Of Cabbages and Kings

While most in Britain are gripped with Royal Wedding Fever, Australians are not impressed. A quick glance through my friends' facebook statuses (stati?) reveals that most will not have the TV switched on tonight, with one friend commenting: "I could watch the royal wedding, but I think there's a real possibility that the paint on my walls might dry out a little more tonight, and I think I'd better keep my eyes on them just in case."

A couple of good friends are so unimpressed as to rant about the hullaboo on their blog, making some good points about the unique way that Australians show affection.

I confess I'm not too excited about the whole thing either, and was tempted to boycott watching the ceremony on principle, because, well, people get married all the time, and no other couples get their faces plastered on tea-towels, mugs, ashtrays and notepads (although I guess that's not really Will and Kate's doing). Speaking of paraphenalia, you should really check out these knitted dolls! Why wed if you can't enshrine yourselves in finger puppets for your grandchildren?

However, I am going to watch the wedding, largely because I want to see what they'll do to the ceremonial side of things, and because I want to hear what Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury will preach ....

Here's a couple of thoughts on the Royal Family, however.

Most Australians, I would hazard, dislike the idea of a monarchy, because we believe in equality, and in the benefits of a meritocracy. It's foreign, that a particularly family should be exalted, simply based on pedigree. I think I am like that too: I believe in total egalitarianism (how else can a poor, immigrant child gain an education and earn a living?) And yet, watching the wedding and thinking about Royalty has made me question, whether hierarchy holds a deep truth for us.

As a child I loved the Medieval period best, because of the kings and queens; the pomp and circumstance; the pagentry and chivalry of knights and battles.

And then I grew up. I learnt about the market economy, the class argument, and the horrendous plight of the peasantry - all of which is summed up hilariously in this Monty Python sketch.

Yet the idea of Kingship, and the ideal Rule of Christ Jesus, figures hugely in the theological imagination, and thus ought to dictate our understanding of the world from a Christian perspective. It's something I find at once moving, and yet supremely difficult to reconcile.

So here are my scattered thoughts:

As I say, something about the idea of Kingship needs to be felt with the imagination. You have to 'taste' the word King - which its attendant associations of battle, splendor, power and mercy. (Think of what you felt in the more moving parts of 'Braveheart' or reading about Aslan when you were a child).

Yet kingship in our modern day and age is paltry, trite and often embarrassing. The people who we call 'royal' fail our imaginations - they are hardly heroic, glorious figures. They do not inspire confidence, let alone fealty. We speculate that Will and Kate's marriage won't last the onslaught of the years; we laugh at Eugenie and Beatrice's fashion faux pas; and even the Queen, who's my favourite of the lot, is often represented as a stodgy, stoic figure, trying to do her diplomatic best with some idiotic family members.

So we abandon kingship and hierarchy, and hold onto democracy and equality. It's the 'least worst' option, and a way of protecting human beings, from Lord Acton's dictum, that absolute power will corrupt, absolutely. Of course, it would be most sensible and practical, to abolish the English Monarchy entirely, and for Australia to become a Republic. But what if, in acquiescing to political pragmatism and modern statecraft, we cut the one remaining, tangible thread to a larger reality about what it means to be human? What if the monarchy is the one remaining conduit, through which to channel the best and noblest sentiments and ideals of citizenship - "loyalty, the concecration of secular life, and hierarchical principle, splendor, ceremony and continuity"?

For, whatever idiotic persons within the royal family itself, and whatever kind of lunacy exists in Royalty Fever, the British Monarchy reminds us of that tingly feeling we had, when we once loved kings and queens. Something of the magic of hierarchical representation and the noble idea of giving one's unreservered allegiance to one entirely beautiful and deserving, lingers on. (And a ceremonial monarchy, together with a legal democracy like what Britain has, is, I think, the best way to hold onto both.)

CS Lewis writes, upon viewing Queen Elizabeth II's coronation ceremony on television, that the ceremony wasn't conducted with a sense of triumphalism, but an overwhelming sense of pathos. The young queen herself, then only 20 or so, seemed to be visibly moved by the sacramental side of things. Those watching, felt a sense of

awe - pity - pathos - mystery. The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be His vice-regent and high priest on earth, and yet feeling so inadequate.

He goes on to observe that it is as if God says, in my inexorable love for you, I raise you from dust, from mere animal creatures, to a level of reason, of apprehension, in order that you might have a relationship with me. You are crowned a little lower than angels, and upon your head I lay responsibilities, splendors, glories and dangers that are beyond your understanding.

One misses the whole point of a coronation, a royal wedding, the existence of the royal family, if we do not feel, that in some way, we have all been crowned, we have all been married, we are all princes and princesses, though in a way that is deeply tragic as well as splendid.

One misses the whole point of human royalty as well, if we cannot see that all human kings fail, and cannot exist but as a pointer to the Real King Jesus, and the real rule of a perfect human being - righteous, and full of self-giving grace.

Well, carry on, carry on.