Working for one king; praying for another
Working for one king; praying for another
Sermon by Kenneth Padley
I Samuel 8.4-20; John 18.33-37
‘NOPE’ said the placard.
NOPE: N- O- P- and then a stylised E which, after a little thought, revealed itself to be a crown on its side.
NOPE. It was one of many banners on display across the United States of America on the 18th October, as millions joined protests of the ‘No Kings’ movement. The iconography of this campaign draws on the narrative of American independence and involves a light bashing of the former colonial power: No Kings since 1776. However, as the Dean observed this morning, the target of the No Kings movement is more contemporary. Pointedly noting that their October rallies drew 14 times more participants than Mr Trump’s two infamous inaugurations combined,[1] the protestors rail against what they see as the dictatorial use of presidential executive, for example in the imposition of tariffs without congressional approval and the extra-judicial killing of the pirates of the Caribbean.
The irony is that many of the 7 million No Kings protestors will today be in church, acknowledging and even worshipping a monarch. Whether they attend churches like this one which formally keeps the feast of Christ the King, or whether their congregation is of a freer tradition, in their own peculiar way, each will praise Jesus as Lord.
Christianity down the centuries has had an ambivalent relationship with earthly potentates – and a diverse understanding of what it means to talk about the rule of Christ. On the one hand, the Church has presented Apologies to monarchs for their faith – and then Apologised for monarchy in return for those kings’ support of Christian evangelisation. On the other hand, as tonight’s readings recount, the Church also recognises that the higher kingship of God holds a mirror to the flaws of all earthly governance.
We cannot let 2025 disappear without acknowledging a major anniversary that illustrates this tension. It is exactly 500 years since royal wishes were flagrantly breached by an unprecedented expression of Jesus’ kingship – the printing of the Bible in English.
It is often thought that Bibles in the vernacular (native languages) are a product of the Protestant Reformation. This is not the case. Prior to the Reformation there were many vernacular editions of the Scriptures in European languages, and these were increasingly circulating in print. England, however, was the exception. This is because the very first English Bibles, copied in manuscript from the late fourteenth century by the Lollards, followers of Oxford academic John Wycliffe, were associated with heresy. Under the terms of rules known as the Constitutions of Oxford (1408), anyone in England who wanted to own a copy of the scriptures in English needed the written permission of their bishop. Just imagine the bottleneck that would cause in our bishop’s office if such a rule still applied today!
The Constitutions of Oxford meant that, by 1525, England was behind the curve. But this was about to be blown apart by William Tyndale. Tyndale’s great contribution to my faith and yours, was to undertake the first translation of the Bible into English from the original languages and to arrange for publication of the same in an accessible print format.
Tyndale knew that he could not undertake this work in traditionalist England so, having sailed for Hamburg in 1524 and living hand-to-mouth, he began printing his New Testament in the autumn of 1525 in Cologne. Having been betrayed to the authorities, Tyndale fled up the Rhine to Worms where the first complete English New Testament rolled off the presses towards the end of February 1526. Copies began to arrive in England about a month later, much to the consternation of the English Church and royal authorities.[2]
The bogeyman of the piece – dare I say it – was a former Dean of Salisbury, one Cuthbert Tunstall. As Bishop of London, Tunstall began seizing Tyndale’s scriptures and burning them outside St Paul’s Cathedral. Foolishly, he even tried to buy up all new copies before they left the continent, monies which Tyndale of course just reinvested in more New Testaments.
Tyndale’s life was tragic. For the next decade he was persecuted across northern Europe. Eventually, he was arrested, and in early October 1536 was tied to a stake at Vilvoorde near Brussels, strangled, and burned to death. The woodcut of his execution by the Elizabethan Protestant propagandist John Foxe captures Tyndale’s last words in a speech bubble, ‘Lord, open the King of England’s eyes’.
Tyndale worked for one King and prayed for another: Lord, open the King of England’s eyes. Despite his ignominious end, within four years – miraculously – Tyndale’s prayer had been realised. King Henry VIII didn’t really become a Protestant. However, he did change his mind about vernacular Scriptures. He agreed to issue an English language Bible. The famous frontispiece of Henry’s Great Bible of 1540 shows the King liberally handing out copies of the Scriptures to the English bishops. The bishops in turn pass the Bibles on to the people, who gratefully respond by chanting in unison ‘vivat rex’, long live the King. Within a few swift years, the English Bible was therefore transformed from a threat to royal authority into a means of bolstering it.
The further irony – although it wasn’t admitted at the time – was that the translator who made the greatest contribution to the 1540 Great Bible was… William Tyndale. The authorities took his earlier translations from the 1520s and 30s and worked them into the new official Bible. In time, Henry’s Great Bible would become grandparent to the famous King James Bible of 1611. And the King James Bible, the Authorised Version, is the great-grandparent of the New Revised Standard Version which this cathedral and many churches use today. Thus, although Tyndale was castigated in his own lifetime and largely forgotten after his death, his commitment to the kingship of Christ continues to shape the faith of millions and has had a greater impact on English language culture even than William Shakespeare.
The story of William Tyndale reminds us that God’s kingship is problematic. In the crucible of that confrontation between Jesus and Pontius Pilate – representative of imperial rule – we see Christ’s kingship both exceed and overthrow all expectations. God in the Bible is called a despot – notably in Revelation 6.10 – yet God uses her power in astonishingly unpredictable ways. As William Vanstone once wrote of the crucifixion,
Thou art God; no monarch Thou
Thron’d in easy state to reign;
Thou art God, Whose arms of love
Aching, spent, the world sustain.
Writing in The Observer on Remembrance Sunday, the educationalist and historian Anthony Seldon surveyed our current political scene and commented that ‘bullies dominate’ ‘from east to west’.[3] Speaking into this worrying context, today’s festival is hardly a placard with a deposed crown at its feet. However, as William Tyndale knew, it is a reminder of where authority comes from and whose values it must serve.
[2] Daniell, David, Tyndale’s New Testament (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), viii-ix.
[3] https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/in-1945-we-said-never-again-yet-already-weve-forgotten