Weather permitting, the people of Great Britain and around the British Commonwealth will be spilling out into the streets this weekend to celebrate seventy years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. You don’t have to be a staunch royalist to appreciate all that she has done over the last seventy years and still continues to do at the age of ninety-six, still working when most of her subjects will have retired. The world was a very different place in 1952 when King George VI died, the government of the nation was dominated by men and taking on the monarchy of one of the most powerful nations in the world must have been daunting for a twenty seven year old mother of two small children, yet she stood up and changed the face of the monarchy. She promised to serve the people of the Commonwealth for the rest of her life and I can’t help but respect her, because unlike many in leadership roles, she has been good to her word, and even at times when it has felt that others were letting her down, I don’t think that we could have wanted a better figurehead and a better role model.
As people spill out onto the streets over these four days of celebrations, I am reminded of another occasion, many years ago when people took to the streets. As a nation, we go over the top celebrating Christmas, we chomp our way through grossly over priced chocolate eggs to celebrate Easter and in the twenty-first century we almost forget about Whitsuntide, or Pentecost, as the modern Church refers to it. When I was a lad, we had three key bank holidays in the year, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide. Life changed in 1967 (according to Google) when the Whit Monday Public Holiday became The Spring Bank Holiday and lost its association with Whitsuntide, which I have always thought to be a pity.
Whitsuntide commemorates the occasion when the disciples were gathered together for the Jewish festival of Pentecost (Shavuot) which was a thanksgiving for the first fruits of the harvest and it was while they were gathered there that the Holy Spirit came upon them and equipped them to do amazing things, like speaking to people from other nations in their own native tongues and people thought that they were drunk. Yet Peter, the fisherman from Galilee, the ordinary working man, got up and spoke eloquently to the crowds. Now you can use your own judgement on whether you believe the story or not, but we now know that little group of a dozen men, established the first Christian Church, which two thousand years later has a following of 2.38 billion people throughout the world, making it the largest religious group in the world amounting to around a third of the entire population! That’s pretty astounding in my opinion.
I am glad that on this weekend of celebrations, The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee collides with Pentecost, or Whitsuntide, as a nation we celebrate the amazing achievement of our monarch, and as a Christian faith we celebrate the amazing achievements of the Christian Church Let’s party and celebrate!
A Prayer from the Christian Church in Wales
Abundant God,
source of all blessings,
whose Son promised his disciples the gift of the Spirit of truth
to abide with his Church:
we thank you for the work of your Spirit
in the dedicated service offered by Elizabeth our Queen.
Empower her from on high to be a witness to your reign of justice and mercy
through our risen and ascended Lord, Jesus Christ,
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit
be all praise and honour,
now and for ever.
Amen.