April 2023 - Gerry Lynch: Priest, Writer, Photographer

Our Best Laid Plans: Sermon Preached on 30 April 2023 (Fourth Sunday of Easter)

30 April 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne (Devizes Deanery Choral Evensong)

Readings – Ezra 3: 1–13; Ephesians 2: 11–22

“And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord; ‘because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever…’”

Tonight’s Old Testament lesson is one of those ones that can make little sense when we hear it read. It can seem to be a confusing mass of difficult names, of Shealtiels, Zerubbabels, and Jozadaks. So, let me explain what it’s all about, and why it matters today.

The return from exile is depicted in this woodcut for Die Bibel in Bildern, 1860, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld.

The story comes from the Restoration of Temple in Jerusalem, seventy years after its destruction by the Babylonians. This architectural wonder of Hebrew culture and civilisation, built by King Solomon, full of beautiful art and craftsmanship, had been looted and then razed. Jerusalem was intentionally destroyed, and its citizens were deported to hundreds of miles across the desert to Babylon.

For long decades afterwards, the idea that the Temple would be restored must have seemed like a pipe-dream. Then, however, the political situation changed. The Persians became the new great power in the Middle East, and under Cyrus the Great they swept away the Babylonians and allowed the many nations kept in bondage in their mighty capital to return to their homelands. Among them were the exiles from Jerusalem.

The portion of the Book of Ezra we heard from this evening records the restoration of the Temple from its modest beginnings, when Jews first re-gathered on the ruined foundations of Solomon’s Temple, meeting in fear of the people of the neighbouring lands despite their sponsorship by their new friends, the Persian imperial authorities. Then it outlines how, through hard-work and sacrifice, the means were found to lay a foundation stone for the new Temple. There were even some elderly people present when it was laid who remembered King Solomon’s one before its destruction.

What did they people do when the foundation stone of the new Temple was laid? They praised God; they praised God in music and praised God at the top of their voices; they praised God because ‘his mercy endureth forever.’

Eleven Kilometres from Jerusalem: Sermon Preached on 23rd April 2023 (Third Sunday of Easter)

23 April 202323 April 2023 by Gerry Lynch

A painting by James Tissot from 1900. Three men in long flowing robes, two in white and one in red, are waling as the walk along a rough path under some trees. This purports to be the scene from Luke Chapter 24, where a mysterious man talked to two of Jesus' disciples on the road to Emmaus, and the mysterious man turned out to be Jesus.

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

Readings – Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Luke 24.13-35

“…he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.’”

You may or may not know that our Bible readings for any given Sunday repeat on a three year cycle, and I very distinctly remember today’s Gospel reading, about the travellers on the road to Emmaus, at this point four cycles ago: on the Sunday that fell a fortnight after Easter in 2011.

I remember it so vividly, because I was in Cape Town, and one unfamiliar detail in this otherwise very familiar passage of Scripture left me feeling disorientated and far from home. Instead of Emmaus being about seven miles from Jerusalem, it was instead about eleven kilometres from Jerusalem. As their country converted entirely to metric two generations ago, miles are an unfamiliar measurement to most South Africans today. Of course, neither miles nor kilometres were used two-thousand years ago in the Roman Empire – both are translations for the convenience for us modern hearers, and Luke originally reported that Emmaus was located sixty stadia from Jerusalem.

I have driven across the Irish border often enough that a switch from miles to kilometres is a familiar experience, and this was a minor quirk of translation – but worship is such an intense and meaningful thing for most of us, including those of us who don’t go in for emotionally expressive worship, that even very minor changes in ritual, translation, or music can leave us feeling disorientated and bewildered.

Christianity is Strange (Easter Day 2023)

9 April 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and St Mary’s, Potterne, 9^th April 2023

Readings – Acts 10: 34-43; John 20: 1-8

Christianity is a very strange faith – if it were not strange, it would scarcely be worth believing in. Take Mary’s encounter with the risen Christ. At first, she doesn’t recognise her close friend, whom she last saw just two days before; in fact, she thinks this stranger must be the graveyard’s gardener. It is only when Jesus speaks her name that she recognises that the impossible has happened; that the man whom she had watched being put to death is in fact alive. Yet there is something odd about his physical nature – He asks her not to cling to Him.

A "noli mi tangere" icon, 16th Century Crete. — An icon from 16th Century Crete of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with Christ in the Garden on the first Easter morning.

In our reading from Acts, another of the eyewitnesses of the risen Christ, Peter, has been asked to visit a senior Roman solider who has had a mysterious vision of angels. Peter recounts his own encounters with Christ after the Resurrection. In these encounters, too, Jesus’ physical characteristics are very odd – He is sometimes not recognised until He speaks or acts in a particular way; He sometimes appears in the middle of locked rooms. Yet He also eats and drinks with His disciples, apparently normally; they can embrace Him and even poke their fingers in His crucifixion wounds.

Jesus has clearly not been simply brought back to life, miraculously healed, but instead has become somehow different than He was. Nor is He a ghost or an apparition – He has a definite, tangible, physicality. The new life of the Resurrection is clearly something different from the mundane life of mortal human beings.

Of course, this could all be a story made up by people who couldn’t cope with the death of their hero.

Why the Talking Snake Matters: Sermon Preached on Saturday 8th April 2023 (Easter Vigil)

9 April 20238 April 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Genesis 1.1 – 2.4; Genesis 3; Exodus 14.10-15.1; Ezekiel 37. 1-14; Romans 6. 3-11; Matthew 28. 1-10

Didn’t we have an awful lot of readings this evening? And weren’t a lot of them from odd bits of the Bible with unscientific stories like creation in six days, seas parting to open a walking path, and talking snakes? Wouldn’t we better just talking about God’s love and how God wants us to love others?

A tempera and gold painting on a copper base by William Blake of a radiant Eve being tempted by a golden, magnificently coiling, snake. Blake drew his inspiration for this scene from the book of Genesis in the Old Testament and from John Milton's epic poem 'Paradise Lost' (1667). Blake often experimented with painting techniques, and here the surface has flaked badly because of the poor adhesion between a glue-based paint and the copper support he used. — William Blake, Eve Tempted by the Serpent (1799-1800). Hangs in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

I don’t agree. These readings form the main arc of the Christian story – how we are related to God, and why Jesus had to come into the world: that’s why we have them tonight. They aren’t a science textbook and God never intended them to be when He inspired them to be written.

Science may explain our biological evolution but it does not explain our moral evolution. One of the great unanswered questions of human origins is how did we change from being creatures of instinct like other animals, to creatures of reason, and creatures with a moral sense, the ability to tell right from wrong? Where does the sense of right and wrong come from? That question provokes another, related, one – why do we human beings so often do things that we know to be wrong? For we seem to be doomed to constantly damage not only other human beings, but other life-forms, however well-meaning our intentions might be.

One of the saddest realities of human existence is that, as we spread across the world, mass extinctions of the native wildlife followed us in every place we expanded into, soon after we arrived. That is true on every continent and island; ever since we had the spear and the ability to create fire, we’ve been wiping other creatures out. We drove the mammoth to extinction before we even had rudimentary agriculture.

Reflection on ‘Betrayal’ for Holy Week; Wednesday 5th April 2023

5 April 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Given at Christ Church, Bulkington

Matthew 26: 20-25, 36, 47-50

Betrayal provokes emotions in us that are perhaps more disturbing than those that result from any other human experience. In that light, it is perhaps understandable how Judas has, in countries with a Christian cultural background, become a synonym for a particular type of wickedness. To call someone a Judas is one of the worst things one can say about them.

It is one thing to be attacked or undermined by an enemy, a rival, or even a random stranger — but when a trusted friend turns against us, the direct impact of whatever wrong they have done to us is often eclipsed by the feelings left by an abuse of trust, friendship, and love.

Being betrayed can, understandably, leave people very bitter. For all that such bitterness might be understandable, it is also dangerous. Bitterness is an emotional and spiritual acid; it risks corroding our humanity if we allow it to fester.

Reflection on ‘Judgement’ for Holy Week; Monday 3 April 2023

3 April 20233 April 2023 by Gerry Lynch

A medieval church, St Mary's in Potterne, brilliantly lit in golden colour by bright evening sun.

Given at St Mary’s, Potterne

Matthew 25. 31-40

Do we want to live in a universe where Jimmy Saville got away with it?

A medieval church, St Mary's in Potterne, brilliantly lit in golden colour by bright evening sun. Some tombstones are in the churchyard, also brilliantly lit, and a few primroses are just visible — I walked over the fields on a gorgeous spring evening to this wonderful church and then gave a reflection on judgement, damnation, and one of the vilest characters ever to disgrace British public life… © Gerry Lynch, 3 April 2023.

I found myself asking this as I prepared the readings for tonight’s service. Many of us will know the famous parable of the sheep and the goats that our bible reading tonight came from. It was rather too long for this short service, so I left out the bit about what happens to the goats. I left out the bit that may be the most important for us to hear, because I didn’t want to frighten or upset anyone.

The idea of God as divine judge is frightening and upsetting. Maybe, however, that’s no bad thing. It’s a pity that Jimmy Saville wasn’t a bit more afraid of being judged by God.

The Church has in recent decades downplayed the idea of divine judgement. It wanted to be positive, to celebrate the best in humanity; it often said that judgement really wasn’t what Jesus Christ, Love incarnate, was about. People weren’t fooled. They knew this was a rewrite of what Christianity had always said. You can’t escape for too long that the Biblical record is pretty clear that Jesus did talk a lot about judgement. Worse yet, nobody seemed much interested in this rewrite, which is probably part of the story of why the churches slowly emptied. If we don’t need redeeming from our sins, then why do we need a saviour?

Celebrity and Humility: Sermon Preached on Sunday 2nd April 2023 (Palm Sunday)

2 April 2023 by Gerry Lynch

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

Philippians 2. 5–11; Matthew 21. 1–11

If Jesus made his second coming in the near future, how would we know about an event like his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday? I suspect we might learn about it from TikTok, or a YouTube video, probably made by one of the army of professional YouTubers trying to cash in on Jesus’ popularity.

When I talk to primary school children, one of the most common things that both boys and girls say they want to be when they grow up is a “YouTuber”. You might wonder if that can actually be a job. Well, the highest paid video-maker on YouTube in 2020 earned US$26 million in that year alone. He is a boy from Texas called Ryan Kaji who reviews toys, and 2020 was the year in which he had his ninth birthday.

A watercolour painting in dull colours by James Tissot of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey carrying a palm surrounded by cheering crowds. — James Tissot, The Procession in the Streets of Jerusalem, (1886-94). Hangs in the Brooklyn Museum

So, the Palm Sunday story should resonate powerfully in our era of celebrity. Jesus rides into town like a king, and He is quite conscious of what he is doing; He seeks to fulfil Hebrew prophecy, with a direct quote from Zechariah. What comes next has clearly been carefully thought through, and Jesus seems to have made preparations for His triumphant entry to the Holy City with people in Jerusalem who call him “the Master”, but who aren’t known by even the closest disciples who have travelled with him from Galilee. The crowds greet Jesus like a conquering king entering his new capital, spreading their cloaks in front of him and forming a guard of honour.

Today, we break the story here, with Jesus the darling of the masses. Yet within just a few days, the story will take a dramatic twist. To be a darling of the crowd and greeted as a coming king is, needless to say, a serious threat to the actual kings and rulers of a society. The authorities soon launch a campaign of black propaganda against this preacher who some people see as a prophet. The propaganda is effective and soon enough the masses turn against Jesus. When He is brutally executed just five days later, those members of Sunday’s crowd who come to see Jesus on the Cross do so not to cheer, but to jeer.