We have never awakened to a Coronation Day; no one has ever spoken over us the words of majesty and consecration that Elizabeth heard that day.  No one has ever prayed for us quite the way the Archbishop prayed for the new Queen … but … the Word of the Lord is full of  proclamations like this:

“I have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of my hand– I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth, and who say to Zion, ‘You are my people.’”  (Isaiah 51:16)

And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. (Ezekial 36:27)

And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  (Thessalonians 5:23)

No ruler, no priest, no hero ever received more or better than this!

Now the music of Handel’s “Zadok the Priest” took the participants and guests to another place, to that time on earth when kings and priests were anointed by God to the service of His people. “And all the people rejoiced . . . rejoiced, and all the people rejoiced!”  To her people’s, this was another day like those.

The Archbishop had invoked the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit, and now, when he had prayed over Her Majesty, Elizabeth rose from her knees and the voices of the choir rose, as from the top of a high mountain, as though filling the national valleys that remained following two World Wars and the death of two monarchs and the abdication of one, flooding the dry tributaries of despair and deprivation . . . in the eyes of her subjects, at home and around the world, God had given a Queen, and He was about to anoint her to her most high calling.

The volume was intense and the chorus began to echo into “Amens” as only Handel can do!  The trappings of Coronation bowed with the tide of those “Amens” to the austerity of anointing . . . Elizabeth removed her glittering diadem with her own hands.

The Lord Great Chamberlain did for Elizabeth that which every Lord Great Chamberlain before him had done and assisted in the removal of the Royal Robe as it was folded in perfect symmetry by the Maids of honor; the precious Collar of the Garter and all its symbolic protection was removed, and the glimmering Coronation Gown was covered by a nun-like garment, plain and white, special and superb only in its design and Elizabeth’s delicate figure.

At last Elizabeth was seated on the Chair of King Edward, not yet enthroned but sitting where monarchs had sat for a thousand years for the same purpose, the Anointing. The Garter King of Arms summoned the four knights of the order who took the silver staves of the cloth of gold canopy and bore it over her, the twenty-five year old Queen.  Suddenly, she was gone, invisible to all but a very few.  One who was able to see her face thought she looked more withdrawn from earthly things than even the canopy could make her.  The cameras were turned off.

The “Coronation” might well be called “the Anointing.”  It is the Anointing that supports the crown.  Unadorned, “uncovered,” Elizabeth was sanctified to her Majesty.

“Be thy Hands anointed with holy Oil.  Be thy Breast anointed with holy Oil. Be thy Head anointed with holy Oil., as kings, priests and prophets were anointed.  And as Solomon as anointed king by Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet, so be thou anointed, blessed and consecrated Queen over the Peoples whom the Lord thy God hath given thee to rule and govern.”  

         There was nothing given to Her Majesty that is not ours in Christ Jesus.  We lift up holy hands; He lives within our Breast; we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16.)  We reign in love and watchful prayer over those given to us by God.

From the beak of the tiny Ampula, drops of anointing oil fell into the Spoon.  This, the Ampula, was a tiny golden vessel, in the shape of an eagle, its Spoon believed to be one of the only relics to have survived Cromwell’s purge of all things royal.  Alone with the Archbishop, alone before the Lord, Elizabeth was anointed, blessed, and consecrated to rule and govern under God – exactly as have been our service, our love, and our wisdom in Christ Jesus.  The Anointing was the reason for it all; Elizabeth was anointed to be crowned.

If Members of Parliament forget the people in their struggles for power and position, she would not.  They might strive for position; she was anointed in it.  If the whole world collapsed in a heap, Great Britain would still have a Queen whom God had given.  This, as best an outsider can relate, was the joy and hope and exaltation in the Realm and Commonwealth that day.

The Anointing

Rotherham Web