john the baptist

Patience Amid Shrill Voices: Sermon Preached on 14th December 2025 (Third Sunday of Advent)

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Panoramic landscape photograph of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, viewed from the Israeli side. In the foreground, a flat, barren expanse of cracked, earthy brown desert soil stretches toward the shore. The strikingly blue, calm waters of the hypersaline lake occupy the middle ground, reflecting a partly cloudy sky with scattered white clouds. Along the far shoreline, a cluster of modern white buildings—hotels and resorts on the Jordanian side of the Sea—nestles against the base of dramatic, layered arid mountains in shades of beige, brown, and gray, rising steeply in rugged ridges. These Judean Desert hills dominate the background, emphasizing the stark, inhospitable yet beautiful desert environment. The overall scene conveys tranquility and geological extremity, with no visible vegetation or signs of life in the immediate foreground, highlighting the sea's unique mineral-rich, lifeless waters.

Preached at Christ Church, Bulkington

James 5. 7–10; Matthew 11. 2-11

“The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient.”

"Saint John the Baptist" (c. 1410–1420), oil on panel by Robert Campin (also known as the Master of Flémalle), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. The bust-length figure of Saint John the Baptist appears in three-quarter view, gazing solemnly leftward with curly shoulder-length brown hair, a full beard, and a plain gold halo denoting sanctity. He wears a white cloak draped and knotted over one shoulder, partially exposing a hairy chest to symbolize his ascetic desert life and hair shirt beneath. In his right hand, he holds a tall slender staff topped with a white banner bearing a red cross, symbolizing resurrection and his proclamation of Christ as the Lamb of God. The luxurious gilded background features intricate green damask patterns of vines, flowers, and foliage, contrasting the saint's humility with divine opulence. The aged surface shows extensive craquelure, fine cracks typical of early Netherlandish panel paintings. This work, likely once a wing of a triptych, exemplifies Campin's pioneering realism in the Northern Renaissance.
Robert Campin, St John the Baptist (c. 1410), hangs in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

A few weeks ago, I had a friend staying who is an early riser, and when I got up to get my first coffee of the day he was already in the kitchen, listening to some panel debate on the Today programme on Radio 4. Various clever panellists were screeching at one another at high pace and high volume—not what I needed before 8 am. The topic was the future of jury trials, which is very important, but the debate felt like performance art rather than an attempt to inform or persuade. Still lacking caffeine and my early morning pipe, I had to fight hard to resist the urge to snap at my friend, who was entirely innocent of just how much that programme annoys me nowadays.

When I was young, and absolutely obsessed with politics, I thought the Today programme was great. Nowadays, it grates with me so much that I have fled to Radio 3 at the start of the day. So many words. So much silly point scoring. So little wisdom. Do either the people who make the programme or the people who appear on it think that the public cares all that much about that shrill squabbling?

Most of us are unhappy with our leaders. And it doesn’t particularly matter what way our politics lean, either. In my experience, the vast majority of people are as disappointed and depressed by the leaders who come from their part of the political spectrum as they are with any of the rest of them. What’s even worse, it’s the same in most other countries, and not just in other Western countries. If you think the mood of cynicism and despondency is bad here or in our near continental neighbours, I suggest spending some time talking politics to people from any part of the complex and divided society that is South Africa. Or you could be in Peru, where the polls say that President Boluarte recently had an approval rating of 2%.

In this country, we have one government elected with a massive majority but the leader can’t even control his own backbenchers and rapidly becomes hated by the public, and then lurch to another government from a different party which retraces exactly the same path. It should be obvious that the problem isn’t with the personal qualities of the individuals or their parties, but is a problem with the system.

Where will we find leaders who knows how to navigate their way out of our present malaise? I have no idea. We’re going to have to wait. For whom or what I don’t know.

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Made to Flourish as Ourselves: Sermon Preached on 31st August 2025 (Eleventh Sunday After Trinity)

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A wide field with golden hay bales scattered across the landscape, a blue tractor with a loader stacking bales in the center, and a gentle hill covered with green bushes and trees in the background under a cloudy sky.

Preached at St John’s, Devizes (Deanery Evensong)

Isaiah 33. 13-22; John 3. 22-36

“For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.”

Before I came to live in the countryside, I didn’t really appreciate that there are many different harvests across the year. I mean, I sort of theoretically knew that, but I hadn’t quite twigged that the garlic is gathered in the spring but maize not until Hallowe’en. I only remembered that blackberries came in August because when I was a boy one of my uncles would take us up the high hills that overlook Belfast to pick huge bags full of them. It was a regular summer holiday activity which has buried itself deep in my memories.

A vast golden field of harvested grain stretches across the foreground, dotted with several large, cylindrical hay bales scattered at varying distances. In the midground, a solitary green tree stands prominently on a gentle hill lined with bushes and more trees. The sky above is dramatic, filled with heavy, dark gray storm clouds, with patches of blue sky and sunlight breaking through on the right, casting a warm glow over the landscape.
Harvested fields near All Cannings, Wiltshire, 14 July 2025. © Gerry Lynch

Not until I came to spend my working life driving between the fields in this area, and so many long days walking among them for pleasure, did I really start to understand the rhythm of the agricultural year. So divorced can modern humanity be from the food that sustains it.

Just as crops ripen each in its own season, so every year is different. This year, of course, we have had one of the worst droughts on record. But one of my neighbours in Potterne has just given me some of the most beautiful plums from her trees. In conditions where one crop struggles, another will flourish.

And different crops flourish in different types of soil too—some varieties of grape like sandy soil, others prefer chalk or loam. That’s one reason why wine has such varied flavours. This is one of the glories of God’s creation. God didn’t give us a wonder crop, a sort of manna that could flourish anywhere, but many different kinds of crops not only to flourish in different environments, but to enrich our lives with their flavours and scents.

So each of us is designed to designed to flower, mature, and ripen in different ways and in different contexts. Each of us is made to play a distinct role in the human ecology of our societies and to play a distinct role in the life of the Church. It would be no more a good thing to see every Christian and every congregation being the same than it would be to go to the market and see only one kind of vegetable on sale.

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You Brood of Vipers!: Sermon Preached on 15th December 2024 (Third Sunday of Advent)

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Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Philippians 4. 4-7; Luke 3. 7-18

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

A scantily dressed man with a translucent shine around his head raises his right hand in the air as a group of women, men, and children gather round him with grim, sometimes excited, expressions of their faces.
Saint John the Baptist Preaching by Luca Giordano (1695). Hangs in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Are you a viper? Have you, in the course of this year, exhibited any snake-like characteristics? You don’t have to answer that question out loud. But if the answer is yes, then you’re in the right place: because you need to repent, and church should be a place of repentance.

There is some contrast, isn’t there, between our two readings this morning. The crowds flock out through the Jerusalem Desert to be baptised by St John the Baptist, and he does the exact opposite of what a good PR man would tell someone to do today if they found themselves an accidental celebrity. The smart thing to do if you want to maximise your return on your fifteen minutes of fame is to make your biggest fans feel valued and loved in return for their loyalty—not to call them a den of snakes, and warn them that, “Even now, the axe is lying at the root of the trees”.

St Paul, in contrast, tells those reading his letter in the far off city of Philippi, “Do not worry about anything” for, “The Lord is near.” Rejoice therefore, he tells them, be full of peace and open gentleness.

Let me tease out this contrast between our two letters by repeating the question I started with: are you a viper?

If so, it’s time to repent.

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Waiting Patiently for Christmas: Sermon Preached on 17th December 2023 (Third Sunday of Advent)

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A medieval altar triptych displaying a dramatic scene.

Preached at St John’s, Devizes

Readings – 1 Thessalonians 5.16-24; John 1. 6-8, 19-28

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances…”

The supermarkets have been keeping Christmas since October. The big firms’ Christmas TV adverts came out just before Remembrance Sunday. We like to tut at them for their indecent rush to start the festive season, yet by this stage, we ourselves have all been to about fifteen Christmas parties, sang about fifty carols, and eaten nine thousand eight hundred mince pies. Even St John’s is full to the brim with beautifully decorated Christmas trees.

A medieval altar triptych displaying a dramatic scene.
Triptych of the Virtue of Patience (1521), by Bernard van Orley. Commissioned by Margaret of Austria, the governor of the Low Countries. Hangs in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

Yet according to the Church it still isn’t Christmas. It’s Advent, which is supposed to be a time of waiting, a time of reflection and spiritual preparation before Christmas, sort of like the junior brother of Lent. It’s hard to preach about keeping Advent faithfully rather than jumping the gun with the secular world when the building is full of angels and stars. It’s harder still to keep any sense of this being at least something of a season of fasting when David Evans is offering you another hot mug of his delicious mulled wine, sourced directly from Germany.

I’m not in a position to give you a lecture from the pulpit about keeping Advent properly, because I haven’t been keeping it very well myself. Indeed, pretty much the whole Church, across denominational boundaries, celebrates Christmas with the secular world during Advent, then during the Twelve Days of Christmas, supposed to be the time of feasting, it joins everyone else in having a good slumber.

I think it’s a great pity, because Advent is all about waiting patiently, sometimes in surroundings that are very dark, for the light of God’s eternal Word to enter into the world. And when that Light did enter the world, it didn’t do so in a blaze of glory, but almost entirely ignored, in the form of a tiny, vulnerable, baby. Given how dark the world has become over the last few years, we as Christians could do with preparing ourselves spiritually to be proficient at waiting patiently, and looking for where light is entering the world, vulnerable and much ignored. If we could be better at that, we could also be more of a blessing on our secular neighbours.

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Dare We Risk it All?: Sermon Preached on Sunday 25th June 2023 (The Birth of John the Baptist, Patronal Festival)

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The painting depicts a Bible story from Luke 1:5-80, in which Zacharias and his wife, Elizabeth, are too old to have children. One day the angel Gabriel appears to tell Zacharias that he and Elizabeth will have a son named John. Zacharias is literally dumbfounded and loses his ability to speak.

Preached at St John’s, Devizes

Readings – Acts 13.14b-26; Luke 1.57-66, 80

“What then will this child become?”

That’s what the neighbours asked when confronted by the strange circumstances of the birth of St John the Baptist. His father, Zechariah, had been struck dumb by God for refusing to believe he had fathered a child at his advanced age. Then he and his wife, Elizabeth, broke all custom by giving their son a name, John, not already used in their family. Immediately after that break with custom, Zechariah’s speech was suddenly restored. Elizabeth and Zechariah were delighted with their bonny boy whose name means ‘God is gracious’, but the neighbours found these weird experiences frightening.

“What will this child become?”, they asked, in their fear.

The painting depicts a Bible story from Luke 1:5-80, in which Zacharias and his wife, Elizabeth, are too old to have children. One day the angel Gabriel appears to tell Zacharias that he and Elizabeth will have a son named John. Zacharias is literally dumbfounded and loses his ability to speak.
The Birth of St John the Baptist by Artemisia Gentileschi (c. 1635), now in the Prado Museum, Madrid.

He became a great man, a man who changed history, but not one who enjoyed success in his life by conventional standards. He lived a wild life, eating insects and wild honey, and dressing in animal hides. Yet more than a thousand years after his death the Norman conquerors who had recently set up a castle thousands of miles away in Devizes named their church after him, and almost a thousand years after that, we meet in the same church and commemorate John as our patron saint today.

Although he was later celebrated by conquerors, John was far from a conqueror during his life. Instead, he came to the attention of the authorities as someone who refused to collude in their lies, was imprisoned, and later brutally executed. The régime that put him to death remained in power. On the surface, he achieved nothing in his life.

We can’t reduce Christianity to a formula for a successful life by the conventional standards of the world. Worldly success may be a blessing that God grants us; but equally, to live a godly life may require us to renounce comfort and instead live a life of deprivation and physical risk. Not just in Christianity: a deep ambivalence about worldly success was also present in the Jewish thoughtworld which remains part of our scriptural inheritance.

That’s clear when we listen to this morning’s first reading, from Acts. This is part of St Paul’s speech at the synagogue in Antioch. Here, Paul locates John the Baptist in the long sweep of Jewish history. So, he says that God “made the people great” – isn’t that a phrase to conjure with in our time – God “made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt.” So, God made the Hebrew people great when they were living as slaves in a foreign land ruled over by often despotic pharaohs. Isn’t that a strange idea – whatever it means to be great here, it isn’t greatness in the eyes of the world.

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Waiting Patiently: Sermon Preached on 11th December 2022 (The Third Sunday of Advent)

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Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – James 5: 7–10; Matthew 11: 2–11

“Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.”

The other day, I tried to order one of those little plastic ice scrapers for the car from Amazon, partly so that I could be sure of getting here to take this service this morning! Given the pre-Christmas rush, I couldn’t get one to arrive before the middle of next week.

“How dare they”, I fumed inwardly to myself, “I’m an Amazon Prime member specifically so I can get deliveries of almost anything I need overnight. Just because they’re busy, and just because half the factories in China have been shut for most of this year, doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have nearly anything I need within 24 hours!”

A snowy scene as I left St Peter’s, Poulshot, after preaching this sermon.

Patience is a virtue: but not one I have ever been much possessed of! The structure of modern society doesn’t help, with its promise that it can satisfy any of our wants almost instantaneously. Yet fulfilling most needs more significant than an ice-scraper or a case of wine demands patience, and can’t be done with a few clicks on a website.

By the time John the Baptist came along, some strands of Jewish opinion were waiting with impatient fervour for a Messiah, a religious-political leader who they believed would remove the Roman occupiers and usher in a new political order of justice and righteousness in a godly independent state.

Now, Matthew’s Gospel identified Jesus as the Messiah in its very first sentence, and it does so again in this morning’s Gospel reading. But that is something intended for those, like us, reading the story much later: in the action of the story, even Jesus’ closest followers have not worked out his true identity by this point. When, shortly afterwards, Peter does work out that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus orders the disciples “sternly” not to tell anyone. The time was not yet ripe.

The messages that pass between John and Jesus here are interesting in that light. Firstly, John the Baptist, in prison at the hands of Herod Antipas, asks “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” So, despite the fact nothing could possibly be better news for John in those terrible circumstances than to hear that Jesus, the man he baptised in the Jordan, is the Messiah, he is prepared to wait if the time is not yet ripe for God to send it.

Another interesting thing is that Jesus doesn’t simply say that He is the Messiah. Instead, he asks John’s messengers to relay news of his miracles and says “blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.” Jesus presents the evidence of what he is doing in the world, but respects John’s right to make up his own mind about his nature in good faith. Whether or not he accepts that Jesus is the Messiah, he will be blessed if he takes no offence Him.

There is a lot in this exchange that chimes with our experience of how God interacts with humanity in our world. The evidence of God’s existence is all around us. Maybe it is possible, in the vastness of the universe, that some lengthy sequence of random events led to the existence not only of life, but intelligent, self-aware life, with a sense of morality.

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Proclaiming Forgiveness: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 5th December 2021 (The Second Sunday of Advent)

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Readings – Luke 3:1-6; Malachi 3:1-4

“He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” 

May I speak in the name of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

It seems that in this pandemic, we’re always waiting. This time last year, we were waiting for the vaccines to arrive, having just heard news that seemed too good to be true about their effectiveness. This year, we’re waiting to see if they’ll still work as well against the Omicron variant. Waiting can sometimes be a nerve-grinding, exhausting, process, most of all when we wait poised between utter despair and relief. Let us be honest – the Second Sunday of Advent in 2021 involves just this kind of joy-sapping, emotionally fraught, waiting.

A painting by Domenico Veneziano of St John the Baptist surrounded by bare mountains and scattered woodland. He is naked.
St John the Baptist in the Wilderness by Domenico Veneziano (1445). Now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Waiting is, however, part of the human condition. It is also a major theme of the season of Advent, where we wait for Christ to come into the world at Christmas. Even Jesus had to wait for the appropriate time to start his public ministry, which meant waiting for John the Baptist; and John himself presumably had to wait for the right moment to begin preaching, in a time and a place that was full of shifting political and religious tensions.

It is of note that Luke locates John the Baptist at a definite historical moment. His preaching didn’t happen at a random moment in history, but at a particular time and a particular place, and I quote from this morning’s Gospel:

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.”

From the time when he is writing, Luke is probably looking back around sixty years to the ministry of John the Baptist. That is a long time, but well within the living memory of older people; prominent public figures of the time will still mean something to most people. John the Baptist’s ministry is presented as a historical reality, in the not too distant past. It is as if a modern writer were writing about, say the Cuban Missile Crisis or miniskirts, by saying:

“In the eighth year of the reign of Elizabeth the Second, when Macmillan was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Kennedy President of the United States, and Khrushchev and Mao Chairmen of the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union and China, during the archiepiscopates of Geoffrey Fisher and Michael Ramsey.”

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