Out With A Bang: Sermon Preached on 16th November 2025 (Second Sunday Before Advent)

Posted on November 16, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Christ Church, Worton and Holy Cross, Seend

2 Thessalonians 3.6–13; Luke 21.5–19

‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.’

A black-and-white photograph shows a middle-aged man with a mustache, wearing a leather aviator jacket, scarf, and cowboy hat, perched triumphantly atop a large black-and-white checkered spherical object. He leans forward with intense energy, one hand gripping the sphere for balance while the other waves his hat high in the air. His mouth is open wide in a shout of exhilaration or defiance. Behind him, a dramatic mountainous landscape with snow-covered peaks and a winding road stretches into the distance under a dark, moody sky.

Slim Pickens goes out with a bang in Dr. Strangelove (1964).

The other night, I watched a Netflix blockbuster, released last month, named A House of Dynamite. (Trailer) In it, the American military detects an inbound object streaking across the Pacific towards the United States. It is soon confirmed as a missile headed straight for Chicago and its nine million-odd people, due to impact in just 18 minutes. Nobody knows who fired the object – it could be North Korea, or China, or Russia. Nobody even knows if there is a nuclear warhead attached to it at all. The President must make perhaps the most fateful decision in history in the face of conflicting suggestions from his top advisors—fail to respond, and they could invite further catastrophic attacks on American cities; respond, and they could trigger nuclear apocalypse.

One thing that comes across is the chaos as decision-makers are pulled from their daily routine to try to make an impossible decision on a group video call, in a matter of minutes. And that, potentially, is the sort of frayed thread by which the fate of the world could hang. For real.

We have lived, now for 80 years, with the possibility that the human race might wipe itself out in a nuclear war. For everyone here today, it is a possibility that we have lived with every day at least since childhood, in most cases for our entire lives. My primary school years took place during one of the most intense periods of nuclear fear, the 1980s, when the Greenham Common women were on the news every night and genuinely frightening movies like Threads, which depicted the effects of a nuclear strike on Sheffield, were prime time fare.

The depressing world situation we face at present brings those fears back. Two nuclear powers – Israel and Russia – have now been involved in years’ long wars on their own borders. As science advances, we read worrying stories about new possibilities of self-inflicted extinction, from genetic modification and artificial intelligence

“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified.” None of us know what might be coming around the corner, for us and for the world. When Jesus taught at the great Temple in Jerusalem, those who heard Him had no idea that He was in the last week of His earthly life. Yet, behind the scenes, the clerical leaders of the Temple, fearing the wrath of the Romans, were plotting that it might be expedient for one man to die for the people.

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Why Are You Here?: Sermon Preached on 9nd November 2025 (Third Sunday Before Advent)

Posted on November 10, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

2 Thessalonians 2.1–5, 13–17; Luke 20.27–38

“God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation…to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

A vibrant early-20th-century watercolor of Jesus conversing with a Sadducee in a sunlit ancient Middle Eastern street. Central: Jesus, with long brown hair, beard, and compassionate gaze, in white robes, gesturing explanatorily. Facing him: An elderly Sadducee in striped robe and green-white turban, hand on chin thoughtfully. Around them: A dozen bearded men in earth-toned robes and headscarves, observing curiously. Background: Ochre stucco buildings, arches, blue sky. Rich golds, blues, earth tones; soft shading, detailed fabrics.

‘The Question of the Pharisees’ from Harold Copping’s ‘Scenes from the Bible’ (before 1907).

Why are you here?

Is it because you want to receive Communion? Good reason. Is it because you slept in this morning? Because you love the ambience in St Mary’s on a winter evening? Because it’s more interesting than yet another repeat of an old episode of Antiques Roadshow?

As long as worshipping God in His Son Jesus Christ is at least one of your reasons for being here, then St Paul has a different and more fundamental answer as to why you’re here. He writes to the Christians in Thessalonica, then as now a large Greek city, that “God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation…to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

So you are here tonight because God called you to be here, so you might obtain glory: glory in the world to come, when you are raised from the dead in Christ, as Christ was Himself raised from the dead by the Father.

The idea of Resurrection strikes many people as silly, and often they think that’s because they’re sophisticated modern people who believe in science. But actually, Resurrection struck a lot of people in the ancient world as silly too—this includes the people mentioned in our Gospel reading, the Sadducees, who were a group of Jewish religious leaders who seem to have done a lot of the administrative work in the Temple at Jerusalem in Jesus’ time.

We don’t know a lot about the Sadducees, and most of what we do know was written by their enemies so isn’t entirely reliable. But we can be pretty sure about a few things. They were good administrators, and at their best they were very learned. They were drawn from the upper échelons of Jewish society in the Holy Land, enjoyed the good things in life and had no worries about spending money on luxuries. And they didn’t believe in Heaven, Hell, spirits, angels, or demons—any more than they believed in the Resurrection.

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Impossible Even for Saints: Sermon Preached on 2nd November 2025 (All Saints’ Day)

Posted on November 7, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

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

Ephesians 1.11–23; Luke 6.20–31

“…from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.”

A towering Gothic polyptych altarpiece, illuminated by soft church light, depicting a sacred hierarchy in vivid tempera and gold leaf. The composition unfolds in three tiers beneath a pointed arch, framed by intricate gilded tracery and a starry indigo vault.

‘Like A Good Hand At Bridge’—the East Wall at All Saints’, Margaret Street, London W1, © Gerry Lynch, 17 November 2017

“Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.” Dorothy Day, the American pacifist, radical Socialist, feminist, and devout Catholic, has this among the pithiest of her large collection of pithy sayings.

And we can all see where she’s coming from, can’t we? Who’d want to be a saint? Saints have to be good all the time. I mean—boring! And anyway, we all know we’re not good all the time. We swear at people when they cut us off when we’re driving, and most of us, when we thought nobody was looking, have probably picked our noses. And we all know that we have a few faults that are rather worse than that.

Sainthood is all very well and good for the saints, but for most of us, it feels like setting out on a lifetime of dreariness only to set ourselves up to fail in the end. It can also feel like something that takes us out of doing practical good in the world for the sake of an impractically otherworldly set of ideals. I think that’s where Dorothy Day was coming from: it’s easy to dismiss a saint as someone whose actions are well beyond the capacity of the rest of us to achieve, and whose ideas are well beyond the capacity of any society to put into action.

But hang on a minute. The Bible, and the Gospels in particular, tell us lots about the first generation of Christian saints. And all of them, at least some of the time, were total car-crashes! They often don’t get what Jesus is really about because their image of God is so limited, but more than that, they’re often selfish, vain, glory-hunters!

The St Peter of the Gospels is a case study in self-centred cluelessness, who liked to play the tough nut but couldn’t deal with the pressure when Christ was arrested—yet he was the rock on which Christ built the Church. St Paul was so hard to put up with that even sweet, gentle, St Barnabas – Barnabas the encourager – stormed off and abandoned him. And when you put Peter and Paul together in a room, there could be fireworks, because they couldn’t stand one another. That’s even before we get to the Sons of Thunder and all the rest of them.

In the Creed every Sunday, we say that we believe in “one holy catholic and apostolic Church”. We say that our Faith is the same as that of the apostles, that we are part of the Church founded by the apostles. Well, this is what the apostles were really like, if we believe the Bible—not pious plaster statues, but real people with real faults; real faults that didn’t prevent them being the instruments of God’s work in the world.

That’s what being a saint is about: not being someone who is always good, but someone whose dark side hasn’t prevented them from living for Christ, from doing the Father’s work, in the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s not just people like Peter and Paul and Augustine and Alban and all that lot who are called to be saints: I am called to sainthood, and so are you, strange as that may sound.

Today’s Gospel reading is full of what seem to be demands impossible even for a saint. Let’s start with, “Love your enemies?” How good are you at doing that? I don’t mean tolerating your enemies’ existence, or grudgingly forgiving them through gritted teeth because it’s your Christian duty, but actually, you know, loving them?

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Interview with Adam Curtis; Article on Church Closures

Posted on October 31, 2025 by Gerry Lynch
A vibrant, glitch-art promotional poster for the BBC documentary episode "Shifty: Part Five - The Democratisation of Everything" (2025), directed by Adam Curtis. It depicts a triptych composition with heavy digital distortions and overlays in hot pink, lime green, and electric yellow hues creating a surreal, fractured effect. In the central panel, two middle-aged British politicians—Tony Blair (left, with short hair, speaking emphatically, wearing a dark suit and red tie) and Gordon Brown (right, with dark curly hair, furrowed brow, in a dark suit and red tie)—sit side by side at a conference table, each holding a water glass, against a plain pink backdrop suggesting a formal debate or interview setting. Bold, sans-serif white text spans the bottom reading "THE DEMOCRATISATION OF EVERYTHING," with the final "G" stylized in green for emphasis, evoking themes of political disruption and digital chaos.

Still from a promo trailer for Shifty.

Because it came out when I was on holiday, I’ve underpromoted this interview I did on behalf of the Church Times with the BBC documentary-maker Adam Curtis (Bitter Lake, HyperNormalisation, SHIFTY, etc.) but it’s probably the most high profile piece of journalism I’ve done. In it, I talk to Adam about the current mood of stagnation and hopelessness, why Thatcher was a prisoner of forces out of her control more than she was a trend-setter, and what Beijing and Washington have in common.

“We have to imagine something beyond all this”, he told me, “Politics used to share a sense of transcendence with religion. We did once believe in something, but the belief that arose in the ’80s of individual self-fulfilment as the central goal of society has failed. The politicians have lost control, and we have a lot of individuals who feel very alone. The only vision of the future is fear.”

Despite his many detractors on the Left, Curtis remains an old-fashioned progressive with revolutionary sympathies, who regrets that “Western society has been through a period of failed revolutions which had an optimistic view of human nature; so you’re going to get this pessimistic counter-revolutionary view.”

He believes that a route out of the current cultural and political impasse might be a series of revolutions that fail but nonetheless open up new avenues of thought, in the manner that those of 1848 did. He doesn’t think Christianity will be among those avenues of thought—but then he remains an old-fashioned progressive.

Click here to read the whole thing. (7 minute read)

I also wrote a piece for Unherd in response to reports in the Daily Telegraph that up to a third of UK churches could close by the end of the decade—well, surveys can be interpreted in different ways, and I think that is highly unlikely. But the decline in religious practice has led to many churches closing, especially in Scotland and Wales.

Click here to read it all. (2½ minute read)

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Popes, Kings, and Tax Collectors: Sermon Preached on 26th October 2025 (Nineteenth Sunday After Trinity)

Posted on October 26, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

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

2 Timothy 4.6–8, 16–18; Luke 18. 9–14

“The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people…’”

Pope Leo XIV, dressed in white papal robes with a red and gold embroidered chasuble, walks down the ornate tiled aisle of the Sistine Chapel alongside King Charles III, who wears a dark blue suit, white shirt, black tie, and white pocket square. A cleric in black robes with magenta accents follows closely behind them, holding a book, while Queen Camilla, in a black dress and veiled hat, and other attendees are visible in the background. Rows of empty red upholstered chairs with gold frames line both sides of the aisle, and the chapel's renowned ceiling and walls, painted with Michelangelo's frescoes including scenes from The Last Judgment and biblical figures, loom above.

King Charles and Pope Leo in the Sistine Chapel, 23 October 2025 © Vatican Media

The Pope and the Queen played an outsized role in the graffiti I saw as a boy. Their titles usually appeared in a three-letter acronym only differentiated by its last letter. The first letter was ‘F’, and did indeed stand for the F-word you’re wondering if the Rector is actually going to use in the pulpit. The second letter was ‘T’, simply for “the”. And the last letter was either ‘P’ or ‘Q’. It was, in a strange way, quite useful to have ‘FTP’ or ‘FTQ’ written on a wall, as if you were somewhere unfamiliar, it gave you an instant visual clue as to what sort of place you were in, and therefore whether you could tell the truth about who you were and where you came from, or whether you had to tell a few little white lies.

The Pope of Rome and the King or Queen of England were our respective bogeymen. You might not have had anything much against them personally, you may even have sort of liked what you saw of them on the TV, but you knew if you were rude about them, you were taking a pop at a sacred symbol of the other side, and you were also warning anybody on your own side who might go soft what was expected of them.

Of course, it’s easy from the security of rural England to roll your eyes at all that and say, ‘Well what do you expect from Northern Ireland?’ But for four hundred years, this division wasn’t just in Northern Ireland, but across Europe and later across the world. One side said there was no salvation outside their Church, while the other loved phrases like: “the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome, and all his detestable enormities”.

One of the mainstays of British national identity was, into the early 20th Century, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Almost forgotten now, it was full of grizzly stories of godly Protestants being burned at the sake and disembowelled, usually accompanied by lurid ink drawings that, in the days before horror movies, were probably part of its appeal. The Catholic minority in England had their equivalent stories of saints being crushed to death, or quartered while alive, and Irish Catholics not only had similar stories but outright dispossession in their own country to draw on.

The saddest part is, all the stories were true, in all their cruelty. Tyburn really happened, and the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre really happened. But people tended to remember the stories of when they were victims, and often chose not remember the stories where they were making the victims. Christians proclaim that Christ, who rejected violence and revenge and conquest and power, is the victim sacrificed for the sins of the world—and then, too often, go out and make more victims in His name. When do that, we nail Christ to the Cross all over again.

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Greetings, E-Mail Subscribers

Posted on October 20, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

After many years, I’ve finally worked out how to send my posts as an automatic e-mail to those who’ve signed up to get an update whenever I post a new article.

If you get this post as an e-mail from me, let me know if it has arrived safely, and let me further know if you want to unsubscribe.

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Persistence: Sermon Preached on 19th October 2025 (Eighteenth Sunday After Trinity)

Posted on October 19, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend

2 Timothy 3.14 – 4.5; Luke 18.1–8

“Preach the word… in season, out of season”

Do you want to be a record breaker? For me, it all depends what sort of record I might be breaking. I wouldn’t to be like former Nottingham Forest manager Ange Postecoglou, sacked yesterday just 39 days after being appointed, and setting a new record for brevity of managerial tenure in the English Premier League.

Perhaps Mr Postecoglou might take comfort from the fact that he is probably the victim of forces well beyond his own control—a short-termist mentality that demands instant results, which has been produced by a culture that promises instant gratification, as long as we have the money to pay for it.

A classical painting depicting an elderly woman dressed in a dark robe and white headscarf, sitting and holding a young child who is nestled against her. The child, wearing a golden robe, is reading or holding a small book. The background is dark and muted, with warm lighting highlighting the figures' faces and clothing.

William Drost, Timothy With His Grandmother, Lois (early 1650s). hangs in the Hermitage, St Petersburg.

Today’s readings, although different in terms of form and style, both commend to us a different approach to life—one of constancy and persistence, especially when it comes to our Christian Faith.

Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy is written in the style of an old man, realising he is nearing the end of his life, giving advice to a younger protégé. Timothy has clearly been earmarked by Paul as a future Church leader, and his background contrasts dramatically with the first generation of Christian leaders, who all started following Christ as adults, many of them literally following Jesus Christ around the Holy Land while he walked the Earth. Timothy, in contrast, was born into a Christian family, and Paul seems to think His backbone needs a little stiffening.

We see another change—the earliest Christians expected Jesus to return and enact the Last Judgement very soon; in this passage, we get signs that they are starting to realise this Christianity business is for the long haul.

So Paul writes: “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season”. ‘Instant’ in the language of the Authorised Version means persistent; Timothy is to be persistent in preaching the Gospel even when it feels like he isn’t getting anywhere, and even when people who had been faithful Christians get distracted and drift into believing myths that seem to be Christian on the surface but lose the true essence of the Faith at their core.

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Be Like This Dirty Foreigner: Sermon Preached on 12th October 2025 (Seventeenth Sunday After Trinity)

Posted on October 16, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

2 Timothy 2. 8-15; Luke 17. 11-19

“He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.”

Whom do you hate?

A painting depicting a group of people in colorful, tattered clothing kneeling and reaching out with raised hands on a grassy hill. In the background, a figure in a white robe stands alone, with a soft, glowing sky above. A few shadowy figures are visible further back on the hill. The scene conveys a sense of reverence and awe.

Gebhard Fugel, Ten Lepers Call Out to Jesus (1920), hangs in the Diocesan Museum of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, in Freising.

Do you hate Muslims?

Do you hate… Tories?

Do you hate Black people? Do you hate posh people? Do you hate Nigel Farage? Do you, well, want to make clear you’re not anti-Semitic, of course, but actually you hate the Israelis? Or do you hate sanctimonious lefty-liberals who have self-righteousness like other people have bad breath?

We all have a little bit of hatred for somebody or other tucked away in us somewhere. None of us is all-kind and all-loving all the time. We all form in-groups and out-groups—that’s just part of human nature. We can’t possibly know everything we need to know to make a judgement as to whether to trust somebody we’ve just met, so we all look for shortcuts to help us form a view of them. Although our higher aspirations rightly make us try to suppress these instincts, it’s not always easy to navigate the world without them, and they aren’t easy to control.

For the Jews of Jesus’ time and place, the people they hated were the Samaritans. Their religion was very similar to that of the Jews, but that just made the ways in which it was slightly different even more upsetting. Unlike the Jews, the Samaritans hadn’t been sent into exile by the Babylonians, but had always lived in the Holy Land— so as far as the Samaritans were concerned, they were the true descendants of Moses and David, while the Jews were the people whose religion had been corrupted by funny foreign ideas.

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Wait Patiently in Faith: Sermon Preached on 5th October 2025 (Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity)

Posted on October 10, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Christ Church, Worton and Christ Church, Bulkington

Habakkuk 1.1-4, 2.1-4; Luke 17. 5-10

“I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.”

“Anarchy and violence break out, quarrels and fights all over the place. Law and order fall to pieces. Justice is a joke. The wicked have the righteous hamstrung and stand justice on its head.” That’s a translation from the Bible version known as ‘The Message’ of the first of our readings today. It was penned by the prophet Habakkuk (isn’t that a great name) in what turned out to be the years just before an era came to an end; something that Habakkuk seems to have understood even as most of those around him scoffed. He wrote at a time when standards had collapsed, when wrongdoers seemed to get whatever they wanted and ordinary people saw no justice, when neighbours were bitterly divided from one another. Nobody really knew how to turn the country round from the decline it had settled into.

An old black-and-white illustration depicting a dramatic scene with a person standing on a rooftop, arms raised, overlooking a city with domed buildings. In the background, a hilltop fortress is engulfed in flames and smoke, suggesting a battle or destruction. Another figure is crouched nearby, and the sky is filled with dark, swirling clouds.

Jerusalem is On Fire, from the Art Bible (1896) – public domain image.

Truly, Habakuk was a prophet for our times—but He wrote around the year 600 BC in the Kingdom of Judah. He didn’t know that the Fall of Jerusalem was only a few years in the future, but knew his society was in trouble. Yet he also had faith that his people weren’t coming to the end a story, but merely the end of a chapter. Despite the state of his country, Habakuk still watched and waited for God to speak to him. He didn’t lose faith. And God did indeed speak to him. God told Habakkuk to do something that is now very unfashionable – to wait! – to be patient, for God would indeed grant His people a vision of a better future, but only at the appointed time.

We live at a time when everyone in public life is expected to give an instant reaction to every issue under the Sun, and this reaction has to fit in a two-sentence tweet or thirty-second video on TikTok. We demand our politicians tells us their views about sport and the entertainment business, ridiculing them if they confess to being uninterested in football or too serious-minded for the soaps. At the same time, we demand sportspeople and singers and actors give us their political opinions and act as our moral leaders. Serious problems are trivialised, while trivia is elevated

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Magnificent Kyrgyzstan in Photos

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

No sermon this Sunday or last Sunday as I’ve been on my summer holidays, in Kyrgyzstan. A lot of people asked me why I was going on holiday to Kyrgyzstan. I hope the photos below explain why!

Classic Kyrgyzstan scene, near Karakol.

Is the Skaza Canyon real life or a Star Trek scene?

Kyrgyz cowboy, near Karakol.

Last light on the Terskey Ala-toos, shot from the main road near Karakol.

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