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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
October 16, 2024
Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer
Reading: John 15:18-20
‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, “Servants are not greater than their master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also.
Meditation by Jeremy O’Neill
There is a certain nostalgia connected with today’s Christianity. It is related to the reality that church is not the cultural force that it once was, and there are various attempts to try and reclaim some of that cultural and social prominence. This comes with a false assumption that the church has always held a certain privileged status in western culture and it must continue to uphold that to continue to do its work effectively.
I find stories like those of Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer to be helpful in contextualizing the church and fascinating in terms of examining the often discussed but frequently misunderstood distinction between “the church” and “the world.” All three were burned in Oxford for their refusal to renounce Protestantism after Queen Mary had commanded that the Church of England return to its adherence to Roman Catholic authority.
It is important to remember that there was a time only 500 years ago (a brief period when placed in the context of the 2000 plus years of Christianity) where you could get burned in public at the top university in the world for your religious convictions. In some ways that still happens, albeit not in as medieval a fashion as burning at the stake, but it doesn’t really happen to Christians much anymore. Religion more broadly continues to be a source of violence and oppression, as well as an antidote to it.
The passage from John examines this distinction ecclesiastical autonomy and the pressures put on Christians by the broader world. The claim that “the world hates you” is a striking on, but I do think it serves as an important call to examine that in which we place our trust, loyalty, and faith. It can be tempting to get wrapped up in making everything perfect or ourselves here and making our worldly existence as comfortable as possible. Intimacy with God, however, is both a longer lasting as well as a trickier thing to accomplish and prepare for.
We have spent a lot of time this year talking about conversation, and I would apply that lens to a discussion of the church and the world. The divisions are not nearly as stark and as clear as we sometimes want them to be, but the two parties can still engage in conversation. The church can respond to the cries of the world and respond with compassion rather than judgement. Ideally, the world mirrors some of the grace and love that the church preaches about.
Many of Cranmer’s prayers have made their way into the liturgy as we know it today. Thinking about how he had to die for the theology in those prayers gives them a whole new meaning, even as removed from that experience as we are.
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