St Peter’s Church News

ACOUPLE OF DAYS AGO (as I write) there was a bit of a kerfuffle in the press: Alex Salmond had suggested that the Scots ought to withhold the Stone of Scone from the coronation of King Charles III in May. Used for centuries in the coronation of Scottish monarchs, it’s also been placed under the coronation throne of all English monarchs for several hundred years too.

Details of the coronation in May continue to be released in bits and pieces – again as I write we still don’t even know the time it will start on Saturday 6 May. But we do know the throne which will be used, whether or not the Stone of Destiny (as it’s also known) is sitting in its usual compartment or whether the Leader of the Alba Party has got his way. The seat itself has its own august history – over seven hundred years of it.

Thrones are one of the most significant symbols of power we have – maybe from the days when seating for everyone was not provided, only the most important were allowed to take the load off their feet! Even cathedrals are named after the seat of the bishop which they house. Someone’s place, allocated seat, tells us a lot about them, whether it’s a throne or the place of honour at a banquet, or even the ownership of a ‘reserved’ parking space.

But the coronation is in May, and before that in April we mark the events of Good Friday and celebrate Easter. To compare, it’s interesting that in the New Testament, while the cross is never called a throne, it is clearly the place in which Jesus’ destiny is revealed and fulfilled, the place of honour and glory despite being a rough-hewn instrument of execution. Before we come to celebrate the coronation in May, the official commemoration of a new reign, we come first to mark again the beginning of a new era in human history, the realisation of the reign of a rescuing King - not on an ancient, august, throne, but on a rough and ready cross.