“Out of Our Depth”: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes on Sunday 9 August 2020 (the 9th Sunday After Trinity)

Readings – 1 Kings 9:9-18, Matthew 14:22-33

But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’

May I speak in the name of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Have you ever found yourself out of your depth and almost embarrassed that you were driven to ask for God’s help to get you out of the consequences of your own stupidity?

I certainly have!

I suspect I’m not the only one who used the lockdown as an excuse to get fitter. Do you know the start of the hundred and twenty-first psalm? “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh even from the Lord.” Well, that was my motto of the lockdown; in a small terraced house in Belfast’s inner-city with my parents, it was a case of either turning to the hills that surround the city or turning to drink. If the truth be told, there might have been a bit of both.

Divis from Wollfhill 20 May 2020 © Gerry Lynch

Divis from Wollfhill, 20 May 2020, © Gerry Lynch.

Still, on the first Saturday of the lockdown I surprised myself by tackling the highest of the Belfast Hills, a four hundred and eighty metre monster called Divis, in one go, six miles walk from home which is near the docklands and sea level. I was very proud of myself. But I hadn’t really got my mountain legs at this point, and I didn’t relish the circuitous walk back down. A quick scan of aerial photos on Google Maps showed that at one point it was barely four hundred metres from a formal path to the tarmacked city streets below, from where it would be an easy three mile stroll back. I knew the hill was steep at this point, as its slopes are visible across the city, but from below it always looked like a manageable scramble across some very pretty, gorse-bedecked, fields. My father, who grew up in the estate immediately below that hill, has long regaled me with stories of a childhood spent playing up on that mountain. When I clambered naughtily over the fence to start my short-cut, I had to admit it looked steeper than it seemed from a distance. Much steeper. But you know, four hundred metres, four football fields, how hard could it be? Continue reading

Posted in Christianity, sermons | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on “Out of Our Depth”: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes on Sunday 9 August 2020 (the 9th Sunday After Trinity)

Cassettes, Communion, and Guardians of the Galaxy: Online Worship isn’t the Answer to Everything

Young people these days are a rum lot! I’ve recently discovered that they’re getting into cassette tapes in a big way. I understood when people got back into vinyl again, that made perfect sense; analogue audio just sounds better than its digital counterpart, and there is something magical about the gentle crackle of a needle amplified by a good set of speakers. For the same reason, as a keen digital photographer, I understand why some of my snap-happy brethren are rediscovering film, even I have no desire to go to the trouble of setting up a darkroom myself.

But tapes? We lived off cassettes in the 1980s; we would make compilations by recording scratchy radio stations, sometimes Radio Luxembourg on Medium Wave, barely audible before sunset and full of fading after it in far-off Belfast. I remember how prone to breaking they were, always getting tangled up on the heads of the tape player, having to be straightened out and wound back on with a pencil, usually damaging the sound quality, even when they didn’t break altogether. Who in their right mind wants to use tapes?

Hooked on a feeling, I'm high on believing.

♪ Hooked on a feeling, I’m high on believing, but just not via Zoom ♫

A clerical colleague, who has the advantage of having teenage children, explained to me that it all started with Guardians of the Galaxy. And I can see why. Rarely has anything been more aptly named than Awesome Mix Vol. 1. My coleague’s son had recently given his girlfriend a mixtape for her birthday – they use that ugly Americanism (ugh!) rather than ‘compilation’, apparently. A question formed in my mind: but surely he could just make her a playlist on Spotify? The answer was so obvious I never even uttered the words. A compilation would always be a physical token of their love – in a sense, a sacrament. An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

Maybe the young people aren’t so rum after all.

Continue reading

Posted in Anglicanism, Christianity, COVID19, Evangelism, Prayer and Worship, Reflection | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Cassettes, Communion, and Guardians of the Galaxy: Online Worship isn’t the Answer to Everything

Sermon Preached at St John’s Devizes on Sunday 19 July 2020, the 6th Sunday After Trinity

Readings – Romans 8:12–25, Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43

“…in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.”

May I speak in the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

It is good to be with you as your curate for the first time this morning. And I hope, for all of you, it is good to be back in Church.

Wiltshire Wheat Fields in mid-July near West Dean © Gerry Lynch

Wiltshire wheat fields in mid-July, © Gerry Lynch, 22 July 2016.

The parable of the wheat and the weeds centres on the idea that God allows both goodness and wickedness to flourish here on earth. It is particularly appropriate at this time, for we’ve seen the best and the worst of human nature over the four months since people last gathered together to pray here in St John’s. We’ve seen medical personnel and care home staff put their lives on the line, and in some cases give their lives, for the common good. We’ve seen the natural world revive as the pressure we human beings put on it eases off just a little, with cleaner air and water, less noise, and wildlife returning to our towns and cities. We’ve seen a great revival of community spirit, with neighbours looking out for the vulnerable, and we’ve also seen a great global effort of medical science taking place across boundaries of nation, religion, race, and system of government.

We’ve also learned a lot about who is genuinely indispensable to society: when most of us were told to stay at home if we possibly could, those who still had to go into work were often those least financially rewarded for their labours. Supermarket workers, staff in meat plants, fruit and vegetable pickers, truck drivers, security guards, home helps, taxi drivers, as well as those working in the NHS and care homes – these were the people who had to go to work right through the worst of the pandemic, and many of them earn wages that make it impossible for them to imagine providing a secure home for their families. These were the people who died in disproportionate numbers. Continue reading

Posted in Christianity | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Sermon Preached at St John’s Devizes on Sunday 19 July 2020, the 6th Sunday After Trinity

Twilight View of the Kyiv Pechersk-Lavra Monastery Complex

The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery complex shot from the Paton Bridge in a golden evening twilight, 9 August 2018

Kyiv Pechersk-Lavra Complex shot from the Paton Bridge, 9 August 2017, © Gerry Lynch.

Viewed here from the Paton Bridge is the enormous and ancient Pechersk Lavra monastery complex in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. This is the crucible in which East Slavic Orthodoxy was formed and is arguably the third most important religious community in the history Christendom behind only Monte Cassino and Mount Athos.

Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (Ukrainian: Києво-Печерська лавра; Russian: Киeво-Печерская лавра), also known as the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, was founded as a cave monastery in 1051, since which time it has usually been a preeminent centre of Orthodox Christianity in Eastern Europe. Together with the Saint Sophia Cathedral a few kilometres away, it is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Among others, the remains of Imperial Prime Minister Peter Stolypin, assassinated at the Opera in the city centre, lie at rest here.

While remaining a major cultural and tourist attraction, the monastery has been active again as a religious community since the 1980s, having been shut down by the Soviet authorities in 1928 and turned into a museum-park. Nowadays, there are now over 100 monks in residence. Continue reading

Posted in Christianity, Photography, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Twilight View of the Kyiv Pechersk-Lavra Monastery Complex

Devizes Market Square, West Side

Devizes Market Square, West SideThe west side of the Market Square of Devizes in Wiltshire (population 15,500). The Bear Hotel, which occupies the two left-hand buildings, dates back at least to the 16th Century, but reached both its current form with Doric front and stucco pillars, and the height of its popularity towards the end of the 18th Century, when it provided lodging and alimentation for the then rapidly expanding coach traffic transiting the town between London and Bath or Bristol. The statue of the bear above the front door was removed from its previous perch in the Market Square and placed here around 1800.

The Corn Exchange, the right hand building, is somewhat later, dating to 1857, in Victorian classical style and the Bath stone which the opening of the Kennet and Avon Canal brought so much of to Devizes after it opened 1810. The building is topped by a statue of Ceres, Roman god of the harvest. The building made Devizes one of England’s premier sites for trading in corn. It now largely provides a venue for social and arts events.

Rare indeed is the opportunity to photgraph these buildings without parked cars in the way, but an early Sunday morning in lockdown-lite was perfect, with an almost cloudless sky.

A market is still held in the square every Thursday.

For those interested in the history of Devizes, I highly recommend Lorna Haycock’s History and Guide of the town, available from all good bookshops.

Posted in Photography, UK | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Devizes Market Square, West Side

The Case for Socialist Healthcare in One Country

If China and Covid can’t shake doctrinal globalism, can anything?

My latest piece in The Critic…

My friend Murat runs two tailor’s shops in the south of England. Having arrived from Turkey as a sole trader five years ago running a little alteration business in Salisbury, he now employs eight people, has a second premises in Winchester, and offers a full bespoke suit-making service. When Covid-19 hit, he and his team of mainly Turkish immigrant craftsmen put their skills at the service of the NHS, making scrubs for Southampton University Hospital as supply lines around the world crumbled in the face of unprecedented demand.

It’s hard to think of two similar sized towns in the United Kingdom more unlike one another than Salisbury and Strabane, yet a similar story played itself out on a bigger scale there. This stronghold of Irish Republicanism on the Tyrone/Donegal border is home to O’Neills, a global sportswear brand that has expanded so far beyond its origins making Gaelic football and hurling gear that they now design and make, among other things, the strip of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s national football team. I know this because I was sat next to a gentleman wearing one on a Lusaka to Copperbelt bus last July, a market trader shuttling goods between his homeland and Zambia. We had no common language and it seemed he had never heard of Northern or any other Ireland, but a boy brought up by the River Lagan still rubbed shoulders, literally, with a man in a jersey made by the River Foyle as we bounced up Central Africa’s Great North Road. O’Neills closed their Strabane factory and made 750 staff redundant a few days before the lockdown was introduced, but within a week had brought some staff back to make scrubs for the Covid-19 ward at the nearby Altnagelvin Hospital. Currently, they are making more than 10,000 sets of scrubs a week, with more than 400 staff back at work.

Here we have two entrepreneurially-minded firms, in different ways on the margins of being British, reshaping their production lines to work for the common good in a national emergency. At the same time other firms reported huge frustrations with bureaucracy and seeming official disinterest as they attempted to respond to the government’s requests to switch production to PPE. This despite the problems in securing supplies from overseas during the height of the pandemic. James Ball reported in this week’s Spectator that Public Health England had indeed acted to top up its depleted PPE supplies in January as the news from China became steadily more worrying. The problem was that the enormous order went to a factory in France, whose government quite sensibly requisitioned all PPE within its borders once the virus struck Western Europe, whatever the EU’s ‘four freedoms’ might have demanded. It is by now almost facile to note how national sovereignty has reasserted itself over globalism during the pandemic. The hoarding of global supplies of Redemsivir by the United States, as the virus is getting out of control there again, is a warning that the NHS needs to urgently shorten all sorts of supply lines during what will be a lengthy crisis with shifting global epicentres.

Read more at The Critic

Posted in Journalism, UK | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Case for Socialist Healthcare in One Country

Beginning Public Ministry in a Liminal Time

On Saturday last, I should have made a deacon in Salisbury Cathedral, a place I love, the antepenultimate milestone in a journey to fulfil a call to priesthood in the church of God that I began, depending on how one counts it, either six, ten, or twenty-two years ago. I first went to see the Director of Ordinands for the Diocese of Connor and joined the Fellowship of Vocation there in September 1998. I often find it useful to date moments in my life by the pop songs on the radio at the time; the UK Number 1 single then was, with delicious irony, T-Spoon’s Sex on the Beach. That really was a long time ago now.

St John the Baptist Church, Devizes, 1 July 2020, © Gerry Lynch

St John the Baptist Church, Devizes, 1 July 2020, © Gerry Lynch

Having been formally licensed as a lay worker in the parish of St John with St Mary, Devizes, by the Bishop of Salisbury via videoconference on Sunday I am, however, a curate if not a cleric, an officially licensed tender of God’s garden of souls at a time when churches have not held public worship for more than three months, when public health regulations have quite correctly banned visiting the army of lonely and isolated people in their own homes. Hundreds of others have had their ordinations similarly delayed, and are experiencing similar uncertainties. For me, a journey towards ordained ministry that often involved being told that I was an awkward person on the edge leads to a public ministry that begins in a virus-ravaged world that sits on the edge of… who knows what?

Wikipedia tells me that in anthropology, liminality (from the Latin word limen, meaning ‘a threshold’) is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. Liminality is terribly fashionable in the Church at the moment; I have not always found it to be a pleasant or rewarding place to inhabit. It is, however, the state in which the whole world waits for a new order to emerge, groaning for better but often in trepidation of worse.

Liminal time exists in the cracks in our lives and the cracks in the life of the world that lie between the passing of the old and the coming of the new. Of course, there are other ways of looking at the world, ways that emphasize the continuities rather than the discontinuities. Emphasising the continuities that lie across all breaks in human experience seems to have been the most modish approach of late. Understandings that emphasize continuity bring richness and insight, for each of us always remains himself and all of us always remain human. Like all perspectives, however, these are limited. Just as a photographer will choose his perspective depending on the time of day and year, weather conditions, subject matter, and the like, sometimes we must consciously open ourselves to new viewpoints on ourselves and our world. Continue reading

Posted in Christianity, Priesthood, Reflection | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Beginning Public Ministry in a Liminal Time

The Blind Eye Turned to Barrow

What’s not newsworthy about fascists, Islamists, grooming and death threats to journalists?

My latest piece for The Critic.

When we sit at an obvious hinge of history, the tendency of the press is to look in the wrong direction for the events that will define a new era. 106 years ago this month, foreign correspondents were camped in Dublin hotels, waiting for a supposedly inevitable civil war to break out after the final passage of Asquith’s Home Rule Act. Leading world power Britain was a much more commanding story than little-understood and impoverished Bosnia, where Gavrilo Princip’s bullet was about to destroy the world that had existed since the Congress of Vienna.

In today’s Britain, attention is lavished on the anti-racist protests and demands for dethroned statues in urbane, metropolitan centres like Bristol, Manchester, and Oxford. Yet the current protest movement with the capacity to most directly shape Britain’s political future has received no attention from national journalists, with the honourable exception of the Guardian’s North of England correspondent, Helen Pidd, despite the fact it is taking place in the town with the UK’s worst Covid-19 outbreak.

Partly, this reflects the fact that it is taking place in Barrow-in-Furness, as remote a decent sized town as it is possible to find in England. Partly it reveals how uncomfortable a tale involving fascists, Islamists, grooming allegations, collapsed faith in the police, and death threats to journalists is to people of all political persuasions.

Read more at The Critic…

Posted in Journalism, UK | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on The Blind Eye Turned to Barrow

Orbán, Trianon, and the Rebirth of Nationalism

orban

Photo of Viktor Orbán © The Estonian EU Presidency 2017 and used courtesy of CC 2.0.

It is well worth reading Viktor Orbán’s speech on the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon, which was last Thursday and I didn’t even notice until it passed. Let’s start with this passage towards the end, which needs little comment.

“The world is changing. The changes are tectonic. The United States is no longer alone on the throne of the world, Eurasia is rebuilding with full throttle, the frames of our European Union are crackling, and now it hopes to save itself with a salto mortale. The ground is trembling under the feet of our eastern neighbour. The Balkans is also full of questions to be answered.

“A new order is being born. In our world, in our lives as well, great changes are banging on our gates.”

The Treaty of Trianon was one of the Paris Peace Conference treaties with the defeated Central Powers after World War One, which included the famous Treaty of Versailles, but also the treaties of Neuilly (with Bulgaria), St Germain (with German Austria), and Sevres (with Ottoman Turkey but ripped up by Atatürk by force of arms). Hungary lots two-thirds of its territory, nearly all of which had an ethnic majority of another nationality; but it also lost about three million Hungarians.

Hungary has lost another million in the since 1980 through a collapsed birth rate and high emigration; it is not hard to see the desperate desire for a bout of natalism that young Hungarian women seem reluctant to supply.

“At times they gave soldiers to defend the nation, at other times they gave armies of nation-building craftsmen to the country.”

This is contentious language even within Hungary. But the Hungarian liberal-left cannot simply wish its way out of dealing with the great national disaster that was Trianon. Budapest’s Mayor, Gergely Karácsony, the nearest thing to a credible rival that Orbán possesses, ordered a minute’s silence last Thursday. He spoke of the fate of his mother, trapped in what was now Romania in 1920 with his elderly great-grandparents, after his grandparents fled to the newly shrunken core Hungary. The elders, despite caring for a small child, were put to forced labour. Hungary is full of such stories and such myths, not only of the time after 1920 but the time after 1945.

But the silences are as revealing as the topics for comment, for Horthy’s regency is swept under the carpet, neither glorified nor condemned but simply not discussed; unmentioned too are the five months of murderous madness under the Arrow Cross Party. For others must always be the architects of Hungary’s problems. Continue reading

Posted in Europe, World Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Orbán, Trianon, and the Rebirth of Nationalism

Let’s Worship Outside

The News Letter later asked me to turn this blog into a newspaper article which you can read here.

Worshipping outside in happier times in South Dorset. Photo © Diocese of Salisbury/Gerry Lynch.

The dreadful news that more than a hundred people were infected with coronavirus at a single, legally permitted, church service in Germany earlier this month should make it transparent that we are unlikely any time soon to be returning to church worship as we hitherto understood it.

In this time of fear and death, I feel deeply deprived of connection with God. I have not received communion in more than two months; I have no idea when I might do so again. I cannot even spend time in a church praying in the presence of the reserved sacrament. I cannot kneel in any of my familiar haunts for prayer, nor can I discover new ones. A computer screen in my parents’ box room has proven a distracting and sensory-deprived locus for prayer. In my case, as a very definite extrovert, prayer is very much an externally contextualised physical process as well as an interior mental and psychological one. Prayer involves the placing of the earthly into the loving care of the heavenly, and is thus intimately bound up with place, physicality, community and body.

Worship via videoconference involves deprivation of the senses. It only involves sight and hearing; never smell, taste, or touch. The aural and visual, already overprivileged in technological societies, are mediated through a screen and a speaker, usually with poor audio and video quality. That is not to dismiss its value – certainly some people seem to have reconnected or newly connected with Christian worship via online means during the pandemic. But it can never involve the smell of incense, the taste of sacramental wine, the heat of a ray of sunshine streaming through a window, a hug, or noticing that a much loved elderly parishioner’s gait has suddenly become laboured.

Are there other ways to worship safely in the era of coronavirus?

Continue reading
Posted in Anglicanism, Christianity, COVID19, Journalism, Prayer and Worship | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Let’s Worship Outside