welcome, pastoral mercy, and an understanding that we are not to judge.” Thus, no sin is aberrant enough to warrant a sincere, pastoral rebuke. And with the toleration of sin, no, the “embrace” of sin, there can be no true communion with God. God and the absence of God, sin, cannot inhabit the same space at the same time.
There are many metaphysical arguments for the Anglican loss of grace. I do not think any of them are important, really. Women’s ordination and Homosexuality are merely symptoms of inward apostasy, not the cause. The cause is unconfessed sin and a lack of proper preparation in taking the Eucharist. If people truly believe that they are taking damnation into themselves when they commune without confession of sins, then they would not take Communion in a state of rebellion against the Church’s historical teachings. I Corinthians 11:29 says, “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.” This “self-excommunication" protects the Church from the tendency to “tolerate” sin in order to be “kind.” No, instead, they would see denying communion to the disobedient and the rebellious as it truly is - mercy. This was the central loss when the Caroline vision of an Orthodox Anglicanism was lost by Latitudinarians and Liberals. Real Presence was scoffed at, downplayed by the Reformed, explained symbolically by the Evangelicals, and rejected by Modernists. Without Real Presence, there is no true power in Communion, and without true power, the Church becomes a vehicle for the culture, to “change with the times”, rather than demanding conformity to God’s Word. It really is that simple. It is the central axis of Christ’s Church. Rather than the Pope, as it has become for the Roman Church, it should be the “Presence”. This is what keeps Orthodoxy together, and so coherent - The local Church, gathered around the Eucharist, with one successor to the Apostles, the Bishop, and the council of presbyters united with the synaxis of the Faithful in prayer and thanksgiving to God, discerning the Body and receiving God’s saving grace. Without this Faith, and the canonical walls erected to protect the mystery of the Eucharist from misuse, there is no Orthodox Faith.
Faithfulness as the Root of Christian Civilization
We often forget that, with the remarkable discoveries and constant “scientific progress” that we have experienced in the last 100 years, that civilization does not thrive upon quickly changing conventions and the dismissal of traditions. Contrary to what so many Protestants believe, righteousness is not found in iconoclasm, breaking down the ancient landmarks, forgetting the ancient rhythms of worship, and the throwing out the manners and decorum of deference and respectability. No, God’s righteousness is found in all of these patterns, if they reinforce the Gospel’s continued unfolding throughout our culture’s symbols, relationships and interactions.
A conservative society that treasures the Scriptural texts, these outward symbols of God’s inter-permeating grace, these patterns of life, will be a society in which the Logos keeps residence and continues to propagate the Divine Will into the future for mankind’s salvation. We can see clearly that Christianity does not survive in contexts where it does not have a privileged, protected, cultivated position. The Assyrian Church of the East was once the largest Church in the world, but due to its subjugation by Islam during the terrors of Tamerlane, it now hovers on the brink of extinction, with its brilliant Christian poetry and distinct ancient culture muted by the violence of 1400 years of suppression. Without a Christian Sovereign to protect it and allow for its proper flourishing, the so-called “Symphonia” of the Byzantine legal ideal, the “Divine Right of Kings” that St. Charles I died for, there is no hope of Christianity preserving its birthright, its outward symbols, its icons of human identity. Just as Islam achieved in the past, and now Secularism attempts in the present, we must realize that this is the point. To extinguish God’s worshipping, covenanting, sacrificing people, the people that are called to be God’s body and restore and renew the world, is Satan’s last hope of triumph over our Creator.
A Way Forward in the Anglican Patrimony
Civilizations thrive when the foundations are strong, when, generation upon generation, line upon line, people have a strong sense of continuity, purpose, and the logos tying together the order of the cosmos with the functioning of society is allowed to shine. Christianity is the only foundation of rock upon which to build this kind of thriving culture. All other religions are shifting sand. Only in God’s greatness, His unlimited compassion, His abounding mercy, His righteous justice and loyal love is there room for human growth, for repentance, and for continued progression of our spiritual and physical lives towards the ideals which appear to us by the revelation of the Holy Spirit. When this course of “progress” is denied, when order is broken and dismissed as unimportant, and the traditions of hundreds of generations are seen as unreasonable oppression, chaos, despair, and a floating nihilism take their place. We are at such a point in our society, where tolerance has only become a value exercised towards those committed to destroying the Christian legacy of our culture, and is not extended to those with a true understanding of tolerance as compassion upon the sinner. Now to mention the word “sin” is the greatest sin of all. “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isa 5:20)
We need Christian authority, Christian law, and Christian civilization in order to truly function as a Church in protecting a true Gospel for the future. This is why we are commanded to pray “For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” (I Timothy 2:2) Only with Christian leaders may we be saved from extinction and live to preach the Gospel in another age. This is why a corporate, national religion is necessary, a reflection of the historical pattern of God’s Covenant between Himself and various people groups. This is why we believe that it is wrong for English-speaking Christians to convert to the national churches of other Patrimonies, abandoning our tradition of faithfulness to God, rather than restoring it to fullness of Orthodoxy. This is the unique calling of the Anglican Vicariate. This is also why it is supremely biblical and Christian to do as we saw at Prince Philip’s funeral yesterday, and say, “God Save the Queen!”
The Collect
ALMIGHTY God, who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an ensample of godly life; Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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