Month: August 2024

Eat Me!: Sermon Preached on 25th August 2024 (Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity)

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The hands of a priest saying Mass, near a paten with a wafer host, with a chalice and purificator on one side and a Mass book on a stand on the other.

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

Ephesians 6.10-20; John 6.56-69   

“…whoever eats me will live because of me”

Let’s imagine that one Sunday, after church, over coffee and cake, that I told you… to eat me. Would you think I’d gone a bit nuts? You probably wouldn’t be entirely sure what I was getting at, but let’s be honest, you wouldn’t think I meant something entirely wholesome if I, you know, told you to eat me.

What if I went on to tell you to drink my blood? Tell the truth, you wouldn’t just find that weird, but completely disgusting. You might even send an e-mail to the bishop’s office when you got home from church, asking him to have strong words with the clearly wayward Rector of the Wellsprings Benefice.

So, I have a fair bit of sympathy for the disciples when they start complaining to Jesus about the strange and difficult teaching He’s asking them to accept in today’s Gospel reading. I mean, ‘I am the living bread come down from heaven, and whoever eats me will live forever’—it’s really bizarre stuff isn’t it? We tend to accept the idea of eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking His blood because the Church has been teaching it for 2,000 years; and we’re all familiar with the idea from childhood; and we also acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God, so we’re prepared to accept things being said by Jesus that wouldn’t accept from anyone else. But don’t let that obscure how strange these ideas are.

An oil painting of St Peter, with a beard, wearing a tunic, clasping his hands, looking upwards with a pleading look on his face.
St Peter Penitent (1639), by Guercino. Hangs in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

And to the disciples in those early days, Jesus was just a teacher from Nazareth. A very clever teacher who seemed even to be able to perform miracles. But just a teacher. Once you heard Him asking you to drink His blood, you might even start wondering whether His power to work miracles came from God or from, you know, the other direction. It’s no wonder that a lot of His followers walked away from Him at this point.

Christianity is weird. It’s a profoundly strange faith. It isn’t about common sense—not the common sense of the 21st Century West, but also not the common sense of anyone at the time of Christ: not of pious Jews nor clever Greeks nor imperious Romans. At the heart of Christ’s teachings, are things that turn our conventional view of the world upside down. At its core of it is the concept that God gives us what we don’t deserve, because in fact we aren’t good enough to deserve anything; what God gives us, He gives us freely out of His love. And because we could never be good enough to pass any purity test, God closed the gap that humanity’s sin opened between us and Him Hithrough giving up Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, on the Cross.

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Bread of Eternal Life: Sermon Preached on 18th August 2024 (Twelfth Sunday After Trinity)

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The hands of a priest saying Mass, near a paten with a wafer host, with a chalice and purificator on one side and a Mass book on a stand on the other.

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Ephesians 5. 15-20; John 6. 51-58

“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life…”

Funerals, and ministry with the bereaved and dying, are a big part of my job. Some people seem to think they need to sympathise with me for this. If people ask me what I’ve been doing in work, and I say I’ve taken a funeral, or spent time with someone who is terminally ill, they’ll often say, “I am sorry…”, or “How sad for you.”

A brightly coloured, early 14th Century, breviary illustration of Jesus, in blue robes and with a halo, observing many full baskets of bread being carried by the people around him, while the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove hovers over the scene.
The Feeding of the 5000, from the Breviary known as the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, executed ca. 1411-16.

This is less the case among churchgoers, I’ll grant you. It more often happens in the pub, or when I’m sitting outside Caffé Nero in Devizes smoking my pipe. Among those who actually practice the Christian faith, people are more likely to accept that death, while a cause of great pain to at least some of those left behind, is also the gateway to something else.

One of the great privileges of priesthood is to minister to someone who is going to their death in absolute confidence in the promises of Christ. There are times in every clergyperson’s life when they know they are being ministered to and fed by their flock, and not the other way around—and a situation like this is one of them. In a strange way these are times when one learns that a belief in eternal life is worth it for what it brings to this life alone; that even if it weren’t true then it would still be one of the most valuable gifts one could have. But this sense of rightness and peace with ourselves and with the cosmos that faith in eternal life brings is itself a sign that it is true—that this is the reality that God made us for.

Now, obviously some people think this eternal life business is rank nonsense: pie in the sky when you die and all that. But it was ever thus. That’s a big part of what’s going on in this morning’s Gospel reading. I preached about this a fortnight ago in this church, because we’re having readings from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel five weeks in a row. We could briefly summarise the story of John 6 like this: the people think Jesus is great when he’s performing miracles, but once he starts telling them that He’s bread come down from heaven that gives eternal life, they start muttering about how weird it all is and eventually turn on Him. And it isn’t just members of the general public who turn on Jesus in the end, but even some of His closest followers.

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The Limits of Good Works: Sermon Preached on 11th August 2024 (Eleventh 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 Peter’s, Poulshot and Christ Church, Bulkington

Ephesians 4. 25-5.2; John 6. 35, 41-51

“Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Do you find some of the teachings of Christianity a little hard to swallow? That eternal life is a reality? That Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead? That Christ is actually present today whenever Christians break bread and share wine in His name? All this stuff is quite challenging to the common viewpoint of our times that only material things that really matter and that the main goal of the Church is to change the world.

He’s got the whole world in His hand… and about a septillion other worlds too!

These days, we tend to put the difficulties that many people have with these mystical beliefs – difficulties, indeed, that some of us here probably have with these beliefs – down to living in an era of science and reason. When people find the more mysterious teachings of the Faith hard to accept, it is tempting to reduce Christianity to the Cult of Militant Niceness, where the Church is all about its good works, and we don’t talk too loudly about the weirder stuff Jesus Christ taught.

But none of this is new. The section of John’s Gospel from which this morning’s reading comes from is all about that. People got into little boats and sailed across the Sea of Galilee to keep up with Jesus, because they wanted to see Him feed them and heal them—but instead He gave them a cryptic message that the He was bread come down from heaven, that whoever ate this bread would live forever, and that the bread He would give for the life of the world was His flesh. No wonder they started muttering. Soon after today’s Gospel reading, the complaints got so bad that even some of Jesus’ closest followers abandoned Him. The things that Christ taught about His own nature, about death and eternal life, have always been hard for people to believe.

If we say the Church is all about its good works – which is what most people who aren’t particularly committed Christians want to hear – then we are making the same mistake as the crowds who muttered when Jesus didn’t give them the good works they wanted. Here’s one problem with a Gospel of good works—I hope none of us thinks that we are better people than others because we are Christians. That’s not what Christ taught at all. We all know atheists, and Jews, and Muslims whose basic goodness puts us to shame; we all know that being a Christian hardly makes us perfect.

That isn’t anything new either. Look at what St Paul had to write to the Christians in Ephesus – warning them against bitterness and anger and squabbling. Of course, they were called to live better lives than that, but they clearly often failed, otherwise he wouldn’t have had to write.

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Gratitude at Lammastide: Sermon Preached on 4th August 2024

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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 for the Wiltshire Countryside Club annual service

Leviticus 23. 9-14; Matthew 15. 32-39              

“You shall eat no bread … until you have brought the offering of your God.”

For many people in this country, the wisdom and awareness of human nature that used to be provided by Christianity are now sought for in self-help literature, counselling, and the psychology of the Sunday supplement and the social media meme. It is therefore interesting when these modern forms of religion share the same perspective as the Old Faith. One thing Christianity and pop-psychology agree on is the importance of gratitude, and the benefits that flow from being grateful for what we have. No less a source than the Harvard Medical School’s in-house magazine – I googled it – tells me that when we are grateful, we improve our health, deal better with adversity, and build strong relationships.

A combine harvester in a cereal field on a day of thin cloud and hazy sunshine, almost completed its job.
Taking in the harvest at Stanton St Bernard in Wiltshire’s picturesque Vale of Pewsey, 3 September 2024 © Gerry Lynch

Lammas is all about remembering with thanks that it is God who us gives us all that we have. It is God who gives the miracle of natural growth – and it is a miracle, much as familiarity tends to blind us to that. It is God who gives the sun, and the rain, and the seasons that govern our production of food. And it is God who gives us the skills to work with the fruits of nature to sustain ourselves and our nature—not just the skills of the farmer, but of everyone else who makes a living from the countryside, from the man who repairs the combine harvester to the woman who organises the transport of the food to the supermarket. For as much as He is the provider of the bounty of nature, God is also the source of us, and of our skill and diligence. God does not only all this for us, but also gives us the beauty of the natural world, including so many of our agricultural landscapes, which sustain and nurture our souls.

On the face of it, offering of a loaf to God is a pretty limp thank you present for so much. But the loaf symbolises the deep gratitude of our hearts and our souls, and it is appropriate that we offer this symbol of our gratitude now, when the harvest is still ongoing.

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Don’t Be Useful!: Sermon Preached on 4th August 2024 (Tenth Sunday After Trinity)

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Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Ephesians 4. 1-16; John 6. 24-35

“…they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing?””

We all want the Church to be useful. And what’s wrong with that? We all want to be useful ourselves, don’t we? But in that, there are grave dangers. Some of them are flagged up in this morning’s Gospel reading.

Half a loaf of artisan bread, covered in seeds, on a flat serving base with a buttering knife beside it.
By Cottonbro Studios, public domain, downloaded with thanks from Pexels.

In it, the crowd flocks to Jesus wanting signs and works. In John’s Gospel, it follows immediately after Jesus performs two spectacular miracles, feeding the Five Thousand and then walking on water. After the feeding of the five thousand, the crowd declares Him a prophet and tries to make Him king against His will—that was last Sunday’s Gospel.

The trouble with spectacular events, however, is that nothing is ever enough; the crowd always wants more. Just one hit of excitement and validation is rarely enough. We know that from the celebrity culture of our own times.

So it’s appropriate that this reading marks the start of a change in the relationship between Jesus and the crowds, one that defines the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. I’m always careful about reading too much into ‘chapters’ in the Bible: they weren’t created until the 13th Century and although they’re useful for us in finding our way around a massive collection of writings, they don’t always reflect natural sections. But John 6 is a coherent sub-story in its own right, it’s a very long one, and a very significant one, which we hear over five successive Sundays.

After the crowd’s initial delight at two miraculous works, Jesus doesn’t follow up with more, but instead gives them a strange teaching that He Himself is bread from heaven, giving life to the world, greater than the manna with which Moses miraculously fed their ancestors fleeing persecution in Egypt. Here’s a point that’s easy to miss—Jesus is pointing out here that He is greater even than Moses. Moses gave the people food to satisfy their physical needs, but Jesus will feed them with eternal life. So also, while Moses gave the people the law, Jesus will give them something even greater than a set of rules that nobody can keep correctly all the time—forgiveness of their sins. Jesus represents a new set of promises God is making with the human race, promises that will be sealed, it will eventually be revealed, on the Cross.

Soon after, the crowd will turn on Jesus because He won’t give them miraculous bread on demand but teachings that are hard to swallow. The sixth chapter of John will end with even some of Jesus’ own disciples abandoning Him. If our faith in God depends on Him giving us what we want, when we want it – if it depends on God being “useful” – then it is a faith built on sand, and it will crumble as soon as it faces a real challenge.

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