gratitude

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

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A painting featuring a group of figures dressed in elaborate, tattered white robes with raised hands, holding staffs adorned with bells and vines. They appear to be in motion, reaching out toward a single figure on the right, also in white robes, standing with arms outstretched against a grayish background. The scene has a mystical and dynamic feel.

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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Gratitude at Lammastide: Sermon Preached on 4th August 2024

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The image depicts a vast, undulating farmland under a clear sky during golden hour. Rows of crops stretch across the landscape, their textures highlighted by warm sunlight. In the distance, gentle hills complete this serene rural scene.

Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot for the Wiltshire Countryside Club annual service

Leviticus 23. 9-14; Matthew 15. 32-39              

“You shall eat no bread … until you have brought the offering of your God.”

For many people in this country, the wisdom and awareness of human nature that used to be provided by Christianity are now sought for in self-help literature, counselling, and the psychology of the Sunday supplement and the social media meme. It is therefore interesting when these modern forms of religion share the same perspective as the Old Faith. One thing Christianity and pop-psychology agree on is the importance of gratitude, and the benefits that flow from being grateful for what we have. No less a source than the Harvard Medical School’s in-house magazine – I googled it – tells me that when we are grateful, we improve our health, deal better with adversity, and build strong relationships.

A combine harvester in a cereal field on a day of thin cloud and hazy sunshine, almost completed its job.
Taking in the harvest at Stanton St Bernard in Wiltshire’s picturesque Vale of Pewsey, 3 September 2024 © Gerry Lynch

Lammas is all about remembering with thanks that it is God who us gives us all that we have. It is God who gives the miracle of natural growth – and it is a miracle, much as familiarity tends to blind us to that. It is God who gives the sun, and the rain, and the seasons that govern our production of food. And it is God who gives us the skills to work with the fruits of nature to sustain ourselves and our nature—not just the skills of the farmer, but of everyone else who makes a living from the countryside, from the man who repairs the combine harvester to the woman who organises the transport of the food to the supermarket. For as much as He is the provider of the bounty of nature, God is also the source of us, and of our skill and diligence. God does not only all this for us, but also gives us the beauty of the natural world, including so many of our agricultural landscapes, which sustain and nurture our souls.

On the face of it, offering of a loaf to God is a pretty limp thank you present for so much. But the loaf symbolises the deep gratitude of our hearts and our souls, and it is appropriate that we offer this symbol of our gratitude now, when the harvest is still ongoing.

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