Is Lent What You Do?: Sermon Preached on 14th February 2024 (Ash Wednesday)

Posted on February 14, 2024 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

2 Corinthians 5.20-6.10; John 8. 1-11

When I was at university, a big Catholic charity in Ireland had a major Lent advertising campaign to raise funds for its work in developing countries. The campaign slogan was very clever: not only does it stick in my head a quarter of a century later, but I remember how, back at the time, it struck a chord with one of my associates in student politics. This friend was and still is what you might call a sympathetic atheist—supportive of the Church as a channel for good works, especially looking after the poor; sometimes entranced by the beauty of Church music and architecture; but fundamentally convinced that there was and could be no such being as God. But the slogan stuck in his head—one evening, in the pub, when I refused a pint because I had given up drink for Lent, recited this charity’s slogan to me. It was: “Lent is what you do.”

A cartoon version of an ash cross such as is put on people's heads on Ash Wednesday.

Of course, it was nice that my friend missed drinking beer with me, but I wasn’t convinced by the idea that: “Lent is what you do.” My instinct was that Lent was indeed mainly about giving things up and that this was a good thing. Over the years since, my instincts then on this score have hardened into a firm conviction.

Of course, I understand the logic behind “Lent is what you do”, and why many of you will be surprised that I don’t like it. With the idea that Lent is about giving things up so firmly rooted in people’s heads, the slogan presents the exact opposite message. Not only was this memorable for the charity, but it also presents an image of Christianity that is positive and wants to get things done for people, rather than always saying no and wanting to forbid things.

So why do I think Lent should be primarily about giving things up? Well, while good works are indeed good, we lose much of the richness of the Christian faith if we reduce it to a religion of good works.

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The Transfiguration of Technology: Sermon Preached on 11th February 2024 (Sunday Before Lent)

Posted on February 11, 2024 by Gerry Lynch

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

2 Corinthians 4. 3-6; Mark 9. 2-9

“He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”

Carol Beer from Little Britain, and her computer which always says no.
Computer says… yes…?

We seem to be hardwired to giving more credibility to information that comes from a screen than things we hear in-person from other people, or even things we see directly with our own eyes. Last month, after falling for a so-called Deep Fake, an employee of a large multinational firm in Hong Kong transferred twenty million pounds to fraudsters. Police in the territory think that the criminals faked an entire video conference, with perhaps fifteen computer-simulated participants, using Artificial Intelligence to add made-up dialogue to real recordings. Because the people in the video conference looked and sounded just like people the victim knew from the real world, she fell for it. Would she have fallen for a similar con attempted in the flesh by a troupe of actors?

And so to our first reading, from St Paul, writing another of his letters to those perpetually troublesome Corinthians. “The god of this world”, he warns them, “has blinded the eyes of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel.” The “god of this world” is, fairly obviously, a reference to the Devil. But the quote sets off all sorts of reflections about what the actual god or gods of today’s society are. We seem particularly prone to worshipping our own supposed cleverness, and the products of it. Above all, technology seems to be the Zeus or Jupiter of our 21st Century gods, the solver of problems and the bringer of enlightenment. That’s why we are at risk of falling for scams delivered via a screen, in a way we never would for a real-life cold caller at the door.

I’m hardly opposed to technology. I make quite heavy use of social media and the Internet and all sorts of gizmos and software for my photography. Technology is a morally neutral thing, neither good nor evil – at the end of the day, a computer is just a fancy tool. Difficulties start when we forget that humans are supposed to use tools and not the other way around. Technology often seems to be our master rather than our tool.

The Church seems besotted with technology as a sort of magic bullet to appeal to young people and reverse Church decline. In particular, during the pandemic, we tried to convince ourselves that Zoom services were the future of the Church rather than an emergency response to an unprecedented situation. By the end of all those lockdowns, however, I think we all knew that being on a videoconference call with people was emphatically not the same as being in a room or a Church with them. Electronic presence is not the same as physical presence; and, as already noted, experiencing things through a screen can make it harder, not easier, to discern the truth.

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Christianity is Strange: Sermon Preached on 4th February 2024 (Second Sunday Before Lent)

Posted on February 9, 2024 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Christ Church, Worton

Colossians 1. 15-20; John 1. 1-14

“through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things … by making peace through the blood of his cross”

The cover of Tom Holland's book on the history Christianity and the Western mindset, 'Dominion'.

Confessions of a sort-of convert—Tom Holland’s ‘Dominion’ details how Christianity changed the mindset of Westerners from Graeco-Roman conceptions of power and violence.

I don’t know if you have yet heard me say in a sermon that Christianity is a very weird religion. If you haven’t, don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of chances over the years to come. In this country, a Christian understanding of the world was simply the default position of almost everyone for well over a thousand years, and that has obscured the sheer strangeness of our faith to us. The retreat from Christian faith over the last two generations has started to make that strangeness apparent again. Interestingly, I think because we want to be as open to newcomers and explorers as we can, we have tried to underplay or hide that strangeness, for fear of scaring them off. But actually, I think it’s precisely the weirdness that makes Christianity a worthwhile alternative to a secular order – in business and politics and entertainment and so much else – that seems to know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Christianity has always been strange. The Wiltshire-based historian, Tom Holland, came back to the Faith after having abandoned it once he realised how much it had subverted the dominant value systems of the Roman Empire, which were all about power and authority, often exerted with great cruelty. This was the world in which this morning’s Bible readings were written.

At the centre of this strangeness is the person of Jesus Christ. Who was Jesus Christ and why did He matter so much?  Our readings both show 1st Century Christians trying to grapple with these questions.

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Fragments of Wisdom: Sermon Preached on Sunday 7th January 2024 (The Epiphany)

Posted on January 7, 2024 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St John’s Devizes; my final sermon as curate there.

Isaiah 60.1-6; Matthew 2.1-12

“Wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?’”

We know nothing about them, really. They are only mentioned once in the whole of Scripture, in the part of Matthew that was read as this morning’s Gospel. We don’t know what made these men wise, or whether they were learned at all in the conventional sense – the Greek word used to describe them, ‘μαγοι’, is the root of our own word ‘magician’. Bible translators have always struggled with it. I explored some modern translations of this passage when preparing my sermon – a German translation called them astrologers, all four French translations I checked called them magicians, while the Spanish New International Version opted for “some wise men”.

Three men dressed in medieval Near Eastern clothes, including breeches, carry gifts in their hands, as their horses walk behind. There is some Armenian writing above and behind.

The Wise Men as depicted in the an illuminated Armenian Gospel of 1391 in what is now Akdamar Island in Lake Van, Turkey; the Gospel is now kept in the Matenadaran in Yerevan.

That last is particularly interesting, because we don’t even know that there were ‘three’ Wise Men. In the churches of the West, that has always been taken as read given that they left three distinct gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But the Bible doesn’t say how many of them there were. In fact, in parts of the East, and especially in Syriac Christianity, known to have particularly deep connections to the Church of the earliest times, they are adamant that there were twelve wise men bearing those three gifts.

All sorts of other things we take for granted about the Wise Men weren’t reported for many centuries after Matthew wrote his Gospel – that their names were Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchior, or that Balthasar was Black. Indeed, while we in the West have linked Balthasar with Africa for more than a thousand years, in Armenia – another Eastern land with a very ancient Church – they identify the Wise Men as Caspar of India, Melchior of Persia, and Balthasar of Arabia.

Wherever they’re from, once they’ve played their part in this morning’s Gospel reading, they walk off the biblical stage, never to be mentioned again.

It’s obvious why Matthew makes the Wise Men a significant part of His story of Christ’s early life – he wants to show us that even while still in a makeshift cot, this little baby is already not merely King of the Jews, but destined to be worshipped by peoples from every nation.

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The End of the World: Sermon Preached on 24th December 2023 (Midnight Mass)

Posted on December 24, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

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

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”         

How would you react if a vicar, at Midnight Mass, in a medieval church, in a rather traditional village in the depths of Deep England, started preaching about the End of the World? Would you wonder if he had been teleported in from the American Bible Belt? Or perhaps, on hearing a certain accent, wonder if he was a friend of another Ulster preacher, whom some of you may remember, the man who liked to say “no” a lot?

A painting of Our Lady in a stable with the Baby Jesus in her arms; watched by St Joseph and the angels, who have halos, and shepherds and animals, who don't.

The Nativity by Giotto (1311-20), in the Basilica of St Francis, Assisi.

In fact, in the churches I go to I never hear anyone preaching on the end of the world. They’re far too moderate and sensible for that sort of thing. But lately, I’ve heard people talking about the end of the world on Radio 4 and in the pages of The Times.

That nice Matthew Syed, who won an Olympic medal in ping-pong, and makes those interesting radio programmes about quirky bits of modern history, had a column in The Times the other week saying our advancing technology meant that we might cause our own extinction. Then last Tuesday, when I was driving, Radio 4’s PM programme – not normally known for fire and brimstone sermons – had an interview with Geoffrey Hinton, the man often called “the godfather of artificial intelligence”, warning of the risks that AI might pose to human existence within the next 5-20 years. And all that’s before we talk about climate change, or nuclear war.

The world might be entering a very dark era.

So far, so cheerful!

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Patience and Obedience: Sermon Preached on 24th December 2023 (Fourth Sunday in Advent)

Posted on December 24, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend (Benefice Service)

Readings – Romans 16. 25-27; Luke 1. 26-38

“Then Mary said, ‘Let it be with me according to your word…’”

Advent is a season about patience and obedience. If, as we do this morning, we follow the Church’s calendar obediently, and keep the season patiently to the end, Advent reminds us that God is always breaking into the world in ways that are little noticed and often among people who are held to be of little account by the conventional standards of the day.

A painting in realist style. Elizabeth, standing at the top of the steps of her house, is smiling with her arms outstretched, while Mary, at the foot of the steps, looks up at her.

The Meeting of Mary and Elisabeth (1866) by Carl Bloch – hangs in the place for which it was painted, the King’s Oratory at Frederiksborg Castle.

This morning’s Gospel reading is about how God launched His great rescue plan for the human race thanks to the obedience of two ordinary women, who lived in rural communities, as members of a people under foreign occupation, at a time when women were held to be inferior and were excluded from public life.

Elizabeth, who kept faith patiently through years of barrenness, is given a child she could never have expected; Mary is given a child earlier than she could ever have imagined, in circumstances that will be difficult, but her obedience is such that she accepts.

Neither patience nor obedience are exactly fashionable virtues at the moment. Consumer culture mitigates against patience, while we too easily get obedience confused with acceptance of authoritarianism—they aren’t the same thing at all. Like people in every time and every nation, the presumptions of our culture leave us with much to learn and to unlearn about what God requires of us. That learning requires patience.

In our epistle reading, St Paul writes that in Jesus Christ, “the mystery that was kept secret for long ages…is now disclosed”. Why was the mystery kept for all these long ages? Why could God have not just given people some simple rules for living well together?

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Waiting Patiently for Christmas: Sermon Preached on 17th December 2023 (Third Sunday of Advent)

Posted on December 17, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St John’s, Devizes

Readings – 1 Thessalonians 5.16-24; John 1. 6-8, 19-28

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances…”

The supermarkets have been keeping Christmas since October. The big firms’ Christmas TV adverts came out just before Remembrance Sunday. We like to tut at them for their indecent rush to start the festive season, yet by this stage, we ourselves have all been to about fifteen Christmas parties, sang about fifty carols, and eaten nine thousand eight hundred mince pies. Even St John’s is full to the brim with beautifully decorated Christmas trees.

A medieval altar triptych displaying a dramatic scene.

Triptych of the Virtue of Patience (1521), by Bernard van Orley. Commissioned by Margaret of Austria, the governor of the Low Countries. Hangs in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

Yet according to the Church it still isn’t Christmas. It’s Advent, which is supposed to be a time of waiting, a time of reflection and spiritual preparation before Christmas, sort of like the junior brother of Lent. It’s hard to preach about keeping Advent faithfully rather than jumping the gun with the secular world when the building is full of angels and stars. It’s harder still to keep any sense of this being at least something of a season of fasting when David Evans is offering you another hot mug of his delicious mulled wine, sourced directly from Germany.

I’m not in a position to give you a lecture from the pulpit about keeping Advent properly, because I haven’t been keeping it very well myself. Indeed, pretty much the whole Church, across denominational boundaries, celebrates Christmas with the secular world during Advent, then during the Twelve Days of Christmas, supposed to be the time of feasting, it joins everyone else in having a good slumber.

I think it’s a great pity, because Advent is all about waiting patiently, sometimes in surroundings that are very dark, for the light of God’s eternal Word to enter into the world. And when that Light did enter the world, it didn’t do so in a blaze of glory, but almost entirely ignored, in the form of a tiny, vulnerable, baby. Given how dark the world has become over the last few years, we as Christians could do with preparing ourselves spiritually to be proficient at waiting patiently, and looking for where light is entering the world, vulnerable and much ignored. If we could be better at that, we could also be more of a blessing on our secular neighbours.

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November Churches…

Posted on November 23, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

November churches in Wiltshire, great and small… Salisbury Cathedral and St Peter’s, Poulshot.

Salisbury Cathedral, floodlit, but with still quite a bit of light in the "blue hour" sky; clouds, whose rapid motion is made clear by use of long exposure, are skidding past it.
Salisbury Cathedral in Twilight, 21 November 2023, © Gerry Lynch.
Brown leaves fallen on the ground, which is grassy, while in the background, a golden-leafed beech tree stands next to a medieval church.
St Peter’s, Poulshot, 19 November 2023, © Gerry Lynch.
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Destined for Salvation: Sermon Preached on 19th November 2023 (Second Sunday before Advent)

Posted on November 19, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

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

Readings – 1 Thessalonians 5.1-11; Matthew 25.14-30

“For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”

So, Jesus Christ will return like a thief in the night to judge the world, and He told a story about what that judgement would be like that ended with a poor servant of a harsh man being thrown out into the outer darkness—where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. I have to be honest, this morning’s readings make me uncomfortable, and I suspect they made most of you uncomfortable too.

Partly, I think, our discomfort come from not wanting to be like those Christians, you know, the ones who are very sure that they are going to be Jesus Christ’s personal hitmen when He returns, when they’ll happily help Him out as He casts a few wretches into the outer darkness. We’ve all met a few of them in our time. It is right that we don’t want to be like those Christians, far too certain for their own good that they have this Christianity business nailed down – and far too inclined to forget that Scripture is clear that judgement belongs to Christ and Christ alone, and not to them nor anyone else.

The Parable of the Talents (2013), © Andrei Mironov

The Parable of the Talents (2013), © Andrei Mironov

But unless we ourselves are also too certain for our own good that we have this Christianity business nailed down, we should accept that if the Gospel is worth believing, it must be capable of disturbing our comfortable certainties. If Jesus Christ is going to actually come back in glory to judge the world – and He repeatedly stated that He would – that means He’s going to come back to judge us. And we all know that we aren’t quite the lovely people we like to pretend we are for public consumption – certainly, I know that I’m not. Quite apart from that, few of us could mount a case that we have made the spectacular 100% Return on Investment from the talents God has given us achieved by the profitable servants in this morning’s Gospel. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t solved many wars, ended many famines, or brought many people to Faith.

When I hear readings like these from the Bible, at first blush I can find myself thinking that God may be a being I need to fear, but He’s hard to love, and I even wonder sometimes if want to associate myself with this Jesus Christ fellow and His tales of mistreated servants.

But let’s dig a little deeper into the readings, because there are a few points that can be easy to miss, and which are far more hopeful.

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Remembering: Sermon Preached on 12th November 2023 (Remembrance Sunday)

Posted on November 17, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St John’s, Devizes

Readings – Micah 4: 1–5; Romans 8: 35–39

Henry Allingham, the last British survivor of those who fought in WW1 trenches, aged 110 in 2006. He is wearing medals, smiling, and shaking the hand of someone located off-camera.

Henry Allingham in 2006, when he was aged 110.

Henry Allingham died in the year 2009, at the age of a hundred and thirteen, as the oldest man in the world. An air mechanic, he was the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland, and later served with the air reconnaissance units supporting the offensive at Passchendaele.

For eight long decades, Henry tried to forget what he’d seen on the Western Front. It was only towards the end of his life that he began to open up about what he remembered. Then, it was obvious why he’d wanted to forget. He once said that his Remembrance Day was the 22nd of September, when he lost three mates. He spoke of men standing in two feet of water in mud-filled trenches waiting to go over the top, knowing exactly what their likely fate was. He once spent a night in a shell hole. “It stank,” he said. “So did I when I fell into it. Arms and legs, dead rats, dead everything. Rotten flesh. Human guts.”

It is more comfortable, in some ways, to forget. So why do we remember? One reason is the sense of duty that we rightly feel to honour those who made the supreme sacrifice. Another important reason for remembering is because those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

But to remember also means something else. The word ‘member’ can mean a body part; indeed originally that was its only English meaning. Member is a word that came into English, via Norman French, from the Latin word membrum, which means limb. The word remember also has its root in this Latin word, membrum. So to re-member someone is literally to put their limbs together again. When we remember the dead, we bring them to life in our hearts and souls.

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