The Power of Words

Last Saturday the Church remembered Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, and one of those martyred in Oxford in the 1550s. While Archbishop, Cranmer had written a new Book of Common Prayer, no longer in Latin but now in English so that all the people could understand it. Cranmer worried that while services were in Latin the people ‘heard with theyr eares onely: and their hartes, spirite and mind have not been edified thereby’ – he wanted them to experience the words with their whole being. His Prayer Book would, he hoped, bring the scripture to the people, so that through it they would come to know God ‘and bee the more inflamed with the love of his true religion’.

Cranmer believed in the power of scripture to build and transform communities; in the Prayer Book he drew words of love, comfort and reconciliation from the scriptures and offered them to the people of England. He hoped that through those words they might grow in faith, together and on their own. In these weeks our need for words of comfort and togetherness seems especially acute, as we keep ourselves physically distant from each other. Yet these times can also be an opportunity to find new ways of being together and reaching out, through virtual meetings, virtual coffees, even virtual morning prayer. Cranmer would certainly have been surprised by our modern technology, but not by our need to share our words and feelings with each other – and with God.

Dr Sarah Mortimer

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