OK, Sheeple! (Fourth Sunday of Easter: 11th May 2025)

Posted on May 11, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

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

Readings – Acts 9. 36-43; John 10. 22-30

“My sheep hear my voice.”

“OK, sheeple!” I don’t know how many of you have heard of the term “sheeple”. If you spend too much time on the internet, you might have! It is used in conspiracy theory circles – the sort of people who think the moon landings were faked and that Covid was invented so Bill Gates could implant us all with microchips under the cover of vaccines. In the conspiracy theorist part of society, the rest of the population is ridiculed as “sheeple” whose acceptance of received wisdom about the world is read as a sign of conformity and lack of independent thinking.

A painting depicts a flock of sheep and lambs grazing on a grassy hill near a stormy coastline. The sky is cloudy, and waves crash against the shore. In the background, a shepherd in a blue cloak stands near a cliff, with distant hills visible. The scene is lush with green grass and scattered bushes.

Coastal Flock by August Friedrich Schenk (1865)

While we shouldn’t lose too much sleep about what conspiracy theorists call us, calling someone a sheep isn’t normally meant a compliment. A sheep blindly follows their leader, is afraid to take a stand, lacks critical thinking, and probably isn’t the sharpest tool in the box.

Everything in our culture encourages to think of ourselves as being the opposite of sheep. We’re encouraged to think of ourselves as independent minded free spirits, who become the people we dream ourselves to be through the power of self-will. We don’t want to be sheep, and we don’t even particularly want to be shepherds. We romanticise the Lone Ranger sort of figure, the iconoclastic anti-hero who loves to do it all “my way” and refuses to let convention prevent them doing good or having a good time. The strange thing is that most people who think of themselves as self-willed free thinkers are desperately conformist, but that’s another story for another time.

In that view of the world, of course, there’s nothing positive to be said about being one of the sheep. But let’s be fair to our fluffy friends, they have their positive side, and not just as a delicious Sunday lunch. Sheep are part of a community, and while our individualism has brought us many blessings, its dark side has been that the bonds of our communities have become much weaker. Staying part of a coherent community doesn’t require dull conformism, but does need sensitivity to the needs of others, adaptability, and mutual trust.

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We’re Suspicious of a St Peter—(Third Sunday of Easter: 4th May 2025)

Posted on May 4, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Christ Church, Worton and Christ Church, Bulkington

Readings – Acts 9. 1-7; John 21. 1-19

“Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’”

An ancient religious icon painting depicts two figures in a close embrace, dressed in traditional robes with a gold background. The figure on the left wears a black and yellow robe, while the figure on the right is in a black and red robe. The painting shows signs of aging with visible cracks and faded colors. Text in an old script is partially visible at the top right and left edges.

Angelos Akotantos, Icon of The Embrace of the Apostles Peter and Paul (mid-15th Century). In the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

We all love a St Paul—but the St Peters of this world are often treated with profound suspicion. Why? Well, we all love finding out we’re right, and what could be better proof of that than someone who had been one of our bitterest enemies coming over to our side. It’s harder to embrace those who were always in agreement with us, but failed to put their principles into action for one reason to another. We all love a new friend; it can be harder to forgive an old friend who has let us down. The former is like St Paul, someone who once held wrong ideas, which have now changed for the better. The person who has let the side down, like St Peter, on the other hand, is always suspected of weakness of character. They may have failed in circumstances anyone could understand, you might like them a lot, but when the going gets tough, can you really trust them? And here’s the oddest thing—after incidents where we’ve let others down, we are often ourselves our harshest critics, and we can be the very ones who trust ourselves least.

I mention that last point for this reason—although it isn’t mentioned directly in today’s Gospel reading, I hope you remember how many times Peter denied Jesus on the night of His arrest? Three times! So, in this reading while Peter may be hurt at Jesus’ asking Him three times if he really loves Him, this balances out Peter’s three denials, which had taken place just a few weeks before. And each time Peter affirms that he loves Christ, Christ shows He trusts Peter again, by trusting him with the most important job of all: to tend and to feed the lambs and the sheep of Jesus’ flock. The story of the risen Christ appearing to the disciples on the Sea of Galilee is reported only in St John’s Gospel, the Gospel where Jesus declares Himself to be the Good Shepherd. So Jesus telling Peter that he is to feed the lambs and the sheep has profound symbolic significance here—not only is Jesus’ forgiving Peter but commissioning him to a role in Christ’s own mould.

Don’t think you’re not pious enough or have made too many mistakes or are too washed up to serve God. Peter was good enough for God, even after His spectacular, public, failure. You are good enough for God and He is undoubtedly calling you to do things for Him in the next part of your life. The question is to discern what it is.

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Forgiveness and Repentance: (Second Sunday of Easter: 27th April 2025)

Posted on April 27, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Acts 5. 27-32; John 20. 19-31

“God exalted him … that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.”

A fresco painting shows a group of people in a historical setting with stone buildings and a tower in the background. On the left, a woman in a grey dress holds a child, while others in robes stand nearby. In the center, two men in flowing robes, one yellow and one red, appear to be speaking or gesturing. At their feet, a person in a red robe lies on the ground, seemingly lifeless. The scene is framed by architectural elements, including a column on the right and a red wall with a small window on the left. The sky is pale with soft clouds.

St. Peter Distributing the Common Goods of the Church and the Death of Ananias, Mascaccio (c.1427), a fresco in the Brancacci Chapel within the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence.

On Good Friday, I heard an interview by the Rev’d Kate Bottley on Radio 2 with Esther Ghey, the mother of Brianna, the teenaged victim of a particularly brutal murder in Warrington two years ago, a murder carried out by other teenagers and motivated at least in part by transphobia. It was emotionally intense and at times profound, especially when Mrs Ghey said she had befriended the mother of one of her own daughter’s murderers, having witnessed her genuine distress at the trial and realising as a result that they shared a depth of woundedness that few mothers do. Such extraordinary empathy is rare and is often those who have been deeply wounded themselves who are capable of it.

Mrs Ghey was very clear that she wasn’t religious herself. Yet at the same time, she also reported seeing vivid sunset skies far more often since her daughter’s murder. As pink was Brianna’s favourite colour, she interpreted this as Brianna letting her family know she was OK from wherever she was now. The two things that jumped out at me are, firstly, if it needs to be said again, we Christians have no monopoly on goodness and Jesus Christ never said we would; and secondly that, although most people in this country now seem to think of themselves as having left Christianity behind, their attitudes are still saturated with Christian concepts which over dozens of generations have soaked into the psychological soil of this country and continent. By and large, people still believe there is something more than this life, although they may be reluctant to define what that “something” is.

The final words of this morning’s Gospel reading want us to believe in something very definite—“that Jesus is … the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

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The Last Enemy to Be Destroyed Is Death (Easter Day: 20th April 2025)

Posted on April 20, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

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

Readings – 1 Corinthians 15. 19-26; Luke 24. 1-12         

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

A painting depicting three figures in biblical attire near an empty tomb. The figure on the left, draped in orange and gray robes, holds a jar and appears mournful. The central figure wears a blue cloak over a red dress, standing with a somber expression. The figure on the right, in a red cloak and green dress, holds a white cloth and looks contemplative. The background features a hilly landscape with sparse trees, a cloudy sky, and distant structures, evoking a quiet, reflective mood.

Sketch to the Painting ‘Three Marys Walking to Christ’s Tomb’, Józef Simmler (1864), National Museum, Kraków.

Christians in this country are lucky that the celebration of Easter comes when springtime’s miracle of new life is at its peak. The miraculous nature of new life is clear whenever we see it, from an April field full of cowslips and celandine to a new-born child sleeping in the arms of its mother. The very existence of life is a mystery, and our existence, as a species that can reason and has a sense of right and wrong, is stranger still. There are two explanations for of human existence. One is that we are the product of the spontaneous emergence of life from non-living chemicals, and then trillions of chance encounters over four billion years—that we are a freak occurrence in a meaningless, and largely lifeless, universe. The other is that we were created by something greater than ourselves.

Our first instinct is probably that the only explanation compatible with science is that the human race came about by chance. The universe is a huge place and the four billion year span of life on Earth is a very long time indeed… far too long for us really to get our heads around. You can also be a perfectly good and faithful Christian and believe that God used the natural processes of the universe to allow a species in His image and likeness to evolveand, that, given the sheer size of the universe and the depth of time involved, nothing else would be required.

For a long time that was precisely my position. There is no scientific evidence for God nor, I believed, could or should Christians waste their time trying to find evidence for something that is fundamentally a matter of faith. But do you remember that old saying that if you had enough monkeys hammering randomly at typewriters for long enough, that one of them would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare?

Well, the maths on that have been done repeatedly, and if you had enough monkeys to fill not just the world, but the entire observable universe, and let them type for the whole time until the protons that make up all matter began to decay, then the chance that one of them would produce Hamlet is so low that we don’t even have a name for the number. It’s not one in a billion or one in a trillion, but one in one followed by hundreds of thousands of noughts. If it is improbable that a play named Hamlet could emerge by change, how much less probable it is that a man named Shakespeare could do so?

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God is Always With Us: A Reflection for Holy Week (Wednesday 16th April 2025)

Posted on April 18, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Given at Christ Church, Bulkington

Luke 24. 13-31

A painting shows two figures seated at a table in a dimly lit room, sharing a meal. The figure on the right, draped in a dark cloak, faces the other, who is in a lighter robe. A third figure stands in the background near a fire, casting a shadow. The table holds bread and a cup, and a sack hangs on the wall. The scene is illuminated by a soft, warm light, creating a contemplative atmosphere.

Rembrandt, Supper at Emmaus (1628) now in the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris.

Somebody asked me why I’d set this reading during Holy Week, when it takes place on the first Easter Day, after the Resurrection. Wasn’t I putting the cart before the horse?

Well, firstly, the theme for these three short Holy Week talks is encountering God—the first was about wrestling with God; the second about returning to God. The Road to Emmaus points to the reality that God is with us always, albeit often unrecognised by us.

Often, we don’t recognise God’s presence because He’s acting in ways that don’t fit our preconceived notion of what God is. That’s at the heart of the Emmaus story, of course: God isn’t supposed to be someone you’ve never met before, who joins in your animated conversation on a long walk. Many a sermon has been built on the need to be alert for God appearing to us in the face of a stranger, and while that point is well made, many of those sermons I’ve heard over the years slightly tut-tut at the folk in the pews for not being more sensitive or open-minded.

I think, however, that we should be a bit less harsh on ourselves.

Here’s a detail that’s easy to miss in the Emmaus story. When Christ first approached Cleopas and his friend and asked what they were talking about, they just stood there, still, presumably with plenty of time to take in His face but “their eyes were kept from recognizing him”. Notice this is in the passive voice. The closing of the friends’ eyes is something that has been done to them, not a choice they have made. Similarly, when Jesus breaks bread “their eyes were opened”. If God is sovereign, then our noticing His presence must lie in His gift more than it does within our control.

There are times in our lives when we feel God’s presence literally touching us. At other times God seems remote. We can even feel He has abandoned us. I’ve found both these experiences at their most intense when life was at its hardest for me. The toughest experiences – bereavement, severe ill health for ourselves or loved ones, employment problems, relationship breakdown – seem either to draw us alongside God or push us away from Him. Perhaps sometimes God’s presence is too intense for it to be safe for us to sense it too directly.

Beyond these life crises, one of life’s most difficult experiences is to have our cherished illusions about our lives or the nature of the world shattered. It was just that Cleopas and has friend had endured. A difficult experience, but often the necessary prelude to growth, to starting the next stage of a journey.

Here’s the final reason for exploring this Eastertide Story during Holy Week. The Christ who breaks bread with the disciples is the same God cries out “My God, why have you forsaken me” on the Cross.

The person we are when we feel ourselves to be close to God is the same as the person who sometimes feels far from God. We need to love both those versions of ourselves, integrate both of them within our self-understanding, because both these elements are necessary to any journey towards God and His plans for our lives.

As T.S. Eliot wrote:

“…the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

This Eastertide, may the Paschal mystery draw you closer to the God who is always with you. Amen.

Top image: Titian, Supper at Emmaus (1538), Hangs in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

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Returning to God: A Reflection for Holy Week (Tuesday 15th April 2025)

Posted on April 17, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Given at Christ Church, Worton

Luke 15. 11-32

A historical painting depicts four figures in a dimly lit room. An elderly man with a white beard sits at a table with papers and coins, engaged in a transaction with a younger man standing opposite him, dressed in 17th-century clothing with a white collar and brown coat. Two other figures, a young boy and a woman in a dark cloak, stand to the left, observing the scene. A red curtain hangs in the background, and a marble column is visible on the right. The atmosphere is serious and focused.

The Prodigal Son Receives His Portion by Murillo (1660s), hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland.

Last year, I had occasion to be in Dublin, and ended up having most of a Bank Holiday Monday free just to wander around. I was spending time there for the first time in many years, having at one time visited the city several times a month. I found myself wandering into the National Gallery, which has a pair of paintings of scenes from the life of the Prodigal Son by the 17th Century Spanish painter Murillo.

In the first, the son’s eyes are so firmly fixed on the bag of money he has just been handed that he doesn’t even notice his father’s eyes, full of pain, riveted on him. Behind his father stands his brother, shooting him a look of withering contempt. In the other painting, the son, dressed in rags and surrounded by swine, is gazing into the sky with eyes imploring God’s mercy.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of those bible stories that speaks profoundly into our own time and place. Just as the Father in the parable gives the son free will to squander his inheritance, so our heavenly Father gives us the freedom to take the gifts He has given us and either use them for His greater glory, or to squander them, as we choose.

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Wrestling with God: A Reflection for Holy Week (Monday 14th April 2025)

Posted on April 16, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Given at St Mary’s, Potterne

Genesis 32. 22-32

“Oh, sorry Vicar!” People often say that when after they’ve just had a good swear in front of me. A vicar is, of course, the sort of person you shouldn’t use foul language in front of. He – or, she, these days – is a very prim and proper person who would never swear, any more than they would drink, and blushes to hear even the first syllable of the word balderdash.

A classical painting depicts a dramatic scene of two figures engaged in a struggle. One figure, dressed in a red and white robe, appears to be a man with a beard, gripping the other tightly. The second figure, with wings and curly hair, is likely an angel, wearing a white garment. They are locked in an intense wrestle, set against a muted, earthy background, suggesting a moment of spiritual or physical conflict.

Rembrandt, Jacob Wrestling with An Angel (1659). Hangs in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

And God is often perceived by the same people, in the unlikely event He exists at all, as a sort of Supervicar, very prim and priggish, in front of whom you want to be on your best behaviour—because if God does exist, and He finds out what’s really going on in your head, then you’re in big trouble.

The same people sometimes tell me that they’d like to believe in God—they envy people who have Faith, they tell me, envy the meaning and purpose our lives and envy our strong sense of community. Of course, we Christians know that we’re actually a bit more prone to isolation and drifting than that, but let’s roll with the idea… These people tell me they envy us our Faith, but they struggle the idea of a God who created life to include the harsh realities of suffering and pain. Because why would a supervicar do that?

The Bible paints a picture of God that is far from a supervicar. Far from expecting blind obedience, in tonight’s reading, God is presented as a mysterious stranger who proactively seeks out Jacob for a good bout of wrestling that lasts all night – we all know about wrestling with God all night don’t we? When dawn breaks, the stranger has not defeated Jacob, who is still battling gamely with Him, although He has been left with a limp from a blow to the hip.

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A Story of Celebrity and Mobs: Sermon Preached on 13th April 2025 (Palm Sunday)

Posted on April 13, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

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

Philippians 2. 5-11; Luke 19. 28-40

“the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen”

A large group of people dressed in ancient, flowing robes gathers outside a stone building with an arched doorway. Some sit or lie on the ground, while others stand or lean against the wall. A central figure in a blue robe stands on a carpet, addressing the crowd, with a donkey nearby. The scene is set under a partly cloudy sky with a tree on the right. The painting has a warm, earthy tone, capturing a moment of communal listening or teaching.

Nikolay Koshelev, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem.

Palm Sunday speaks into an age of celebrity culture and social media in a way that few other Bible stories do. On Sunday, Jesus is the darling of the crowds, who mob Him like a modern day celebrity. It’s as if Taylor Swift turned up in Morrison’s in Devizes on a Saturday afternoon. Then, in the space of just five days, Jesus falls from favour so spectacularly that the crowds are literally calling for him to be strung up. We’ve seen so many stars fall from their pinnacles in recent years, sometimes deservedly and sometimes not, often because they said something on social media that outraged people.

The Internet is often the first thing that gets blamed for any social or cultural problem these days, and celebrity culture is never far behind. As with any technology, the Internet is an amplifier for both the good and the bad, and here are good and bad sides to social media. On the positive side, it keeps in touch with friends we haven’t seen for years and with family who live too far away for us to visit often. It could be why over the last ten to fifteen years mental health problems among young women have spiked and birth-rates across the world have collapsed.

But, hang on, Palm Sunday happened two thousand years before Facebook was invented! Our most serious problems are just modern variations on problems that have been with the human race since the dawn of time. Selfishness, greed, bigotry, and violence didn’t arrive with the smartphone. Nor did the way that being part of a crowd can turn normally decent people toxic, nor our tendency to abandon our most noble principles once it means risking unpopularity. Our problems today aren’t really caused by social media, or by the mainstream media, or by the way we chase after celebrities who are so often empty. Our problems are caused by the sickness in our souls.

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Beauty and Idols: Sermon Preached on 6th April 2025 (Passion Sunday)

Posted on April 6, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Christ Church, Worton

Philippians 3. 4-14; John 12. 1-8

“Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.”

When we hear this familiar story of Mary the Sister of Lazarus pouring the jar of expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet, do we ever think about the perfume and how much effort went into making it? Making perfume can still be quite an involved process today, and it seems to have been even more difficult in the ancient world without modern machinery. We actually know a little about ancient perfume-making from writings that have survived into the present day. In an expensive perfume, flowers, spices, sap, gum, resin, roots, and different kinds of wood were gathered, probably from different places. Nard, the main ingredient of the perfume Mary is said to have used, is a plant related to the honeysuckle which grows only in the Himalayas, for example. For weeks or months, the whole mixture was left to marinade in some natural oil, perhaps olive oil or some kind of odourless seed oil, during which time it would be repeatedly boiled and the sediment thrown away. Then it may have been transported a long way, perhaps even many hundreds of miles, to be sold.

A scenic outdoor view features a clear blue sky above a grassy landscape. A dirt path splits into two directions, winding through the area. On either side of the path, there are patches of green grass and dense bushes with white blossoms, likely in spring bloom. In the background, tall trees with bare branches stand against the sky, indicating early spring or late autumn. The overall scene is bright and serene, suggesting a peaceful nature trail or park setting.

I came out of church after preaching this sermon to this scene of blossoming blackthorns. God’s gift of beauty indeed! Gerry Lynch, 24 March 2025 (public domain).

Although the manufacturing process has changed over the centuries, making perfume still involves the same truly vital ingredients—time, skill, knowledge, patience, creativity, love for the job, and sometimes an appetite for risk. Perfume doesn’t appear by magic. At its root, it is the product of three things: experience, sometimes painstakingly gathered and passed down over many generations; people’s God-given talents; and the God-given gifts of nature. The perfume exists only to make life a little more pleasant, to stimulate our sense of smell, perhaps only for a brief moment. There is something extravagant about perfume: that’s why it’s such a valued gift.

Was Judas right, that the perfume should have been sold? The person who bought it could still have enjoyed the God-given gifts of beauty it contained, and the money could indeed have been spent on the poor. Surely that would have been more useful than a few moments of smell and sensation as the scented oil was poured over Christ’s feet?

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Hope for the Bad Guys: Sermon Preached on 30th March 2025 (Fourth Sunday in Lent)

Posted on March 30, 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at St Mary the Virgin, Bishops Cannings (Devizes Deanery Evensong)

Prayer of Manasseh; 2 Timothy 4. 1-8

“Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord reward him according to his works!”

Karel van Mander Manasseh, Repentant Sinner from the Old Testament (1596). In the collection of the Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Have you ever heard of Manasseh, whose prayer was our first reading this evening? He is one of the main bad guys in the Old Testament—or at least he started out that way. He became the King of Judah when the great prophet Isaiah was an old man. Unlike his father, Hezekiah, who had been a pious man, Manasseh was an open worshipper of idols who abandoned many of the most important tenets of the religion of Moses, David, and Solomon. Although Isaiah’s end is not recorded in the Bible, there is an ancient Jewish tradition, going back many centuries before Christ, the Manasseh had Isaiah executed by sawing him in two. He had evidently spoken too many truths for the comfort of the new man in power.

Now, I wonder how many of you had even heard of the Prayer of Manasseh before this evening, let alone that the Church of England lectionary occasionally sets it as a reading in church? The Prayer of Manasseh comes from the collection of writings known as the Apocrypha, which your Bible may or may not include—although if you’re an Anglican, it should include it. The Thirty-Nine Articles say that the Church should read from the Apocrypha “for example of life and instruction of manners”, but that they cannot be used to establish any doctrine. They are enlightening writings to read, but don’t have the weight in Christian teaching of canonical Scripture. The New Testament contains many references the Apocrypha, and these writings enjoyed a prominent place in the early church.

Interestingly while some parts of what we Anglicans call the Apocrypha are regarded as fully part of the Old Testament in Roman Catholic teaching, the Prayer of Manasseh isn’t among them. It has roughly the same status in Roman Catholic teaching as it does for Anglicans. But it is fully part of the Old Testament for some our Orthodox brethren, and this long prayer of forgiveness for the gravest of sins is used in the Orthodox liturgy for compline, or night prayer.

After some decades of ruling Judah in an ungodly way, Manasseh was captured by the Assyrians and taken away in chains. The Second Book of Chronicles records that in prison in Babylon, Manasseh returned to the fear of the Lord, after which he was released and restored to his throne. This is supposedly the prayer he prayed in jail.

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