Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the feast of the Translation of St Edward the Confessor 2026

In the Bayeux tapestry, currently on view at the British Museum, St Edward the Confessor, whom we celebrate today, is depicted as a kindly giant of a king. In the first panel he is shown resplendent in green robes, denoting the peace and prosperity of his reign. He is the personification of the ideal ruler in our first reading from the second book of Samuel:

One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God,
is like the light of morning,
like the sun rising on a cloudless morning,
gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.

Edward is shown verdant and radiant, kindly and wise.

His great stature is further emphasised in the same panel by the rather low throne on which he is perched, yet even seated he still towers over a diminutive Harold, complete with pencil-moustache, so very clearly a cad and a bounder.

Edward commissions him to go to William, Duke of Normandy, to tell William that he is the chosen heir to the English throne.

Clearly, the Bayeux Tapestry is a piece of Norman propaganda, and William’s choice to be crowned here in Westminster Abbey is evidence enough that he wished to show himself as the legitimate successor to the regal and spiritual giant buried here to this day (an event also recorded in the tapestry), rather than the deceitful little man, with the dodgy moustache, who presumed to take the throne.

Today, on this Feast of Translation we celebrate that person and that place—the person of St Edward, and the place where his body was moved or ‘translated’ (by a matter of a few feet, in truth), to make this not just a royal church, but a national shrine.

From Psalm 78 we heard:

(God) chose …
the hill of Zion, which he loved.
And there he built his sanctuary like the heights of heaven

And

(God) chose David …, his servant,
and took him away from the sheepfolds;
from following the ewes with their lambs he took him
that he might shepherd … his people

We celebrate today God’s choice of Edward as, one might say, England’s David and this place as God’s particular sanctuary in this green and pleasant land.

Of course, we celebrate not what Edward achieved per se, but what God achieved in him, through him, sometimes despite him. We celebrate that somehow, by God’s grace, holiness was compellingly manifested in a person, and the Kingdom of God compellingly manifested in a place.

And by celebrating this person in this place, we are reminded of our calling, the desire God has for every one of us, to make his holiness manifest in us and to make his Kingdom manifest in whatever place he puts us.

By this we know that we abide in God and he in us—wrote St John—because he has given us of his Spirit.

Our calling to holiness, as a person in a place, as a saint in the service of the Kingdom, is the work of the Spirit, through and through. But it does still require a decision on our part; a free choice to abide in God and to welcome God’s abiding in us through the Spirit—a free choice and a welcome that are themselves God’s gifts, God’s grace at work in us, God’s unswerving desire to abide in and among us that he showed us in his Son.

God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, St John tells us.

We celebrate St Edward as ‘Confessor’, one who confessed Jesus as Son of God; who as king of this kingdom discerned and acknowledged his dependence on, and his service to Christ and the Kingdom of God; confessing Christ and his Kingdom as an ever-present, governing reality.

I wonder whether, like me, you wander through most of your life acting as if God were absent, as if he weren’t already at work in us and in the places where we live or work; as if he weren’t already abiding with us, reigning among us.

I wonder whether, like me, you spend a lot of time wishing you were a different person in a different place; unsatisfied with yourself and with your station in life. God may be in that; but God always begins with who we are and where we are now. David’s calling began in the sheep-pen, Edward’s began in distant exile, we might also remember Jesus’ long years (we presume) in Joseph’s workshop.

We don’t have to go somewhere else or become a different kind of person before God chooses to abide in us, to call us. He doesn’t choose us, as far as I know, based on our Instagram, or Linked-in—on an impressive cv, or glamorous location (remember—sheep pen…exile). Our sainthood and his Kingdom begin with whoever and wherever we are, and they take us wherever God chooses for us, in his love.

The mother of the Sons of Zebedee knew exactly where she wanted her boys to be—at the right and the left hand of Jesus in his kingdom—a picture any parent would be proud to post.

Jesus, in response, is patient with her, with them, and with the other disciples when they get wind of this presumptuous bid for proximity to Christ’s throne. He is patient because Jesus knows that none of them yet understands his Kingdom, and how fundamentally it differs from the kingdoms of this world.

‘To sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, (he says) but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.’

Christ’s reign is not about individual autonomy and power; certainly not about grasping at a place or position; it is about seeking the Father’s will, what the Father has prepared. All the disciples, and we too, must learn to submit our hopes and plans for the person and place we want to be; submitting them to the Father who loves us. We may well see others elevated to enviable places and positions, and others may envy us ours. But God has prepared something better for all of us—a better kind of greatness, to wean us off our need for plaudits, or power or position.

'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you.’ He tells them. ‘But whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave'

Whoever and wherever we are, we are called, with Edward, to be saints in the service of Christ and his Kingdom. If we can lay aside our dissatisfactions with who and where we currently are, and pray for God’s grace to show us how, by the Spirit, Christ is already abiding with us; perhaps we can begin to lean into his presence, into his reign; and we might discover how we are already fit for his service, and how we may be made more so.

Gathered here in this national sanctuary, celebrating England’s David, let us ask St Edward’s prayers for that we may manifest God’s holiness and God’s kingdom, whoever and wherever we are; not twirling our metaphorical moustaches as we plot our own advancement, but trusting entirely to God who and where we might yet be.

Holy Edward, King and Confessor, Pray for us.