Mercy Transcends Justice: Sermon Preached on 5th March 2024 (Ash Wednesday)

Posted on March 5, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s Potterne

Joel 2. 1-2, 12-17; John 8. 1-11

“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Ash Wednesday—a day when we think about our sinfulness. Is that depressing?

This painting depicts a religious scene set on a rocky mountaintop, featuring Jesus Christ in a blue robe with a red inner garment, standing on a peak and pointing towards a dark, winged figure representing Satan. Jesus has a golden halo around his head, symbolizing his divinity. Two other figures, likely angels, dressed in flowing robes, stand behind him, observing the scene. The background includes a golden sky and a detailed, colorful cityscape with fortified walls, towers, and domed buildings, painted in pastel shades of pink, green, and blue, extending across the hills. The overall style is reminiscent of medieval or Renaissance religious art, with a focus on spiritual symbolism and dramatic contrast between the figures.

The Temptation of Christ on the Mountain by Duccio (1308-11), originally part of an altarpiece in Siena Cathedral, now part of the Frick Collection, New York.

Well, I think it’s only depressing if we forget that thinking about our sinfulness is also an opportunity to think about God’s mercy. There’s a phrase I often use, that expresses one of the central truths of the Christian faith—God came to save us in the person of Jesus Christ not because we are good, but because He is love. We don’t save ourselves by being just about good enough to reach a pass mark for heaven set by a cosmic headmaster—instead God saves us out of His mercy.

I don’t think there’s enough mercy in the world. Mercy is easy to misrepresent as something soft-headed. One of the problems with the culture of our times, which is driven by what happens online, is that it usually lacks mercy. I think there are two main reasons for that. One is that most of us don’t realise when we type angrily behind our screens that there is a real person at the other end of the Internet receiving that anger. But this lack of mercy is also because on the Internet we’re always looking over our shoulders to see if what we’re doing is sensible and socially acceptable. Social media is a great X-ray machine into human psychology and it shows us that mercy is often seen as weak on transgressors and, in times of conflict, that exercising mercy is seen as letting the side down. This hostility to actually showing mercy is as prevalent among those who like to think of their attitudes as embodying kindness and concern for the marginalised as much as it is among the rest of us.

But that is to misunderstand mercy. When we show mercy, we don’t have to pretend that wrong has not been done to us. We show mercy when we choose not to take up the redress or vindication that would quite rightly be ours.

Perhaps in recent times, the Church has focused too narrowly on the idea of justice. Now, justice is a wonderful thing and I would hardly argue against it. But few of us would want to be on the receiving end of an entirely fair share of God’s justice for the worst things we’ve done in our lives. And there are other great aspects of human character, besides justice, to which Christians are called to live out. We all need mercy sometimes. If justice isn’t tempered by mercy, it can be a cold and even cruel thing.

Mercy transcends justice. When we are merciful we touch God’s nature.

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We Need Visions: Sermon Preached on 23rd February 2025 (Second Sunday before Lent)

Posted on February 23, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Revelation 4; Luke 8. 22-25

“…the one seated there looks like jasper and cornelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald.”

After a stormy week or so in the affairs of the world, the story of Jesus calming a huge storm on the Sea of Galilee seems obviously relevant. It’s tempting for me to say, “Well just read that again at home and trust Jesus in these stormy times.” Then we can all get our post-church coffee and get off to our Sunday lunch ten minutes earlier.

A vibrant, abstract mural featuring a central figure in a white robe with raised hands, set against a green background with yellow geometric shapes. The figure appears to be a stylized, solemn depiction, possibly religious, framed by an arch-like structure. Surrounding the central figure are dynamic, colorful panels with abstract representations of birds, flames, and human-like forms, adding movement and energy to the composition.

Graham Sutherland’s great east wall tapestry in Coventry Cathedral is full of imagery from Revelation. © Gerry Lynch, 2 August 2018.

That feels inadequate, and trite, given that we’ve all been on complex journeys of faith through our lives. The truth is that all of us go through stormy periods in our lives where we find it difficult to trust Jesus; there are times when we find it difficult to trust that God wants good things for us in own lives, and also when we find it difficult to trust that a loving God is in charge of the world. In moments like that, I’ve never found being ordered from the pulpit to have more faith did me any good.

Another thing to bear in mind is that we can have faith, and lose faith, in many things, not just in God, or that Jesus Christ was God. This is a time in our history when people are losing faith in many things—especially in institutions and leaders. No doubt some of them have misbehaved or misunderstood their mission and got things wrong, but without leaders and institutions we have faith in, any country becomes a fractured place where the strong dominate the weak, the crooked break the rules without fear of consequences, and where even the strong and successful live much less pleasant lives than they otherwise might.

I think important light on what is happening in our society and politics is shed by the first reading this morning from Revelation. You’re probably surprised to hear me say that, because it’s a reading full of vivid, almost fantastical imagery, of living creatures with six wings full of eyes on the inside, singing constantly before the throne God. It openly acknowledges itself to be the result of a mystical experience where St John of Patmos is “in the spirit”. You can see why many people dismiss Revelation as the ravings of a madman, perhaps even of a drug addict. It doesn’t always make much rational sense—you know, what does it mean to say that “around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald”? Have you ever seen a rainbow that looks like an emerald?

It’s easy to dismiss this part of the Bible as worthless, and many people do. After all, what does this have to do with feeding the hungry and visiting the prisoners and all those practical things that Jesus commanded us to do? The things we are so often told are what Jesus was really interested in.

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Life Punishes the Late—Adapt or Die

Posted on February 20, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

This article was originally posted on Slugger O’Toole…

A large, cracked globe depicting a world map, resting on a pile of rubble and broken stones, symbolizing the breakdown of the old world order. The globe, shown in shades of blue with visible continents and grid lines, has multiple deep fissures running across its surface. In the background, shattered ruins of buildings are visible, set against a dramatic blood-red sky with hints of gray and purple, evoking urgency and turmoil.

This will be the first of many shattering weeks in 2025. Even the cleverest members of the establishment that is being routed have started to acknowledge publicly that the old order is dead. This isn’t a matter of a change in the personnel in charge, or even of long-standing diplomatic alliances, but of suddenly finding that the assumptions that most of us shared about how the world functions and how it should function are no longer correct. To think through what we might be about to experience, it might be useful to briefly explore the last time a world-historical shift of similar speed and scale took place.

On 7 October 1989, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorchbachëv visited East Berlin to help the incompetent geriatrics who ran the misnamed German Democratic Republic celebrate the 40th anniversary of their state. Although he was the leader of what was supposed to be their closest ally, East German security forces blocked streets to prevent their citizens from greeting the world’s most senior Communist—only vetted members of front organisations on planned demonstrationswere allowed near his cavalcade. Extra barricades were erected at Checkpoint Charlie, and day-trippers from West Berlin, normally welcomed for the hard Deutschmarks they spent in eastern shops and cafés, were turned away.

Nonetheless, a few East Berliners managed to find their way to vantage points overlooking the route, shouting “Gorbi help us!” in front of the world’s cameras. In private, away from the media, Gorbachëv warned Erich Honecker and his colleagues in the SED ruling party, bitter opponents of his economic and political liberalisation, that the USSR would not intervene to preserve their rule if their own people turned against them.

In October, power in the country still seemed to rest with its fearsome secret services, especially the widely-despised Stasi, far more competent than the SED’s gerontocracy. Many wondered if the Stasi would start shooting at the weekly Monday night demonstrations in the second city of Leipzig which grew into the tens of thousands after Gorbachëv’s visit. In the weeks that followed, events moved with such speed they were almost impossible to process at the time. By December, with the Berlin Wall open and the SED negotiating with the opposition, people wondered if the crowds that stormed Stasi regional headquarters across the country to prevent them shredding evidence of their crimes would lynch the occupants (they didn’t). A montage of West German TV evening news reports from the last three months of 1989 captures the blistering and often bewildering pace of events.

The situation was frequently misread as it developed, especially by the many in West Germany who, while despising the brutality of the SED and its secret police, saw at least some features of the Communist economic and cultural order as being superior to Western capitalism.

Very rarely has a video clip profoundly influenced me; an exception is a panel discussion on West German TV the night after the Wall fell on 9 November, which discussed the extraordinary events of the previous 24 hours. The right-wing journalist Gerhard Löwenthal, long a figure of ridicule on the Left for his televised rants about ‘Linksextremiste’, confidently predicted that reunification would soon follow. In Left-leaning West Berlin, his fellow panellists talked down to him and rolled their eyes; there had been no evidence over weeks of demonstrations, they told him, that East Germans wanted reunification rather than reform.

By February, the only question was how quickly the two Germanies would reunify. It was estimated that around 90% of East Germans favoured reunification. During the campaign for East Germany’s first and only free elections, centre-right parties led by Helmut Kohl’s CDU offered rapid reunification, the centre-left SPD offered reunification at more measured pace, and a slow reunification was proposed, ironically, by both the newly renamed former ruling party and the human rights activists who were the first to raise their heads above the parapet in early 1989 as a potential opposition. Commentators on both sides of the border expected the SPD to top the poll—surely, with democracy secure, East Germans would want to take the time to preserve the redeeming features of state socialism, it was reckoned, especially in this heavily working-class region. They were badly wrong. Kohl’s allies swept to victory, and by the first anniversary of Gorbachëv’s visit, the German Democratic Republic had ceased to exist.

2025—The End of an Era

February 2025 lies at the beginning of a period of destruction of existing structures, but more than that, the destruction of previously reliable political and even psychological assumptions about the way the world works. Trump is ripping up Europe’s post-1990 security architecture, as he promised in his successful election campaign. He is also ripping up the American domestic settlement on identity and race, also as he promised in his successful election campaign.

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A Faith for this World?: Sermon Preached on 16th February 2025 (Third Sunday before Lent)

Posted on February 16, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend and St Peter’s, Poulshot

Readings – 1 Corinthians 15. 12-20; Luke 6. 17-26

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Is your hope only for this world rather than what might be in the life to come? Is your faith in vain?

A painting depicting a scene by a body of water with a mountainous background. In the foreground, a large group of people, dressed in robes and head coverings, are gathered around a central figure who is seated on a rock. This central figure is also robed in white and appears to be teaching or speaking to the crowd. The people are seated on the ground, some standing, all attentively listening. The setting suggests a historical or biblical scene, with the atmosphere being calm and serene.

James Tissot, Jesus Teaches People by the Sea (1886-96), hangs in the Brooklyn Museum.

I always feel a little uncomfortable as an inclusive, liberal-minded, sort of priest in putting Paul’s case as bluntly as that. I realise many people do support the Church for what it does in this world, and many folk are loyal churchpeople and seek to be faithful to Christ as He taught us to live in this world, while not really believing in “the magic bits”. The Beatitudes, which are today’s Gospel reading, are often presented as a manifesto of hope for the future of humanity—if we could only fully embrace them and the rest of Christ’s teachings, really fully embrace them, we could create heaven on earth. Or so some say.

All of you welcome here, just as you are. That’s an important principle for a parish church that seeks to be a centre of faith and hope for the whole community; also I’ve had enough people tell me over the years I’m not a real Christian for me to tell anybody else the same thing. For what it’s worth I think that, on balance, over time, Christianity is good for earthly societies and Jesus Christ’s teachings, on those occasions when we really do live them out fully, do create little pockets of heaven here on Earth.

But I’m going to tell you why I believe in “the magic bits” and why I agree with Paul that if our faith is only for this world then we are to be pitied.

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The Times Are Changing: Sermon Preached on 9th February 2025 (Fourth Sunday before Lent)

Posted on February 9, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend, St Peter’s, Poulshot, and Christ Church, Bulkington

Readings – 1 Corinthians 15. 1-11; Luke 5. 1-11

“I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle.”

When I was young, I was far more self-conscious and afraid than I ever let on. Whenever I walked into a room, I assumed that everyone else there was competent and confident—and that I was a bluffer. I projected overconfidence to try to hide the fears that wracked me, fears I assumed nobody felt but me. A major life moment was when I realised nearly everyone has these fears, and that many people who are very confident on the surface are battling doubt underneath. Losing our illusions can be a very healthy thing.

We all say that nobody’s perfect. But we often assume that some other people are close to perfection, and because we know we aren’t, we can assume that we are terribly deficient. With age should come a certain wisdom that the things that we struggle with are usually just the same things that everybody else struggles with.

A painting of a bearded man dressed in traditional robes. He is wearing a blue tunic with a brown cloak over it. In his left hand, he holds a rectangular object with some red and white markings on it. The background is a textured, aged gold, giving the image an antique appearance. Some areas of the painting show signs of wear and damage, particularly on the left side where the paint has flaked off.

Andrei Rublev’s icon of St Paul dating to ca. 1410. Now hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

When I was younger I also hated St Paul—or I thought I did. The truth is I didn’t really know him or his writings. Despite my best efforts to pay attention, I would find myself drifting off at church when the New Testament reading came from Paul. All those long sentences with too many clauses and too few full stops. The same would happen when I tried to read Paul at home. What I hated about Paul was that he was full of misogyny and homophobia, or so I was told by both the people who thought that was a good thing, and those who thought he was a bigot.

Another thing that happened as I got older was that I started to get were Paul was coming from. Perhaps not the most stylish writer, but so brilliant at reducing Christianity to its essence. One of his great gifts is to make no bones that he is far from perfect; that any favour God had for him was entirely undeserved. Sometimes, like in this morning’s Epistle, Paul makes too much of what a horrible rotter he had been when he persecuted the Church. After his conversion, even his best friends still found him to be a very difficult man. As a young man he was exactly the sort of person who projected too much overconfident certainty in his faith precisely to cover the fears that lay underneath, and in the process he became a bit of a horror, a violent religious fanatic seemingly devoid of conscience. Yet hidden from view, Paul’s conscience was clearly deeply troubled by his actions, and then God in all His Grace brought Paul out of the darkness of his overcertainty into the light of trusting in Christ alone rather than himself. Grace is a much used but little explained concept, but theologically it means the favour God has for us which we have done nothing to deserve.

In this morning’s epistle, Paul produces one of his great lines, “by the grace of God, I am what I am”. And so am I. And so are you.

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Never Mind the Bishops!: Sermon Preached on Candlemas (Sunday 2nd February 2025)

Posted on February 2, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s Potterne and Christ Church, Worton

Readings – Hebrews 2. 14-18; Luke 2. 22-40

“he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might … free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.”

“It’s rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.”

A man in a suit and tie is standing and holding a piece of paper, appearing to be speaking or reading in a formal setting, possibly a legislative or governmental assembly. Several other individuals, also dressed in formal attire, are seated around him, listening attentively. The setting suggests a serious and official environment.

Presentations come in many shapes and sizes; Geoffrey Howe resigns on 13 November 1990. Used under the Fair Use doctrine.

Perhaps I am the first preacher ever to quote, in a sermon, this famous line from Sir Geoffrey Howe’s 1990 resignation speech as Deputy Prime Minister. Yet they were words that popped unbidden to mind as I returned from a fairly long and very pleasant leave, raring to get back into the fray, to find myself confronted with disastrous stories in the media about the Church of England, generated by our bishops: these are the people who are supposed to be our shepherds, our pastors. For it is rather like arriving at the crease, hoping to start a long and productive spell, only to find that my bat has indeed been broken.

What does that have to do with this morning’s Bible readings? Well, quite a lot as it turns out. One is the famous story of Jesus being presented by Mary and Joseph in the Temple, in fulfilment of Jewish religious law, as we would expect as today is Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation. The other reading is a passage from Hebrews which reflects on the implications of Jesus sharing our human nature in all its fullness. Both identify Jesus directly as the Christ, the Messiah, sent by God to deliver His people.

So it makes sense to have this pair of readings together on the same day, but they are to some extent in tension with one another. Our Gospel shows even Christ, God made human, binding Himself to the Law of Moses, and the religious system of the Temple at Jerusalem, in which sacrifices of animals played a major role. But the Letter to the Hebrews is all about making the case that the system of animal sacrifices has been ended by Christ, whose sacrifice of Himself on the Cross is enough for everyone, for all time. The Bible doesn’t give us simple answers. To read the Bible faithfully, we need to listen carefully when we find different parts of it in tension. It is always tempting to mine Scripture for simple answers; the trouble with that is that we then tend to find the answers we already wanted. If we honestly seek to puzzle our way to finding God’s will for us and for the world, it will be a job that we can barely make a start on in a lifetime.

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You Couldn’t Make It Up: Sermon Preached on 25th December 2024 (Christmas Day)

Posted on December 25, 2024 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and Holy Cross, Seend

Readings – Titus 2.11-14; Luke 2.1-20       

“Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.”

This image depicts a classical nativity scene, rich with religious symbolism and traditional iconography. In the foreground, a figure, likely representing the Virgin Mary, is kneeling in adoration. Surrounding her are several cherubic figures, possibly angels, gathered around a newborn child lying in a manger, symbolizing the birth of Jesus. Above the manger, a radiant halo signifies the divine nature of the child. To the right, an elderly man, likely Saint Joseph, stands holding a staff, observing the scene with a contemplative expression. Behind him, two figures dressed in vibrant red and green garments peek over his shoulder, adding a sense of community and witness to the event. In the background, a small hill rises, dotted with white flowers, leading to a rocky landscape where a winged figure, possibly an angel, hovers above, announcing the birth to shepherds or other figures in the distance. The overall color palette is dark and earthy, with subtle highlights that draw attention to the central figures, creating a sense of reverence and quiet celebration.

Nativity (c. 1515-20), Lucas Cranach the Elder; in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.

You couldn’t make it up, could you?

Let’s just say there was a young woman who was pregnant, and she was in the Brewery Inn, or The Raven, and she told everybody at the bar, “An angel appeared to me the other week, and he said I would get pregnant by being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. Actually, I’m still a virgin.”

I think the reaction might be best encapsulated in a phrase much used where I come from: “Aye, yo-ho, love!”

You couldn’t make it up, could you?

A conceit developed in the 20th Century that people used to believe in concepts like the Virgin Birth because they were uneducated and superstitious; it was now time to abandon these silly religious ideas, the story went, because we were too clever and scientifically educated for mumbo-jumbo like that.

But people in the ancient world weren’t stupid. The Roman Empire, where these stories took place, was a sophisticated society, full of clever, well-educated, philosophers. It also had plenty of cynics who enjoyed picking apart supernatural stories as thoroughly as Derren Brown or Penn and Teller do today on their shows.

And even simple people knew where babies come from.

This wasn’t a story you’d invent if you wanted people to take you seriously. It’s not just that you couldn’t make it up, you wonder why anyone would make it up, in this way—unless it actually happened.

Now the shepherds were rough types. They weren’t respectable; they lived in the mountains for months on end, which meant they were never in a position to fulfil their religious or civic duties. They weren’t the sort of witnesses you’d want to have to call in your defence at a court case, with their rough accents and rough manners. You definitely wouldn’t invite them to a dinner party at your villa, because they stank of sheep. If you wanted to make up a story about a boy born to be king, you wouldn’t make shepherds the first witnesses to the birth, not if you wanted people to believe it. That would be even less the case if your story said this baby boy was actually God in human form—but we’ll come to that in a few minutes.

Now, they might not have been respectable, these shepherds, but they had seen it all up on those mountains. They weren’t naïve superstitious simpletons. They were tough, smart, people who knew how to deal – without any help at all – with a storm, an injured animal, or a marauding wolf. But when an angel of the Lord appeared to them “they were terrified”. This was something completely out of the experience even of tough guys who’d lived hard lives. These angels weren’t Disney figures—they made grown men, of the type who never like to show fear, quake with terror.

Now, you might decide you can believe Jesus was a good man, perhaps even the greatest human being ever to live, and also that our society should be formed around his teachings—but you can’t believe stories about angels and multitudes of heavenly hosts, let alone virgin births. I’m not going to try to change your mind, not this morning anyway, but just remember this: this story wasn’t spun to sound as plausible as possible to convince as many people as it could; it wasn’t even written to make the people in it look good.

Similarly with the circumstances of Jesus’ birth. This wasn’t a society where young men and women from good families put on the accents and mannerisms of the lower classes so they could pretend to be more cool than they actually were. It’s only very recently that humble origins became so valued that people started to fake them. In the ancient world, a great king definitely needed to come from the right sort of family; and if an actual deity was being born in human form—and those stories were definitely part of ancient mythology—they needed at least to have a royal parent on one side and ideally an actual god or goddess on the other. Achilles, Aeneas, Helen, and Hercules? All those lads and lasses had divine parentage.

None of them were born in a stable to a carpenter Dad after a shotgun marriage. If you were going to make up a story about a god in human form, you definitely weren’t going to have him the son of poverty-stricken craftsman.

Think of it in modern, marketing, terms. We all know it helps to have the right endorsements if you want people to buy your product. Sportspeople are very useful for that sort of thing today, as they seem to have been in the ancient world also. These days, you also want to get some music and acting celebrities to back your product, and maybe a few of the type of social media influencers who are famous mostly for being famous.

Luke having Jesus born in the way He was, to the people He was, first witnessed by… shepherds, is the ancient world’s equivalent getting your TikTok and Instagram endorsements done by a bloke who temped for a while as the office junior where you used to work and who has a website about his hobby of collecting snails.

You wouldn’t make it up. You couldn’t make it up.

Our first reading came from St Paul’s letter to a younger man called Titus, written towards the end of his life. When Paul had been a young man, he’d been a very successful religious entrepreneur — definitely the sort who’d have active TikTok and YouTube channels if he were around today. He was a clever lad who knew his holy books back-to-front, was known to high priests by name, and was capable of summoning mobs through his gifts with words and his connections. Yet he’d given it all up because of a strange encounter he’d had on the road to Damascus, when a flash of light and a strange disembodied voice convinced him to follow the risen Jesus, whose followers he had recently been encouraging his mobs to attack.

You’d say the bit about the blinding light and disembodied voice was a likely story, except for this. It didn’t do Paul any practical good. For the next twenty-five or thirty years, following Jesus brought Paul repeated imprisonments, kickings by mobs who ran him out of town—I mean, he’d lived through it all. Soon after writing this letter, following Jesus would see Paul executed in public. Yet he wasn’t resentful or bitter about all this; he didn’t regret following Jesus Christ or complain that he wished he’d lived his life differently. He was full of joy, encouraging his younger friend to live a self-controlled and upright life while he waited patiently for Jesus Christ to return in glory.

If it was all made up, surely they would have got something more out of it?—riches, fame, something positive? Successful modern invented religions like Scientology usually make money for their leaders; Christ’s early followers got gaolings and beatings even though they were trying to live lives of absolute respectability.

Here’s where it all comes together for me—two thousand years later we still gather to hear these familiar stories of the Christ-child in the stable, and the shepherds and the angels. Even when we dismiss it as the ancient equivalent of a Disney story, even when we strip all the hard bits out of it “because Christmas is for the kids” and reduce it to a Disney story, something draws us back to hear it, time after time. It’s almost as if it touches something in the depths of us, at the very ground of our being. It’s as if it’s a story that tells us things about the human nature and the nature of reality that we know to be true by instinct rather than intellect.

It’s almost as if there might be something in it after all. The fine details might be a bit ropey, and vary a little from one Gospel to the other, but it’s as if these things actually happened, more or less in the manner we heard this morning. Because you couldn’t make it up, and you wouldn’t make it up like this.

And now to our wonderful counsellor, mighty God, everlasting Father, to Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace, and to the Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary, be glory in the highest, until the end of all ages. Amen.

Top image – Cranach, Anbetung Christi (1545); now hangs in a private collection.

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True Light and Deep Darkness: Sermon Preached on 24th December 2024 (Midnight Mass)

Posted on December 24, 2024 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Isaiah 9. 2-4, 6-7; John 1. 1-14

“…the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”         

The image captures a breathtaking night sky filled with countless stars, with the Milky Way galaxy prominently visible, stretching diagonally from the top right to the bottom left. The sky is a deep, rich blue, contrasting with the bright, sparkling stars. A faint, white streak of a shooting star or meteor is visible near the top right, adding a dynamic element to the scene. In the foreground, on the left side, stands a large, rugged boulder. This boulder has a rough texture, with visible cracks and crevices, and appears to be part of a natural landscape. The ground around the boulder is covered in grass, which appears slightly illuminated, possibly by moonlight or a distant light source. In the background, there are a few trees, their dark silhouettes adding depth and framing the scene. The trees are spaced out, suggesting an open field or meadow. The overall composition of the image evokes a sense of tranquility and the vastness of the universe, with the ancient rock contrasting against the eternal expanse of the cosmos.

The dark skies of Wiltshire,13 August 2024 © Gerry Lynch

It’s a pity that it’s so cloudy tonight, because the night sky is magnificent at present, especially around midnight. The winter stars, held together by Orion and Sirius are all rising in the south-east about this time of night, with the brilliant white of Jupiter and jaunty red of Mars making a cameo appearance for this winter only.

One of the first things I noticed when I moved to Devizes four years ago was how dark the skies are in this part of Wiltshire, especially as one looks south towards Salisbury Plain, where there is very little artificial light to ruin the view.

A sad reality of the present is that only a small minority of people in the world now ever see the night stars in all their glory. Most people now live in cities, where thousands of streetlights waste much of their energy by leaking upwards, doing no good to anyone below but ruining the night sky.

The human race now has so much power that the light we waste is enough to obliterate the glories of nature.

The light that really dominates our lives in the 21st Century, however, is that of flickering screens, the sickly blue glow that comes from our phones, tablets, and televisions, which impacts our system so profoundly that it even disturbs our sleep. Beyond that, these screens make us agitated about things that we can do little about and could probably quite easily ignore. The programmes on our TVs and apps on our phones are also intentionally designed to seize our attention, to distract us from anything that might encourage us to tune away from the channel, or close the app.

By possessing our attention these screens crowd out the space we might have to think, or just to allow our minds to slow down. I am as guilty of being distracted by all this as anyone; I am constantly flipping between tabs as I try to write my sermons.

None of this technology ever seems to make us better. We live in a society surrounded by all sorts of light we have generated ourselves. But our souls are as dark as they ever have been. In fact all this artificial light just seems to make that spiritual darkness more visible. We parade our anger and intolerance on social media apps and radio phone in shows.

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Duty: Sermon Preached on 22nd December 2024 (Fourth Sunday of Advent)

Posted on December 22, 2024 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Christ Church, Worton and Holy Cross, Seend

Hebrews 10. 5-10; Luke 1. 39-45

“See, God, I have come to do your will…”

The painting depicts an intimate scene of two women in a dimly lit room. The woman on the right, dressed in a blue garment with a white scarf, stands with her hands raised in a gesture that could suggest surprise or conversation. She faces another woman on the left, who is partially obscured by shadow and an archway, wearing a dark cloak and holding something in her hand. The table between them is set with a bowl of oranges, bread, and a small cup, suggesting a domestic setting. The interplay of light and shadow creates a warm, almost ethereal atmosphere, highlighting the emotional connection between the figures. The overall mood is one of quiet interaction, perhaps of sharing or contemplation.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Visitation (1910), hangs in the Kalamazoo Institute of Art.

I never expect a bumper congregation on the Sunday before Christmas [it was a pleasant surprise to have an above-average congregation at both services I took!]. I always presume it will be composed largely of people who see going to church every Sunday as their duty. That’s OK, because I see going to church every Sunday as my duty too, and I did so long before I was ordained.

Duty is a very unfashionable idea, but it’s hard to see how any society can function without it. In a culture where people have a strong sense of duty, we are more likely to know how things will work and that they’ll work at all. We will be clearer on our own responsibilities and clearer about where to expect the assistance of others. Societies where people have a strong sense of duty tend to have higher levels of trust and stronger social bonds—and they have all the benefits that flow from these things.

In times of crisis, we all depend on people doing their duty even at great personal risk. We will all remember the situation we faced in March 2020, when we depended on doctors and nurses doing their duty even though we knew little about Covid and we also knew there was a great shortage of personal protective equipment. At the other end of Europe, Ukraine’s survival as a nation depends on people doing their duty, in terrible danger and in horrible mid-winter weather, in the trenches that run the length of 700-mile front line.

From the earliest days of the Church, Christians have considered it their duty to gather to worship together on the first day of the week, Sunday, because it was the day of Christ’s Resurrection. They often did so in the face of challenges much greater than needing an extra morning to finish the Christmas shopping. Even now, this very Sunday, in places like North Korea and Iran, Christians will gather to worship Jesus Christ at the risk of their liberty.

If we, with all our freedoms, attend church every Sunday and follow the Church’s year—even on the odd Sundays when attendance tends to be low—we don’t just fulfil a duty that’s relatively easy for most of us, but we follow church’s year in its fullness, giving us a richer picture of our Faith.

What makes the Fourth Sunday in Advent interesting is that there is perhaps no other point in the year when the Church’s rhythm is so out of kilter with that of wider society. Most people assume that Christmas really started ages ago—how many weeks ago did you have your first mince pie?—with a lot of people finishing work last Friday, even the Christmas party season is starting to wind down. There is only the final blow-out on Wednesday to look forward to and that’s Christmas for another year.

But in Church, Christmas hasn’t even started yet. We are still in the season of Advent, the great season of waiting; in Advent the Church’s worship takes place in the key that forms so much of our lives—waiting with longing for God to break into a troubled world and our often troubled lives. We wait still for God to make His presence felt in all its fullness even as the rest of the world assumes the party has long started, because we know that God is often at work precisely in the opposite direction to where people are looking, in ways that will surprise everyone when they eventually come to light, through people the world considers of little account.

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You Brood of Vipers!: Sermon Preached on 15th December 2024 (Third Sunday of Advent)

Posted on December 15, 2024 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Philippians 4. 4-7; Luke 3. 7-18

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

A scantily dressed man with a translucent shine around his head raises his right hand in the air as a group of women, men, and children gather round him with grim, sometimes excited, expressions of their faces.

Saint John the Baptist Preaching by Luca Giordano (1695). Hangs in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Are you a viper? Have you, in the course of this year, exhibited any snake-like characteristics? You don’t have to answer that question out loud. But if the answer is yes, then you’re in the right place: because you need to repent, and church should be a place of repentance.

There is some contrast, isn’t there, between our two readings this morning. The crowds flock out through the Jerusalem Desert to be baptised by St John the Baptist, and he does the exact opposite of what a good PR man would tell someone to do today if they found themselves an accidental celebrity. The smart thing to do if you want to maximise your return on your fifteen minutes of fame is to make your biggest fans feel valued and loved in return for their loyalty—not to call them a den of snakes, and warn them that, “Even now, the axe is lying at the root of the trees”.

St Paul, in contrast, tells those reading his letter in the far off city of Philippi, “Do not worry about anything” for, “The Lord is near.” Rejoice therefore, he tells them, be full of peace and open gentleness.

Let me tease out this contrast between our two letters by repeating the question I started with: are you a viper?

If so, it’s time to repent.

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