Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Feast of the Translation of St Edward the Confessor 2025

One can imagine a fair few saints struggling, at that moment when they are called forth from the grave at Our Lord’s coming again, to appreciate their final earthly resting place. Incredulity, if that will be allowed at the Second Coming, might be in evidence. And although the saints of God could hardly be expected to express disappointment at where they ended up this side of heaven, we know that saints, and parts of saints, end up in the unlikeliest of places. 

Clearly, this is a crude and somewhat ridiculous manner of speaking, not least because it assumes the saints are tarrying on earth as opposed to interceding for us in heaven. In any case, today’s Feast is no occasion for frivolity. It is no light matter to consider the great company of holy men and women who have inspired us through the ages – and on whose constant intercession we rely for unfailing help. 

Today is about proximity. Because what we celebrate in this great feast of the Translation of St Edward is about a relationship. And it is about the proximity of a person to a place; the proximity of a saint to a sanctuary; and about proximities which speak to one another not through historical accident, but because the relationships are as necessary as they are obvious. 

St Edward is here; and I dare say that he would not be surprised in the least to be here, in this great church – save for one reason, perhaps. Given the vicissitudes of history, and the vandalism that has desecrated the holy places of this land over the centuries, it is remarkable verging on miraculous that we are here, in this place, with the Saint. That is cause enough to celebrate today. It would be difficult to imagine Edward anywhere else but here; but it is not difficult to imagine his remains being lost to us entirely. He has been preserved; the wicked do not always prevail.

In being here, in this church designed to enshrine the King and Confessor, inspired and blessed by the Saint’s physical company, and joining with him, and all of heaven, in the unbroken confession of Jesus Christ; the confession for which St Edward lived and died – it is as if, even without being conscious of the fact, we have been granted the request made by the mother of the sons of Zebedee – which is that we might find ourselves in closest proximity to Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Because to be near to the Confessor is to be near to the One whom he confessed; the One who drew near – and still draws near – to us in his own flesh; the One who exercised his divine kingship not in being served, but by serving: Christ the King of kings, the fount and source of all royal anointing, anointed before the ages to create, and to re-create, a kingdom not made of human hands. 

To be near the Confessor, even now, is to feel, and to know ourselves, close to Jesus Christ, whom he confessed, in his life and in his death. Because the Spirit who animated St Edward is the same Spirit who, in our time, and amidst the complexities of a world at the same time remarkably similar and entirely unrecognisable to Edward’s world – it is the same Spirit who enlivens and breathes through this holy place – and beyond its walls into the teeming halls and corridors of our nation and its institutions. The same Spirit: who through Edward, and through men and women of every age, hovering over the depths of our wraths and sorrows, our deepest problems and perplexities, and all that unsettles our own hearts – the same Spirit who is as the sun rising on a cloudless morning.

Good kings confess. And good kings serve.

Many Christian thinkers, including in our own time, have given serious consideration to the saints as theo-politically important figures. Which is to say that saints are important politically as well as theologically; that the lives and witness of the saints make the integration of political and theological thinking, the communication between them, and the realisation of their effective reliance on one another, possible. And that the saints do this not by obscuring boundaries or by confusing categories, but by witnessing to the world as being rooted in God’s will; by acknowledging that the world, the realm of people and ideas and institutions – the political realm – is God’s theatre of operation, a place of his own dwelling. 

God is love, St John asserts in his first epistle, and those who live in love live in God and God lives in them. St Edward exemplified this boundless breadth of God’s activity; he knew that the Church rightly stood near to the nation’s parliament and to other institutions of State. Venerated as a Saint, he first served as a king. And in both roles and realms, the God of love lived in him and through him.

‘Faith at the Heart of the Nation’ is a line so clearly associated with Westminster Abbey. But long before it appeared in print, it was a founding principle of this church – and our nation – as exemplified and embodied by Edward.

This saintly king continues both to confess and to serve well beyond his earthly reign and sojourn. For St Edward’s taking to heart Jesus’ teaching that ‘whoever wishes to be first among mortals must be their servant’, thanks be to God. That the saint was preserved in time, and in this place, such that we can still come close to him, and he to us, thanks be to God. That he continues to inspire our prayers offered on behalf of this Nation which he so selflessly served, thanks be to God. And, that we might lay hold of his example and, through him, the fullness of Christ, the servant of all, whom he so faithfully served – St Edward, pray for us.