December 2023 - Gerry Lynch: Priest, Writer, Photographer

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

27 January 202424 December 2023 by Gerry Lynch

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.

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?

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!

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

24 December 2023 by Gerry Lynch

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.

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.

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?

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

17 December 2023 by Gerry Lynch

A medieval altar triptych displaying a dramatic scene.

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.

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.