This is the text of a brief article in yesterday’s Yorkshire Post.
The death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II changes the world. Not just the world of politics, people and the business of life as we know it, but the world inside us in which she has been a constant presence for (in my case) the whole of my life.
Having served for more than seventy years on the throne, we have clearly come to the end of an era. And this will have an impact – in ways we cannot yet fully comprehend or anticipate – not only on the United Kingdom, but also on the Commonwealth and the wider world beyond it. The response of countries and national leaders around the globe has been remarkable: honour, generosity, friendship and compassion. The late Queen has rightly been admired, respected, revered and loved.
At the heart of this love is her total commitment to duty and service. The world has changed radically since she ascended the throne, but by her constancy and commitment she has helped people navigate the complexity of change with confidence.
However, her own confidence and constancy did not emerge from some vague notion of public service as an end in itself. She was deeply rooted in the Christian faith, not because she had to be (it goes with the job), but because she believed and openly spoke about her discipleship of Jesus Christ. She was unafraid of mortality and trusted in the God who creates, sustains and loves us. She was not immune from personal suffering, but she was drawn by Christian hope rather than driven by fear.
So, we pray for the repose of her soul. We also pray for her family – especially her eldest son King Charles III as he, like she seventy years ago, ascends the throne in circumstances of personal grief. For her family she was not only the monarch, but also a mother, grandmother, friend.
We pray also for the world she impacted so powerfully (and will continue to do as we build her memory and inherit her legacy) – a world of fragility, conflict, uncertainty and fear. Further potential change looms on the horizon of the Commonwealth whose glue has been the Queen. The qualities she exemplified in life are needed more now in her absence than ever before: wisdom, historical perspective, constancy, faithfulness, clear commitment to values rooted in something deeper than mere expediency.
Every time the late Queen read her Speech in the House of Lords at the beginning of a new session of Parliament, she sat faced by the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. All their work is done in the name of the monarch. But, the monarch reads the speech in the name of God while looking up to see statues of the barons of Magna Carta between the windows of the chamber. In other words, even the Queen was fully aware of her own accountability in the exercise of her own power and responsibility. It is this sense of accountability, not to an idea but to the person of God, that underpinned the late Queen’s commitment of body, mind and spirit to service.
We will hear much in coming days about legacy. The most powerful response to this, if we take it seriously, is to ask ourselves how we might learn from the witness and example of the the late Queen. We need then to understand why and how her faith drove her commitments and priorities. It was this commitment that allowed her to create wide space for everyone – of all faiths and none – to be free and to thrive.
As we reflect in the past, we now say: Long live the King. God save the King.
