armageddon

Keep ‘Er Lit in the Face of Armageddon: A Reflection for Holy Week (Monday 30th March 2026)

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Given at St Mary’s, Potterne

Reading—Matthew 25. 1-13   

A watercolour depicting ten female figures against a dark nocturnal landscape. On the left, five women stand composed and luminous in pale robes, holding lit oil lamps on chains; the central figure extends her arm firmly, pointing to the right in a gesture of dismissal. On the right, five women in darker clothing react with distress — one kneels with arms outstretched in supplication, another throws her hands upward in anguish, a third slumps toward the ground. Their lamps hang unlit. In the middle distance, a city with illuminated domes and spires is visible against the dark sky, suggesting the wedding feast now out of reach. Above, a floating angelic figure blows a long trumpet, heralding judgement. The overall palette is cool grey and silver, with the warm glow of the lit lamps providing the only warmth in the composition.
William Blake, The Wise and Foolish Virgins (ca. 1800). Owned by the Metropolitan Museum, New York; not currently on public display.

The story of the human race has been one where we gradually, but continually, amass more knowledge, more advanced technology – and more power. Even before writing was invented, we were already unique because of the wheel, the domestication of fire, the domestication of other species, and perhaps most of all speech. These things also made us uniquely deadly to other life forms. Our kingdom is very much of this world.

In recent generations, we’ve also potentially become lethal to ourselves. We’ve lived with the risk of nuclear war for 81 years now, and the wars unfolding in different parts of the world at the moment are frightening and violent events. Experiments in Genetic Modification of humans and other life forms are rapidly increasing in ambition and potential to do good, but also in risk of disaster. But it is Artificial Intelligence that is currently most in the public eye as a potential risk to our survival. One after another, some of the world’s top computer scientists – in many cases people instrumental to making Artificial Intelligence a reality – have either quit the field warning that it could lead to our extinction, or called for development to be slowed dramatically to allow adequate safety checks before AIs are made more powerful.

The logic of human relationships, however, is such that the two great empires of our time, China and the USA, must race as fast as they can to develop more powerful forms of Artificial Intelligence. This technology could be as transformative of human existence as the wheel, or fire, or speech, perhaps even more so. If one country blinks, it risks ceding the future to the other. Such are the constraints that govern how human kingdoms relate to one another.

The kingdom of God is different. It lives in its citizens often because of what they are and how they approach life as much as what they do, still less what they achieve. It doesn’t have a capital city or any fixed territory to defend.

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

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A screenshot from a video conference displayed on a large screen, showing a multi-participant virtual briefing in a command center setting. The main view is split into several feeds:Top left: A control panel interface with labels including "STRATCOM" (green status), "FEMA", "CENTCOM", "Chief of Staff", "SECDEF", "DNI/CIA", and various status indicators. Top center: A live feed from a military operations room labeled "STRATCOM - GEN Brady". A Caucasian male general in camouflage uniform (Gen Brady) stands at a podium with a microphone, speaking seriously. Behind him are personnel at workstations, including a seated woman and others monitoring screens. An American flag is visible. Top right: A feed labeled "NORTHCOM - GEN Longmen". A Caucasian female general in camouflage uniform (Gen Longmen) sits at a desk with papers, looking forward intently. Behind her is the U.S. Northern Command seal on the wall and an American flag. Bottom left: A close-up feed of a man with short dark hair, viewed from below in a dimly lit room, looking upward with a serious expression. Bottom right: An empty or dimly lit office-like feed with ceiling lights and indistinct objects. The overall scene has a tense, high-stakes atmosphere typical of a fictional emergency response or military strategy session, reminiscent of a movie or TV show.

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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The End of the World: Sermon Preached on 24th December 2023 (Midnight Mass)

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A painting of Our Lady in a stable with the Baby Jesus in her arms; watched by St Joseph and the angels, who have halos, and shepherds and animals, who don't.

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Isaiah 9. 2-4, 6-7; John 1. 1-14

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”         

How would you react if a vicar, at Midnight Mass, in a medieval church, in a rather traditional village in the depths of Deep England, started preaching about the End of the World? Would you wonder if he had been teleported in from the American Bible Belt? Or perhaps, on hearing a certain accent, wonder if he was a friend of another Ulster preacher, whom some of you may remember, the man who liked to say “no” a lot?

A painting of Our Lady in a stable with the Baby Jesus in her arms; watched by St Joseph and the angels, who have halos, and shepherds and animals, who don't.
The Nativity by Giotto (1311-20), in the Basilica of St Francis, Assisi.

In fact, in the churches I go to I never hear anyone preaching on the end of the world. They’re far too moderate and sensible for that sort of thing. But lately, I’ve heard people talking about the end of the world on Radio 4 and in the pages of The Times.

That nice Matthew Syed, who won an Olympic medal in ping-pong, and makes those interesting radio programmes about quirky bits of modern history, had a column in The Times the other week saying our advancing technology meant that we might cause our own extinction. Then last Tuesday, when I was driving, Radio 4’s PM programme – not normally known for fire and brimstone sermons – had an interview with Geoffrey Hinton, the man often called “the godfather of artificial intelligence”, warning of the risks that AI might pose to human existence within the next 5-20 years. And all that’s before we talk about climate change, or nuclear war.

The world might be entering a very dark era.

So far, so cheerful!

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