On Crowns, on Kings, and on the Oil of Mercy

 Sermon. 07/05/2023.

Weekend of the Coronation of King Charles III

·        Isaiah 40:12-17, 25-end

·        Luke 22:24-30

 

And here we are, in our Coronation weekend.

A rare event.

I am tempted to say that few of us expect to experience more than two Coronations, but realise that is not something we’d want to dwell on, for it takes us into the territory of reflecting on the longevity of lives.

But still: a rare event indeed.

A moment of great solemnity.

A moment of great meaning.

A moment of great celebration.

A moment of great reflection.

A moment of great prayer.

A moment of great thanksgiving.

We have so much to ponder.

The nature of our nation.

The nature of our Church.

The nature of our constitution.

The nature of power and authority.

The nature of ritual.

The nature of gathering, gathering as a country,

and as a village (and a group of villages), and as a congregation.

So! No pressure on your preacher, then!

 

In truth, the pressures come from more than one place.

One of the pressures is what the Bible has to say,

to say about crowns and about Kings.
This is something we will surely want to face.

It is not the easiest of teachings.

First, in the Bible, people are crowned,

but the people who are crowned tend to be high priests,

not monarchs [e.g. Zech 6:11].

More problematically still, what the Bible says about kings is… ambiguous.

Kings are permitted in Israel.

That much we can say.

But it is harder to say that God wills there to be kings.

The initiative comes from the people.

And their motives are mixed.

One strand sees it as a loss of faith in God.

To oversimplify, it can seem that God’s own will was for a theocracy,

for rule by God as Sovereign,

with power dispersed

among priests and prophets and chieftains and judges and others.

The centralisation of power in the figure of a King

can be seen as putting a human in God’s own place.

And another thing that is best named:

the Bible is clear that monarchy has to do with military might:

the people want a king to lead them into battle [1 Sam 8:20].

For completeness’s sake, I had better add

that the actual history of the kings in Israel is not a happy story.

After Saul and David and Solomon,

the United Kingdom splits, splits into Northern Israel and Southern Judah,

and their kings mostly fail to trust in God,

and that is recorded with candour in the Bible.

 

What, then, is your manifoldly pressurised preacher to do?

I will do what I very rarely do, and give a three-point sermon.

 

First, let us take all the comfort we can from today’s first reading from Isaiah.

Saying nothing about earthly kings,

it speaks of God’s sovereignty, as Creator of all and guide of all.

“Lift up your eyes on high and see:

Who created these?

[God] who brings out their host and numbers them,

calling them all by name;

because he is great in strength

mighty in power,

not one is missing.”

God created – and creates –

this vast and majestic and complex and beautiful universe,

and it is fitting for us to remember this, with all reverence and with all awe.

But the passage tells us more,

tells us something that may surprise or even shock us.

It says that such is God’s majesty

that it exceeds any human idea of majesty.

This is majesty of such scale and scope

that it cares not only for the most distant star,

but also for every human being.

For King. For Queen. For subject. For you.

God is not too busy or too big to care for you, to pay attention to you,

to meet you at the point of your need.

“He gives power to the faint,

and strengthens the powerless.”

That God cares for and loves persons (King, Queen, subject, you) is a truth proclaimed in the heart of the Old Testament.

This is who the Sovereign Creator God is.

My first point.

 

My second point. From our Gospel reading.

Again saying nothing (or not much) of earthly kings,

Jesus himself tells us plainly that

he is among us as one who serves.

Truly King of kings, he claims none of the pomp or splendour of royalty.

He serves us, that we may serve others.

It’s not something I need expound or explain further.

I will emulate our Archbishop,

for surely this was the import of his sermon yesterday.

He made the point; he did not dwell on the point.

It is not a complicated doctrine.

It is an invitation. It is a call.

One thing all of us can take from this weekend is a renewed will 

to commit to serve others, and thereby be serving God.

My second point.

 

My third point. Here I will focus on the Coronation – at last, you may say.

But not to the crown or the crowning,

nor to the throne or the enthronement,

but, yes, to the anointing.

They called it the most sacred moment,

though of course the service was a eucharist,

and the sacrament holds that place.

The commentators also said that it was

so sacred that we didn’t get to see it.

It was a personal moment between a human person and Personal God.

This does not make it magic, of course.

It makes it sacred, because here is something which does go back to the Bible, and to the kings of the Bible.

They were not (we think) crowned, but they were anointed.

One thing we know:

Zadok the priest and Nathan the Prophet anointed Solomon king. 

Anointed with oil.

 

Not only kings were anointed.

Priests were anointed.

Sometimes prophets were anointed.

What is more, you are anointed.

The word “Christ” comes from the Greek, Christos.

The word “Messiah” comes from the Hebrew Mashiach.

And both simply mean “anointed”, “the Anointed One”.

And – a point we may not stress enough –

to be baptised is to be another Christ.

It is to share in the anointing of the Anointed One, Jesus Christ.

And at baptism, and at other points in life, we can be literally anointed, anointed with oil, with finest sweetest, olive oil.

 

The Greek for olive oil is elaion, from elaia, olive tree.

And there is a school of thought

– linguists do not necessarily agree that it is accurate,

but it is a school of thought which is ancient –

and this school of thought says that

the word elaion is related to the words for mercy,

the noun eleos and the verb eleeo.

Elaia, elaion, eleos, eleeo.

You can see why people made the connection.

The underlying idea is that olive oil is a mercy in the form of medicine:

it is the healing balm, used to bind up wounds.

And in the ancient world olive oil was also the primary way of making light: before electricity, and before even wax, lamps had oil in them.

So oil is also the mercy of illumination, of brightness itself.

 

These themes and more are present when we pray

“Lord, have mercy” (as we already have).

Lord, have mercy – in Greek, Kyrie eleison.

Eleison – that verb again – it comes from eleeo.

Lord, have mercy. Kyrie eleison.

You see, then, that “Lord, have mercy” is a rich prayer.

It is broad and it is deep.

It includes forgiveness, for sure, but it goes beyond that.

It doesn’t just mean “Lord, forgive me my sins”.

It means:

“Lord, give me the healing balm I sorely need;

heal me in the ways I need to be healed;

illumine and enlighten me in the ways I need;

be light and be medicine and be nourishment to me;

feed me.”

Kyrie eleison.

My third point.

 

Now you know as do I that many a three-point goes on beyond the third point.

There is often what we might call, if we are being kind, a coda.

Well, this sermon will be in that tradition.

I will finish by commending to you a prayer, t

he Jesus Prayer, loved and prayed in Orthodoxy especially,

and held to have spiritual power and healing, when sincerely prayed over time.

There are different versions. But the one I want to bring today says:

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.”

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.”

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.”

 

I invite you to try out this prayer for size, taking “have mercy” in the fullest sense.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, give each one of us your healing balm.”

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, anoint each one of us”,

just as you anoint prophets,

and priests,

and kings.

Amen.