Month: June 2024

Faith Heals Us: Sermon Preached on 30th June 2024 (Fifth Sunday After Trinity)

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A view across the Sea of Galilee from Magdala/Migdal towards the Golan Heights in afternoon sun.

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne and on Poulshot Village Green

Mark 5. 21-43

“your faith has made you well”

We’ve all been in situations where what people don’t say is more important than what they do. That’s certainly true of Jesus in this morning’s Bible reading. But to understand why, let’s look first at exactly where today’s reading sits in the overall story of Mark’s Gospel.

A realist painting. Jesus, standing upright and in white robes, holds the hands of a girl, who is lying on a bed, also in white robes, and somewhat darker skinned.
Ilya Repin, Raising of Jairus Daughter (1870), hangs in the Mikhailovsky Palace, St Petersburg.

Today’s reading consists of the last two miracle stories in a run of four, all set in Galilee early in Jesus’ mission, that Mark uses to establish Jesus’ power. Between them they establish Jesus’ power over the forces of nature, over disease, over demons, and over death. Last week in church, we heard one of the other of these stories, the stilling of the storm on the Sea of Galilee; the other story, the casting out of demons into a herd of pigs from the poor tormented madman who self-harms constantly, is also one of the most familiar of Jesus’ healing miracles.

The supernatural elements of these stories can make them seem remote from our world. Yet look more closely and we see people who, while perhaps living in a very different culture with very different technology from us, are people who tick just like us. The way Jesus is constantly mobbed by crowds as He travels around these little market towns and fishing villages in Galilee reminds me very much of today’s celebrity culture. Not everyone in these towns and villages thinks well of Jesus, and as much as the adulation of the crowds, the abuse He receives from the Pharisees reminds me of our own culture and its toxic side, which social media has revealed to be regrettably widespread. A third reminder of our own world is the desperation of the chronically ill people who approach Jesus seeking healing, people like the woman with the issue of blood—and for all that we can cure many diseases in a way that would seem almost magical to the people of Christ’s time, the reality is that at some point most of us end up living with chronic and debilitating illnesses, and the fear and misery they bring is unchanged.

That’s the context for us to notice what Jesus doesn’t say here. He doesn’t say, “I’m the Son of God.” He doesn’t even say, “I’m sent from God.” He certainly doesn’t say, “I can heal people by magic, and I deserve to be paid for it—so front up with the readies, folks!”

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Waiting Patiently for Harvest: Sermon Preached on 16th June 2024 (Third Sunday after Trinity)

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The image depicts a vast, undulating farmland under a clear sky during golden hour. Rows of crops stretch across the landscape, their textures highlighted by warm sunlight. In the distance, gentle hills complete this serene rural scene.

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

Readings – 2 Corinthians 5. 6-10, 14-17; Mark 4. 26-34

“The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.”

The image depicts a vast, undulating farmland under a clear sky during golden hour. Rows of crops stretch across the landscape, their textures highlighted by warm sunlight. In the distance, gentle hills complete this serene rural scene.
Tan Hill from Allington, 10 June 2024 © Gerry Lynch

On Monday evening shortly after eight, I popped into Devizes to buy a few things at Lidl, and was captivated by the quality of the late evening light; the amount of rain we’ve had this Spring has made the air unusually clear when the Sun does shine, and the greens of the landscape are especially vibrant at the moment. Luckily, I had taken my camera with me and, being at that side of Devizes already, set off along the road that goes through Horton and on into the heart of the Vale of Pewsey. There is a particularly attractive prospect on the north side of the road just before entering the hamlet of Allington from the Devizes side. Wheat fields, clambering up the foot-slopes and catching the late evening sun beautifully at this time of year, are overlooked by the ridge of hills crowned by Tan Hill, the second highest point in Wiltshire; which always looks to me like a sleeping dragon, the green of its scales being caught by the fire of the setting sun.

It is especially interesting to look at the individual stalks of wheat at the moment – the head and the stalk are certainly there, but we are still some weeks away from it being ripe enough to harvest.

We take plant growth for granted – yet it is a miracle. A wheat seed averages only around 6 millimetres in length, or a quarter of an inch, yet it can turn into a plant that is taller than we are. We bury the seed in the ground and God gives the growth. Mustard seeds are even smaller, only one or two millimetres in diameter. Around 1,500 could fit along the edge of the altar, literally millions of them piled on top of it. How does a mustard seed turn into a mighty tree so big that birds can nest in it? It seems impossible to believe that they are the same organism. Yet they are.

Animals, including humans, also grow from tiny simple seeds and tiny simple eggs into complex adult forms. Some creatures even change forms at different points in their lives – caterpillars turn into to butterflies; tadpoles turn into frogs and toads.

It seems strange to assume that growth, and indeed, transformation, can only take place in our physical bodies. Surely it can also take place in our souls.

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Was Jesus Mad?: Sermon Preached on 9th June 2024 (Second Sunday after Trinity)

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James Ensor’s “Christ’s Entry Into Brussels in 1889” is a vibrant, chaotic scene. A parade floods a wide street, filled with grotesque, masked figures, clowns, and caricatures. Amidst the crowd, a small figure of Christ, almost hidden, rides a donkey. Banners wave above, and the overall effect is flat and poster-like.

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

Readings – 2 Corinthians 4.13 – 5.1; Mark 3. 20-35

“When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’

Maurycy Gottlieb’s painting, “Christ Teaching in Capernaum,” depicts Jesus, identified as a practicing Jew, preaching in a synagogue. He’s surrounded by attentive listeners in Middle Eastern attire, with a Roman figure in a toga appearing bored. The setting features Roman architecture, including fluted columns and a coffered ceiling
Maurycy Gottlieb, Christ Teaching in Capernaum (1878-9). Hangs in the National Museum, Warsaw.

Have you ever heard a passage of Scripture and thought to yourself, ‘Jesus could be a bit bonkers, couldn’t he?’ Have you ever formed that thought but immediately suppressed it as un-Christian and maybe a bit blasphemous? It would be understandable to suppress a thought like that.

But, in this morning’s Gospel reading, we find Jesus’ own family – His brothers, His mother who would remain with Him right to the Cross, thinking either that He was nuts, or at least that a mob might do Him harm because they thought He was nuts.

Indeed, in crazy times, it’s the sane people who can seem to be nuts. Jesus lived in crazy times for the Jewish people of the Holy Land. We, too, live in frankly crazy times, as you’ll have noticed if you’ve watched the news recently.

Sensible people want to do the right thing; sensible people want to be good. Doing good is, of course, a very good thing. We all know, however, that none of us is good all of the time.

People who aren’t Christians think the Church is all about doing good; they think it’s an organisation for good people to celebrate and promote goodness in the name of a good holy man called Jesus Christ who lived a long time ago. It’s therefore easily dismissed as irrelevant to people who want to live in the present, and who know they aren’t always good all the time.

The Church too often colludes with this, by constantly trying to justify its existence with good works, as if it were a charity or an NGO. The Church, however, isn’t about goodness, but something far more wonderful – grace. Goodness is something we try to achieve through our own efforts; grace is a gift from God.

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Cow Parsley and Heaven: Sermon Preached on 2nd June 2024 (Second Sunday after Trinity)

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A head of a cow parsley plant, in flower.

Preached at Christ Church, Worton

Readings – 2 Corinthians 4. 13-5. 1 ; John 3. 1-17

 “…we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.”

A sprig of cow parsley in full flower, close-up.
Cow parsley: in June, as common as muck, but a sign of life’s persistence; © Gerry Lynch, 24 July 2017.

Driving from Worton towards Seend the other day, I marvelled at the quantity of cow parsley in the hedges. The landscape is particularly thick with new growth when blossoming May gives way to bowery June. Yet I was struck by a rather sombre realisation. In just a few months, it will start to die back as we speed towards the dead, dark, weeks of December.

St Paul writes in this morning’s epistle reading that, “We are always being given up to death for Jesus’s sake.” Everything in this universe must eventually die. Not only living things, but, although we rarely think about it, the stars, and even the atomic particles which make up all matter, dead or alive. Their lifespan is almost beyond the human imagination, but is nonetheless finite. Indeed, science tells us that without the death of many stars over many billions of years, the complex elements which make up humans and all other living beings simply could not exist. Each of us too must eventually give way for new life. We are not meant to live forever, not in this universe, anyway—but as Christians, we have faith that Jesus Christ, the eternally living God, by dying opened the way to eternal life for us.

We human beings are indeed “clay jars”, as St Paul puts it: fragile creatures, with a limited lifespan, and far from perfect. Yet we are of such immense value that God gave Himself up to death for our sakes to give us the most valuable treasure possible, eternal life.

St Paul knew we were not meant to be perfect, any more than we are meant to live forever in our mortal bodies. Paul had once thought he was a particularly holy follower of God because he was so diligent in keeping all the rules which he found in Scripture. He forgot was that although God’s written word is indeed treasure, he was a clay jar. The vision of God he had on the road to Damascus was such a violent experience that it left him literally blind. Yet he considered it the most valuable experience of his life, one that taught this over-intense and rather self-certain man that it is a dangerous thing to be too sure you know God’s will.

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