St Helen

Reflection from Rev Trevor Lloyd

Reflection for October 6 2025

Today we remember William Tyndale, Translator of the Scriptures, Reformation Martyr, who died on this day in 1536, and the Gospel reading is John 17.6–8, 14–19: Jesus prays for his disciples.

‘I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.

I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.’ (NIV)

In January 1957 I was being interviewed for admission to Hertford College, Oxford, and the panel asked at the end if I had any questions. A bit stumped to think up any intelligent question, I betrayed my lack of preparation for the interview by asking why many of the ancient leather bound books in the medieval Old Library where I had been waiting had the name ‘Magdalen Hall’ on the cover. They patiently explained some of the chaotic history of the college, which had been Hart Hall and then Magdalen Hall before being refounded as Hertford College in 1874, and rewarded my ignorance (or innocence?) by giving me a major open scholarship for five years. The only drawback was that it was a celibate scholarship, so Eldey and I got married ten days after my final exams for my second degree! William Tyndale must have arrived as a student in Magdalen Hall around 1510, when the advent of moveable type printing made books cheaper and easy to produce, so I might well have been looking at volumes that had stimulated him. But like the internet today, cheap and easy communication was also seen as dangerous by those with vested interests in the status quo. The upside down ideas in the Bible are dangerous and challenging to a very conservative society, and translating anything into English had been punishable by death for a century when Tyndale started translating the New Testament directly from Greek into English. It was not surprising then that when he went in 1523 to ask for financial support from the Bishop of London he was refused, and wisely departed for Germany, where his English New Testament was published in Worms in 1526. Continuing to revise and extend the scope of his work, he applied his prodigious scholarship and determination to the Old Testament, which he had nearly completed when he was arrested in Belgium, tried, found guilty of heresy and killed by strangulation and burning at the stake at Vilvoorde near Brussels in 1536. He was only 42, but the vision that he pursued with such energy lives on, a vision for the word of God to be accessible to people of all backgrounds and abilities. He laid the foundation for subsequent translations such as the Authorised Version in the next century: scholars reckon 84% of the New Testament and 76% of the Old Testament in the Authorised Version comes from his work. It was so embedded in the language of his day that even today many of the things we say can be traced back to him. When we say “under the sun”, “signs of the times”, “let there be light”, “my brother’s keeper”, “lick the dust”, and far more, we are using the language of Tyndale. Look at his use of monosyllables, ‘the drumbeat of English prose’ , and short sentences, effects the compilers of Common Worship tried to emulate. And why is all this important to us? We need his vision for the message of the gospel to be accessible and effectively communicated, whether in preaching or writing, face to face or online. Both content and idiom, what we say and how we say it, need to be reviewed to keep to Tyndale’s standards. What we say? ‘Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth ‘. The battle for truth is on, as the BBC currently reminds us ‘ And the cost? Not the licence fee, but freedom and life itself. Jesus says to his father ‘I have given them your word’ and that communication of the word took him to his death on the cross. He says ‘ As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world’ and sends us to communicate his word, whatever the cost. It cost William Tyndale his life too, and we are thankful for his vision, determination and standards. Let’s face the challenge that brings us.

We pray for the work of the Bible Societies, the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators, for the present Bishop of London, Sarah, who used to be our local bishop, as she prepares to become Archbishop of Canterbury, for all who teach and minster your word, including ourselves as we speak the truth of your word to our family, friends and neighbours.

Lord, give to your people grace to hear and keep your word that, after the example of your servant William Tyndale, we may not only profess your gospel but also be ready to suffer and die for it, to the honour of your name; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,

St Helen

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