Since the Queen died the word ‘duty’ has often been at the forefront of my thoughts.

As a young person I used to be a Girl Guide. I guess you could say I’m still a Girl Guide at heart because, even though it was well over 60 years ago, the tenets of Guiding are still with me. I still remember the Guide Law which we used to recite off by heart, “On my honour I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen, to help other people at all times and to obey the Guide Law”. Unfortunately, through increasing age and arthritis, I struggle now to stand to attention and get my fingers to form into the Guider's three fingered salute – and the uniform no longer fits! However, inside I am a Guide and being “dutiful” has dogged me all my life. Often it has driven me to take on tasks, like the office job here at UCANZ, which I would not have chosen to do without this sense of duty. However, duty has also led me to people and things I would have never discovered, things which have expanded my imagination and skills and given me a sense of fulfilment and joy.

Up until the Queen’s death, duty had almost become a dirty word. Duty carried with it a grey, dogged, ugly sound – it conjured up thoughts like dull, drudgery, discipline, determination. "Do your duty" sounded very Victorian. Doing your duty was not very appealing or glamorous, nor seemed to be very rewarding. It is not a word which has been popular in modern times particularly with ideas about power and leadership. Yet Queen Elizabeth II was acclaimed on her death as the monarch who committed her life to the duty of serving her people. She was proclaimed a woman of God, feted as an example to all who take up the challenges of leadership. Her popularity as a person and the love shown for her, even among non-royalists, was evident as millions mourned her passing. Maybe her death has signalled a change in how we now regard the importance of the duty of service. Through Queen Elizabeth, the virtue of duty has now become once again the ideal for those in positions of power.

Strangely, as sometimes happens when a word is floating around in your mind, other things crop up along the same lines. The lectionary readings, just after the Queen’s funeral, led us to Luke’s Gospel where Jesus says, while talking about faith and service to his disciples, “Servants don’t deserve special thanks for doing what they are supposed to do. And that’s how it should be with you. When you’ve done all you should, then say, ‘We are merely servants, and we have simply done our duty.’” (Luke 17. 9-10 CEV)

It seems then that doing our duty is not just for world leaders and for those in positions of power, but for all who follow Jesus. It is our duty to be servants of all. Duty too, thanks to Elizabeth, is no longer synonymous with drudgery and boredom, but has become a word fit for a Queen. Maybe someone will now bring me a marmalade sandwich as well!