A postcard for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost 09/11/22.
There have been a handful of moments in my life where I knew in the moment that I was living through a major historical event. The Fall of the Berlin Wall. 9/11. And now the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8, 2022. I have never known a world without a Queen of England, and that stands true for a lot of folks.
As the Queen, Elizabeth was the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and this role goes back to England’s Reformation period in the 1500. The role presently is more ceremonial, but the British monarch has a role to play in the life of the Church of England and the larger Anglican Communion. Rowan Williams, a former archbishop of Canterbury, reflected on the Queen Elizabeth’s life, writing:
A servant of God, without doubt; a generous, courageous, patient, and prayerful person. And not least, someone whose living-out of her role kept alive the question of how increasingly secular societies find any kind of durable unity in the absence of the great common symbols of grace, in the absence of that “canopy” that offers us an identity larger than our own tribe and interest group and holds us in a kinship we haven’t had to invent for ourselves.
You can read the complete reflection here.
Embed from Getty ImagesQueen Elizabeth II was a lover of corgis, so some of my favorite photos are of her with her dogs.
A sermon for the Episcopal Church of the Messiah, Heflin, Alabama, on the 14th Sunday after Pentecost, 09/11/22:
Principal text: Luke 15:1-10
Coming next
- September 18 – St. Paul’s Greensboro —15th Sunday after Pentecost
- September 25 – Messiah, Heflin — 16th Sunday after Pentecost
- October 2 – St. Barnabas, Roanoke — 17th Sunday after Pentecost
- October 9 – Messiah, Heflin — 18th Sunday after Pentecost
Kelley Hudlow 