Latimer and Ridley - The Trouble with Tribes

 Thursday 16 October

Commemoration of Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, Reformation Martyrs, 1555
Readings: Romans 3.21–30; Luke 11.47–end

Romans 3.21–30

Now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.  For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.  He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

Then what becomes of boasting?  It is excluded.  By what law?  By that of works?  No, but by the law of faith.  For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.  Or is God the God of Jews only?  Is he not the God of Gentiles also?  Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.

Luke 11.47–end

Woe to you!  For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed.  So you are witnesses and approve of the deeds of your ancestors; for they killed them, and you build their tombs.  Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute’, so that this generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.  Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this generation.

Woe to you lawyers!  For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.  When he went outside, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be very hostile towards him and to cross-examine him about many things, lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say. 

Sermon

 It’s hard, sometimes, to make sense of the Reformation.  To the outsider, it can sound like a particularly messy parish meeting that got wildly out of hand.  Someone moved the candles, someone else objected to the vestments, and before you know it, bishops are being burned in Oxford.  There’s a moral somewhere in that, I think.

Today we remember Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, and Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester — two brave, exasperating, faithful men.  They were both brilliant scholars and passionate preachers.  And both were so absolutely certain that they were right, that they were willing to die for it.  Which they did, on a cold October morning in 1555, bound to a stake outside Balliol College.  “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley,” said Latimer, as the fire was lit, “for we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England as I trust shall never be put out.”  Stirring stuff.  And yet, a small part of me can’t help wondering whether God looked down from heaven that day and sighed: ‘Oh for goodness’ sake — not again.’

Because the thing is, our species has an almost bottomless appetite for tribal conflict, especially over ideas.  We form our tribes — theological, political, social — and we defend them as fiercely as any football hooligan.  The Reformation was, among other things, a clash of theological tribes.  On one side, Rome — with her centuries of accumulated tradition and authority.  On the other, Reformers who longed to strip faith back to the simplicity of Scripture and grace.  Both camps were full of conviction.  Both claimed the moral high ground.  And both, alas, were sometimes so busy defending their own purity that they forgot the point of the Gospel — which, as Paul reminds us today, is that ‘there is no distinction… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’

There’s the rub.  No distinction.  No special club.  No holy tribe that has the monopoly on God.  For Paul, writing to a church already divided between Jewish and Gentile factions, that was dynamite.  God’s grace, he insists, is poured out through Christ for all who believe.  No one can claim superiority.  No one can say, ‘My badge, my doctrine, my ritual makes me holier than you.’  The Reformation didn’t quite hear that bit.  Nor, I fear, do we.

Fast-forward five centuries, and the tribal drums are still beating.  In one corner, Christians, Jews, and Muslims — the monotheistic cousins, all convinced they worship the one true God, and yet somehow still managing to glare suspiciously at one another across the family table.  Each faith has its radicals and its reformers, its moderates and mystics.  And within each, there are internal squabbles that make the Reformation look almost polite.  Sunni and Shia.  Orthodox and Reform.  Evangelical and Catholic.  Human beings seem to have an infinite capacity for building fences inside the same field.

And then there’s the Anglican Communion — our own slightly eccentric extended family.  We’ve got provinces that bless same-sex couples and others that excommunicate them; dioceses that dance in the aisles and others that genuflect in Latin.  ‘Different integrities,’ we call them, which is a beautifully Anglican way of saying ‘we don’t agree, but we’d rather not fall out at the coffee morning.’  Yet underneath all that gentle language, there’s a real question about identity.  Which tribe do I belong to?  Evangelical?  Liberal?  Catholic?  Inclusive?  Conservative?  The labels multiply, and before long we’re back to shouting across the barricades.

The problem is that once we’ve found our tribe, it becomes part of who we are.  Our friends share our theology.  Our bookshelves reinforce our assumptions.  Our Twitter feeds are echo chambers of affirmation.  And to step outside that — to question our tribe, or worse, to move from one camp to another — feels like treason.  It’s not just a change of mind.  It’s a change of self.  And the cost can be enormous: ridicule, suspicion, even exile.  Few people have the courage for it.  Most of us prefer to stay safely where we are, grumbling about the other side.  It’s more comfortable that way.

Yet Christ, in today’s Gospel, has little patience for comfort.  He condemns those who build the tombs of the prophets — the grand memorials to those who challenged the status quo — while ignoring their message.  ‘You’re just like your ancestors,’ he says.  ‘They killed the prophets, and now you honour their graves.’  Latimer and Ridley were prophets of their age, challenging a church that had lost its way.  But let’s not fool ourselves.  If they turned up today, they’d probably annoy us just as much.  Prophets always do.  That’s their job.

And maybe that’s the heart of it.  True faith — whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Anglican — always involves the risk of stepping beyond the tribe.  It’s the courage to say, ‘Perhaps my people are wrong.’  Or, at least, ‘Perhaps there’s more truth to be found beyond my comfort zone.’  That’s terrifying, because it threatens our belonging.  But it’s also the only way grace ever gets a foothold.  Grace begins where the tribe ends — where we stop defending our purity and start admitting our humanity.

So perhaps that’s what Ridley and Latimer can still teach us.  Not to glorify their particular opinions, nor to romanticise their deaths, but to recognise their courage: the courage to think, to question, to act according to conscience, even when it cost them everything.  They weren’t perfect — no one is when the fire’s lit.  But they were brave enough to risk their place in the tribe for the sake of truth as they saw it.  And maybe that’s the candle Latimer spoke of — not the light of Protestantism over Popery, but the light of conscience over conformity, of grace over belonging, of truth over tribe.

In a world still fractured by creeds and causes, that candle needs trimming and lighting again.  And perhaps — just perhaps — the way we keep it burning is by daring to listen to one another, across our barricades and our doctrines, until we discover that the God we thought was ours alone has been quietly loving everyone all along.  Amen