'Honour the King' - what we can learn from when the King came to church

Screenshot of King Charles III and Queen Camilla arriving at the service

This week Australia welcomed King Charles III and Queen Camilla on the King's first visit to Australia as Sovereign (although I believe it was actually his 17th visit all up).

Their first public engagement was to attend church at St Thomas' Anglican in North Sydney on Sunday morning.

As an Aussie, It was a blessing to be able to watch it online from our home on another continent. And you can also watch it here.

However, what I want to comment on was what St Thomas's Rector Micky Mantle said to his congregation, before the King and Queen arrived and the official service began. 

As an evangelical Anglican church it is not usual for the rectors, deans, etc to be robed, except for special occasions. So the Rector's son had asked his dad about the robes. It was not only good for a church pastor to give the explanation he did to his son, and to his church, but I also found his explanation to be said in a very helpful way. 

Biblical Balance to our 'honouring'

The issue the Rector wanted to make clear was about a biblical understanding and balance of how a Christian should honour the king but still stay faithful to Scripture, make sure we don't show partiality, and also make sure that no human being takes honour that is due to God.

This is a big topic that emerges often in our trainings as local folk grapple with the same issues, in relation to trying to make sure to give appropriate honour to people around us in a culture where honour giving is of utmost priority, but yet being careful not to give honour to people that should be given to God alone. Often the contexts are complicated and nuanced and do not have quick easy legalistic answers and various factors have to be weighed up. As Christians we are not called to be disrespectful to people because we give highest respect and honour to God.

So what should we do when the King of England, who is also the King of Australia comes to share in worship with you at your church? (or similar situations)

Here is what the rector said: 

'This is church. We are gathering before the King of Kings this morning as we do week by week, and we must not forget that….We will hear the Scriptures read. We will hear the Scriptures preached…we are continuing our series in Acts. That is the main thing this morning. 

But it is of course the case that we are welcoming guests, distinguished guests, and especially the King and the Queen….and as my son said 'why daddy are you going to be wearing different clothes?…and you might ask that question…there is the risk of course that one is guilty of James 2…to make a special fuss of a rich man….however the guests who are coming today and the guest in particular is not Elon Musk, not a mere rich man, but the king. And the Scriptures tell us 1 Peter 2: 'honour the king'; 1 Timothy: 'pray for kings'. So it is appropriate and right this morning that we do things a little differently in order to honour the king. We dress differently, why?...not because what we wear matters…but because those who are gathering with us who are not used to coming to church may think that if I turn up in shorts its disrespectful to our monarch and would bring disrepute upon the gospel of Jesus Christ. And therefore that's why we do these things differently this morning.'

I felt he did a good job at covering the issues and nuances involved in this context, but his comments are also useful to us all.

Five Factors to Guide our Biblical honouring

Here are a few factors that I think we can extract and apply from his explanations, which are significant and can also help us.

1. Perspective and Priority - he made clear to all that as Christians we belong to, and honour, the King of Kings above all, and before any earthly king. That reality needs to guide all our other actions.

2. Hierarchy and Equality - the parishioners and the King and Queen all worshipped together, singing together, praying together, hearing the Word together, but there is also right and appropriate honour to be given to earthly kings.

3. Honour of God-appointed Position rather than Personally-achieved Possessions - honour was given to the King because of how God views kings and how God says to honour kings as the leaders which He raises up and takes down in governance for our world. We honour and pray for the King not for his riches but for his role. This is different from giving preference to those who are wealthy over those who are poor simply because we want to be seen with them and 'acquire' any associated honour and prestige and favouritism and notoriety that we can gain from such links. 

4. Honour should still consider how others around us consider honour issues. In honouring people in a godly way, we need to consider the cultural contexts they are coming from and not give unnecessary offence and confusion when to give expected honour would not violate any of God's commands and His call on our lives as His children. We should not despise and totally ignore the honour-codes around us, but we need to still endeavour to show ourselves to others as 'honourable' as much as we can without sinning. And in the light of that, we should not unnecessarily give a wrong understanding of the gospel and our witness to who Christ is.

5. Our way must give way to a higher authority. There was a 'normal' way the folk at St Thomas' met together as the church each Sunday, but when the King came, everything had to be re-assessed in order to abide by the protocols surrounding the honour of the King. But how much more in our own lives do we need to be ever mindful that everything we do every day needs to be constantly re-assessed in order to check if what we are doing and how we are doing it and when we are doing it considers others and is in line with the honour of the King of Kings. 

Some of what can be learnt from this event and the Rector's comments, can also be applied to others to whom Scripture calls us to give honour to on this earth, such as parents, other society leaders, and even church leaders. It is very easy to err on either side of the 'ditch'. ~We can be so focussed on 'equality' that we fail to honour those God calls us to honour as we should. Or we can be so focussed on showing honour in culturally hierarchical ways, that we fail to honour God as we should as supreme and we elevate human honour too high. We also must not totally disregard others around us in our efforts to honour God and also not disregard God in our efforts to honour people.

Last of all, the Rector made another point that I didn't write out above, and that was how that although the church leaders had been working with the royal visit organisers for months, security was tight and the church members did not know what was going to happen yesterday when they arrived at church (or at least had been given minimal advance notice). So the Rector mentioned that its a bit like when the King of Kings returns He will come unexpectedly and we know not the day or the hour. We are called to live ready, as we don't know when that time will be. Let us be ever diligent to be living God-honouring lives so that He will find us faithful when He comes.