Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, Bishops and Martyrs
(1 Cor 3:5-17, Ps 142, John 15:20-16:1)

Collect
Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, that, like your servants Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, we may live in your fear, die in your favor, and rest in your peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw — each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done (1 Cor 3:12-13, ESV).

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Church calendar is replete with commemorations of martyrs. Today is no exception; on 16 October the Anglican Church honors two of its most noted martyrs, Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. Along with Archbishop Thomas Cranmer these three are known as the Oxford Martyrs for the place of their public execution.

Persecution and martyrdom have been the reality for the Church from its inception. As with the head, so with the body: just as Jesus was treated as a blasphemer by the Jews and an insurrectionist by the Romans and was unjustly executed, so too were his followers treated. Persecution is a recurring theme in the Acts of the Apostles: Peter and James called before the Jewish Council and threatened for healing and speaking in the name of Jesus; the Apostles beaten by the Council and ordered not to speak again in the name of Jesus; Stephen stoned by the Council for doing signs and wonders in the name of Jesus and for contending powerfully for Jesus against the Jews in synagogue debates; Christians throughout the region and even into Damascus seized and arrested by Saul of Tarsus; Paul and his companions beaten repeatedly in town after town, jailed in not a few, and finally executed by Roman officials. The Church has never shied away from persecution and martyrdom, but rather has embraced it as a grace, sometimes embracing it too readily, sometimes even seeking it out.

Persecution and martyrdom have remained constant from the beginning of the Church until now. But the nature and the context of it has changed throughout the years. In the first few decades of the Christian era the persecution came primarily from the Jewish authorities or was instigated by them and implemented by the civil power of Rome; that is what we see in Acts. But, after 70 A.D., with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, the Jews were no longer the primary antagonists against Christians. That dishonor fell to the Roman Empire. Christians were seen by Rome as a threat to the civic order — as what we might call today “unpatriotic” — because they refused their civic duty of emperor worship and by so doing they showed disloyalty to the empire. And, the Christian social ethic was so out of step with Rome — treating men, women, children, and slaves with equal human dignity; insisting upon sexual purity and the sanctity of marriage; eschewing abortion and infanticide; caring for the poor, the sick, the abandoned — so out of step with Rome that Christianity was viewed as disruptive to social order. And, as the empire declined and imploded, the powers that be needed a scapegoat; the Christians were conveniently at hand.

With Constantine, the nature of persecution changed yet again. Christianity, in rapid succession, went from being illegal and persecuted, to tolerated, to preferred, to official. Now, instead of the power of the government being arrayed against the Church, the Church had the power of the government behind it. Instead of being persecuted, the Church could now persecute those — both those inside and outside — who disagreed with its official doctrines: heretics, apostates, infidels. The Western Church — the Roman Catholic Church — crowned emperors and exercised authority over nations and peoples and accumulated vast holding of land and wealth; the Church ruled the Holy Roman Empire through its proxies and dealt harshly with those who fell afoul of it. Persecution became a politico-religious weapon used by the Church to ensure a type of orthodoxy and political fealty.

There are great dangers when the Church obtains this kind and scope of power, when the zeal of the Church is enforced by the power of the state, when the persuasive appeal of the Gospel is sublimated to the coercive demands of empire. This cautionary history raises very modern questions and concerns about Christians seeking to use the power of government to implement social agendas rather than the power of the Gospel to change hearts. Without going further down this path, suffice it to say that this is a matter for concerted prayer and discernment during our upcoming election. Is the Church putting its faith in political power or in the power of the Gospel?

This complex and — I think highly questionable — alliance between Church and State brings us to the martyrs the Anglican Church remembers this day: Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley (d. 16 October 1555). The English Reformation was a messy and bloody affair not least because of the relationship between Church and State, between the monarchy of England and the Church of England and the hostile and complex relationship of each of those with the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. And all of this was made more convoluted by Henry VIII’s dysfunctional marital and family dynamics, the resulting instability of his dynasty, and the struggle for power upon his death. Add to this the fact that within the Church of England there were diverse and contradictory opinions about which direction the Church itself should go: from nearly Catholic but without the Pope to more reformed than the Continental Reformers to antiseptic, anti-traditional Puritanism. And caught up in the whirlwind of all this were the ordinary worshipping folk of England who probably just wanted to be left alone to worship as they always had.

Throughout these tumultuous years the pendulum of power swung first one way and then another. Sometimes the traditionalists were ascendant, sometimes the Reformers, sometimes the Puritans, and sometimes even the Roman Catholics. Those who were not in power, were certainly in danger, perhaps never more so that when Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII, became Queen of England and Ireland. She was a staunch Roman Catholic and was determined to reverse and eradicate every vestige of the English Reformation and return the English Church to Rome. That put the leaders of the English Reformation in her crosshairs. In her five year reign she had more than two hundred eighty reformers in the Church of England burned at the stake, earning her the moniker “Bloody Mary.” It was only two years into her reign when she martyred Bishops Latimer and Ridley.

What were their offenses? Let’s leave aside the political answer to that question, not because it’s unimportant but because I’m not well versed enough in the political history of England to answer it. Let’s focus instead on the theological answer. On the Anglican spectrum from Reformed, those who embraced the Protestant faith and practice of Luther and Calvin, to Anglo-Catholic, those who tended toward the sacramental faith and practice of the Roman Catholic Church, both Latimer and Ridley were very far toward the Reformed end of that spectrum, that end which Mary sought to eradicate.

What were some of the major theological issues for Latimer and Ridley? Both men were charged with and convicted of denying the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, in other words, of denying the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation in which the bread ceases to bread and becomes instead the actual, physical body of Christ “hidden” under the appearance of bread. Instead, in the Oxford Disputations of 1554, Ridley wrote:

“The true Church doth acknowledge a Presence of Christ’s body in the Lord’s Supper to be communicated to the godly by grace…spiritually and by a sacramental signification, but not as a corporeal Presence of the body of his flesh.”

Latimer and Ridley maintained that Christ was spiritually — but not bodily — present to the godly as the bread was eaten. So, to these men, when Christ said in the words of institution, “This is my body,” he meant it only in a spiritual sense, but not in a corporeal, physical, sense. The bread does not cease to be bread, but becomes also the sacramental means by which the faithful feed spiritually on the body of Christ. The Anglican Articles of Religion say:

The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ’s death: insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.

The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith (BCP 2019, p. 783).

All of these distinctions are subtle. Both Anglicans and Roman Catholics agree that the Eucharist is a sacrament, a physical means by which God imparts spiritual grace. Both agree that the bread is more than bread and the wine is more than wine. Both agree that the Eucharist is a real participation in the Body and Blood of Christ. Latimer and Ridley were martyred because they would not specify the mechanism by which this is true; they would not affirm that the bread and wine cease to be what they were before the words of institution and become physically the body and blood of Christ afterwards. Would you be willing to be burned at the stake for that distinction? What doctrine is important enough for you to die?

In addition, Ridley, particularly, was an iconoclast, a destroyer of images. He would have been appalled and scandalized by our nave with its processional and altar crosses, its stained class windows, its icons. These weren’t matters of indifference to him, but matters of idolatry associated with the Roman Catholic Church. Most Anglicans today disagree with him. Certainly our use of these images has nothing to do with idolatry; they are beautiful and meaningful aids to worship but never objects of worship. We think — I certainly think — that Ridley was simply wrong, that he was over-reacting against all Roman practices. And yet, he was willing to die for that belief. Again, that raises the question: What doctrine is important enough for you to die?

Our appointed text for today from 1 Corinthians is for me both fitting and ironic. It has nothing directly to do with martyrdom, but it does relate to a final testing by fire, to the possibility of loss and to the hope for gain.

1 Corinthians 3:10–15 (ESV): 10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

St. Paul is not speaking here of the fire of martyrdom, but rather the fire of judgment, of the fiery test of one’s workmanship. Latimer and Ridley were willing to suffer the fire of martyrdom in the flesh so that they would not suffer loss in the fire of judgment on the last Day. This much is clear: everyone’s work will be tested and its quality revealed by fire. This much is opinion: one’s work may be tested here — as was Latimer’s and Ridley’s — or it will be tested in the day of judgment. The important thing either way is that one’s work is built on the foundation of Christ and that one builds to the best of one’s ability, using the best materials available: faith, hope, love — especially love, because St. Paul reminds us that while these three abide, the greatest is love.

As the fire was kindled around them, Ridley said to Latimer, very reminiscent of the three young men in the furnace, “Be of good heart, brother, for God will either assuage the fury of the flame, or else strengthen us to abide it.” A moment later, in response, Latimer said, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

Mary hoped to destroy them in her fire, but God was simply testing their work. It passed through the fire and it survives to this day, just as Latimer hoped. May their reward be great in heaven. Amen.