Called to be Saints: Sermon Preached on 5th November 2023 (All Saints’)

Posted on November 5, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Christ Church, Worton and Holy Cross, Seend

Readings – 1 John 3.1-3; Matthew 5.1-12

“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.”

This Sunday, we’re keeping All Saints’ Day, the day where the Church celebrates – you know – all the saints. That’s all very well and good, but you wouldn’t want to be too like a saint would you? If you’re being honest, you probably wouldn’t even want to get too close to one of them. In being so good at the whole Christianity business, they rather show the rest of us up. We’re just ordinary Christians – we believe and trust in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we try our best to live good lives and all that, but we also know we aren’t very good at it. With their constant praying, doing good, being pious, and staying away from all the naughty but fun things we enjoy – from booze to gossip – saints leave us feeling a bit inadequate. Just for example, you wouldn’t want a rector who’s too much of the saint, would you?

Ten status of twentieth century martyrs above the West Door of Westminster Abbey, on the exterior wall.

The Ten Modern Martyrs at Westminster Abbey. © CEPhoto, Uwe Aranas

That’s my instinctive reaction when I hear about saints, one that I suspect many of you share. But I think it’s also an incorrect reaction. Look at your Bibles! The people who were close to Jesus, and went on to build the Church, certainly weren’t perfect. The apostles did plenty of squabbling and bickering with one another – so much of it that you’d think they were just like today’s Christians. Nor did the apostles avoid the good things in life. That St Peter liked getting lavish hospitality from the congregations he visited, for himself and his wife – at least if you believe St Paul’s gossipy comments in his letters.

Saints aren’t perfect. Only God is perfect. We sometimes get a little confused about what a saint is. Saints aren’t just the famous people like Peter and Paul who get a special day in the Church’s calendar. The truth – the frightening truth – is that all followers of Jesus Christ are called to be saints.

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Render unto Caesar: Sermon Preached on 22nd October 2023 (20th Sunday after Trinity)

Posted on October 22, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – 1 Thessalonians 1. 1-10; Matthew 22.15-22

“Paul, Sylvanus and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.”

Jan Lievens' 1629 painting of St Paul Writing to the Thessalonians; St Paul is depicted with a long white beard, and a thoughtful, almost mournful expression, holding a quill in his right hand with a ream of papyrus behind.

Jan Lievens, St Paul Writing to the Thessalonians, painted 1629, now hangs in the Kunsthalle Bremen.

“Paul, Sylvanus and Timothy, to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.” These words may not seem very significant, but it is likely that they are the earliest written in all the New Testament. St Paul dictated them in the year 50 or 51 to the Church in Thessalonica. Thessalonica remains very much a part of today’s world, the second largest city in 21st Century Greece, roughly comparable in size with Bristol. In St Paul’s time, Thessalonica was also an important city, and a wealthy one, capital of the Roman province of Macedonia.

We are all used to hearing Paul telling off Churches in his letters for backsliding from his teachings. But there is no hint at all of this in today’s reading. Instead, the Thessalonians are praised for their faith, and the power with which they have received the Holy Spirit. It also seems obvious from the way Paul congratulates his readers on turning “to God from idols”, that this church comprises one of Paul’s first big successes in converting Gentiles to faith in Christ. In particular, Paul praises the Church in Thessalonica for its endurance, persisting in the faith “in spite of persecution”.

Why might these gentile converts, in a diverse Roman provincial capital, have faced persecution? Well, their faith in Christ would have meant that they no longer participated in important local pagan cults – for example, we know Thessalonica was the stronghold of devotion to Isis. Nor would they have participated in the cult of the Emperor. None of this would have endeared them to politically and economically powerful interests. When faced with a choice between Christ and Caesar, the Thessalonians chose Christ, and perhaps this most of all is why Paul is so fulsome in his praise of them.

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Return to the Gospel’s Core: Sermon Preached on 8th October 2023 (18th Sunday after Trinity)

Posted on October 8, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Philippians 3.4-14 Matthew 21.33-46

“I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus…”

This morning’s readings give us an intensely personal and impassioned passage from St Paul coupled with one of the more difficult and judging of Jesus’ parables. I think this pair of readings is profoundly relevant to the times we are in and the state of our Church. Christ’s words judge the Church of our time forcefully, and St Paul points a way out.

Marten van Valckenborch, The Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen (ca. 1580-90). Hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Marten van Valckenborch, The Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen (ca. 1580-90). Hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Let’s start by looking at the gospel reading, the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen.

Most of our Sunday gospel readings this year come from Matthew, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that as we’re coming towards the end of the year, we’re coming towards the end of Jesus’s public ministry in the story. So although it’s October, this Gospel reading is set in the Temple in Jerusalem in the last few days of Jesus’ life.

This parable might explain why the religious hierarchy in Jerusalem had come to fear and hate Jesus so much. The story is a sort of fictional representation of the history of God’s prophets in Jerusalem – most of them were mistreated or even put to death, at the hands of people like them. The landowner represents God, and in the end sends his son, obviously representing Jesus, to try and sort out these unruly tenants and get them to give him some of their grapes as rent, as they agreed. But they kill the Son. Jesus’ audience assumes the landowner would rightly put the murderers of his son to death. Jesus doesn’t actually confirm that, but He makes it clear that, “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the Kingdom.” Bear that in mind – we will come back to it.

Our epistle comes from St Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and recalls his faith as a young man, and how he came to believe Jesus Christ was the son of God.  The young Paul was proud of his Jewish heritage and that he had always remained the staunch Jew he was brought up to be. Except for one problem: Paul was so convinced he God’s man that he forgot that God in the Hebrew Bible was clear that He wanted mercy rather than sacrifice and love of neighbour. Paul, however, thought his faith gave him the right to duff up the people he considered God’s enemies, foremost among those being the Church in its first years.

Thinking he was an expert on pleasing God, Paul found instead that God had to hit him with a bolt from the blue to put him on the right path. Writing with the benefit of several decades’ hindsight, Paul was glad that his preconceptions had been shattered. Paul had lost everything considered valuable by ordinary standards, but he willingly paid that price to gain his faith in Jesus Christ.

In trying to meet God’s standards through his own efforts, Paul found out that he didn’t even know really what God’s standards were. Instead, in following Jesus Christ, he learnt that he could never meet God’s standards, but instead had to throw himself on God’s grace – and in abandoning his self-will, he found true liberation.

So what does all this have to do with our situation today? Well I think the church lost its way in the middle of the 20th century, in a way somewhat reminiscent of the young Paul. Paul was, in his own words, confident in the flesh – confident in his heritage, his intellect, and his faithfulness. The churches of the Western countries, very much including the Church of England, became overconfident in its brain. As we entered a world of nuclear power and television, the Church thought it was much too advanced for these hoary old Hebrew fairy stories, and started thinking the idea that Jesus rose from the dead was primitive. It told itself it had “matured” beyond this, that the rest of society had matured beyond it too, and that for the Church to survive it would have to abandon belief in anything supernatural.

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The Paradox of Christianity: Sermon Preached on 1st October 2023 (17th Sunday after Trinity)

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St John’s, Devizes

Readings – Philippians 2.1-13; Matthew 20.1-16

“And they argued with one another…”

If you’ve been paying attention to the readings in Church on recent Sundays, you’ll have noticed that we haven’t had the Palm Sunday Gospel – unsurprisingly in early autumn. So it’s a little startling to find this week’s Gospel catapulting us into the middle of Holy Week. We don’t read Matthew’s Gospel entirely in sequence during the year, so we’ve skipped over Christ’s final journey through Judaea and Jericho, and find Jesus in the Temple arguing with the chief priests and elders.

Jesus Christ stands on a pedestal in The Temple, with Corinthian columns behind, surrounded by listeners dressed in sumptuous Renaissance clothing.

Paolo Veronese, Christ Among the Doctors (ca. 1560). Hangs in the Prado, Madrid.

The religious leaders are playing what they think are clever word games. But although they present themselves as having power and authority over the Jewish people, what this debate exposes is how afraid they are of public opinion. We also know that they rightly fear the Romans. So they’re performing little verbal dances, determined to get one over on Jesus, but also aware that saying the wrong thing could enrage either the Empire, or the crowds who admire this popular, if strange, preacher, as the admired John the Baptist.

By the time Matthew’s Gospel was written down in this form, perhaps forty years after Holy Week, the pointlessness of these games of had been brutally exposed. In the year 70 the Romans destroyed the Temple, halfway through a brutal eight-year Jewish revolt which ended, inevitably, with a Roman victory. The chief priests and elders in Jerusalem were absolutely not capable of managing the relationship between an all-powerful Empire demanding obedience and a fractious and resentful Jewish Palestinian society.

I’m afraid the word games and meaningless hair-splitting remind me rather of the politics of our own time. While it’s easy to blame our leaders for that, like the Jerusalem Temple authorities of Jesus’ time, they live in fear of fickle public opinion—the opinion of us and people like us—and the evident enjoyment the population takes in a bit of mob anger, albeit mostly expressed on the phone-in shows and on social media. At the same time, the long-term mega trends of the modern world, be it galloping technology, migration, climate change, or whatever, seem as beyond our leaders as the ever-rising tensions between Roman power and Jewish resentment were for the clerical gentlemen at the Temple. Perhaps it’s an inevitable part of the human condition that rulers spend much effort on irrelevancies they can control while ignoring the real problems that they possibly can’t.

Now, here’s a point that’s easy to miss in all this. It is very obvious from this exchange that Jesus can play these political word games like a pro. He puts the chief priests and elders in their box with a calculatedly sharp answer, as He does so often. But Jesus isn’t interested in playing these games for too long. While the religious authorities are desperate to stay on the right side of public opinion, Jesus already seems to be aware that it will turn against Him, and soon.

This is where we see the magnificent paradox that sits at the heart of the Christian faith. Christ has already warned His followers, in Matthew chapter 16, so not all that long before these events, that anyone who tried to save their life would lose it, but anyone who lost their life for His sake would save it. When we lose our lives for Christ’s sake we save them; it’s only because Christ died on the Cross that eternal life is open to us.

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The Workless Labourers: Sermon Preached on 17th September 2023 (15th Sunday after Trinity)

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Philippians 1.21-30; Matthew 20.1-16

“…he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’”

Gerry Lynch standing in front of a table groaning with labelled bottles of various types, which was a tombola competition.

What does tombola have to do with eternal life… well, we’ll come to that folx.

Yesterday, it was the Michaelmas Fayre in the Devizes Corn Exchange organised by the charity linked to St John’s Church, Omnes ad Unum. I was manning the tombola stall, and took in a healthy amount of cash, so felt very pleased with myself. At the end of the day’s trading, I wandered around bragging rather insufferably. Now, I didn’t give any of the prizes, except for a can of chickpeas and a can of chopped tomatoes, both from the highly-regarded Lidl own brand range. Somehow I don’t think those were exactly what pulled the punters in! My success was entirely dependent on the generosity and kindness of people who had given the prizes, and those who had organised the event.

Indeed, ultimately, whatever success I may have had depended entirely on God.

The parable of the workers in the vineyard is so familiar that we can sort of surf through it in our minds when it’s being read in church. Yet sometimes there are little details we notice for the first time. When I read it to prepare for preaching this morning, it hit me that none of these workers had any other work. Four times after the start of the working day, the land-owner sees men standing idle in the marketplace because nobody has hired them. Presumably all these men had families to feed.

So, this isn’t just a matter of whether the people who worked all day have been treated fairly. The land-owner’s decision to pay a full day’s wage to those who have worked for only a short time has more profound implications for them, and their loved ones, than we perhaps noticed. It might even be a matter of life or death for some of them.

The painting entitled the Parable of the Labourers in the Vinyeard (1880) by Lawrence Ladd

The Parable of the Labourers in the Vinyeard (1880) by Lawrence Ladd. Now hangs in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

This is the last parable Jesus tells in Matthew’s Gospel before he begins his final journey to Jerusalem, so it must be one of great significance. That journey will be a matter of life and death for Him, and for us who share the Christian faith, it is a matter of eternal life and the destruction of death itself. Like the land-owner, Jesus Christ offers the same wage for those who work for him, whether they do so for their whole lives or just for a short time – and that is eternal life.

The land-owner doesn’t short change anyone – he gives some of his workers a fair days wage for a fair day’s work, and some of them the full days wage they need to survive, even though they have only been able to find an hour of work. This is something he does out of his own generosity. So it is with God – He offers us eternal life, not as a reward for good behaviour, but because He loves us.

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The Difficult Gospel of Forgiveness: Sermon Preached on 17th September 2023 (15th Sunday after Trinity)

Posted on September 17, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

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

Readings – Romans 14.1-12; Matthew 18.21-35

“Jesus saith unto him, ‘I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.’”

On Thursday, it was Holy Cross Day and, to celebrate, A.N. Wilson wrote a thunderous article about the state of the Church of England in The Times. I didn’t agree with all of it. Then again, I doubt that A.N. Wilson agrees with everything he writes either!—but he did have some good points.

One was to remind us that whatever we think about the issues that currently consume the most oxygen inthe Church, like women bishops and gay marriage, they are secondary to what he called, “the awesome Gospel” whose values, he says invert those of, again I quote, “liberal modern life”. I would go much further than that, in fact—the Gospel subverts and often inverts the values of every human system and civilisation.

Now I have strong views on both gay marriage and women bishops – I’m vehemently in favour of both – but to reduce the Gospel to our culture’s quite correct concern for equality and inclusion is to make it both less strange and less wonderful than it actually is.

Perhaps no Gospel passage is more confounding to any conventional understanding of morality than the encounter between Peter and Jesus we heard this morning. Peter asks how many times he must forgive someone who has sinned against him. Is it as many as seven times?

Christ gives Peter the Keys of Heaven, by Christ gives Peter the Keys to Heaven (1820) by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Hangs in the Musée Ingres, Montauban, France.

Christ gives Peter the Keys of Heaven, by Christ gives Peter the Keys to Heaven (1820) by
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Hangs in the Musée Ingres, Montauban, France.

Firstly, note what Jesus doesn’t say in his reply. He doesn’t say, “You know Peter, one of these days a lot of our conversations are going to be written down, and many of them are going to be about how you’re always getting the wrong end of the stick—maybe you want to remember that before you accuse people of sinning against you.” It’s quite clear we’re talking about Peter actually being wronged. Yet, Jesus still says that we are to forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven.

Christian forgiveness is supposed to be either limitless, or very nearly so. How upsetting of any system of worldly morality is that? Surely, there comes a point when we realise that someone who continually does us wrong is just taking the mickey? Surely if we keep forgiving someone who continually does us wrong, we’ll encourage them to exploit others, making for a world with more injustice?

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Photo Recharge for Your Soul – NI September 2023

Posted on September 16, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

A baker’s dozen of the best shots I took while back home this month. All photos © Gerry Lynch.

Looking west from the fancy new viewing point-cum-picnic area at Magheracross just west of Dunluce Castle. The peninsula that ends just below the setting sun is Portrush.
The tasks of early autumn—making silage near Meigh, County Armagh.
Reading the Financial Times in the beautiful Northern Room in Belfast’s Linen Hall Library: a 1990 decorative effort on Victorian themes.
I shot Scrabo silhouetted against the setting sun from the shore of Strangford.
RISE is the official name given to the public art sculpture located at Broadway Roundabout in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It has been given unofficial, colloquial titles that you may be more familiar with.
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Sweetly Seductive Satan: Sermon Preached on 3rd September 2023 (13th Sunday after Trinity)

Posted on September 3, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St John’s, Devizes

Readings – Romans 12.9-21; Matthew 16.21-28

“And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him…”

Conjure the scene in your mind: Peter tapping Jesus on the shoulder in front of James and John and all that lot and saying, “Jesus, can I have a word… in private?”

Sometimes there are revealing little details in the Bible that can pass us by our whole lives, even when the stories are very familiar. As I prepared this morning’s sermon, a phrase that caught in my mind for the first time was that when Peter told Jesus not to risk His life in Jerusalem, Peter “took him aside and began to rebuke him.” One wonders what the other disciples thought.

Now, Jesus doesn’t tell Peter off for embarrassing Him in front of the other disciple, but something more dramatic, famously telling him, “Get behind me, Satan!”

Why did Jesus give Peter such a blunt and probably rather hurtful answer? Well, can you remember what last week’s Gospel was? It was Peter working out the Jesus was indeed the Messiah, and Jesus telling Peter that he would be the rock on which He would build His Church. This morning’s reading follows directly on from that story without a break. In all three synoptic Gospels, once Peter works out that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus begins to tell the disciples that He must suffer and die in Jerusalem – although Luke doesn’t mention Jesus saying “Get behind me, Satan.”

The cover of Iron Maiden's 1982 album, Number of the Beast

Why should The Devil get all the good music?

Poor Peter must have been crushed by this. When Jesus told Peter that that He was indeed the Messiah and, better still, that Peter would be the rock of His community, suffering and death would have been the last thing in Peter’s mind. The Messiah was expected to be a great religious, political, and probably military leader. Peter will naturally have thought that Jesus the Messiah would march into Jerusalem, annihilate the Romans in a huge battle, overthrow Herod, and put the scribes and Pharisees in their place. Jesus would then reign as king, and Peter would be something like His Prime Minister. Peter thinks he’ll be a powerful figure in Jesus’s new Kingdom—and, in fact, he is entirely correct in that, but he completely misunderstands what the new Kingdom is.

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Love Your Body: Sermon Preached on 27th August 2023 (12th Sunday After Trinity)

Posted on August 27, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St John’s, Devizes and Christ Church, Bulkington

Readings – Romans 12.1-8; Matthew 16.13-20

“present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

On Thursday, when cooking, I gave my thumb a proper deep cut with a sharp cooking knife. It happened as I was getting something ready to put in the slow cooker overnight, so my evening peace was disturbed by frantically finding a plaster to deal with the profuse bleeding. By the time I’d found one, the blood was already showing signs of clotting. Over the 60 hours since, the cut has healed with remarkable speed. I haven’t used any medical aid other than a few plasters; yet the pain has long gone and the gash in the skin is starting to close.

Our bodies are remarkable things. Even the most basic functions of the human body can provoke wonder, and we live at a time when science has unveiled just how wonderful many of the body’s workings are. Yet although the human body in general often provokes wonder, many of us seem to feel our own specific bodies are not good enough.Especially among teenage girls, there is an epidemic of self-harm and depression related to poor body image.

A painting by Giovanni Paolo Pannini of St Paul preaching in what purported to be the ruins of Rome, although there wouldn't have been such ruins in St Paul's day!

Apostle Paul Preaching on the Ruins (1744) by Giovanni Paolo Pannini; now hangs in the Hermitage, St Petersburg.

So it can be a surprise to hear St Paul speak so positively about bodies in today’s Epistle reading – we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, he says, and furthermore, he sees the human body as a model for a healthy Church.

Now, if you ask people about faith, very few will tell you that our physical bodies have much to do with it—whether they are Christians, or believers in other faiths, or non-religious people. Faith is held to be a matter of one’s mental or emotional state, detached from physical reality. Even the most faithful and well-read Christians are inclined to go along with the idea that the body is a prison for the soul, a soul which longs to be united with God in a relationship in the world to come that is undisturbed by material things.

Yet, Christianity is a religion of the physical at least as much as of the spiritual. We worship God who became human in the person of Jesus Christ—eating and drinking, getting cuts that healed and viruses that made Him sneeze. We worship a God who even went to the toilet; and a God who ultimately died a death of brutal physicality on the Cross. God lived a human life in the person of Jesus Christ, a life just like ours, except without sin.

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Jesus Making Us Uncomfortable: Sermon Preached on 20th August 2023 (11th Sunday After Trinity)

Posted on August 20, 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Christ Church, Worton

Readings – Romans 11. 1–2a, 29-32; Matthew 15. 21–28

“He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’”

We often hold to a stereotype that Paul’s letters are full of judgement and chauvinism and sexism, while the Gospels show Jesus to be a paragon of tolerance who is only ever nice to people. This morning’s readings show that stereotype up for the misreading of the Bible that it is. In our Epistle, St Paul writes to the Christians in Rome, a very mixed group of Jews and Gentiles, that while he remained proud of his Jewishness, God did not discriminate between different groups of people – and indeed that God allowed all of us to sin, so He could be merciful to everyone.

A woman kneels before Jesus' feet clasping her hands, while to his left, a bearded man with his hands held out aggressively pleads with Jesus.

Jean-Germain Drouais, Christ and the Canaanite Woman (1784).

In contrast, in this morning’s Gospel reading, where Jesus encounters a Canaanite woman seeking healing for her daughter, Jesus is rude, and a bit of a bigot, calling the Canaanites “dogs”. Now, by this time, the Hebrews and the Canaanites had a history of bad blood that went back more than a thousand years. Two peoples sharing the same piece of land for a long time sometimes develop a strange sort of relationship – a hatred that seems particularly intense to outsiders, but which sits alongside great mutual familiarity, indeed an intimacy that can exist even in the absence of love or good feeling. People from Northern Ireland are familiar with this phenomenon.

For Jews, Canaanites were not merely polytheistic pagans – and that would have been bad enough, but the nasty stench of child sacrifice also still lingered over them in the Jewish imagination. The Jews, moreover, believed God had given them the whole region as their homeland more than a thousand years before—but the Canaanites still showed no sign of leaving. So, if Jesus were just another wise teacher, just another Jewish holy man, we might not feel so shocked to hear Him dismiss the Canaanites as ‘dogs’. We all have our off days, don’t we? But it’s quite another thing to hear God incarnate, God made human, display such prejudice. If Jesus’ words and actions here make you feel uncomfortable, don’t try to smooth away either your feelings or the biblical text, but bear with the discomfort for a while.

I wonder what would happen if this encounter took place today, and was recorded by a passer-by on their mobile ‘phone. As we all know, saying the wrong thing while being recorded—and we are recorded more than anyone until recently would have thought possible—can end someone’s career, even if it’s only a single incident, an ‘off-day’ in an otherwise blameless life. In today’s culture, if Jesus referred to another nationality or ethnicity as “dogs”, he’d probably be ‘cancelled’. We are not always a very merciful culture.

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