Month: October 2024

When Only the Blind See: Sermon Preached on 27th October 2024 (Last Sunday After Trinity)

by
In the middle of a crowd, a grey-haired man points at his unseeing eyes as a man in a blue robe stretches his arm towards him.

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend

Hebrews 7. 23-28; Mark 10. 46-52               

“…he began to cry out, and say, ‘Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.’”

A blind man sits on a stool, playing a spike fiddle sitting vertically on his knee; he is on a bridge with a glass barrier, and below him is a main road.
A very elderly, blind, man busking in Chengdu by playing the erhu, a two-stringed, bowed, instrument which has a reputation for being difficult to play. © Gerry Lynch, 6 October 2024.

When I was on holiday in China a few weeks ago, I saw a very elderly, blind, man busking on a pedestrian bridge in the city of Chengdu, one of these Chinese cities that many people have never even heard of even though it has a larger population than London. He was playing an instrument called the erhu, a two-stringed instrument not entirely different from a violin, which my Chinese friend told me was known to be particularly difficult. He was playing it beautifully, little noticed by most of the Sunday shopping crowds that walked past, and completely invisible to the throngs of mopeds and buses passing below.

How often we miss what is truly valuable and extraordinary in the world, because it is in the hands of those not considered important.

This morning’s Gospel story works on many levels, some of them very clear from even a simple reading, and some of them less obvious. Let’s look at some of the less obvious things. The first thing to notice is how the blind beggar first speaks to Jesus—“Son of David, have mercy on me”, he cries. “Son of David”. That’s interesting, because it’s not a term that Mark uses often in his Gospel. That should lead us to ask whether its use here must be significant.

Firstly, it identifies Jesus, obviously, as a descendent of David. Now, this is interesting, because unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark doesn’t start with his Gospel with a family tree for Jesus, but instead jumps straight into the action with John baptising Jesus in the River Jordan. More than this, however, Son of David was one of the titles that Jews of the time used to refer to the hoped for Messiah, a king who would deliver them from foreign occupation and usher in a truly godly kingdom characterised by fairness and justice.

So, this desperately poor, disabled, man has realised a profound truth about Jesus which those around him are blind to, and they don’t have the sense or patience to listen to what he’s saying.

How often we miss what is truly valuable and extraordinary in the world, because it is in the hands of those not considered important!

Read more

Earthly Power or Eternal Glory?: Sermon Preached on 20th October 2024 (Twenty-First Sunday After Trinity)

by

Preached at Christ Church, Bulkington; St Mary’s, Potterne; and St Peter’s, Poulshot

Hebrews 5. 1-10; Mark 10. 35-45

“Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”

What do you want to get out of the Bible? Some of us seem to want a collection of wise sayings and inspirational quotes, and the Bible certainly contains these. Some of us get more from the earthier and more frank stories of sometimes appalling human behaviour, that speak to the human condition in ways that we often prefer to avoid thinking about. There are plenty of those sort of tales.

Russell Brand in 2020, By Raph_PH on Wikimedia Commons, used under CC BY 2.0

This morning’s Gospel reading is one of my favourite stories from the Bible because it does both. It gives us one of Jesus’ most significant sayings, that those who wish to be great should be the servant of all; and then it addresses the reality that, even in the presence of God incarnate, most of us aren’t actually capable of being as good as that all of the time. We’re a bit more self-interested than that, or at least the vast majority of us are. While I hope I’m not as shameless in my desire for a comfortable, influential, life as James and John, when I’m honest with myself I know that I certainly don’t approach the Christlike ideal of pure self-sacrifice all that often. I may not be vain enough to demand to sit at Christ’s right hand, but I certainly enjoy being ‘the Rector’ and the social rôle that even in 2024 still goes with that in a place like rural Wiltshire.

The truth is that we all approach the throne of heavenly grace with mixed motives. There is, I hope, true faith and genuine devotion there for most of us. There are also other things. Sometimes it’s hope for an answer to a prayer that is really quite self-serving. ‘Go on, God’, I find myself saying as I see the Euromillions signs in the village shop, ‘I don’t want £112 million: but think of all the wonderful things I could do – for you, of course – with five numbers and a bonus ball.’

Our mixed motives aren’t always as avaricious as that. For some of us, church gives us a nice group of friends and there’s nothing wrong with that. Some of us are looking for an institution that will give a moral lead to a society that seems quite rootless, and there’s nothing wrong that that either. Still others want to be part of an institution that can campaign for justice for the poorest and most vulnerable, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. But if earthly goals are the only aim of our Faith, then we miss much that is important about what Jesus Christ actually taught.

I suspect most of us have heard of the celebrity Russell Brand. Brand has been at the end of a number of very serious allegations about his behaviour towards women, and back in the days when he was still the darling of the BBC, he often had a notably cruel broadcasting style. But everything is OK now because in May, Brand was baptised in the River Thames by no less a figure than Bear Grylls, the celebrity survivalist and England’s Chief Scout. By September, Brand was baptising people in rivers himself.

Read more