Lancelot400 Sermon | 27 September 2026
-
PREACHER
The Very Reverend Dr. David Michael Hoyle | Dean of Westminster
It took 165 yards of black baize, hung on the walls of this church, to mark his passing. It took the College of Heralds and a procession of bishops and scholars. It prompted the Bishop of Rochester to preach for nearly two hours. I am slightly offended your Dean has not been quite so generous with me. On the splendid tomb they said Andrewes was ‘the treasury of all language and learning’. His death was significant.
But what do we remember now? Lancelot Andrewes, died in his home, almost next door, on 25th September 1626. He was, successively, Dean of Westminster, Lord Almoner, Bishop of Chichester, Bishop of Ely and finally, Bishop of Winchester. He was a scholar of international distinction. He helped create the sound of Anglicanism – as one of the translators of the King James Bible. But, in that expansive funeral sermon, John Buckeridge, had little to say about any of it. What he remembered was the sound of Andrewes preaching. Vox clamans, he said - think of Mark’s gospel and a voice sounding out over a wilderness. ‘Remember that’, the preacher said.
Andrewes as preacher. We do not discuss sermons much. We might think them too long, too boring, too odd. Four hundred years ago they really listened. But you would not preach like Andrewes now. It’s not like listening to your Dean – Andrewes was longer, less humour, more Latin and paraded all the marks of oratory.
T. S. Eliot called him ‘the first great preacher of the English Catholic Church’ and made one of his sermons very memorable indeed, by quoting it in a poem
A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey.
It is wonderful, but the rest of the sermon does not read like that. Here is setting Andrewes, the technician, explaining ‘manifesting’ the faith
Manifesting itself by these five. 1. by ore fit confessio, the confessing of it; 2. by fides est substantia, the ground of it; 3. by vestigia fidei, the steps of it in their painful coming…
You get the idea. It is not easy listening. An hour or more, preached from memory, breaking words into bits, squeezing out the juice.
So, the sermons can be tough, but they can also take flight and grip you. Listen to this, as Christ comes to Mary Magdalene at Easter and she mistakes him for a gardener.
a thick cloud of heaviness had so covered her, as see Him she could not … these two syllables, Mary, from His mouth, scatters it all. No sooner had His voice sounded in her ears but it drives away all the mist, dries up her tears, lightens her eyes - that she knew Him straight… a kind of resurrection … The gardener had done His part, made her all green on the sudden.
What do we remember – well remember that, that faith, that gift for making words that speak above all the noise we make.
But we have to work at it, because Andrewes was of his time. If you want to know him you must know him then. He was born in 1555, when England was a Catholic country. By the time he was three we were protestant again - really protestant, frightened of Catholicism. His life was lived through the Armada and the Gunpowder plot. Imagine that, an anxious church and an anxious nation. Imagine boats in the channel, imagine talk of regime change, imagine clergy complaining about one another, hating bitterly. Just imagine that
Worship was stripped back. There were rows over vestments and bowing to altars. Theology was open warfare, and ecumenism was treason. You had to hate the Pope. Here was a religion in which we were sinners and God was glorious… and also rather disappointed. The sovereign God saved who he would, and damned who he chose. Because he could. A religion to which we brought nothing. To understand Andrewes we must understand that.
He was tempted, as we all are, to take sides in angry times and he did not always cover himself in glory. Honestly, some of the sermons before King James can make you wince. He could be too much a courtier, too admiring. That was unusual though. Andrewes as a scholar, a preacher, and Andrewes as a bishop was not so partisan. Around him they fought like cats, but he did not. He was admired across the divide.
Nonetheless, he did occasionally pick a side and that is important. He preached on The Epistle of James – the reading we heard,
be doers of the word, and not merely hearers James 1:22
He was preaching about preaching. He thought that we had turned sermons into sport, entertainment. People came to hear, but walked away untouched, unchanged. Like Falstaff, they thought the words were only air. ‘Be doers of the word’, he told us, ‘not merely hearers’. He was incensed by shallow listening. We can hear the anger,
The music of a song, and the rhetoric of a sermon, all is one. A foul error, even in the very nature of the word; for that is a law, a testament, and neither song nor sonnet.
This is a big theological point and it matters. Remember, people we sometimes call ‘Puritans’ are busy reminding us that we are sinners and we do nothing good. Yet here is Andrewes urging us precisely to do something. He is taking a contrary view. He believes we can offer God our best and we must. There is more to us than the smell of sulphur. He also believes our worship should look serious, even beautiful. His own chapel was elegant, easy on the eye. The critics were offended. It looked like Popery.
Arguments about whether this thing is a ‘table’ or an ‘altar’, arguments about surplices and bowing, arguments about predestination, and good works might seem curious now, but when Andrewes died this country was less than twenty years from a devastating Civil War and by 1649 bishops, Anglicans and the Book of Common Prayer were all gone. Make no mistake, Andrewes was fighting a corner. Behind the canon smoke, it can be hard to see him. He is forever signed up to causes that were perhaps not quite his. For a generation Anglicans with a fondness for gin and old lace have turned him high church, as if he flitted in and out of the vestry carrying candles and cushions – exactly as they would wish. Meanwhile T. S. Eliot, talking up the sermons made him intellectual and buttoned up, because that was what Eliot admired. People go looking for a man they want to find. They miss the truth, miss the man.
So how do we remember Andrewes now? Well, I think perhaps we should remember ourselves, our world, and our church. We have looked back at his life, but now we need to look around us. Andrewes lived through a crisis in the Church of England, a battle for its soul. He died before that battle became a terrible war. Other contemporaries were furiously insulting, angry and abusive. They made the argument personal. He did not. He read, he wrote. Learning and understanding led the way, not passion, not prejudice. The theology always mattered most. More truth, less noise. That would be welcome wouldn’t it?
He thought intelligent preaching and good liturgy were essential. Church should stretch your mind and heart, not lock us in old loyalties. His faith was never passion or mere conviction. His church was not a lifestyle choice, or a club for the like-minded. Instead, faith was fed by discourse, sustained by discipline. He thought we should learn to love things that are unfamiliar, and even at first uncomfortable. He expected church to change us, not make us more ourselves. I think that is interesting.
And we really should hear his steady insistence on being doers, not just hearers. Contemporary Christianity assumes that we have found something – a certainty, an experience, an ending we have been looking for. Then clings it on to the certainty, wears it like a badge. Andrewes did not believe that and neither do I. Surely we come here to listen, learn and receive. We do that because there are things we do now know and challenges we can barely manage. There is a reason why early christians called their faith ‘The Way’ and thought they should follow Christ who had gone ahead. We are not here to celebrate success, we are here to find our way.
Lancelot Andrewes preached and promoted an Anglicanism we should have inherited but now have nearly forgotten. A faith that could teach us, change us, shape a hope we need. Remember that. Because Remembrance is supposed to transform us, make us doers, not hearers. ‘Do this’, said Christ, a rare command from him, ‘do this in remembrance of me’. So, be doers, not hearers… then you really will remember Lancelot Andrewes.