forgiveness

Beware the Vegetarians – Sermon Preached on 13 September 2026 (Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity)

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Preached at Holy Cross, Seend

Romans 14.1–12; Matthew 18.21–35

“another, who is weak, eateth herbs.”

Oil painting of a king and his servant seated at a table, the king pointing accusingly while the anxious servant sits with hands clasped; two clerks between them count coins and write in a ledger, illustrating the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant.
Jan van Hemessen, The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant (c. 1556). Hangs in the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, USA.

When St Paul writes that the weak eat only vegetables, he isn’t acting like the ancient equivalent of a social media influencer from the manosphere, recommending that his followers stick to a fat-rich diet of red meat and bone broth. He’s actually referring to a controversy that divided the ancient Church in exactly the same way that gay marriage or women bishops divide the Church of our own time.

For St Paul, the question at hand was what Christians should and shouldn’t eat. In the pagan cults of the Roman Empire sacrificing animals to various gods at their temples was a big thing, especially on their holy days. Of course, a lot of the meat was consumed at big parties at the various temples, but some of it was given away, perhaps to the poor or just to buy goodwill, and some of it was sold on the open market. So, if you were tucking into a nice ham sandwich in a big Roman city, there was a fair chance the ham had been sacrificed to a pagan god.

So, some people in the early Church avoided eating meat, because they were worried it might have been sacrificed to pagan gods. For St Paul, that kind of scruple was a sign of having a weak faith. After all, pagan idols weren’t actually gods – they were just dumb statues, or figments of people’s imaginations, after all, so if you really had a strong faith that Jesus Christ was Lord, then why would you worry about a bit of chicken that had been sacrificed to Jupiter or whoever?

This had big social implications, because just as now, a lot of Roman socialising and commercial life was done over a meal. Business deals were struck at the dinner table. Men of social standing invited others to dine and accepted invitations. The Christians who refused to eat meat that might possibly have been sacrificed to pagan gods were cutting themselves off from respectable society and job opportunities.

So, the Christians who abstained from meat sacrificed to idols thought that the people who ate it were barely Christian at all, unwilling to make the slightest sacrifice for God, completely captured by the pagan society round them. The people who ate meat thought the abstainers had totally missed the implications of Jesus Christ dying for us, which freed us from the idea that breaking arbitrary laws about diet and washing could put us on the wrong side of God.

This might seem obscure, but it was a topic that divided the Church along the lines of whether Jesus was calling Christians to be a group of particularly holy people quite separate from the mass of people; or whether Jesus was calling Christians to be an integral part of society to better lead others to Him – very like, for example, a lot of Christian arguments about whether or not the Church should embrace same-sex marriage.

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Love Is Simple… And Hard  – Sermon Preached on 6 September 2026 (Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity)

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Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Romans 13.8–14; Matthew 18.15–20

“if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

Stanley Spencer, Separating Fighting Swans (ca. 1932-3)
Stanley Spencer, Separating Fighting Swans (ca. 1932-3) in the keeping of Leeds Museums and Galleries.

“…the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” So writes St Paul in this morning’s epistle. Isn’t that lovely? Christianity is all about love and nothing more. I could stop preaching now, you could all go home deciding to be even more loving than you already are, because that’s what Christianity is about, and we could all live happily ever after.

But, wait, maybe it isn’t that simple. Jesus says, “if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” Cut them off! Treat them like one of those thugs who abuse their position with the government to extort money from law-abiding people! That’s what Jesus says.

So, clearly, it isn’t just as simple as saying love one another and that’s it. How do we resolve St Paul’s commitment to love as the absolute standard of the law with Christ seeming to put hard limits on forgiveness when reasoned persuasion has failed?

One thing to bear in mind is that our Gospel reading is set towards the end of Jesus’ time of preaching and teaching in Galilee. He is about to make His final journey towards Jerusalem. He is starting to teach His followers things that will matter when He is no longer with them. Their lives have already been transformed by His work of preaching and healing, and they will later be transformed further by His Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

But they’re still people, with the normal run of human failings. People don’t always see eye to eye. They don’t always agree on what the most loving way to behave is. And then they all get tempted by greed, and laziness, and need for status, and taking others for granted; and they still have the frustrating moments of failing to live up to their principles that we’re all familiar with.

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Grace and Revenge: Sermon Preached on 3rd May 2026 (Fifth Sunday of Easter)

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Preached at Christ Church, Worton and Christ Church, Bulkington

Acts 7. 55-60; John 14. 1-14

“Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” 

On a long flight this week, I watched an extraordinary film from Iran, called It Was Just an Accident. A veteran director named Jafar Panahi, who has been imprisoned for previous films, shot it on location in Iran without official permission. The story follows a former political prisoner working as a mechanic. One day, a customer brings in a car to be fixed, and the hero recognises him by his peg leg: it’s his old torturer.

A medieval fresco painted on a vaulted ceiling depicting the stoning of Saint Stephen. Four figures in colourful clothing — greens, yellows, ochres, and blues — are shown in dynamic, striding poses with arms raised, hurling stones. Clusters of rounded stones are scattered across the ground. At the bottom centre, a partially visible prostrate figure represents Stephen, shown in blue garments beneath his attackers. The painting style is characteristically medieval, with flat, linear forms and expressive gestural energy. Decorative red scrollwork and foliate motifs fill the upper background. The plasterwork shows extensive craquelure, indicating great age. A section of a whitewashed pillar or arch is visible at the lower right. The overall palette is warm and earthy, with pigments that retain considerable vibrancy despite evident wear.
Early 16th Century depiction of the stoning of Stephen, St Lawrence’s Church, Lohja, Finland. © Gerry Lynch, 23 July 2017.

He tracks the secret policeman down, kidnaps him, and takes him out into the desert ready to kill him, but can’t bring himself to do so because he isn’t entirely sure of his identity. Then follows a bizarre drive around Tehran, where the hero collects other former political prisoners to see if any can be entirely sure that the man who is now drugged in the back of his van was indeed their torturer. A very black comedy, the film succeeds partly because it refuses either to sanitise or to dehumanise the villain, who is a ruthless killer but also a loving husband and tender father. The heroes, in turn, must battle to preserve their humanity in the way their torturer has failed to guard his, as they face a choice between grace and revenge.

St Stephen faced a choice between grace and revenge. Just before today’s first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, he had been dragged up before a religious court on trumped-up charges and defended himself in a sweeping speech which concluded by warning his hearers that they are the latest in a long line of Jerusalem Jews to resist the Holy Spirit, persecute God’s prophets, and fail to keep the Law they claim to revere.

This sends the crowd into a violent rage against Stephen, but as they are about to mob him, he sees a vision of Heaven opened, and “the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God”. Now, Christ is usually depicted as being seated at the right hand of the Father, so this is normally interpreted as standing as an advocate for Stephen, and maybe also standing to receive him.

Perhaps it was this vision of Christ’s presence with him that allowed Stephen to do what he did next: taken out and brutally lynched, his last words are, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” This is the standard of forgiveness by which we are called to live as Christians.It isn’t easy.I certainly don’t manage to live up to it all the time. But it is how God teaches us to act. Such forgiveness is what God is like.

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

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A detailed stained glass window panel in vibrant medieval style, illustrating a biblical scene. The composition features intricate tilework in shades of red, blue, green, yellow, and white, with geometric borders and foliage motifs framing the action. The overall scene conveys tension and moral drama, with warm jewel tones dominating the left side fading to cooler blues on the right, all outlined in black lead cames for a luminous, narrative effect.

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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Should You Hate Your Mum?: Sermon Preached on 7th September 2025 (Twelfth Sunday After Trinity)

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Underneath a partially cloudy sky, hillocks of sand with very little vegetation, stretching far into the distance, although a few tall buildings are just visible on the far horizon.

Preached at Christ Church, Worton; Holy Cross, Seend; and Christ Church, Bulkington

Philemon 1–21; Luke 14. 25-33

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children … cannot be my disciple.”

So, should you really hate your Mum because Jesus told you to?

As a priest, one sometimes gets invited into intimate and difficult bits of people’s lives. Most of that work isn’t appropriate to talk about in front of others, even in private, but you’ll not be surprised to learn that not every family is a happy one. Sure, every family has unhappy aspects and difficult dynamics, yours and mine and everyone else’s, but some are much more difficult than others. Despite that, it’s exceptionally rare to find people who actually hate their mothers, and when one does, it’s quite an unsettling experience. And as for people who hate their children, well that’s what we have social services for!

A classical painting depicting a biblical scene with Jesus at the center, dressed in a red and green robe, surrounded by several figures including disciples and a crowd. He is shown interacting with children, one of whom offers a basket of bread or fruit. A small white dog stands nearby. The crowd, composed of men, women, and children in colorful robes and head coverings, is gathered around, some reaching out or sitting on the ground.
Christ Preaching to the Multitudes by Follower of Tintoretto, late 16th Century.

In fact, the Ten Commandments tell us to honour our Father and Mother. So what is Jesus playing at here? Is this just a bit of hyperbole, saying things that are completely over the top to grab our attention? We should never forget the Gospels are full of examples of Jesus cracking jokes, teasing people, and being sarcastic.

So is what this reading is about, then? When Jesus says you need to give up everything to follow Him, is it actually all exaggerated and sarcastic, so He doesn’t really mean you have to give up absolutely everything, but maybe quite a lot of stuff? Maybe you need to be ready to hate your mother but only if she’s standing between you and following Jesus, or something like that?

I’ve heard that sort of sermon preached on this passage and…? I mean, OK, I suppose… It just feels a bit flat to tell you that Jesus’ message here is to give up lots of things to follow Him but not actually everything because He was just exaggerating to keep the crowd interested. Frankly, that interpretation leaves me wondering why Jesus of Nazareth, one of history’s great public communicators, had such a bad day at the office. It’s like watching Lionel Messi miss a penalty or something.

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Is Doing Good Enough?: Sermon Preached on 31st August 2025 (Eleventh Sunday After Trinity)

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A serene river flows through a lush, green landscape, flanked by dense vegetation and trees on both sides. The water reflects the surrounding greenery and the soft light of a sunset or sunrise, creating a peaceful scene.

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend (Benefice Service)

Hebrews 13. 1-8, 15-16; Luke 14. 1, 7-14

“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid; what can anyone do to me?”

If you’ve ever wondered what a preacher does during the sermon, it’s to try and make sense of the passages of the Bible that are read at that particular church service, and connect them to the world we live in. So here we go.

A historic stone church with Gothic architectural features, including pointed arches and a tall tower with a clock. The church is surrounded by a well-maintained graveyard with weathered tombstones and lush greenery, including trees and flowering plants. A stone pathway leads to the wooden entrance door, and the scene is lit by soft evening light.
It was lovely to have such a good congregation in this gem for our Benefice Service. (Holy Cross, Seend in evening twilight, 11 July 2025, © Gerry Lynch.)

Are you worried about the state of the world? Does the news from Ukraine and Gaza make you anxious and depressed about the state of the human race? Does the state of this country worry you? If so, you are certainly not alone!

This is hardly unique to our times too. Some of the Hebrews to whom the first of this morning’s Bible readings was addressed must have been worried. We know that because the letter tells them not to worry!

It was written when the Church was very new, perhaps 30 or 40 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, when the Christians were a tiny and often mistreated group who had much to worry about in their lives. This long letter is full of intricate and beautiful theological and philosophical thinking, but our reading came from a section towards the end, which instead supplied practical instructions about living a good Christian life—one full of love for other Christians, hospitality to strangers, care for those in prison, faithfulness in marriage, and contentment with what one has.

That sort of practical Christianity is a big part of what village Anglicanism should be about.[1] Not showy, not loud – but being a community rooted in hospitality where people care about one another and seek to do good for our neighbours in a very individualistic world.

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The Tough Message of Mother’s Day: Sermon Preached on 30th March 2025 (Mothering Sunday)

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A classic rood screen, late Victorian, with Mary and St John both facing the nave along with Christ, St Mary to the left.

Preached at Christ Church, Worton and Holy Cross, Seend

Colossians 3. 12-17; John 19. 25-27

“…he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’”

A painting depicts a somber scene of the Crucifixion. At the center, a figure is nailed to a wooden cross, wearing a white cloth around the waist. The sky is dark and stormy, adding to the dramatic atmosphere. Below the cross, several figures are gathered, dressed in robes typical of ancient times. A woman in a striped robe kneels at the base of the cross, her head bowed in grief. To her left, another figure in a white robe stands with hands clasped, looking up at the cross. To the right, a woman in a light blue and white robe also gazes upward, her expression one of sorrow. In the background, other figures, including soldiers in armor and onlookers, observe the scene. The ground is rocky and barren, emphasizing the bleakness of the moment.
James Tissot, “Woman Behold Thy Son” (1886-94), in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.

Sometimes you’ll hear people complain that Mother’s Day, a modern commercial invention, has eclipsed Mothering Sunday, the traditional celebration kept on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, which is today. Mothering Sunday was traditionally the time that people who worked a long way from their homes came back to their “mother church”, the place where they were baptised and became a child of the Church. Of course, as a result, they had a chance to see their families. You’ll most often hear the complaint about Mothering Sunday being abandoned from a certain type of slightly grumpy old-fashioned High Church clergyman. Although I am very much such a grumpy old-fashioned High Church clergyman, I am in fact quite strongly in favour of Mother’s Day and that we keep it in church.

You see, Mother’s Day does two things at one—certainly it speaks into our own lives and our own families. Yet it also speaks into one of the beliefs about God and the universe that makes Christianity truly unique—that Jesus Christ is God made human. Jesus Christ is God, every bit as much as the Father, the maker of the universe, and every bit as much as the Holy Spirit, the mysterious force of life and love which circulates everywhere, and which we find rather difficult to understand. For Christians, Jesus Christ is not just a wise and holy teacher, and not even a prophet, but God Himself.

You may be wondering how Mother’s Day speaks into this. We see it in today’s very short Gospel reading—the incredible, horrendous, scene on Cross where Jesus, close to death, has been abandoned by all His followers except for four women, including His mother, and ‘the disciple he loved’ – generally assumed to be St John the Evangelist. Jesus asks John to take care of his mother. Think of what’s going on here: Jesus must be in physical agony, exhausted and close to death, and His main concern is the welfare of his mother. When we think of ‘the love of God’, we tend to think of something remote and abstract, perhaps even a bit overwhelming and frightening. But this isn’t remote or abstract love—it isn’t love for a great principle or a sort of universal love for all of humanity, wonderful and important as these things are. This is the love of one person in particular for another actual person, in the face of death. Most of us have experienced the sheer intensity of love when someone we love is dying; it can be overwhelming even when it doesn’t involve a brutal public execution. This is what God’s love is like—so intense it can be overwhelming, and felt for you in particular.

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Duty: Sermon Preached on 22nd December 2024 (Fourth Sunday of Advent)

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Preached at Christ Church, Worton and Holy Cross, Seend

Hebrews 10. 5-10; Luke 1. 39-45

“See, God, I have come to do your will…”

The painting depicts an intimate scene of two women in a dimly lit room. The woman on the right, dressed in a blue garment with a white scarf, stands with her hands raised in a gesture that could suggest surprise or conversation. She faces another woman on the left, who is partially obscured by shadow and an archway, wearing a dark cloak and holding something in her hand. The table between them is set with a bowl of oranges, bread, and a small cup, suggesting a domestic setting. The interplay of light and shadow creates a warm, almost ethereal atmosphere, highlighting the emotional connection between the figures. The overall mood is one of quiet interaction, perhaps of sharing or contemplation.
Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Visitation (1910), hangs in the Kalamazoo Institute of Art.

I never expect a bumper congregation on the Sunday before Christmas [it was a pleasant surprise to have an above-average congregation at both services I took!]. I always presume it will be composed largely of people who see going to church every Sunday as their duty. That’s OK, because I see going to church every Sunday as my duty too, and I did so long before I was ordained.

Duty is a very unfashionable idea, but it’s hard to see how any society can function without it. In a culture where people have a strong sense of duty, we are more likely to know how things will work and that they’ll work at all. We will be clearer on our own responsibilities and clearer about where to expect the assistance of others. Societies where people have a strong sense of duty tend to have higher levels of trust and stronger social bonds—and they have all the benefits that flow from these things.

In times of crisis, we all depend on people doing their duty even at great personal risk. We will all remember the situation we faced in March 2020, when we depended on doctors and nurses doing their duty even though we knew little about Covid and we also knew there was a great shortage of personal protective equipment. At the other end of Europe, Ukraine’s survival as a nation depends on people doing their duty, in terrible danger and in horrible mid-winter weather, in the trenches that run the length of 700-mile front line.

From the earliest days of the Church, Christians have considered it their duty to gather to worship together on the first day of the week, Sunday, because it was the day of Christ’s Resurrection. They often did so in the face of challenges much greater than needing an extra morning to finish the Christmas shopping. Even now, this very Sunday, in places like North Korea and Iran, Christians will gather to worship Jesus Christ at the risk of their liberty.

If we, with all our freedoms, attend church every Sunday and follow the Church’s year—even on the odd Sundays when attendance tends to be low—we don’t just fulfil a duty that’s relatively easy for most of us, but we follow church’s year in its fullness, giving us a richer picture of our Faith.

What makes the Fourth Sunday in Advent interesting is that there is perhaps no other point in the year when the Church’s rhythm is so out of kilter with that of wider society. Most people assume that Christmas really started ages ago—how many weeks ago did you have your first mince pie?—with a lot of people finishing work last Friday, even the Christmas party season is starting to wind down. There is only the final blow-out on Wednesday to look forward to and that’s Christmas for another year.

But in Church, Christmas hasn’t even started yet. We are still in the season of Advent, the great season of waiting; in Advent the Church’s worship takes place in the key that forms so much of our lives—waiting with longing for God to break into a troubled world and our often troubled lives. We wait still for God to make His presence felt in all its fullness even as the rest of the world assumes the party has long started, because we know that God is often at work precisely in the opposite direction to where people are looking, in ways that will surprise everyone when they eventually come to light, through people the world considers of little account.

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

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

Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Preached at Christ Church, Worton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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