sermon

Loving One’s Enemies: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 26th December 2021 (St Stephen’s Day)

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Readings – Acts 7: 51–60 , Matthew 10: 17–22

Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’

Some of you will have heard the news that Archbishop Desmond Tutu died earlier this morning at the age of 90. Most of us would agree that Desmond was the greatest saint produced by Anglicanism in our lifetimes. It is appropriate that he died on the feast of Stephen, because both declared Christ’s teachings of non-retaliation most powerfully in their lives.

Non-retaliation isn’t the passive acceptance of being persecuted or discriminated against. Instead that it accepts that injustice can never be undone on its own terms. We know that there is both darkness and light in each of us. We know that once we say that the end justifies any means, then the line between victim and victimiser starts to become dangerously blurred.

But both Saint Stephen and Desmond Tutu went beyond merely refusing to be silenced in the face of oppression, and in doing so, lived out one of the most challenging and most rewarding of Christ’s teachings. Let me explain. Many of Christ’s moral teachings were the same as those of other great teachers and philosophers of the ancient world. Some form of the golden rule, to do to others as you would have them do unto you, is seen in the teachings of Buddha, and Zoroaster, and Greek philosophy.

An image of the painting entitled The Stoning of Stephen (ca. 1603-4) by Adam Elsheimer. Now in the Scottish National Gallery.
The Stoning of Stephen (ca. 1603-4) by Adam Elsheimer. Now in the Scottish National Gallery.

There is one teaching of Christ that was absolutely unique, however. It is the most revolutionary of Christ’s teachings and the one which is hardest to follow; I certainly don’t manage to put it into practice very often. That is his command to love our enemies. Remember, that the command is not, absolutely not, as the lives of both Stephen and Desmond show us, to acquiesce in the evil that our enemies do to us – but to love them, to love them enough to recognise their humanity. To love them enough to recognise that we may be the only agents God has to rescue them from the darkness that consumes them. To love our enemies is to understand that our response to their persecution may be what brings out the image of God that is stamped in each of them and enables them to turn from evil.

It is a wonderful teaching. Let me reiterate, I’m not pretending it’s easy to live out in practice. But Desmond Tutu’s life and Stephen’s show us that in the saints of the church, we have examples to follow of how to respond to persecution not in its own terms, but in refusing the twin dangers of both acquiescence and of hate.

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Angels: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Saturday 25th December 2021 (Christmas Morning)

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And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God

Most of us probably know all the people who were mentioned in the Gospel reading a moment ago, when the Rector stood in front of the altar and read from the big blue book. There are the angels; and there are the shepherds; and there is the Holy Family of Mary, Joseph, and the Baby Jesus. Let me say a little bit about each of them to help you think about what Christmas means and how you can ask God for help in your life.

An image of The Mystical Nativity, by Sandro Botticelli (1500-1), which now hangs in The National Gallery, London.
The Mystical Nativity, by Sandro Botticelli (1500-1). Now hangs in The National Gallery, London.

Let’s start with the angels. Some people laugh at the idea there are angels. But there is more going on in the world than is obvious from our senses, and many people who aren’t even sure if they believe in God do believe in angels. This is a bit odd, as angels are God’s messengers. If you believe in angels, you should believe in God. Trust your guardian angel to look after you; they will be with you to protect you for your whole life. Just try your best to stay out of trouble and not give the angel too much work!

If you find it hard to pray to God, you can ask your Guardian Angel to pray for you, and to teach you how to pray for yourself.

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Celebrating Our Bodies: Sermon Preached at Holy Cross, Seend, Friday 24th December 2021 (Midnight Mass)

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Readings – Hebrews 4: 1–4 , John 1: 1–14

The word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

The word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

For some of you here tonight, that will be a familiar expression heard in Church a hundred times and regularly read in your Bibles. For others, it will undoubtedly a very weird collection of words that makes no sense whatsoever. Yet this phrase sets out the most important thing about the Christmas story; it’s why Christmas became the biggest holiday of our calendar, and why it remained so over many centuries. So let me unpack it a little.

After celebrating my first Midnight Mass as a priest at Holy Cross, Seend, 25 December 2021

The Word is God – God who made the universe, God who was there in the very beginning, God who existed when the Big Bang went bang, God who made the Big Bang go bang. Our Gospel reading a moment ago said many strange things, and another of them was this: “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So we have two beings in the beginning, who make the Big Bang go bang – God and the Word; but the Word is also God. It’s very odd, isn’t it?

Now this “Word”, as St John’s Gospel calls it, became flesh and dwelt among us. In the form of a tiny baby in the womb. Not the son of a King, but the son of a carpenter, who married his mother when she was already pregnant, dragged far from home by the cold bureaucratic order of a distant ruler occupying their country. That the maker of the universe should become one of us is odd enough; stranger still that He should do it as an ordinary man, in a backwater town, without even a proper roof over His head.

We human beings are made in the image of God, not only in our souls, but in our bodies, because Jesus Christ is God, the Word who was already there when the Big Bang went bang. Our bodies are beautiful gifts of God. Our bodies are both unique to ourselves and something we share with everyone else who has ever lived and will ever live. Our bodies have limitations – we are not supermen – but those limitations are not flaws, but design features.

Yet we live at a time when many of us seem to be profoundly alienated from our bodies. We see this most clearly in the epidemics of eating disorders and self-cutting which have become so widespread, especially among adolescent girls and young women.

Technology is part of the explanation for this, although only part of it. Instagram and Facebook hit us with page after page of beautiful people living perfect lives, with all their teeth perfect and not a hair out of place. It’s almost always fake – a pose held for a few seconds, assisted by plastic surgery and a digital photo filter – but it makes us think we are inadequate. Yet you are made to be the way you are, to have the body and face you were given by God.

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Embracing Our Humanity: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 19th December 2021 (The Fourth Sunday of Advent)

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Readings – Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45

“…as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy.” 

If you’re interested in some intelligent listening, may I commend this year’s Reith Lectures on Radio 4? They are being given by Professor Stuart Russell, a British academic who works on Artificial Intelligence at the University of California. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a computer whizz to understand them – Professor Russell is very good at explaining his subject in terms understandable to an intelligent non-specialist audience.

A copy of the painting of The Visitation by James Tissot
The Visitation (1886-94) by James Tissot; now hangs in the Brooklyn Museum.

We have now lived through half a century where ever increasing computer power has radically transformed the way in which we live. The growing power of computers and the consequent disruption to established patterns of living will continue well into the future. Professor Russell, like most experts, thinks many of the jobs made unnecessary by new technology will be ones requiring high levels of education and specialist knowledge. For example, many fewer lawyers and doctors will be needed given the way the expertise of the best can be packaged and made available worldwide. Why do we need the average hospital consultant or barrister when a computer programme will make the knowledge of the very best available to all for a tiny marginal cost? Similarly, who will need the average teacher or university lecturer when the best in the world can be streamed via the Internet to every tablet from Devizes to Dubai.

The experts, however, all seem to agree we will still need just as many people who earn their living by taking care of others and their personal needs – from hairdressers to care home assistants. I hope that means there will continue to be a robust demand for priests.

Please note: when our expertise becomes redundant, there is still a value – including an economic value – on our humanity.

Let us keep this in mind as we reflect on our Gospel reading, and Mary’s visit to Elizabeth to celebrate their pregnancies, for it is all about the value of humanity and of human life.

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Proclaiming Forgiveness: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 5th December 2021 (The Second Sunday of Advent)

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Readings – Luke 3:1-6; Malachi 3:1-4

“He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” 

May I speak in the name of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

It seems that in this pandemic, we’re always waiting. This time last year, we were waiting for the vaccines to arrive, having just heard news that seemed too good to be true about their effectiveness. This year, we’re waiting to see if they’ll still work as well against the Omicron variant. Waiting can sometimes be a nerve-grinding, exhausting, process, most of all when we wait poised between utter despair and relief. Let us be honest – the Second Sunday of Advent in 2021 involves just this kind of joy-sapping, emotionally fraught, waiting.

A painting by Domenico Veneziano of St John the Baptist surrounded by bare mountains and scattered woodland. He is naked.
St John the Baptist in the Wilderness by Domenico Veneziano (1445). Now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Waiting is, however, part of the human condition. It is also a major theme of the season of Advent, where we wait for Christ to come into the world at Christmas. Even Jesus had to wait for the appropriate time to start his public ministry, which meant waiting for John the Baptist; and John himself presumably had to wait for the right moment to begin preaching, in a time and a place that was full of shifting political and religious tensions.

It is of note that Luke locates John the Baptist at a definite historical moment. His preaching didn’t happen at a random moment in history, but at a particular time and a particular place, and I quote from this morning’s Gospel:

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.”

From the time when he is writing, Luke is probably looking back around sixty years to the ministry of John the Baptist. That is a long time, but well within the living memory of older people; prominent public figures of the time will still mean something to most people. John the Baptist’s ministry is presented as a historical reality, in the not too distant past. It is as if a modern writer were writing about, say the Cuban Missile Crisis or miniskirts, by saying:

“In the eighth year of the reign of Elizabeth the Second, when Macmillan was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Kennedy President of the United States, and Khrushchev and Mao Chairmen of the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union and China, during the archiepiscopates of Geoffrey Fisher and Michael Ramsey.”

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Crumbling Empires and Eternal Bliss: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 21st November 2021 (Christ the King)

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Remnants of a vanished empire: a Soviet red star from 1953 on Kyiv's Paton Bridge.

Readings – Revelation 1:4b-8; Mark 10:17–31

 “My Kingdom is not from of this world.” 

May I speak in the name of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Some of you know, and some of you don’t, that I am a very keen radio ham, and a particular enthusiast for Morse code, which is still in use by hobbyists around the world on a daily basis. My love affair with radio started when I was an eight year old boy, on discovering that the radio cassette player my parents had given me as a Christmas present had a switch marked “Short Wave”. At first, tuning the dial on this strange waveband was unpropitious, as the adults had all assured me would be the case, revealing only strange bleeps and noises and a few stations in languages I didn’t even recognise.

Remnants of a vanished empire: a Soviet red star from 1953 on Kyiv's Paton Bridge.
Remnants of a vanished empire: a Soviet red star from 1953 on Kyiv’s Paton Bridge, 11 August 2017, © Gerry Lynch.

Within a few hours, however, I had discovered programmes in immaculate English from Sweden, the Netherlands, and Czechoslovakia and things developed from there over the following weeks and months. To a child always fascinated by maps and already at that tender age becoming interested in politics, that cassette player became like a magic carpet to distant lands, so much more remote in those pre-Internet days of the 1980s.

One of the most ubiquitous stations, and certainly the most bizarre, was Radio Tirana, which dominated large parts of the Short Wave spectrum with its creepy and unforgettable theme tune, introducing broadcasts that promoted Albania’s official state ideology in every language from Armenian to Zulu. It seemed to despise equally both what it described as American Imperialists and Soviet Socialist Imperialists, but its real ire was reserved for the oul’ enemy – the imperialists of Yugoslavia.

The undoubted king of the dial, however, was Radio Moscow, which in English alone had not only a North American service, and a World Service aimed mainly at audiences in Africa and South Asia, but for an hour at 8 o’clock every evening the wonderful Britain and Ireland Service. It was presented by gentlemen who were very well-spoken indeed, sounding like they had been educated at Marlborough and Cambridge – because they probably had been. They presented the failures of the Soviet Union as being the inevitable flaws of a system that was still merely Socialist, and that these would ultimately disappear as a perfect political system, a genuine Communism, inevitably emerged.

I discovered all this at Christmas 1985. Within a few years, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and even the mighty Soviet Union all vanished from our maps. Empires rise and fall. They always have done and always will do, and they are always profoundly flawed entities.

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Have Mercy On Me: Sermon Preached at Holy Cross, Ramsbury, Sunday 24th October 2021 (The Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity)

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Winter afternoon sunlight on the lovely chancel at Holy Cross, Ramsbury. © Gerry Lynch, 22 February 2018.

“…he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’” 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This morning’s readings can be great sources of hope for us, but they can also be disturbing. It all depends what mood or what set of experiences we approach them from. In their very different ways, both Job and Blind Bartimaeus have been dealt a rough hand by God, and have suffered for years. Then, in response to prayer, God fixes each of their problems in a trice. The second part of their lives will be so wonderful they could hardly have dared wish it for themselves. The readings can also be disturbing, however, because God does not do this for everyone, not even for many people who pray faithfully. 

An exterior shot of Holy Cross, Ramsbury, in the Diocese of Salisbury in golden February light.
The preacher was “playing an away match” at Holy Cross, Ramsbury. © 22 February, 2018.

I read an article in Church Times a few weeks ago about a brilliant young academic, who met the love of his life when they were both reading for their doctorates. He had been brought up outside the Church, but thanks to his fiancée, he came to faith in Christ for the first time. The he was struck by what seemed at first to be a routine viral infection, but this left him with a crippling post-viral syndrome which has now lasted for many decades. He has lived in almost permanent exhaustion and pain. His career went nowhere, and his condition placed enormous burdens of caring on that young girlfriend who became his wife. Decades of faithful prayer for healing were met only with occasional false dawns; after so many years, the answer to his prayers was, finally, a sense of peace with his illness, with God, and with the world. 

Where, one asks, is the justice in all that? If we accept that God does at times answer prayer in miraculous ways – and I do accept that – it leaves us wondering why He doesn’t do it more often. 

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If You Sell Everything You Have, I’ll Buy You Lunch: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 7th October 2021 (The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity)

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Readings – Hebrews 4:12–16; Mark 10:17–31

“…go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor … then come, follow me.”

This morning, I’m going to set you all a challenge from the pulpit. Which of you is going to do what Jesus told the rich young man this morning, and sell what you have, and give it to the poor?

The painting by Heinrich Hofmann, entitled Christus und der reiche Jüngling, dating to 1889. Residing at the Riverside Church, New York.
Heinrich Hofmann, Christus und der reiche Jüngling, 1889. Residing at the Riverside Church, New York.

I’m serious. Will somebody here, today, stick up their hand – I don’t want you to interrupt my sermon right now, but will somebody say to me at the south porch after the service, “Yes, Gerry. I’m in. I’ll get the estate agents to put the house on the market tomorrow, I’m giving the car to a young person without much money to whom it would really make a difference, and the family silver is going on eBay this afternoon.”

I’m mean it. If any of you takes up the challenge, I’ll stand you lunch at The Peppermill straight afterwards, along with a decent bottle or two, and you can come and stay with me for a month or two while you work out how you’re going to live your new vocation as a wandering mendicant, living entirely off the charity of others, for the sake of Christ.

Somebody here should give it a go. In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus has promised you treasure in heaven if you do, and in fact he promised you houses, families, and fields in this world as well. Along, it has to be said, with some persecutions. But it will all balance out as a big net positive. So, what are you waiting for?

Oh, by the way, no not me, I can’t do it. I know I’m single and I have no dependants, but I’m the curate and I have to stay here and minister unto you. It wouldn’t be fair, especially to you, for you to lose your wonderful curate who is, of course, entirely irreplaceable. Also, the Diocese would never pass me to go on and apply for my first incumbency.

The apostles reacted much in the manner that most of us do after hearing this challenge to the Rich Young Man, and then Jesus telling them that God’s standards were so high that it was almost impossible to get into heaven. They moaned. And Jesus answered them, that for mortals it was impossible, but for God, all things are possible.

You can’t win heaven. You cannot meet God’s exacting standards. God made us human beings to be flawed. We will, you and I, often make complete messes of things. Acknowledging this is a liberating, life-affirming, idea in a world where our worth is too often measured by our achievements, and our failures are too quickly pounced on by an increasingly angry and unforgiving culture. It is liberating and life-affirming because if you can’t meet God’s standards then you can’t earn God’s love. God loves you anyway, just as you are. He undoubtedly wants you to live your life differently in some ways than you do at present. You could certainly be better than you are – I know I could be. But you are loved by God.

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Stumbling Blocks and Salt: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 26 September 2021 (The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity)

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Readings – James 5.13–20; Mark 9.38–50

“Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.”

There is a striking and rather horrifying picture about our Christian past that occasionally does the rounds on the Internet. It is a photograph of two strangely shaped tombstones, located either side of a high wall. The tombstones are even higher, and from the top of each a hand stretches out to touch the other.

Grave in Roermond © memolands.com gallery
The touching hands between the tombs of Colonel van Gorcum and Lady van Aefferden in the Dutch city of Roermond. © memolands.com gallery and used under Creative Commons Licence 2.0.

The graves are located in the Dutch city of Roermond, and belong to Colonel van Gorcum, a Protestant cavalry officer, and his wife Lady van Aefferden, a Catholic minor noble. They were married in 1842, and after thirty-eight years of presumably happy marriage, the Colonel died and was buried in the Protestant part of the local cemetery, where the dead were divided from one another denominationally by a high wall. His wife therefore refused to be buried in the grand family plot, in the Catholic part of the cemetery, insisting that she would be buried on her own immediately across the wall from him. That is where she was laid to rest eight years later, in 1888, and their graves remain to this day a reminder of the capacity of love to triumph over bigotry.

Love conquers all – even tribalism and stupidity.

Christ presents a dire warning in today’s Gospel about those who place stumbling blocks in the way of faith. The horrid things done due to disagreements between Catholics and Protestants are a huge stumbling block to Christian faith for many, a major contributor to the decline of Christianity in this country and across Europe. Today we pay a heavy price for the sins for the past.

Of course, we’re not like that these days. We’re much more enlightened. Devizes is now absolutely normal in terms of today’s Christianity, certainly in this country, in that the social action of the Church, our commitment to supporting the needy, or the homeless, or people with addiction problems, is carried out absolutely ecumenically. Not only do Conservative Roman Catholics work hand in hand with staunchly Evangelical Protestants, but both work with people at the most theologically liberal end of the Quakers or Anglicans or Methodists, who might see themselves as following a Christian path towards a universal truth rather than understanding Christianity as even presenting a distinct truth at all. All of us seem to have taken on board Jesus’ command to the apostles today about the stranger healing in His name: “Do not stop him; for … whoever is not against us is for us.”

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Wisdom and the Cross: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 12 September 2021 (The Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity)

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The modern Coventry Cathedral alongside the ruins of the original, 2 August 2018. © Gerry Lynch

Readings – Wisdom 7:26 – 8:1; Mark 8:27–38

“She is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every constellation of the stars.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On a bright weekday morning three summers ago, I began my day with Morning Prayer at Coventry Cathedral. Coventry was a convenient place for an overnight break on the long overland journey between Salisbury and Belfast, and I had long wanted to see the Cathedral. I was able to talk my way into spending the hour between the end of the service and the start of public visiting wandering an empty Cathedral on my own, with my camera and tripod.

John Piper’s great Baptistery Window at Coventry Cathedral, 2 August 2018. © Gerry Lynch
John Piper’s great Baptistery Window at Coventry Cathedral, 2 August 2018. © Gerry Lynch

If you haven’t yet been there, I recommend a visit, and also making the effort to visit in the morning, for that is the time when John Piper’s baptistery window is at its best, ablaze with sun from the east, all twenty-eight metres of it.

Just occasionally people tell me they don’t like Coventry Cathedral. I couldn’t disagree more; few church buildings on earth incarnate the reality of the Resurrection more powerfully.

The parish church Cathedral of St Michael, one of the finest medieval parish churches in Europe, was blown to bits during The Blitz on 14 November 1940. As he went into the ruined Cathedral the morning after the destruction, the then Provost, Richard Howard, was struck by what he called “the deep certainty that as the Cathedral had been crucified with Christ, so it would rise again with Him.”

Less than twenty years later, the very different modernist Cathedral was dedicated, also to St Michael, surrounded by the still imposing ruins of 14th Century building, and incomprehensible without their presence.

Coventry Cathedral also showcases two interconnected British revivals of the two decades after the end of the Second World War – a revival of Christian faith and a revival of high culture. Unquestionably it was the high point of British modernism in the visual arts and architecture: Basil Spence’s cathedral housing John Piper’s windows, Graham Sutherland’s tapestry, still in 2021 the largest in the world, and one of Jacob Epstein’s last and finest sculptures. Yet this indubitable gem of 20th Century Christianity could not have existed without the destruction of the magnificent medieval St Michael’s.

The modern Coventry Cathedral alongside the ruins of the original, 2 August 2018. © Gerry Lynch
The modern Coventry Cathedral alongside the ruins of the original, 2 August 2018. © Gerry Lynch

Resurrection follows death. Resurrection is not possible without death. Yet that does not make the death any less real, or any less painful, nor does it make the loss of physical presence that death entails any less final or less disturbing. That is the central paradox of the Christian faith. It is, in every sense of the word, disturbing.

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