Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee at St. Paul's: Archbishop of Canterbury's Speech

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2514/archbishops-sermon-at-st-pauls-for-national-service-of-thanksgiving

Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermon at Diamond Jubilee Service

Tuesday 5th June 2012

In his sermon for the National Service of Thanksgiving to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty The Queen at St Paul's Cathedral, the Archbishop paid tribute to the selfless dedication of Her Majesty who 'has shown a quality of joy in the happiness of others' throughout her reign.


The full text of the sermon is below:

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Sermon for
the National Service of Thanksgiving to celebrate
the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty The Queen

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Some words from St Paul: ‘Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.’

There will be other occasions to remember the splendour and the drama of the Coronation; today’s focus is different. What we remember is the simple statement of commitment made by a very young woman, away from home, suddenly and devastatingly bereaved, a statement that she would be there for those she governed, that she was dedicating herself to them.

‘Dedication’ is a word that has come to mean rather less than it used to. Those of us who belong to the same generation as Her Majesty’s older children will recall a sixties song about a ‘dedicated follower of fashion’ – as though to be ‘dedicated’ just meant to be very enthusiastic. But in the deep background of the word is the way it is used in classical and biblical language: in this context, to be ‘dedicated’ is to be absolutely removed from other uses, being completely available to God.

And so to be dedicated to the good of a community – in this case both a national and an international community – is to say, ‘I have no goals that are not the goals of this community; I have no well-being, no happiness, that is not the well-being of the community. What will make me content or happy is what makes for the good of this particular part of the human family.’

It is an ambitious, even an audacious thing to aim at. It is, of course, no more so than the ideals set before all Christians who try to model their lives on what St Paul says about life in the Body of Christ. That doesn’t make it any easier to grasp or to live out; but the way St Paul approaches it should help us see that we’re not being encouraged to develop a self-punishing attitude, relentlessly denying our own goals or our own flourishing for the sake of others. What’s put before us is a genuine embrace of those others, a willingness to be made happy by the well-being of our neighbours.
‘Outdo one another in showing honour’, says St Paul. Compete with each other only in the generous respect you show to one and all; because in learning that respect you will find delight in one another. You will begin to discover that the other person is a source of nourishment, excitement, pleasure, growth and challenge. And if we broaden this out to an entire community, a nation, a commonwealth, it means discovering that it is always in an ever-widening set of relations that we become properly ourselves. Dedication to the service of a community certainly involves that biblical sense of an absolute purge of selfish goals, but it is also the opening of a door into shared riches.

I don’t think it’s at all fanciful to say that, in all her public engagements, our Queen has shown a quality of joy in the happiness of others; she has responded with just the generosity St Paul speaks of in showing honour to countless local communities and individuals of every background and class and race. She has made her ‘public’ happy and all the signs are that she is herself happy, fulfilled and at home in these encounters. The same, of course, can manifestly be said of Prince Philip; and our prayers and thoughts are very much with him this morning. To declare a lifelong dedication is to take a huge risk, to embark on a costly venture. But it is also to respond to the promise of a vision that brings joy.

And perhaps that is the challenge that this Jubilee sets before us in nation and Commonwealth. St Paul implies that we should be so overwhelmed by the promise of a shared joy far greater than narrow individual fulfilment, that we find the strength to take the risks and make the sacrifices – even if this seems to reduce our individual hopes of secure enjoyment.

Moralists (archbishops included) can thunder away as much as they like; but they’ll make no difference unless and until people see that there is something transforming and exhilarating about the prospect of a whole community rejoicing together – being glad of each other’s happiness and safety. This alone is what will save us from the traps of ludicrous financial greed, of environmental recklessness, of collective fear of strangers and collective contempt for the unsuccessful and marginal – and many more things that we see far too much of, around us and within us.

One crucial aspect of discovering such a vision – and many still do discover it in their service of others, despite everything –is to have the stories and examples available that show it’s possible. Thank God, there are many wonderful instances lived out unobtrusively throughout the country and the Commonwealth. But we are marking today the anniversary of one historic and very public act of dedication – a dedication that has endured faithfully, calmly and generously through most of the adult lives of most of us here. We are marking six decades of living proof that public service is possible and that it is a place where happiness can be found. To seek one’s own good and one’s own well-being in the health of the community is sacrificially hard work – but it is this search that is truly natural to the human heart. That’s why it is not a matter of tight-lipped duty or grudging compliance with someone else’s demands. Jesus himself says ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me’, and that’s what is at the heart of real dedication.
This year has already seen a variety of Jubilee creations and projects. But its most lasting memorial would be the rebirth of an energetic, generous spirit of dedication to the common good and the public service, the rebirth of a recognition that we live less than human lives if we think just of our own individual good.
Listen again for a moment to St Paul. ‘We have gifts that differ according to the grace given us … the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness … Outdo one another in showing honour … extend hospitality to strangers … Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another … take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.’ Dedication to the health and well-being of a community is all this and more. May we be given the grace to rediscover this as we give thanks today for Her Majesty’s sixty years of utterly demanding yet deeply joyful service.

Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans: 60 Years of Her Majesty's Service

http://fcasa.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/the-people-give-thanks-for-her-majestys-60-years-of-service/

The people give thanks for Her Majesty’s 60 years of service

Despite our differences, Britain is united in its respect for Elizabeth II and the monarchy .

The Queen arrives for the Epsom Derby Photo: AP

By Telegraph View

It is very unusual for the whole of Britain to unite in celebration. Election victories and football matches are essentially divisive occasions in this country, where those who do not support the winning party or team are left out, and feel resentful at the other side’s swaggering celebrations. The most glorious aspect of the Jubilee celebrations is that no one – except perhaps the most dogmatic and dour republican – feels left out. Everyone can participate. And it seems likely that, over the next three days, just about everyone will.

The Queen’s capacity to unite her subjects in admiration and respect for her and for the achievements of her reign is remarkable. Britain is a far more diverse country than it was in 1952, when she came to the throne. The fissures between us are more obvious, and in some ways deeper and sharper, than they were 60 years ago. Britons no longer share a single common culture. In 1952, the nation was still emerging from the shadow of the Second World War. Some goods were still rationed. Most of us wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and shared the same religion and amusements. In the years since then, parts of our cities have been transformed in ways which, in 1952, would not have been recognised as “British” at all. While we all enjoy a much higher standard of living, the gap between rich and poor is larger than it was in 1952. And resentments over immigration have increased, largely because in 1952, there had been very little immigration.

And yet, despite our differences, we are united in our respect for Queen Elizabeth, and for the institution that she embodies. She is the head of the Church of England, but far from alienating those who are not Anglicans, or even Christians, her religious convictions seem to comfort them. It appears that Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs feel much more comfortable with a monarch who has faith, albeit not their own, than with a secular political figure.

The Queen’s religious convictions are, however, about the only thing that the populace knows about her, apart from her fondness for her family, for horses, and for corgis. Her ability to remain above politics has been exemplary, and astonishing. She never gives any hint of what she really thinks about any political issue – or any issue at all, come to that. It means that she is able to unite, rather than divide, the nation, for everyone recognises, and respects, her utter impartiality on political matters: this is essential if a constitutional monarchy is to survive in the modern age. A hereditary monarch as head of a democratic state is an anomaly. Few nation-builders would dream of starting a democracy from scratch along these lines. But the continued survival of the British monarchy – a result of historical accident, and of the success with which revolutionary and republican pressures were defused during the 19th and early 20th century – has turned out to be a tremendous boon for the country. It has given us a unity and, indeed, a stability which plenty of republics lack.

Many democracies wish that they were able to temper the fickleness of popular will with an institution as free from partisanship as our monarchy. Many of them envy us for having the Queen as our head of state. And when you consider not only the compromised figures who fill that office in some other countries, but also some of the likely candidates as our head of state if we were to dispense with the monarchy, you immediately understand why.

As our poll today shows, the Queen is immensely popular with her subjects in Britain. Most of us believe that we will always have the monarchy. One third of us thinks that she is our greatest ever monarch, which makes her more respected today even than Queen Victoria.


The Queen’s astonishing work-rate is part of the explanation for her popularity. She may have unique privileges, but she works very hard for them: on a typical day, she spends three hours going through her red boxes. She attends endless hours of receptions, parades and official dinners. She conducts herself with grace and dignity through all of them, which is incredible given how tedious the whole process must frequently be, and how she must long, on occasion, to be able to skip it all and relax on her own. She is 86, an age by which most people have long gone into retirement. But she shows little sign of diminishing her demanding schedule.
Elizabeth II has become so perfect a symbol of what we value about monarchy that it is difficult to disentangle support for her from support for the institution of monarchy. But support for the institution depends critically on the nature of the individual occupying the throne. Public opinion can turn quickly if something happens to make people feel that the monarch is in some way “out of touch” – which is what occurred in the aftermath of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. That brief outpouring of hostility to the Windsors was quickly overcome, and has now been almost forgotten. But it was a reminder that the true affection of the British people is not a given – and the Queen has never treated it as such. She has been very careful to ensure that the monarchy has been, to use the ghastly but accurate phrase, “modernised”. The extent to which members of her family are supported by British taxpayers has been diminished; her own expenses have been curtailed; and she herself now files a tax return and pays income tax – a necessary, if slightly absurd, concession to egalitarian sentiments.
But in this Jubilee year, none of that matters: the nation, and the entire Commonwealth, can simply celebrate one of the most glorious reigns in our history. We all have reason to be grateful that our Queen – and the office that she holds with such dignity – offers stability, comfort and continuity in an age of dizzying change. Her sense of public duty and her extraordinary diligence provide an inspiring example. These are blessings, and not to be taken for granted.