There’s a scene in Episode 6 of the current season of The Crown that I can’t get out of my head. The Crown, being required viewing for Episcopalians, I am going to assume that you have watched it by now. If not, you probably know the backstory anyway.
The marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales is falling apart, and Princess Diana herself is struggling mightily. She finds herself unable to please her husband. She is caught in the awful binge-purge cycle of bulimia, which is taking its toll on her. All her self-doubt, and fear, and self-esteem issues, and anxiety are manifested as she wretches over the toilet bowl. She feels constantly bad about herself, and she’s desperate for affirmation, which is nearly impossible for her to find in the royal household. While the series takes much license, and must have invented a great many lines of dialogue, we already know that the contours of this particular part of the story are true, don’t we?
Diana goes to the Queen to seek help, comfort, and support in a time of great distress. What she gets in return is something less than what she went looking for. There they are in one of the grand rooms of Buckingham Palace, where Diana bares her soul. But before long, the Queen rings a little bell, and rises to bring their session to an end. Diana, in despair, still hopes to get from the Queen something that she needs.
“Don’t dismiss me, please,” she pleads. “Don’t push me away.”
From the Queen, there erupts a little response, “What?” she mutters.
And before the Queen knows what is happening, Diana closes in, opens her arms, and wraps them around the Queen’s shoulders, pulling the monarch into her embrace, as the young princess tries to establish this relationship on the level she needs, calling the Queen “Maman” as she embraces her mother-in-law, and tries to draw her close.
The camera shows us the view over the shoulder of the footman who entered at the sound of the bell. With Diana’s back to us, we can see the Queen extend her open hands out stiffly from her sides, without actually raising them. The gesture, which resembles a shrug more than anything, never gets close to being a hug, since her arms never manage to move toward Diana. The whole thing is profoundly awkward for the Queen, who clearly does not know what to do. The footman looks away. The hug lasts fifteen long seconds.
“That’s all I want,” says Diana, as she lets go of the Queen. “That’s all any of us want from you. Is it too much to ask?”
As I say, who knows if anything like this encounter ever took place, and if it did, if it was really anything like the way it’s depicted on the screen?
What struck me, is that the made for TV version of this story has the precise effect of confirming something unflattering about a person whom we want very much to like and admire (that is, the Queen), but which we strongly suspect to be true, even though we don’t want it to be. In fact, we have managed to like and admire the Queen through all of the previous three seasons of the Crown, and even through much of the fourth season - although cracks have been developing by time we reach this audience with Diana.
And I strongly suspect that the way we begin to feel about the Queen by this time in Season Four of The Crown (which is to say that we are starting to feel ambivalent about our heroine), is also the way many, many people feel about God, and perhaps for the same reasons.
You are all powerful, O God; you rule the heavens and the earth; you even rule the Queen; you can do anything. But time and time again we come to you in despair; we pour out our souls to you; you know all our secrets, and all our needs; we implore you to help us; and we fling our arms around you, wishing to be held in your grasp, in such a way that we could feel your arms hold us too, so we could know that you love us as much as we want to be loved by you. If we could just feel you there, knowing that you hold us tight, that you hear us when we call you, “Abba, Father, Papa.” This is all we want from you; it’s all we need. If we could get this from you, then we could get on with almost everything else; then we would know that we will be OK, because we would know that you are there for us when we fear that no one else and nothing else is there for us... then we would find a way to muddle through. Don’t dismiss us, please, O God! Don’t push us away. Just take your arms and wrap them around us, and pull as us close and as tight to you as we try to pull you close and tight to us…. But if we feel anything at all, it feels more like a shrug than a hug, as God refuses to give us what we want, what we think we need.
Anyone who’s ever prayed to God for help in lonely desperation knows what this encounter between Princess Diana and the Queen feels like - from Diana’s point of view. And it is close to unbearable. Is it really too much to ask? And does it confirm something unflattering about God, whom we want so much to love - that God is distant, cold, uninvolved, or doesn’t exist at all - things we fear might be true, even though we don’t want them to be, but which become hard to refute at those times when we need God most?
The Gospel reading today gives us a different mother-in-law. It’s early in Jesus’ ministry and in his friendship with his disciples. He arrives at Peter’s house and is told that Peter’s mother-in-law is in bed with a fever. St. Mark reports what happens next with efficient clarity: “He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.” He took her by the hand and lifter her up: then the fever left her.
Now, I don’t know anything about the Queen, but I know what it’s like to turn to God for help in lonely desperation. At such times, I don’t need everything to be fixed magically, but if I could only have a kind of hug that brought with it the assurance that God is with me, his arms around me, then I could muddle through. Is that too much to ask?
I know what it’s like to turn to God feeling that I am unable to please him or anyone I care about, or even myself, and to find myself in a fever of self-doubt, and fear, and anxiety. I know how, in the moment, it can feel like my prayer is met with stiff and absent refusal, more of a shrug than a hug, if anything at all.
But I also know something else. I know what it feels like to discover, as I look for strength, that as I walk away from my prayer to God, I find that I am taken by the hand and lifted up, and the fever leaves me. It does not happen in the way I wanted it to happen. There is no drama at all, and never the kind of physical reassurance that I thought I needed and that I know I wanted. But, without fail, the fever of crisis leaves me.
Mind you, in my case the fever is almost always self-induced, since, like most people, I am my own worst enemy. Whether born of pride, envy, gluttony, wrath, sloth greed, or lust (and, yes, I’m familiar with them all, aren’t you?). But of course for some of you, your worst enemy is actually cancer (your own or someone else’s), or dementia (your own or someone else’s), or depression (same), or abuse (just to name a few possibilities). But I think, (I hope, I pray) the same thing holds true no matter what the enemy is: Jesus comes to us, takes us by the hand and lifts us up, and the fever of sickness, anxiety, failure, and hopelessness leaves us, even though we thought that we would be caught in its grip for ever.
How do I know this? I know it, not because everything is magically made better, but because I find myself, having been temporarily incapacitated, able to serve again, just like Peter’s mother-in-law.
This is what I think happens:
It’s as though, having been confronted by Diana, who comes to her with all her need and failure, and fear, and flings herself desperately at the Queen. The monarch, who is not the type to solve things with a hug, instead instructs the footman to leave the room and close the door behind him.
The Queen steps back from the pleading princess, who slumps back into her chair, and the Queen looks down at her with a strong but not unkind face. The Queen draws a slow, deep breath, she sees that this child’s life is out of control and in real danger, and so now, she approaches.
The Queen will not speak: it is not her way. The Queen will not hug: it is not her way. But a look of mercy and pity crosses her face as she bends toward the crying princess and extends her royal hand. She lifts Diana’s chin, so that she can look into her tear-filled eyes. Then she reaches out that powerful hand and takes the princess’s hand in hers, and lifts her up, without so much as a word. And in the act of being lifted, the princess can feel strength flowing from the hand of the monarch into her own hand, down along her arm, through her chest, and into her tortured belly, down through her hips and into her legs and feet so that she finds herself standing, and doesn’t even know how.
The Queen has taken her only by the fingertips. She has not hauled the girl up by brute force, she has lifted her - the princess can see this now - by grace, and by a power that is familiar with weakness, and that knows how to handle a wounded soul with care. The whole thing might take no more than fifteen seconds, but when it has happened, Diana realizes that she has not been dismissed (as she feared she would be), she has not been pushed away. The Queen has come to her and lifted her up, and the fever has left her. And she is able to get up and go on serving, which she was always willing to do anyway.
Except that the Queen is Jesus; and the princess is me, or you, if you want it to be, if you need it to be. And it’s not a scene in a Netflix series; it’s the experience of throwing yourself on God’s mercy, and needing God to do something about the fever.
No one ever says that their favorite person in the Bible is Peter’s mother-in-law. No one ever aspires to be like her. But she’s exactly who we all want to be like, at some stage of our lives: the person to whom Jesus comes and takes by the hand and lifts up from despair and hopelessness. And it’s not magic, which is what we were kind of hoping for, even though we don’t believe in it. Rather, it’s faith that’s born of love, which is the only power that can bring true strength in the midst of real weakness.
And, no, it’s not too much to ask for. It’s precisely what Jesus came to do.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
7 February, 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
Olivia Colman as the Queen