The Oft-Told Unknown and Unheeded Parable of the King in Disguise

For various reasons I haven't watched much of the Jubilee coverage but I did see this wonderful anecdote by a former close protection officer of the Queen, Richard Griffin, about a time when she went unrecognised by some American tourists near Balmoral. It made me laugh. He has clearly told this story on a previous occasion or two, understandably, but I hadn't read or heard it before.
But it also chimed with a story I told at our Jubilee service in Copelands on Thursday about "The King in Disguise". This was based on the ancient trope of monarchs/princes going out in disguise (like Henry V in the run up to Agincourt in the Shakespeare play, as pictured in a 2015 RSC production) to see what life is like for their people. This seemingly has happened in real life relatively recently BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Jordan's king of disguise. I told it together with the story of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 and Mother Teresa's description of the poor as Jesus in his "most distressing disguise."

Then yesterday, reflecting on the anointing of the Queen at her Coronation 69 years ago (does this mean we get another long bank holiday this time next year?) I asked Why was the Jesus and subsequently the church anointed with the Holy Spirit? What's the point of Pentecost?

And in the light of all that I wrote this prose-poem/parable.

The kingdom of God

and the church are like this:

There once was a king

who went missing.

He left his Palace

and donned a disguise

for three long years.

He had gone to live

among his people

in order to learn

what life was like for them.

He experienced first hand

the crushing poverty that

many of his subjects endured

day by day, together with

much kindness and cruelties

at the hands of others

who did not know who he was.

Eventually he returned to the Palace

and resumed his throne.

One of the first things he did

was set aside a group of people

to change how things were:

bringing good news to the poor.

So to this day that group

spends all their time and effort

retelling this story

again and again and again.

If you have ears to hear,

Listen.

Selah

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