A processional route had been marked off, swept and scrubbed clean, and like all the rest of the city, as lavishly decorated as the devastated post-war economy could afford.
Elizabeth rode to her coronation in the four-ton Gold State Coach with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, seated beside her. She had loved him from a girl of thirteen, married him at age twenty-one, but she had not imagined that this day would come the way it did or as quickly as it came. Born third in line to the throne, that ranking was expected to shift downward with every child born to her Uncle David, who became King Edward VIII. Edward, however, was involved with a married woman, and he misjudged the allowances that the government would make for a popular, but playboy, monarch. His abdication thrust her father into the reigning role he had not sought and Elizabeth, with Edward’s signature upon a page, became the Heir Apparent.
On the morning to which we look, Elizabeth was wearing a beautiful Norman Hartnell gown, embroidered from bodice to toe with seed pearl, and threads of gold, silver, and iridescent silk. The dress shimmered like a fabric diamond, white at first appearance, then golden, and then brilliant pastel images emerging all over it, the symbols of her peoples. Tudor roses encircled the hem, the Irish shamrock, the Scottish thistle and Canadian maple leaf were represented, and more, including the Australian wattle and the lotus blossom of India and Ceylon. Like the priests of old, she “wore” her dominions, her peoples, to her crowning, attended by six ladies in silver-white gowns bearing her twenty-food velvet train.
We are poised to spend the next thirty days in a survey of what all this royal splendor means to us. We know that we are called to walk humbly with our God, and that there are warnings for us, that we must not lift ourselves up to heights that leave Jesus behind! We take the lower place, we choose the foot of the table, but there is no height higher than the promise that those who do are given power to become “the sons of God.” (John 1:12) We must not let humility be false in us … there is a height where Jesus reigns, and we are at home there. Nothing on earth or in heaven can compare with the glory that will be seen when Jesus is revealed in His Majesty, and His Bride will be upon His Arm. We can imagine that all the glittering crowns and golden robes and jeweled swords of earth will be as dime store toys on that day. There is a preparation, a time of getting ready. Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation can help us with that.
Ornate it certainly was, really beyond description, but Jesus spoke to us of the clothing of the people of God. He said that King Solomon in his splendor was not clothed as beautifully as the lilies of the field (Matthew 6:27-30,) and then He made a comparison that we may take to heart: we are clothed by God! We are clothed by God! Radiance is one of the Father’s specialties: not only the sun lighting the day, but the way it shines through the veins of leaves and flower petals and on the eyelashes of a sleeping infant … things shine and sparkle on the earth, even in the night sky. Mr. Hartnell’s gown was even more breath-taking and pretty than it was iconic and symbolic, but the righteousness we wear, the radiance of the Lord that is ours, is more lovely by far.
In the newsreel footage of the Coronation, Elizabeth walks like a star, everything about her shining and luminous. Even so, she knows herself that the image of Christ in the man or woman of true faith shines brighter.
Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. (Psalm 34:5, NIV)
photo, Wikipedia
Normal Hartnell’s Coronation Gown
Cor Unum Abbey 