Preached at Holy Cross, Seend and Christ Church, Bulkington
Readings – Romans 8: 12–25; Matthew 13: 24–30, 36–43
“I consider the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”
On Friday evening, I was out walking near North Wilts Golf Course, when I stumbled across a field full of poppies in rich evening light. I wandered along the field margin entranced by magical scenes, like the single sunflower, presumably the result of a stray seed, adding a dash of yellow to the reds and greens. Overhead, the larks sang.

21 July 2023, © Gerry Lynch.
At times, I was quite overwhelmed by beauty. I found myself thinking of the struggles I’d had in life – the very unlikely and occasionally painful path that led me to being a country parson in Wiltshire, which I could never have planned for myself and which nobody could have predicted. I thanked God volubly, moved almost to tears with joy.
Of course, life isn’t always like this. To turn on the news is to be confronted with catastrophes, from a heatwave in southern Europe that seems to intimate environmental disaster to a war in Ukraine that seems to be locked into a deadly stalemate in the trenches.
Still harder to bear than these terrifying but systemic problems is our own suffering and the suffering of those we love. I was reading an article in The Tablet yesterday by the Oxford-based Dominican, Fr Timothy Radcliffe. Timothy is to my mind the best popular theologian in Britain today, capable of explaining difficult concepts in understandable language to ordinary Christians. He revealed that, last year, he had survived a terrifying and risky 36-hour operation for jaw cancer. Although initially it seemed to have been a complete success, recently his consultants had picked up signs of fresh pre-cancerous cells in his jaw. The random operation of fate can sometimes be terribly cruel.
If all there were to the world were the stories of humanity’s struggles to survive and struggles with one another, the world would be a grim place. Yet we see signs everywhere, like the beauty of a field of poppies, that our existence is much greater and more magnificent than the hardest parts of life would indicate.

21 July 2023, © Gerry Lynch.
For example, if I am capable of being overwhelmed by the beauty of a field of poppies on a gorgeous summer evening, it begs the question why human beings have a sense of beauty. It isn’t necessary for evolutionary purposes: we can survive and produce the next generation of humans without it. In a similar vein, why do we have the capacity to feel awe? Why does love seem to be the single most transformative aspect of human existence?
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