Honour the King
“Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honour the king.” 1 Peter 2.17
One of the advantages or disadvantages, depending on your point of view, of visiting America, is that you catch up on royal gossip. The USA may be a republic, but that doesn’t prevent millions of Americans from being obsessed with the British monarchy.
I found out more about Camilla Parker Bowles during a week in New York than I learned in five years in this royal deanery. Mind you, much of that information I guess, would be news to Camilla Parker Bowles as well.
Peter’s injunction in today’s epistle to ‘honour the king’ is part of an early Christian civil code. There were two problems about the first Christians’ approach to the state and society. Many of them tended to opt out, usually because they regarded the Lord’s return and the culmination of all things as just around the next corner.
So some stopped working altogether, which Paul addresses very bluntly in his letter to the Thessalonians - “if a man will not work, he shall not eat” (2 Thess 3.10) With an eye not only on church finances, but on the civil authorities, Paul says directly: “Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.” (2 Thess 3.12)
Combined with this attitude, was a tendency to see the occupying Roman government as the anti-Christ, the satanic Babylon. Even before any widespread state persecution, this was not an outlook that was going to give much of a future to the missionary enterprise of the Gospel.
Paul in Romans (13.1-7), 1 Timothy (2.1-3) and Titus (3.1-3, 8) and even Clement (1st letter, chs 59- 63) whose letters didn’t make it into the New Testament, all urge obedience and submission to the civil authorities.
With a high regard for the omnipotence and providence of God, they argue that pagan rulers are set on their thrones by God, and that maintaining the hierarchical structure of society is a Christian duty.
Furthermore, even by the end of the first century, when the church was beginning to wonder whether Christ would ever return again, there was also a subtext to the instructions: ‘as this wicked world is about to be destroyed, you might as well play along with it anyway’.
So what does it mean to ‘honour the king’? Peter spells it out in the earlier verses: “Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.” (13,14)
Does this mean that Lord Pilkington and the rest of her majesty’s loyal opposition should resign? (Some think they already have!) Does it mean we should be unquestioningly loyal to Tony as appointed by God? (Although left wondering, perhaps, as to who appointed Alastair Campbell...)
This morning I want us to reflect for a few minutes on monarchy, and in particular, monarchy as it is in the United Kingdom - we pray for the Queen at every mass here. And then to see how this may help us in our worship of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
The divisions at the root of the English Civil War are probably as much a part of the political and ecclesiastical landscape now as they were four hundred years ago. Although I would guess that republican sentiments have probably waned over the last 40 years. Let’s think about the monarchy from four different perspectives: scriptural, historical, mystical and emotional.
Scripturally, there is nothing prescriptive about forms of government in the Bible. In fact it is not a good text book for directing societal structures, although it does give excellent moral guidelines for those who govern. We all know that monarchy got off to a shaky start in the Old Testament in King Saul, with prophetic warnings about oppressive monarchs.
But once established, it became accepted by the prophets and royal language was adopted to describe the coming Messiah. Christ himself hardly mentions kingship, although he seems to adumbrate Paul and Peter’s stance in his memorable dictum - ‘ render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’.
At another level, the New Testament and Early Church both unashamedly use regal symbolism for underlining the majesty of the Risen Christ.
Historically, the world is full of monarchies and republics and those countries that have tried both. In practical, governing terms, presidential democracies seem no better than titular monarchies, and in the present day are arguably as expensive.
For us, it is a fact that monarchy is inextricably bound up in the history and heritage of the British peoples.
Totalitarian states have always tried to eradicate or re-write history, and good democracies know how important it is to learn from and be inspired by our history, without being bound by it. The monarchy gives us a strong sense of continuity, and politically can bring a long-term view and oversight denied to short-lived presidencies - the late Queen Elizabeth referred to George Carey as ‘my eighth Archbishop’.
But there is also, and more controversially, a mystical element to monarchy. Ian Bradley in his rather quirky but interesting book God Save the Queen (DLT 2002) “argues that the monarchy has a key role to play in the recovery of the metaphysical imagination and the revaluing of religion in contemporary Britain.”
Postmodernity is fascinated by the transcendence it implicitly denies. And monarchy and its trappings are designed to point to a transcendent Other. It is why the symbolism has been so exploited by Christian writers and the liturgical tradition.
So there is in the West a resurgence of interest in religion, symbol, ritual, mystery and magic, and even monarchy. And these can be features that redeem society from the secularisation and materialism that sprang out of the 1960s. Eighty percent of our population now claim allegiance to some faith community; seventy two percent to the Christian church.
Finally, there is what I have called an emotional or affective aspect to our relationship with the monarchy in Britain. As we grow older, it seems to anchor us into an historical time-line, and thereby give a sense of security.
There are inexplicable resonances between the royal family and our own sense of worth and ‘place in history’. Perhaps this is yet another reason why Diana’s funeral, or that of the Queen Mother, affected so many within the nation.
All the vox pop of the past few years bear this out. There appear to be patterns of human sociology which are instinctive, and which like so many paradoxical aspects of our faith, can be either destructive or constructive. This mythopoeic power of monarchy is exemplified in Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (with its more socialist overtones) or in the Legends of King Arthur.
There is often something coldly rational about presidential democracy which therefore always has a tendency to edge towards monarchy by any other name.
So in what ways does our understanding of how we should ‘honour the king’ within our own 21st century British context, reflect on how we honour our heavenly King? For Peter reminds us at the beginning of this passage that we are but aliens and strangers in this present world (11). Our true and eternal home is in the celestial court.
The answer is in the passage. Peter reminds us that our fealty to God and monarch, is demonstrated by right living, charitable action, and a contagious love and loyalty to one another within the household of the church.
It is the same old story of the patriarchs, prophets and Gospel writers. Right belief must lead to right action. There is no orthodoxy without orthopraxis.
If honouring the monarch means that we play a full and responsible part in our democratic society without compromising our personal freedom, then honouring Christ must mean that we are subject to his gentle rule, whose service is perfect freedom.
Or as Peter puts it in our epistle: “Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.”
And as servants of God, we follow Christ the servant King, in serving one another.
Albert Schweitzer once said: “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know, the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”
May we all be such.
“Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honour the king.” 1 Peter 2.17
