1 Kings 3.5-10

Ephesians 3.14-21

 ‘Republicans are boring – just like atheists.  Being an atheist is like saying, “I think the world is round” – because who still believes in God?!’

The Times Columnist, Giles Coren, thinking aloud on his podcast last week about what to write on the subject of the Coronation.  Shouting about one’s republican or atheist tendencies is in his view deadly dull, because no-one really believes this stuff any more, but plenty of people will take the excuse of the Coronation to bang on about it.

I am a huge Giles Coren fan, for several reasons, one of which is that he is refreshingly unafraid to risk opprobrium by saying exactly what he thinks.  And not for the first time, I have found that his opinions chime with my own, though not entirely in the way he intended.  Because he is picking up on the fact that the undoubted lines of similarity between faith and monarchy, between heavenly and earthly kingship, are seen particularly clearly in these days when our attention is drawn to their intersection.  

But there is a paradox in how he argues this.  In saying that he finds both republicans and atheists ‘boring’, Coren is distancing himself from each of them, at the same time as suggesting that their views are self-evident.  It’s as if he really doesn’t want to be either a republican or an atheist, but he can’t see his way through to being anything else.

And I think that’s because – strangely for someone who is such an interesting thinker – he is stuck in a reductionist, rationalist mindset, which is hemming him in, and which will only allow him to write hilarious prose about something which he can’t quite fathom.  If he were to have another look at that intersection between faith and monarchy, he might see each of them  differently.

The former Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, veteran of many a royal occasion, was asked last week how one should watch the Coronation if one were feeling ambivalent about the whole thing.  The thing to do, he said, was not to be quick to judge, but to keep one’s ears open.  Because, he went on, a coronation is of course a spectacle.  But it is also a symbol, and a sacrament. 

On the surface, we see grand ceremonial and a splendid, vibrant occasion, replete with pageantry and grandeur.  And this has its own integrity and legitimacy, and is loved by many.  It gives us a sense of identity and national pride.  But this spectacle is also a symbol - something which points beyond itself.  Through the stuff of kingship – through vesture and the oil and the crown – we are led to ponder its qualities:  the authority, the service, the set-apartness, the dedication, the sacrifice.  And the richness of this symbolism draws us in yet further, to the discern the presence of the Holy Spirit through the sacramental anointing which lies at the heart of the ceremony. 

Seen this way, the Coronation is like a multi-dimensional compass.  As Solomon prays to the Lord in our first reading, he draws into his prayer the past, the present, and the future.  Taking on the transfer of power from his father David, and offering up his own perceived inadequacy, he recalls God’s past faithfulness, before asking for an understanding mind now, in order that he can govern well, in the future.  We saw just the same honouring of the past, and conferring of gifts in the present, sealed with the hope of future good, in yesterday’s act of public prayer.  And if we allow our eyes and ears to be open, this fulcrum of time allows us to perceive dimensions beyond our own everyday reality.

In the Letter to the Ephesians, we encounter the concept of comprehending something which surpasses knowledge.  We exist in a world of breadth and length and height and depth – of dimensions with which we are familiar – but our language runs out when we try to grasp the love of God in Christ for us.  It is only when we recognise the source of our strength that we can come to know that love, and so be ‘filled with all the fullness of God’.  This is not the kind of knowledge that tells us whether the earth is flat or round.  It is the comprehension of something beyond us: that mystery which pervades our space and time, which holds them in being, and which exists beyond them.  That mystery whose truth does not depend upon our ability to articulate it.

I think that is why some people are surprised by how moved they are at times like this.  It is because the spectacle and the symbolism and the sacrament cut through all the layers of reductionism and rationalism which our post-Enlightenment world throws at us, and suddenly they can taste and see that there is something beyond.  Something which, if we acknowledge it, will enable us to be filled with life.

In the coronation anthem, I was glad, which we have just heard, the thrilling ‘vivats’ in the middle, newly changed for our new King, literally mean, ‘May the King live’.  They are often translated as ‘Long live the King’, but the fullness of which they speak surely goes beyond mere duration of life.  Our prayer is that our new King will know the abundant life which our heavenly King brings us, and that as head of our Church and nation, he will bring to us an infectious faith – one which gives us, in the teeth of Giles Coren’s observations, the confidence and audacity to be both interesting and interested in knowing and sharing that life. 

So may the glory of these days lead us to the glory of him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.

Amen.