Sacraments
The most mysterious part of the coronation of King Charles III was his anointing, hidden as it was behind panels. So, what happened as the choir sang Handel’s “Zadok the Priest”? The Archbishop of Canterbury used a spoon from the 12th century—the oldest piece of royal regalia used in the coronation, possibly dating back to the reign of Richard the Lionheart—to anoint the King’s hands, chest, and head with oil.
The anointing probably seemed strange to people who are not accustomed to such rituals in the church. As Episcopalians, we can understand it as a sacramental rite. Sacraments, the Catechism of The Book of Common Prayer tells us, “are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.” In a sacrament, a divine gift is given and received. We are made new.
The anointing then was the heart of the coronation, not the moment in which the crown was placed on Charles’ head. The crown symbolizes his role and authority. The anointing transforms him.
Dominic Green described it this way in a column published in The Wall Street Journal on May 12. “When Charles Windsor had breakfast on Saturday morning, he was a normal king with a busy day ahead. In the private communion of being anointed he was irreversibly changed. … Consecrated, this mild-mannered constitutional monarch emerged from the abbey as one of the world’s few priest-kings. Charles is the head of the state and its church. He symbolically fuses the secular and the spiritual.”
If you think this all sounds ridiculous, I understand. We in America long ago gave up on monarchy. Even the British no longer believe in the divine right of kings. But as Christians who practice our faith in the Anglican tradition, we take sacraments and sacramental rites seriously. And while Green and others connect the anointing of Charles to priesthood, I am most intrigued by the connection to baptism.
The oil used to anoint Charles, chrism, is the same oil with which we anoint the newly baptized. Immediately after the baptism the priest places a thumb in oil and then makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of the newly baptized saying, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” In baptism we claim nothing less than that we are transformed by the Holy Spirit, that we become something more than we were.
This Sunday, the Feast of Pentecost, Samuel will be baptized. He will be presented at the font as the child of Anna and David. After the baptism he will remain their child but will also be something more: Christ’s own forever. And in one of those wonderful paradoxes of our faith, Samuel will be connected to a man in England who was anointed with chrism a few weeks ago. For though on the one hand Charles was set apart in his coronation, on the other hand the anointing with chrism also reminds us that at heart he is the same as Samuel. A child of God, sealed by the Holy Spirit, marked as Christ’s own forever.