Diocesan News03 Jun 12

Dean John Mann’s Address at Diamond Jubilee Service at St Anne’s Cathedral, Sunday 3 June 2012

The Dean of Belfast, The Very Revd John Mann, will give the address at a special service of Morning Prayer at St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast on Sunday 3rd June to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. In it, the Dean will say: ‘From that moment sixty years ago, through Christmas broadcasts and State occasions; changes in family, public image and all the adjustment to perpetually developing circumstances … Her Majesty has been consistently a gracious and constant part of our lives.’ He will continue: ‘The Queen reminds us of who we are, of what our values should be, where lies the path of duty, how, even in these extraordinary days of profit–driven, globalised industry and glaring, worldwide, social inequality, how wealth and prestige may be harnessed to better the lives of others and how she, in the hard daily grind, even in the mid–eighties of life, can demonstrate so tellingly, that duty is above the seeking of personal pleasure, and a life of service, lived even in the most privileged of circumstances, can be a mark of the sincere honouring of fellow human beings.’

The full text of the address is given below:

The Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
The scenes of the young Queen Elizabeth arriving at London Airport from East Africa on 7th February 1952, to be greeted by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and by Clement Attlee on the death of her father King George VI, are etched on the memory of many who, though not alive at the time, have experienced some part of Her Majesty’s sixty years as monarch. More than a year later, on 2nd June 1953, the Queen was crowned amidst the solemnity and rejoicing of a dignified ceremony in Westminster Abbey. Today, in London, the pageant of celebrating sixty years of the Queen’s reign will reach one of its climaxes in the sight and sound of hundreds of boats on the Thames – a flotilla assembled for celebration, to visually reflect an unusual event, in an unusual way.  Such spectacle – and the British excel at spectacle – will be followed on Tuesday by what is bound to be a splendid service in St Paul’s Cathedral, observing in worship, in music and in word, the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.  

In Belfast, more modestly, but no less warmly, we gather in this Cathedral in thanksgiving for those sixty years – years that have been spent in, amongst other things, teasing out the relationship of the people of Belfast, and indeed beyond, to someone whose interest in serving others is undiminished and whose love for, and sense of duty to, all of us is unsurpassed. The Queen’s visit to Dublin last year sought to build bridges and heal wounds which were both old and deep; this historic visit was one in which most people heartily rejoice, enabling us to pass and re–pass over the ground, apparently without seeing it. This is part of the magical effect of Her Majesty’s personality; maintaining a peculiarly caring presence with the untouchable distance of Royalty – a gift possessed of few, and still less for such a long time. Whilst compared with both her sixteenth century namesake and Queen Victoria, our present Queen has maintained the place of Monarchy in our society with the challenge, and consequent turmoil, of the social unrest presented so starkly and tragically through the years of conflict. As we emerge with the faltering steps of the bruised and the energetic forgetfulness of the young, we come to celebrate a milestone of some importance in our corporate life. Whatever else the past sixty years have brought about in the life of this City, every contact, every influence that remains, every consequential decision, has made us what we are, for good or ill. Such a tortuous way of reaching out to celebrate is as natural to Belfast life, as anything else in the complex nature of this City’s journey to unity, but reflects individual family life too; as any family seeks, through occasional division, as brother falls out with sister, or a mother with her child, to come together to find a unity that honours the spirit of real celebration, whilst feeling the pain of past and even present hurts. That for Belfast is happening within the resurgent confidence of the life of this City, that still retains Royalty as a core value in society, and the Queen as an honoured, indeed revered, figurehead, ever welcome among us.

Symbolic of a search for truth deep within us; within the heart of an individual or a community, in the place of Christian values, beliefs and common outlook, there is perhaps no better antecedent than the person of Nicodemus, the subject of our second lesson this morning. Many people believe that he came to Jesus by night because he feared to be seen doing so by others. I would not deny this probability, but let us consider for a moment the place of meeting between these two men as not only providing the safety of secrecy, but also the context for real dialogue. Nicodemus and Jesus were together in the kind of situation that encourages frankness of expression and effective listening.  Consider not only what is said, but how it is said, not only the darkness of the path, but the light shed upon it: there is respect from Nicodemus towards one whom he knows to be a special presence; a godly man within his experience, so he was ready to both question and listen, but from Jesus there is the care of the teacher who has before him one who, in his own way and in his own situation, is influential and himself heard with honour, but is missing a vital point that needs to underpin his teaching. They are together at night because of the fear of discovery that holds Nicodemus in anxiety, but they are meeting at a moment when mutual concern, unspoken and yet vital, is making the encounter alive with real engagement. What Nicodemus is looking for is truth; he is uneasy and needs to be reassured. Jesus provides him with what he requires in a way that is not necessarily giving him what he wants.

To a certain degree that is how all good encounters of mutual truth–seeking emerge to meet a new dawn: two people or groups of people seeking truth and learning what they need to hear, rather than what they want to hear; whilst at the same time speaking words from the heart that are listened to with concern and respect, and not rejected out of hand without reasonable debate.  

As we continue the search for truth deep within us (surely the spiritual and moral duty of our existence) as Christians apply their understanding of Scripture to the difficulties that face us, there is great reassurance in the message of Nicodemus and his night–time visit to Jesus in setting a context for our on–going debate. This is discussion on the edge, where the casual meeting over coffee as much as the formal gathering to consider actual progress in community agreement, takes place beyond the safety of one’s personal home ground. Moving to the edge – for Jesus to the night, the darkness, not his usual context for teaching; and for Nicodemus, stepping beyond the physical location of his place of teaching and work, and once again into the dark of night; there was brought about a situation where wisdom could be spoken and heard, as the search for truth was undertaken.

In all our dealings, as day succeeds day, we recognise that life is not lived forever on the mountaintop; that we spend time in valleys and in toiling up or down steep slopes.  The Queen has herself borne with these experiences, from the unexpected succession of her father, through the War years, to the period of recovery of which her accession to the throne was a not insignificant part.  From that moment sixty years ago, through Christmas broadcasts and State occasions; changes in family, public image and all the adjustment to perpetually developing circumstances, as Empire became Commonwealth, peoples and nations re–found their racial identity and as what might at one time have been seen as subjects, became a kind of huge extended family; through all these changes, Her Majesty has been consistently a gracious and constant part of our lives. Daily we pray for her in this Cathedral, regularly she or a member of her family delight us with a visit, occasionally the Queen reminds us of who we are, of what our values should be, where lies the path of duty, how, even in these extraordinary days of profit–driven, globalised industry and glaring, worldwide, social inequality, how wealth and prestige may be harnessed to better the lives of others and how she, in the hard daily grind, even in the mid–eighties of life, can demonstrate so tellingly, that duty is above the seeking of personal pleasure, and a life of service, lived even in the most privileged of circumstances, can be a mark of the sincere honouring of fellow human beings.  

In the quiet night–time of the waiting soul on Christ’s words of life, whether in the conscious search for truth with Nicodemus, or in the still wakefulness of a sleepless night, as the mind turns to the things that make for a true understanding of what God expects from us all, the new birth of what Jesus describes to this searching teacher of Israel, calls to consciousness the undeniable reality that such new birth is of God, is spiritual, at times that means accepting that the ways of God are not our ways, nor our thoughts his thoughts.  Such, I believe, from listening to the Queen, is the spiritual insight that she possesses in abundance; a devotion to God that is worked out in a self–offering to her people, a life of prayer that is steeped in the complete trust in the Christian path that she entered at baptism, a holy life acknowledged in Christ, that she strives to make her own. In all her achievements, she has never lost sight of her touchstone. That is above all what we honour today: sixty years of devotion to others, of service to the Country and Commonwealth, of care for her family and for those whose paths have crossed her own.  We wish her many years of peaceful reign before her and thank her for the sixty she has already served. May God be her blessing, her inspiration and her guide, this day and always.

 

Issued on behalf of the Dean of Belfast
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