On this day 380 years ago Archbishop William Laud was executed for treason – one of the more dramatic ends to an episcopal tenure.  One of the charges brought at his trial was that the porch his chaplain had built at St Mary’s displayed a ‘very scandalous statue’, evidence for some that England was drifting back into Roman Catholicism.  To Laud, though, it was part of a drive to promote the ‘beauty of holiness’, taking inspiration from Psalm 96.  He hoped to engage hearts and imaginations in worship, but what he saw as beauty, others denounced as shockingly ungodly.  The controversy this provoked was one of the causes of the Civil War.

Through this season of Epiphany we hear and say those words from Psalm 96, as we too seek to worship ‘in the beauty of holiness’.  What strikes me in this Psalm is the strong connection made between beauty, joy, and justice across the whole creation, as even the trees and fields rejoice in God’s goodness and righteousness.  It is an exuberant scene, wild even, as the psalmist summons all the world to sing God’s glory and to share that song– just as through Epiphany we remember the revelation of God to all people and the value of all in God’s sight.  Perhaps we can learn from the psalmist and welcome beauty wherever it is found, knowing that goodness and holiness come in so many forms, in God’s diverse world.  For we are invited to see God in our different visions of beauty, and to rejoice together in God's love.