Friday before the Baptism of the Lord; William Laud

5 Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 6 This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth. 7 There are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree. 9 If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son. 10 Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in Godc have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Praise the LORD!

12 Praise the LORD, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion!

13 For he strengthens the bars of your gates; he blesses your children within you.

Praise the LORD!

14 He grants peaceb within your borders; he fills you with the finest of wheat.

15 He sends out his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly.

Praise the LORD!

16 He gives snow like wool; he scatters frost like ashes.

17 He hurls down hail like crumbs—who can stand before his cold?

Praise the LORD!

18 He sends out his word, and melts them; he makes his wind blow, and the waters flow.

19 He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and ordinances to Israel.

Praise the LORD!

20 He has not dealt thus with any other nation; they do not know his ordinances.

Praise the LORD!

12 Once, when he was in one of the cities, there was a man covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” 13 Then Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “I do choose. Be made clean.” Immediately the leprosy left him. 14 And he ordered him to tell no one. “Go,” he said, “and show yourself to the priest, and, as Moses commanded, make an offering for your cleansing, for a testimony to them.” 15 But now more than ever the word about Jesus spread abroad; many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. 16 But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Today, we celebrate the feast of William Laud, who follows our own George Abbot in the lineage of archbishops. Bishop Laud was born in Reading in 1573, he was an academic, a fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, and chancellor of the university, and he was a priest, serving as archbishop of Canterbury under King Charles I from 1633 to 1645. He was the 6th Archbishop after the Elizabethan settlement, the settlement which marked the independence of the Church of England from Rome and which conferred on the monarch, the title of supreme govenor of the church. And he presided towards the end of the period during which the church was slowly beginning to realise that there would not be victor between the catholic and protestent arms of the church. In fact, Laud died only three years before the Treaties of Westphalia which ended the thirty year war in europe - a war which had killed 8 million people. This treaty marked the moment of exhaustion between the two cultures, catholic and protestant, and after it Christendom was permanently divided.

During this period of religious turbulence, it was the catholic expression within the church of England that both Laud and Charles I promoted. He was known as an anti-Puritan and his “thorough policy” of liturgical reform proved to be very unpopular with the rising Puritan power in Parliament, and it was violently resisted in Scotland. During his archbishopship, Laud became the target of a double attack. He had repressed Puritanism in religion and he had supported personal monarchy in politics. Laud was impeached in 1641, and after a four-year incarceration in the Tower of London, he was executed on Tower Hill whilst still in office as archbishop. This began the decade where the victorious puritans diseshtablished the Church of England - a time we might soon be able to relate to - and the church has no archbishop until William Juxon in 1660.

Hilaire Belloc describes Laud as having a most interesting personality. He was of the middle ranks of society, with no special advantages of birth, and gained public attention wholly through his own energy and character. That energy was intense and never failed him to the end; it was as great in his last days as in his first and it animated a very small body — for he was a very short man. His volume of work and correspondence was enormous, his power of attention to detail was equally great, and he followed a fixed clear policy with great chances of success, which was only defeated by the rise of a general rebellion against the English Royal Government.

Laud was the chief and leader of those who had come to sorrow the losses of the Reformation and the wounds which it had inflicted upon the church’s worship. He feared the rising Puritanical culture and had great sympathy with the use of images in worship. One of the counts in the indictment against him on which he was put to death was his having put up a statue of Our Lady and the Holy Child which stands above the main door of the University Church of Oxford. The statue had had its head shot off at the same time Laud’s was removed but has since been restored to its earthly grace, along with Laud’s to its heavenly grace. Laud and those like him, who were becoming numerous in the Established Church, not only felt a sentimental attraction towards the human externals of Catholic worship, but were also inclined to consider the fullness of Catholic doctrine in nearly all points. Often differing only in the authority of the Pope.

Laud’s career and its termination has created what may be called “The Legacy of Laud.” Politically that legacy came to nothing. The victory of the wealthier classes in England was so complete and the corresponding defeat of the monarchy so thorough that the very idea of government by a King or Queen died out by 1689 when Great Britain became merely a constitutional monarchy, leaving the monarch as a only figure of identity. Arguably from that day onwards England has been in substance governed by land and property owners and by the money dealers of London. But that’s a whole different topic, perhaps for beer & banter!

But, as we know, the legacy of Laud in ecclesiastical matters had more vitality. It fell very low during the eighteenth century, but it was revived before the end of that century and there now exists a Laudian spirit within the Church of England which even pushes for reunion with Rome, despite the church moving futher away from that union in recent times.

We here at St Nic’s have much to thank Laud for. He was a High Churchman who felt that the majesty of God should be reflected in the liturgy of the church. He pushed to make communion, rather than the sermon, the center of church worship - as dean of Gloucester, he moved the communion table to the east end of the church which symbolically says much about its centrality and its nature as sacrifice. During his career, he saw to it that many churches, even neglected village chapels, were repaired, beautified, and consecrated, aiming to make the beauty of transcendence available to all. He understood the importance of emodied worship, such as bowing at the mention of the name of Jesus. And he rigorously set about ensuring that the church’s ministers should practise what they preach.

What has stood out for you about the life of Laud? For me, it is the his image of mother and child left above the door of the university church of Oxford. That image says so much about what it means to be a part of the catholic tradition. It is relational; embodied; historical; sacrificial. How many people has that image silently spoken to over the centuries? What image can we leave for future generations? How do we speak to them of what we learnt and found to be vital in our earthly span?

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.