The Feast of Waiting Patiently: (Ascension Thursday, 29th May 2025)

Posted on May 29, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot

Readings – Acts 1. 1-11; Luke 24. 44-53

“While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.”

A surreal painting depicts a nude human figure floating inside a transparent sphere, with arms and legs outstretched. The figure hovers above a glowing, honeycomb-like surface radiating yellow light. In the background, a dramatic, fiery red and black sky contrasts with a serene blue and white scene at the top, where a partially visible figure in white appears to be looking down. The overall composition evokes a sense of cosmic or spiritual transcendence.

The Ascension of Christ by Salvador Dali (1958). In a private collection.

Poor old Jesus. Even after all that the apostles had seen and experienced, even after all that happened and didn’t happen in Jerusalem, even after the encounters when He appeared to them on the lake and stood among them even though the doors were locked, the apostles really didn’t know what He was about.

“Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom” they ask Him. They’re still expecting that at some point, probably very soon, Jesus is going to seize power and put them, of course into top jobs. They still want Jesus’ to give them a kingdom that is of this world. Instead Jesus’ kingdom is something that can only be shared in in its fullness in a state that is higher than the one in which we live, when we are in the nearer presence of the Father. It is a state to which it seems that even Christ Himself must ascend to participate in fully, and to do so must withdraw from them. This kingdom is much greater than any state we or the apostles could imagine for ourselves on this Earth. For most of us, in this life, we can only detect little flashes of this kingdom for brief and wondrous moments.

Christ, truly God as well as truly human, knows what this kingdom really is, and how much greater it is than the kingdoms of the world. So, you can almost hear the exasperation when He answers the apostles’ question, “It is not for you to know.” Authority over everything belongs to the Father. The apostles wish to seize that authority, to rule over the Earth, and they think they’ll be much better than the world’s existing rulers and not corrupt or cruel or incompetent. No, not them! God knows what is actually best for them, however. The job of the apostles at this point is something very different—to wait for the Holy Spirit; to wait for God who is love to flow and blow and make His move.

Life often seems to be a waiting game – waiting for the train, waiting for exam results, or medical results, waiting for the money to clear into your account or, worst of all, for the contracts to be exchanged. The worst waiting comes when you don’t exactly know what you’re waiting for, when it feels like you’re going nowhere and being left behind. We can see why the apostles are getting a little impatient to find out what they’re supposed to do next.

But the Holy Spirit will indeed move, not long after the events we heard tonight, at Pentecost. Then the apostles will see another little part of God’s plan revealed to them, for on this Earth there is indeed much to be done to build God’s kingdom. The lesson here is that what God needs us to do is often very different from what we expect it should be. On that day in Galilee when Christ ascended, the apostles were too caught up in their half-baked certainties to understand what God actually required from them.

We’re often just like that ourselves. We want God to sort the world out, and we assume we’re at least vaguely on the right track about how the world should be. Like the apostles, we want God to restore the kingdom as would suit us. But do we give enough attention to trying to understand why God has ordered the world the way it is? Do we try to make our understanding fit the mind of God?

One thing God doesn’t seem to do often is to give us simple answers. Our two readings tonight comprise everything written in the Bible about the Ascension, and both are by the same author. The first brings the Gospel of St Luke to a conclusion, the other begins the Acts of the Apostles. Despite being written by the same author, the chronology is difficult to reconcile between them; the geography isn’t consistent; the dialogue doesn’t quite match. It certainly doesn’t seem like St Luke was that worried about what we might think of as accuracy in the courtroom witness statement sense. We can treat Ascension as purely a feast of Christ triumphant in Heaven and a chance to praise Him in His majesty, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But we could also look at it as a feast that teaches us to be less dogmatic; less sure of ourselves; more prepared to have our preconceptions challenged by God, through His written world and in many other ways. Ascension is a feast of waiting patiently and giving God the space to lead us deeper into the mystery of His truth.

For God can leave us feeling as bamboozled as, in Christ, He often left the apostles bamboozled. Why does God so often seem to withdraw from us? It is tempting to give the old answer that when we can no longer see God’s footsteps next to us, it is only because He was carrying us. I wouldn’t want you to think there’s anything wrong with that, but… there is an interesting phrase in the text of the Gospel reading—“he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven”. Part of what that might be hinting at I’ve already touched on, that even Christ could not participate in the Kingdom in all its fullness from this earth. But sometimes it seems we do need to be on our own, to grow and test our limits, to exhaust our need to tell God what to do—before God can show us what He needs us to do.

So here are five little practical lessons that I take from Ascension about my own Christian discipleship and they might be helpful to you too. Firstly, be patient. Secondly, be faithful. Thirdly, be open to changing and growing. Fourthly, long for Christ to return. And then fifthly and finally, get on with living your life.

Be faithful. Trust that Christ went into Heaven so we too could ascend there. Try to get closer to God’s nature – in prayer, in the Bible, in the sacraments, and yes in living well in this wonderful world God has made for us and enjoying the pleasures that it gives. Scripture tells us that Christ certainly enjoyed earthly pleasures that in His earthly life.

Whatever you are waiting for – and we are all waiting for something – be patient. Not something I find easy myself, but sometimes there’s nothing to do but wait to see how things develop.

Be open to changing and growing, right through your life. The apostles, who had the benefit of having breakfast with Jesus regularly, constantly had to learn and discover that many things they’d taken for granted were at best only partially true. To be perfect is to change often. Don’t be afraid to allow God to change you.

In this mess of a world where we dread switching on the news, long for Christ to come back. Don’t fear the idea of the second coming but instead pray that God might bless you with seeing it.

And finally, go about your business. While you wait for the things you can’t make happen, do the things that you can, great or small, for the people you live among, in your daily life.

As the angels told the apostles in Galilee “why do you stand looking up to heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way you saw him go.” Wait for Him in joyful and hopeful expectation.

Now to God the Father who reigns in heaven, to God the Son who leads us to heaven, to God the Holy Spirit who fills us with the love and peace of heaven, be all glory and majesty, dominion and power, as is most justly His due, now and forevermore. Amen.

Posted in sermon | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

We’re Suspicious of a St Peter—(Third Sunday of Easter: 4th May 2025)

Posted on May 4, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Christ Church, Worton and Christ Church, Bulkington

Readings – Acts 9. 1-7; John 21. 1-19

“Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’”

An ancient religious icon painting depicts two figures in a close embrace, dressed in traditional robes with a gold background. The figure on the left wears a black and yellow robe, while the figure on the right is in a black and red robe. The painting shows signs of aging with visible cracks and faded colors. Text in an old script is partially visible at the top right and left edges.

Angelos Akotantos, Icon of The Embrace of the Apostles Peter and Paul (mid-15th Century). In the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

We all love a St Paul—but the St Peters of this world are often treated with profound suspicion. Why? Well, we all love finding out we’re right, and what could be better proof of that than someone who had been one of our bitterest enemies coming over to our side. It’s harder to embrace those who were always in agreement with us, but failed to put their principles into action for one reason to another. We all love a new friend; it can be harder to forgive an old friend who has let us down. The former is like St Paul, someone who once held wrong ideas, which have now changed for the better. The person who has let the side down, like St Peter, on the other hand, is always suspected of weakness of character. They may have failed in circumstances anyone could understand, you might like them a lot, but when the going gets tough, can you really trust them? And here’s the oddest thing—after incidents where we’ve let others down, we are often ourselves our harshest critics, and we can be the very ones who trust ourselves least.

I mention that last point for this reason—although it isn’t mentioned directly in today’s Gospel reading, I hope you remember how many times Peter denied Jesus on the night of His arrest? Three times! So, in this reading while Peter may be hurt at Jesus’ asking Him three times if he really loves Him, this balances out Peter’s three denials, which had taken place just a few weeks before. And each time Peter affirms that he loves Christ, Christ shows He trusts Peter again, by trusting him with the most important job of all: to tend and to feed the lambs and the sheep of Jesus’ flock. The story of the risen Christ appearing to the disciples on the Sea of Galilee is reported only in St John’s Gospel, the Gospel where Jesus declares Himself to be the Good Shepherd. So Jesus telling Peter that he is to feed the lambs and the sheep has profound symbolic significance here—not only is Jesus’ forgiving Peter but commissioning him to a role in Christ’s own mould.

Don’t think you’re not pious enough or have made too many mistakes or are too washed up to serve God. Peter was good enough for God, even after His spectacular, public, failure. You are good enough for God and He is undoubtedly calling you to do things for Him in the next part of your life. The question is to discern what it is.

Continue reading →
Posted in sermon | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Forgiveness and Repentance: (Second Sunday pf Easter: 27th April 2025)

Posted on April 27, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Acts 5. 27-32; John 20. 19-31

“God exalted him … that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.”

A fresco painting shows a group of people in a historical setting with stone buildings and a tower in the background. On the left, a woman in a grey dress holds a child, while others in robes stand nearby. In the center, two men in flowing robes, one yellow and one red, appear to be speaking or gesturing. At their feet, a person in a red robe lies on the ground, seemingly lifeless. The scene is framed by architectural elements, including a column on the right and a red wall with a small window on the left. The sky is pale with soft clouds.

St. Peter Distributing the Common Goods of the Church and the Death of Ananias, Mascaccio (c.1427), a fresco in the Brancacci Chapel within the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence.

On Good Friday, I heard an interview by the Rev’d Kate Bottley on Radio 2 with Esther Ghey, the mother of Brianna, the teenaged victim of a particularly brutal murder in Warrington two years ago, a murder carried out by other teenagers and motivated at least in part by transphobia. It was emotionally intense and at times profound, especially when Mrs Ghey said she had befriended the mother of one of her own daughter’s murderers, having witnessed her genuine distress at the trial and realising as a result that they shared a depth of woundedness that few mothers do. Such extraordinary empathy is rare and is often those who have been deeply wounded themselves who are capable of it.

Mrs Ghey was very clear that she wasn’t religious herself. Yet at the same time, she also reported seeing vivid sunset skies far more often since her daughter’s murder. As pink was Brianna’s favourite colour, she interpreted this as Brianna letting her family know she was OK from wherever she was now. The two things that jumped out at me are, firstly, if it needs to be said again, we Christians have no monopoly on goodness and Jesus Christ never said we would; and secondly that, although most people in this country now seem to think of themselves as having left Christianity behind, their attitudes are still saturated with Christian concepts which over dozens of generations have soaked into the psychological soil of this country and continent. By and large, people still believe there is something more than this life, although they may be reluctant to define what that “something” is.

The final words of this morning’s Gospel reading want us to believe in something very definite—“that Jesus is … the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

Continue reading →
Posted in sermon | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Last Enemy to Be Destroyed Is Death (Easter Day: 20th April 2025)

Posted on April 20, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

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

Readings – 1 Corinthians 15. 19-26; Luke 24. 1-12         

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

A painting depicting three figures in biblical attire near an empty tomb. The figure on the left, draped in orange and gray robes, holds a jar and appears mournful. The central figure wears a blue cloak over a red dress, standing with a somber expression. The figure on the right, in a red cloak and green dress, holds a white cloth and looks contemplative. The background features a hilly landscape with sparse trees, a cloudy sky, and distant structures, evoking a quiet, reflective mood.

Sketch to the Painting ‘Three Marys Walking to Christ’s Tomb’, Józef Simmler (1864), National Museum, Kraków.

Christians in this country are lucky that the celebration of Easter comes when springtime’s miracle of new life is at its peak. The miraculous nature of new life is clear whenever we see it, from an April field full of cowslips and celandine to a new-born child sleeping in the arms of its mother. The very existence of life is a mystery, and our existence, as a species that can reason and has a sense of right and wrong, is stranger still. There are two explanations for of human existence. One is that we are the product of the spontaneous emergence of life from non-living chemicals, and then trillions of chance encounters over four billion years—that we are a freak occurrence in a meaningless, and largely lifeless, universe. The other is that we were created by something greater than ourselves.

Our first instinct is probably that the only explanation compatible with science is that the human race came about by chance. The universe is a huge place and the four billion year span of life on Earth is a very long time indeed… far too long for us really to get our heads around. You can also be a perfectly good and faithful Christian and believe that God used the natural processes of the universe to allow a species in His image and likeness to evolveand, that, given the sheer size of the universe and the depth of time involved, nothing else would be required.

For a long time that was precisely my position. There is no scientific evidence for God nor, I believed, could or should Christians waste their time trying to find evidence for something that is fundamentally a matter of faith. But do you remember that old saying that if you had enough monkeys hammering randomly at typewriters for long enough, that one of them would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare?

Well, the maths on that have been done repeatedly, and if you had enough monkeys to fill not just the world, but the entire observable universe, and let them type for the whole time until the protons that make up all matter began to decay, then the chance that one of them would produce Hamlet is so low that we don’t even have a name for the number. It’s not one in a billion or one in a trillion, but one in one followed by hundreds of thousands of noughts. If it is improbable that a play named Hamlet could emerge by change, how much less probable it is that a man named Shakespeare could do so?

Continue reading →
Posted in sermon | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

God is Always With Us: A Reflection for Holy Week (Wednesday 16th April 2025)

Posted on April 18, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Given at Christ Church, Bulkington

Luke 24. 13-31

A painting shows two figures seated at a table in a dimly lit room, sharing a meal. The figure on the right, draped in a dark cloak, faces the other, who is in a lighter robe. A third figure stands in the background near a fire, casting a shadow. The table holds bread and a cup, and a sack hangs on the wall. The scene is illuminated by a soft, warm light, creating a contemplative atmosphere.

Rembrandt, Supper at Emmaus (1628) now in the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris.

Somebody asked me why I’d set this reading during Holy Week, when it takes place on the first Easter Day, after the Resurrection. Wasn’t I putting the cart before the horse?

Well, firstly, the theme for these three short Holy Week talks is encountering God—the first was about wrestling with God; the second about returning to God. The Road to Emmaus points to the reality that God is with us always, albeit often unrecognised by us.

Often, we don’t recognise God’s presence because He’s acting in ways that don’t fit our preconceived notion of what God is. That’s at the heart of the Emmaus story, of course: God isn’t supposed to be someone you’ve never met before, who joins in your animated conversation on a long walk. Many a sermon has been built on the need to be alert for God appearing to us in the face of a stranger, and while that point is well made, many of those sermons I’ve heard over the years slightly tut-tut at the folk in the pews for not being more sensitive or open-minded.

I think, however, that we should be a bit less harsh on ourselves.

Here’s a detail that’s easy to miss in the Emmaus story. When Christ first approached Cleopas and his friend and asked what they were talking about, they just stood there, still, presumably with plenty of time to take in His face but “their eyes were kept from recognizing him”. Notice this is in the passive voice. The closing of the friends’ eyes is something that has been done to them, not a choice they have made. Similarly, when Jesus breaks bread “their eyes were opened”. If God is sovereign, then our noticing His presence must lie in His gift more than it does within our control.

There are times in our lives when we feel God’s presence literally touching us. At other times God seems remote. We can even feel He has abandoned us. I’ve found both these experiences at their most intense when life was at its hardest for me. The toughest experiences – bereavement, severe ill health for ourselves or loved ones, employment problems, relationship breakdown – seem either to draw us alongside God or push us away from Him. Perhaps sometimes God’s presence is too intense for it to be safe for us to sense it too directly.

Beyond these life crises, one of life’s most difficult experiences is to have our cherished illusions about our lives or the nature of the world shattered. It was just that Cleopas and has friend had endured. A difficult experience, but often the necessary prelude to growth, to starting the next stage of a journey.

Here’s the final reason for exploring this Eastertide Story during Holy Week. The Christ who breaks bread with the disciples is the same God cries out “My God, why have you forsaken me” on the Cross.

The person we are when we feel ourselves to be close to God is the same as the person who sometimes feels far from God. We need to love both those versions of ourselves, integrate both of them within our self-understanding, because both these elements are necessary to any journey towards God and His plans for our lives.

As T.S. Eliot wrote:

“…the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

This Eastertide, may the Paschal mystery draw you closer to the God who is always with you. Amen.

Top image: Titian, Supper at Emmaus (1538), Hangs in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Posted in Holy Week Reflections, Reflection | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Returning to God: A Reflection for Holy Week (Tuesday 15th April 2025)

Posted on April 17, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Given at Christ Church, Worton

Luke 15. 11-32

A historical painting depicts four figures in a dimly lit room. An elderly man with a white beard sits at a table with papers and coins, engaged in a transaction with a younger man standing opposite him, dressed in 17th-century clothing with a white collar and brown coat. Two other figures, a young boy and a woman in a dark cloak, stand to the left, observing the scene. A red curtain hangs in the background, and a marble column is visible on the right. The atmosphere is serious and focused.

The Prodigal Son Receives His Portion by Murillo (1660s), hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Last year, I had occasion to be in Dublin, and ended up having most of a Bank Holiday Monday free just to wander around. I was spending time there for the first time in many years, having at one time visited the city several times a month. I found myself wandering into the National Gallery, which has a pair of paintings of scenes from the life of the Prodigal Son by the 17th Century Spanish painter Murillo.

In the first, the son’s eyes are so firmly fixed on the bag of money he has just been handed that he doesn’t even notice his father’s eyes, full of pain, riveted on him. Behind his father stands his brother, shooting him a look of withering contempt. In the other painting, the son, dressed in rags and surrounded by swine, is gazing into the sky with eyes imploring God’s mercy.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of those bible stories that speaks profoundly into our own time and place. Just as the Father in the parable gives the son free will to squander his inheritance, so our heavenly Father gives us the freedom to take the gifts He has given us and either use them for His greater glory, or to squander them, as we choose.

Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Wrestling with God: A Reflection for Holy Week (Monday 14th April 2025)

Posted on April 16, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Given at St Mary’s, Potterne

Genesis 32. 22-32

“Oh, sorry Vicar!” People often say that when after they’ve just had a good swear in front of me. A vicar is, of course, the sort of person you shouldn’t use foul language in front of. He – or, she, these days – is a very prim and proper person who would never swear, any more than they would drink, and blushes to hear even the first syllable of the word balderdash.

A classical painting depicts a dramatic scene of two figures engaged in a struggle. One figure, dressed in a red and white robe, appears to be a man with a beard, gripping the other tightly. The second figure, with wings and curly hair, is likely an angel, wearing a white garment. They are locked in an intense wrestle, set against a muted, earthy background, suggesting a moment of spiritual or physical conflict.

Rembrandt, Jacob Wrestling with An Angel (1659). Hangs in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

And God is often perceived by the same people, in the unlikely event He exists at all, as a sort of Supervicar, very prim and priggish, in front of whom you want to be on your best behaviour—because if God does exist, and He finds out what’s really going on in your head, then you’re in big trouble.

The same people sometimes tell me that they’d like to believe in God—they envy people who have Faith, they tell me, envy the meaning and purpose our lives and envy our strong sense of community. Of course, we Christians know that we’re actually a bit more prone to isolation and drifting than that, but let’s roll with the idea… These people tell me they envy us our Faith, but they struggle the idea of a God who created life to include the harsh realities of suffering and pain. Because why would a supervicar do that?

The Bible paints a picture of God that is far from a supervicar. Far from expecting blind obedience, in tonight’s reading, God is presented as a mysterious stranger who proactively seeks out Jacob for a good bout of wrestling that lasts all night – we all know about wrestling with God all night don’t we? When dawn breaks, the stranger has not defeated Jacob, who is still battling gamely with Him, although He has been left with a limp from a blow to the hip.

Continue reading →
Posted in sermon | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A Story of Celebrity and Mobs: Sermon Preached on 13th April 2025 (Palm Sunday)

Posted on April 13, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

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

Philippians 2. 5-11; Luke 19. 28-40

“the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen”

A large group of people dressed in ancient, flowing robes gathers outside a stone building with an arched doorway. Some sit or lie on the ground, while others stand or lean against the wall. A central figure in a blue robe stands on a carpet, addressing the crowd, with a donkey nearby. The scene is set under a partly cloudy sky with a tree on the right. The painting has a warm, earthy tone, capturing a moment of communal listening or teaching.

Nikolay Koshelev, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem.

Palm Sunday speaks into an age of celebrity culture and social media in a way that few other Bible stories do. On Sunday, Jesus is the darling of the crowds, who mob Him like a modern day celebrity. It’s as if Taylor Swift turned up in Morrison’s in Devizes on a Saturday afternoon. Then, in the space of just five days, Jesus falls from favour so spectacularly that the crowds are literally calling for him to be strung up. We’ve seen so many stars fall from their pinnacles in recent years, sometimes deservedly and sometimes not, often because they said something on social media that outraged people.

The Internet is often the first thing that gets blamed for any social or cultural problem these days, and celebrity culture is never far behind. As with any technology, the Internet is an amplifier for both the good and the bad, and here are good and bad sides to social media. On the positive side, it keeps in touch with friends we haven’t seen for years and with family who live too far away for us to visit often. It could be why over the last ten to fifteen years mental health problems among young women have spiked and birth-rates across the world have collapsed.

But, hang on, Palm Sunday happened two thousand years before Facebook was invented! Our most serious problems are just modern variations on problems that have been with the human race since the dawn of time. Selfishness, greed, bigotry, and violence didn’t arrive with the smartphone. Nor did the way that being part of a crowd can turn normally decent people toxic, nor our tendency to abandon our most noble principles once it means risking unpopularity. Our problems today aren’t really caused by social media, or by the mainstream media, or by the way we chase after celebrities who are so often empty. Our problems are caused by the sickness in our souls.

Continue reading →
Posted in sermon | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Beauty and Idols: Sermon Preached on 6th April 2025 (Passion Sunday)

Posted on April 6, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Christ Church, Worton

Philippians 3. 4-14; John 12. 1-8

“Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.”

When we hear this familiar story of Mary the Sister of Lazarus pouring the jar of expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet, do we ever think about the perfume and how much effort went into making it? Making perfume can still be quite an involved process today, and it seems to have been even more difficult in the ancient world without modern machinery. We actually know a little about ancient perfume-making from writings that have survived into the present day. In an expensive perfume, flowers, spices, sap, gum, resin, roots, and different kinds of wood were gathered, probably from different places. Nard, the main ingredient of the perfume Mary is said to have used, is a plant related to the honeysuckle which grows only in the Himalayas, for example. For weeks or months, the whole mixture was left to marinade in some natural oil, perhaps olive oil or some kind of odourless seed oil, during which time it would be repeatedly boiled and the sediment thrown away. Then it may have been transported a long way, perhaps even many hundreds of miles, to be sold.

A scenic outdoor view features a clear blue sky above a grassy landscape. A dirt path splits into two directions, winding through the area. On either side of the path, there are patches of green grass and dense bushes with white blossoms, likely in spring bloom. In the background, tall trees with bare branches stand against the sky, indicating early spring or late autumn. The overall scene is bright and serene, suggesting a peaceful nature trail or park setting.

I came out of church after preaching this sermon to this scene of blossoming blackthorns. God’s gift of beauty indeed! Gerry Lynch, 24 March 2025 (public domain).

Although the manufacturing process has changed over the centuries, making perfume still involves the same truly vital ingredients—time, skill, knowledge, patience, creativity, love for the job, and sometimes an appetite for risk. Perfume doesn’t appear by magic. At its root, it is the product of three things: experience, sometimes painstakingly gathered and passed down over many generations; people’s God-given talents; and the God-given gifts of nature. The perfume exists only to make life a little more pleasant, to stimulate our sense of smell, perhaps only for a brief moment. There is something extravagant about perfume: that’s why it’s such a valued gift.

Was Judas right, that the perfume should have been sold? The person who bought it could still have enjoyed the God-given gifts of beauty it contained, and the money could indeed have been spent on the poor. Surely that would have been more useful than a few moments of smell and sensation as the scented oil was poured over Christ’s feet?

Continue reading →
Posted in sermon | Tagged | Leave a comment

Hope for the Bad Guys: Sermon Preached on 30th March 2025 (Fourth Sunday in Lent)

Posted on March 30, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary the Virgin, Bishops Cannings (Devizes Deanery Evensong)

Prayer of Manasseh; 2 Timothy 4. 1-8

“Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord reward him according to his works!”

Karel van Mander Manasseh, Repentant Sinner from the Old Testament (1596). In the collection of the Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Have you ever heard of Manasseh, whose prayer was our first reading this evening? He is one of the main bad guys in the Old Testament—or at least he started out that way. He became the King of Judah when the great prophet Isaiah was an old man. Unlike his father, Hezekiah, who had been a pious man, Manasseh was an open worshipper of idols who abandoned many of the most important tenets of the religion of Moses, David, and Solomon. Although Isaiah’s end is not recorded in the Bible, there is an ancient Jewish tradition, going back many centuries before Christ, the Manasseh had Isaiah executed by sawing him in two. He had evidently spoken too many truths for the comfort of the new man in power.

Now, I wonder how many of you had even heard of the Prayer of Manasseh before this evening, let alone that the Church of England lectionary occasionally sets it as a reading in church? The Prayer of Manasseh comes from the collection of writings known as the Apocrypha, which your Bible may or may not include—although if you’re an Anglican, it should include it. The Thirty-Nine Articles say that the Church should read from the Apocrypha “for example of life and instruction of manners”, but that they cannot be used to establish any doctrine. They are enlightening writings to read, but don’t have the weight in Christian teaching of canonical Scripture. The New Testament contains many references the Apocrypha, and these writings enjoyed a prominent place in the early church.

Interestingly while some parts of what we Anglicans call the Apocrypha are regarded as fully part of the Old Testament in Roman Catholic teaching, the Prayer of Manasseh isn’t among them. It has roughly the same status in Roman Catholic teaching as it does for Anglicans. But it is fully part of the Old Testament for some our Orthodox brethren, and this long prayer of forgiveness for the gravest of sins is used in the Orthodox liturgy for compline, or night prayer.

After some decades of ruling Judah in an ungodly way, Manasseh was captured by the Assyrians and taken away in chains. The Second Book of Chronicles records that in prison in Babylon, Manasseh returned to the fear of the Lord, after which he was released and restored to his throne. This is supposedly the prayer he prayed in jail.

Continue reading →
Posted in sermon | Tagged , , | 2 Comments