Gerry Lynch

Fame and Truth: Sermon Preached on 12th May 2024 (The Sunday After Ascension)

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

Readings – Acts 1. 15-17, 21-26 ; John 17. 6-19

“…and the lot fell on Matthias.”

The singer Bambie Thug, in heavy makeup, looks at the camera at Eurovision 2024.
Seeking El Dorado? Eurovision 2024, © Arkland, Used under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

On the morning after the Eurovision Song Contest, it seems appropriate to reflect that fame and celebrity seems to be the El Dorado of the present age. It isn’t new, of course – even in the 19th Century, artists with a worldwide reputation like the singer Nellie Melba or the pianist-conductor Franz Liszt could often arrive in a new city to crowds of screaming fans, much as the Beatles and the Stones would a century later. The ancient Romans and Persians also had their celebrities. But this ancient human trait seems to have intensified since the turn of this century. Reality TV and talent shows began to crowd out more interesting forms of programme-making, while the Internet facilitated new forms of celebrity entrepreneur, willing to say, do, or sell anything to harvest attention from their own little world of fans.

People can make a good living from this. You’ve probably never heard of Charli d’Amelio. Charli is a social media influencer, someone who’s famous on social media because she’s famous on social media, and therefore attractive to people wanting to advertise and promote brands. Charli has 44 million followers on Instagram and a whopping 154 million followers on TikTok. Her most recent TikTok video, posted on Wednesday, shows Charli and a friend dancing to music while washing their hair with Garnier shampoo.

Compare this with the situation in our epistle reading. The 120 people Peter speaks to seem to comprise all the remaining Christians in the entire world. Even I have more social media followers than this. About twice that number came to church on Easter morning in our little country benefice.

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Of Vines and Eunuchs: Sermon Preached on 28st April 2024 (Fifth Sunday of Easter)

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A cross section of an icon of Christ the True Vine, surrounded by the apostles as branches, by 16th Century Cretan artist Angelos Akotantos

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend and Christ Church, Bulkington

Readings – Acts 8: 28-40; John 15: 1-11

“I am the vine – you are the branches.”

Just as it is today, the Holy Land of Biblical times was great winegrowing country. The terminology of winegrowing is a frequent part of Jesus’ parables and teaching, and indeed large sections of both the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament, the grapevine was often a metaphor for the Jewish people.

The eunuch, very African in appearance, dressed in opulent appearance, and accompanied by a dog, bends down to be blessed by St Philip. Five retainers, one holding the Scriptures watch from the eunuch's horse and carriage.
The Baptism Of The Eunuch (1626), by Rembrandt. Hangs in the Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, Netherlands.

The language of the vine and the branches in the Gospel reading is so rich, that it is easy to ignore our reading from Acts this morning – and nobody wants to preach about eunuchs in case children in the congregation ask awkward questions. But Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch is tremendously important to the revolution in thought that clearly affected the apostles in the years after the Resurrection. This shift in mindset is all about who could be considered one of God’s chosen people. Acts records it as being clearly directed by the Holy Spirit.

The “Ethiopian” is, of course, a foreigner from a long way away; in fact, he’s described as a court official of the Candace, who was the ruler of the great city of Meroë, located in the present day Sudan. He was probably much darker-skinned than the people in the Holy Land, but that will have mattered much less in the Ancient world, which was much less race-obsessed than we are.

Although we often hear that to be a Jew, you have to be born a Jew, this isn’t actually the case. People from Gentile backgrounds can and did convert to Judaism in Biblical times, and they do so today. As this Ethiopian “had come to Jerusalem to worship”, he was clearly interested in the God of the Jews. The thing that ensured that he could never convert to Judaism wasn’t that he was a foreigner, but that he was a eunuch. That prohibition dated back to Leviticus and Deuteronomy. The Ethiopian was reading from the second part of the prophecy of Isaiah when Philip approached him, and shortly after the section quoted here, it contained a brief reference to a future time when God would give eunuchs something “better than sons and daughters… an everlasting name that shall not be cut off”. (The reference to things being cut off is, almost certainly in this context, meant to be funny.) Yet writings from contemporary Jewish writers made it clear that prejudice against eunuchs was still very much alive in Judaism at the time of the apostles and that Isaiah’s prophecy was yet to be fulfilled.

So something revolutionary happens when the Ethiopian says, “Look, here is water! What is to stop me being baptised.” The apostles by this stage have no sense of themselves as being anything other than Jews, Jews who believed that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. When Philip baptises the Ethiopian, it is a powerful sign that the followers of Jesus Christwill come not just from the Jewish people but from a myriad of ethnicities and nationalities, and will come even from people who had been forbidden from becoming Jews because of their state in life. This isn’t, for the apostles, a rejection of Judaism, but a clear fulfilment of Jewish prophecy.

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The Good Shepherd: Sermon Preached on 21st April 2024 (Fourth Sunday of Easter)

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A Byzantine mosaic of Christ as the Good Shepherd, surrounded by six lambs.

Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot

Readings – Acts 4: 5-13; John 10: 11-18

“…he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth.”

The Good Shepherd is one of the most familiar Bible passages, and the imagery is so beautiful, that we can fall into using it as twee spiritual wallpaper. When we look at the text more closely, it has a harder and more interesting edge, especially if we consider the different lives of the shepherd and the hireling.

Liz Truss on Easter Day, outside a Norfolk church with a round tower, holding a lamb as if she were Jesus in a twee American piece of religious kitsch.
We can fall into using the story of the Good Shepherd as twee spiritual wallpaper.

The shepherd owns the sheep; they are both his savings account and his working capital. They are how he earns his living, and also where he stores his wealth. To others, his flock may seem modest, but for him it is the fruit of a lifetime’s hard graft. Indeed, it may even have been handed down to him by his forefathers, the result of generations of sleeping out alone on cold mountaintops as wolves howled in the darkness.

The hired man, who works for the shepherd, is in a different position; he has no capital, no savings, he lives from payday to payday. He may have no particular reason to show loyalty to the shepherd, whose wealth may seem modest to people like the fancy Temple clergy in Jerusalem, but still like a king’s ransom to the man whose wages he pays. The shepherd may have started out with advantages in life that seem extraordinary and even unfair to the hireling. The hireling may be a hard worker, he may be loyal to and genuinely friendly with his boss, but things get really tough, like when a pack of wolves attacks on a bitter winter night, he has no skin in the game when it comes to the flock. Looking after these sheep is just another job, and not one that comes with the sort of pay-cheque that’s worth risking your life for.

Now, St Peter may have started out life as a fisherman, but by the time Jesus said “I am the good shepherd”, Peter fancied himself very much as Jesus’ co-shepherd. He was Jesus’ best mate and self-styled Second-in-Command. When Jesus said, “I lay down my life for the sheep”, Peter was going to try to emulate him. So, at the Last Supper, Peter told Christ, “I will lay down my life for thy sake.” But Jesus knew Peter better than he knew himself, and told him that before daybreak, he would deny Jesus three times. Jesus, obviously, was right. When it came down to it, when the metaphorical wolves of the Temple were circling, Peter turned out not to be Jesus’ fellow shepherd, but just a hireling there for the payday he thought the Messiah would bring him.

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Forgiving Ourselves for Being Imperfect: Sermon Preached on 7th April 2024 (Second Sunday of Easter)

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Preached at Christ Church, Worton

Readings – Acts 4: 32-35; John 20: 19-31

“There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.”

Why can’t you lot be like those Christians in our first reading? They were “of one heart and soul”. They held all their possessions in common—even selling their houses and sharing the proceeds, so “[t]here was not a needy person among them”.

Painting, oil on canvas, in a style derived from Raphael. Ananias is dead - and has a terrible skin tone - and Sapphira is in mid-collapse, about to join him. A crowd of several dozen looks on.
Ananias and Sapphira, Sir James Thornhill (1729-31). Hangs in the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Now, I could go from here to say that while it was a pity that few of us seemed to be able to be really live like these first Christians, but if were even a little more like them, the world would be a better place; and afterwards you would say “What a nice sermon, Rector.”

As I preached it, I would also know that there wasn’t a cat’s chance in Hell of me giving my savings to a common fund, still less selling my retirement flat. I mean, who would control this fund? The Church of England’s central bureaucracy? No thanks. My PCCs? I love you all dearly, but, also, no thanks. I’d also know you weren’t going to sell your possessions, and if you were to sell your house and give the proceeds to a common fund, some of your children would have very angry conversations with you.

Now, this vision of the Church at its foundation has inspired some Christians in every generation since the dawn of the Church to live totally different lives from most people, and sometimes great things have resulted. And, I don’t know about you, but sometimes that leaves me feeling pretty inadequate. Then I also remember that some of the Christians inspired by this vision end up going a little crazy.

So with all that in mind, let’s return to this story and not over-romanticise it. Yes, it’s a wonderful vision, probably a time in the life of the early Christians when they experienced, here on Earth, a foretaste of Heaven. But let’s be clear, the apostles and their companions didn’t manage to live that way for very long.

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Wilderness and the Garden: Sermon Preached on 31st March 2024 (Easter Day)

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

Readings – Acts 10: 34-43; John 20: 1-18

“Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher).”

When we get to the end of a journey, it’s sometimes helpful to remind ourselves where it started.

Painting of a garden, in which Mary Magdalen, in a red dress and bending down, is trying to touch Jesus cloak - he is walking away from her, but looking back at her, and putting his palm out in admonishment.
Fra Angelico, Noli Me Tangere (1440-2), in the Basilica di San Marco, Florence.

Jesus’ public ministry started with His baptism by John the Baptist, then immediately being taken out into the wilderness for forty days. His public ministry ended with His crucifixion, or so it seemed. Because on the first Easter morning, a few of His closest followers encountered Him risen from the dead. They were the first witnesses to the Resurrection.

The season of Lent consists of forty days of fasting that are intentionally modelled on Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness. Lent also ends on Easter morning—in other words, it too ends in Resurrection.

So travelling through the wilderness seems to be an essential part of experiencing Resurrection. In the wilderness we are confronted by the sheer scale of God’s creation, and how much of that creation lies outside our normal day-to-day experience. In the wilderness, our illusions of being in control die, and we learn just how limited the power of human beings is.

It seems to me that the Western world is entering a wilderness. The financial crisis of 2008, and the very slow recovery from it, was perhaps first warning signthat the existing political and economic order might be in trouble. Other signs include the ever widening gap between the rich and the rest, the fact that it’s often easier to make money by speculation than doing something worthwhile, and the increasing difficulties even relatively well-off young people have in finding security. All these have been warning signs, throughout history, of civilisations in trouble.

A gathering sense of crisis became acute after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One thing the two years since have told us is that the Western world is weaker than is thought by our pundits, our politicians, and the lobbyists and campaignerswho try to influence them. Western attempts to hobble the Russian economy through sanctions have, regrettably, been at best partially effective, and have been ignored by the rising powers of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Western fantasies of power and control lie in tatters, and we seem to have entered a geopolitical wilderness.

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Making it in the World to Come: Sermon Preached on 24th March 2024 (Palm Sunday)

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A painting in mixed media: Christ, riding donkey and approaching from the left, is welcomed by a large crowd, greeting him with palm leaves; two angels appearing at top left.

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

Philippians 2. 5-11; Mark 11. 1-11

“he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

If you want to make something of yourself, you’ve got to get out there and sell yourself. The modern world is no place for humility, especially with the job market being the way it is. Pay close attention to your image, not only in the physical world, but especially on social media. To build your profile there, never forget that outrage sells and angry people click.

In the style of Giotto, Jesus riding on a donkey gives blessings to some passersby, some of whom have a halo and some of whom don't.
Giotto, The Entry into Jerusalem (1305). In the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy.

That’s a reasonable summary of the sort of advice that might be given, in an entirely well-meaning way, to an ambitious young person trying to make it big in a bad old world.

Now, we all know that St Paul has the reputation of being a real old curmudgeon, with views completely incompatible with the modern world. That is clearer nowhere than in this morning’s Epistle reading, when he writes:

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who … emptied himself … humbled himself and became the obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

Holy week turns the values of the 21st Century West upside down. Then again, it also turned the values of the Roman Empire upside down, and it turned the values of Second Temple Judaism upside down. Our Western obsession with self-fulfilment dies on the Cross, just like the Romans’ obsession with power, and the Jewish leadership’s obsession with piety.

And within Holy Week, if there is one story that really speaks to our own times, to the manias and failings of the 2020s, it is that of Palm Sunday. At its core, Palm Sunday is a story about the fickleness of celebrity.

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Sin and Grace: Sermon Preached on 17th March 2024 (Passion Sunday)

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Preached at St Michael and All Angels’, Urchfont (at the Devizes Deanery Choral Evensong)

Exodus 7. 8-24; Romans 5. 12-21

“…where sin abounded, grace did much more abound…”

When we hear the strange story of Moses and Aaron confronting the Pharaoh, with sticks that turn into snakes and rivers turning into blood, its remoteness to our own world can make us dismiss its enduring relevance and power. For not only is the story set more than three thousand years ago, but it is told with a powerful dose of magical realism.

A lithograph in Marc Chagall's classic brightly coloured, abstract, modernist style of Moses and Aaron appearing before Pharaoh on his throne surrounded by courtiers.
Marc Chagall’s Moses and Aaron with Pharaoh, from his 1966 portfolio “The Story of Exodus”—a time when this story resonated powerfully with the secular public, especially thanks to the African-American civil rights movement.

Look beyond the unfamiliar setting, however, and it could be a story from 2024. A persecuted minority protests to the authorities, and when that fails, they turn first to a demonstration of people power, and then an escalating campaign of civil disobedience, leading to non-violent direct action and then intentional property damage.

Pharaoh is also like many a hard-hearted ruler in today’s world, unable to read the signs of the times and all too quick to renege on promises of reform. He overestimates his own strength and underestimates the damage his opponents can cause him. In tonight’s reading, the campaign of the Hebrew people against Pharaoh’s persecution is still in its earliest phases. Everything will get much worse—but it will end in liberation for the good guys.

It would be nice if we could say that they all lived happily ever after. But the problem with stories like this is that yesterday’s freedom fighters almost inevitably turn into tomorrow’s oppressors. When they arrived in the Promised Land, the descendants of Moses and Aaron weren’t too worried about the rights and freedoms of the people already there.

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