When I was a child, the buses that passed our house were red and the telephone vans were dark green. The trains that came through our local station were hauled by steam locomotives, and ambulances rang bells when they were rushing to an emergency. Our house was heated by coal fires, the “News Chronicle” was delivered each morning, we played records on the gramophone, and we listened to “The Archers” on the wireless every evening (we didn’t have a television as my parents thought it was a bit “common”). If we were away from our home and wanted to call someone, we had to find a phone box (and hope that we had 4d to put in the slot). Much of the world map was coloured pink, Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister and Queen Elizabeth was on the throne. Life seemed well-ordered, secure and fixed in stone.

The buses that run past my old house are still red (although they no longer have conductors), and “The Archers” are still broadcast by the BBC; but everything else has changed beyond belief: our Empire has been dismantled and heavily critiqued, Communism as an ideology is a spent force, the Space Age has come and gone (but seems to be making a comeback), we have built cities in the sky and demolished them. At different times we’ve been told that we’ve “never had it so good”, that we’re “all in it together”, that we’ve “taken back control” and that the “pound in our pocket” is still worth a pound – albeit a decimalised coin rather than a green note divided into shillings and pence. Britain has become a multiracial society in a way which few expected, and we are all connected to each other in an electronic world which wasn’t even the stuff of science fiction in the 1950s.

And now, of course, the constant that underpinned our national life for all that time is no longer with us. Seventy years was an extra-ordinarily long reign; and I am sure we all appreciate the continuity and stability that the Queen brought to a country which has changed so much since 1952. Fourteen Prime Ministers from Churchill to Johnson swore allegiance to her (I can’t really count Liz Truss) and one presumes that, despite holding herself above politics, she was able to offer them wise counsel; we know this was a task she took seriously.

We have often been reminded that the Queen’s motto was “duty” and we all recognise the tremendous dedication and integrity which she brought to her role. Being on public display whenever she went out must have been incredibly wearing, yet she never forgot that her ordinary day’s work was a special moment for everyone she met. We can also be thankful for the ways in which the Queen represented Britain all around the world (even without her late lamented Royal Yacht). Many people would say that Elizabeth was a model monarch.

The death of a king or queen and the accession of their successor offers us, with no disrespect, a good opportunity to think about the very institution of monarchy. And it’s no secret that there are many people, people who may well have respected and admired the late Queen as an individual, who feel it’s an anachronism in this day and age for a person to be Head of State simply because of the family they were born into rather than because of the qualities they can bring to the role. Many also believe that a nation’s citizens should be able to choose the person who will rule over them – and to get rid of them if they are not up to scratch! These aren’t, by the way, new thoughts: they were being fiercely debated way back in the 1600s when many folk espoused republicanism and eventually managed to depose and execute the King, setting up the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell – which of course turned out to be a disaster.

As Christians we’ll want our thoughts on monarchy to be guided by the Bible. And the Bible is in fact quite ambivalent on the matter. We know that the Hebrews, once comfortably settled in the Promised Land, felt that they couldn’t hold their head up among the surrounding nations unless they had a king, so they went to the prophet Samuel clamouring for one. It’s clear that God – so we are told – thought that this was a bad idea, for at least three reasons, which Samuel passed on to the people. One was that Israel would lose its most distinctive feature and become just like every other nation: that didn’t seem to bother Samuel’s listeners, but the whole point of their divine calling was that they should be different to everyone else. There was also the danger that a king might develop a taste for rich living and become a drain on the nation, with taxes being squandered on ritzy palaces and luxury food while the ordinary people remained in grinding poverty.

But, as far as Samuel was concerned, the most cogent reason for not having a king was that they didn’t need one, for God was their king. Wasn’t it he who’d led them out of Egypt into the Promised Land; and hadn’t he given them prophets and judges (some of them admittedly better than others) who would guide the nation and command its armies? That was all true; but, at the end of the day, what the people wanted was a flesh-and-blood ruler they could take pride in, rather than a God (however benevolent and almighty) sitting invisibly up in heaven. So God eventually gave in to their demands – and what they got was Saul, prone to mood-swings and instability. By that time, the were well and truly hoist with their own petard; while God, one might say, was now nursing his wounds after feeling decidedly snubbed.

That tale set the tone for the next six centuries of Jewish history, with its succession of good, bad and indifferent kings. Everyone who was at Holiday Bible Club knows how Samuel also chose Saul’s successor David, who grew up to be a flawed man but a great king. And he was followed by diplomats such as Solomon, men of faith such as Josiah and Hezekiah, but also cruel monsters such as Ahab – because that’s the mix you are bound to get when your rulers follow on automatically by succession. I suspect that few of us have resd through both books of Kings and Chronicles in the Bible, let alone the more obscure minor prophets. But it’s clear that, from its high point in Solomon’s reign, Israel entered into a sad economic, political and moral decline with occasional upswings which always proved temporary. I can imagine that our late Queen was very aware of the decline of the Christian consensus in Britain which seemed much more prevalent in 1952 than it does today – although we have hopefully gained an openness and breadth during the same period. Certainly we’ve lost our position in the world although that was inevitable as bigger powers such as America, the Soviet Union and now China took centre stage.

The kingly line of Israel has been broken more than once by the time of the New Testament. Herod’s family are only on the throne because they are friends of the Roman Empire; they are intolerably cruel, mere puppets of their overlords, not regarded as real Jews, and almost universally detested. Yet Jesus – unlike his cousin John the Baptist – never directly criticises the Herod (or the Caesar) of his day. Indeed when a coin is brought to him and he’s asked the question, “To whom should we give our taxes?” which is intended to trip him up, he tells his inquisitors that Roman taxes should be paid to Rome. It’s only later, when Jesus is brought before Pilate, that the issue of monarchy really comes to the fore. Pilate, uninterested in religious matters but frightened by Jewish claims that Jesus is seeking to lead a revolt, asks, “Are you the king of the Jews?”; to which Jesus replies, “My kingdom is not from this world”. When Pilate repeats his question, “So you are a king?” Jesus answers, “Well, that’s what you say – but what I was born for was to proclaim truth”. Pilate is totally mystified but, when the crowds chant, “Caesar is our king!”, he decides that the safest course of action is to have Jesus executed – with the sign on the cross which he refuses to remove, saying “The King of the Jews”.

So Jesus doesn’t challenge the idea of monarchy, even though a particularly nasty and hated king was reigning at the time. Nor does Paul, who doesn’t just tell the Roman Christians, living close to the seat of power, to obey the – pagan – worldly authorities but also exercises his right as a citizen to plead his innocence before Caesar. It was a little bit later that things began to go pear-shaped, when the Roman Emperors started claiming to be divine. That was something which Christians couldn’t stomach; by saying that their king was God alone they laid themselves open to persecution as enemies of the state.

Few if any kings today claim to be divine (although I must say that some of the language I’ve heard this week has troubled me, as some folk seem to have “gone over the top” in their worship of the Queen and spoken of her in almost religious terms). But it’s surely dangerous for any ruler to claim a

mandate from God for their actions. I’ve mentioned the agitation in 17^th century Britain; one of the main drivers of this was the fact that both James I and Charles I proclaimed the so-called “Divine Right of Kings”: the belief that God had put them in place and given them unassailable authority to rule. Yes, there was a Parliament at Westminster – called into play less and less frequently as time went on. But its role was a subsidiary one, to advise the King (if he’d listen) and to carry out his edicts. Both kings saw themselves as responsible to God first and foremost; while that might have led them to rule with humility and caution, it in fact led them to believe that all their actions were divinely-sanctioned and correct. Such a view might just have been acceptable before Magna Carta, or if the king was clearly a devout, moral and humble person; but by the 1640s it was seen as intolerable hypocrisy. When the Monarchy was restored under Charles II, it was with its wings severely clipped.

Most rulers wouldn’t claim that kind of mandate for their actions. We did see it when the Ayatollahs ruled in Iran and when the brutal advance of ISIS in Iraq seemed unstoppable; we see it today in the Taleban’s Afghanistan. It also seems to be a powerful motivation for Vladimir Putin. We may think of him as mad rather than as a man of faith, but he has cast himself as the true defender of Christians throughout the world, is very aware of his (and Russia’s) spiritual heritage, and uses the Western nations’ loss of faith as a club to knock them with. Of course there are other oppressive regimes in the world; but most of them don’t claim God’s backing for what they do.

I’m sure that the late Queen, for all her belief in the sacredness of her role (she took her anointing by the Archbishop of Canterbury very seriously) didn’t think like that; I’m sure that Charles won’t, either. But we may still have questions about Monarchy as an institution. Should the King be the head of a state Church? As a Nonconformist, I’d say, “No”; and of course he won’t be the head of any Church here in Wales. Would we agree that Britain is a far more complicated and diverse country – not least in the area of religion – than it was when Elizabeth came to the throne? Undoubtedly; and I for one would have preferred Charles to have kept on calling himself “Defender of Faith” rather than re-inserting the definite article. As he said in an interview in 2015, “I mind about the inclusion of other people’s faiths and their freedom to worship in this country” and, “the Church” (by which he meant the Church of England) “has a duty to protect the free practice of all faiths in this country”. That seems laudable.

The nation, the world and of course the Queen’s own family will be making their final farewell tomorrow. Only the most ardent republican will remain dry-eyed; I’m sure that the overwhelming majority of people in Britain are hugely thankful for our Queen’s long reign. She has been much more than a tourist attraction for envious foreigners; we understand that she has provided wise advice to a succession of Prime Ministers, while members of her family have promoted not just British business interests around the world but also those indefinable values which most of us cherish. Above all, and as so many have said, the Queen was just “there”, a fixed point in a world of change; that in itself has been of enormous value. She will be greatly missed.

All British Christians will, I’m sure, be praying for King Charles today. What kind of king he will be will slowly become clear over the next few months. Some people will like him as a person while rejecting the idea of monarchy; others will love the fact that Britain still has a king but be less than enthusiastic about him. And we Christians, whatever our personal views, must remember what Samuel pointed out over 3000 years ago; that we must go further, looking beyond our human King to God himself as our supreme Leader and Head. For Christ is the King above all kings, and the Lord over all the nations. Ultimately it is to him that we must declare our allegiance, and him that we serve.