love

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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Of Dandelions and Oaks – Sermon Preached on 12th July 2026 (Sixth Sunday after Trinity)

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

Romans 8.1–11; Matthew 13.1–9, 18–23

“Listen! A sower went out to sow…”

I thought I’d start today with a bit of science. Why does a mouse have dozens of babies, and an elephant just one? Some species, whether animals or plants, have a low number of offspring and put a lot of effort into raising them – we are one of these, so are elephants and gorillas, big animals like us, but so are parrots. Some species have lots of offspring, so cannot, of course, put the same amount of effort into raising any single one of them – rats famously breed like… well, rabbits.

A thickly painted oil landscape. A large yellow sun sits low on the horizon at the centre, its rays radiating outward across a yellow-green sky in short, dashed brushstrokes. Below the sun, a band of pale gold stubble or standing corn runs the width of the picture; a small blue farm building with a red roof stands at the far left, and dark trees mark the horizon at the right. The foreground is a broad ploughed field rendered in dense, choppy strokes of blue, violet, white, and orange, with a pale furrow curving through it. A peasant in a straw hat, olive jacket, and blue trousers strides across the field from the right, seed sack cradled against his body, his right arm swinging out as he casts. Three dark birds are scattered across the soil.
Van Gogh, The Sower (1888). Hangs in the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands.

A similar spectrum is seen in the world of plants – blow on a dandelion clock and many dozens of seeds will float on the breeze; oaks are very different, sometimes waiting for years to produce acorns, with each acorn loaded with enough reserves to survive decades of burial, drought, and being nibbled by squirrels – after all, the forest floor will still be there in fifty years’ time.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” writes St Paul to the Christians in Rome. There are many implications of the phrase “in Christ Jesus”. But one comes from remembering that Jesus is God, and God is Love – the Bible says so in those same three words. To be in Jesus Christ is to live in love. The Holy Spirit is love too – the love that flows between Father and Son, and a person in its own right, who ripples out from them through the whole universe, a universe whose beauty at every scale shows that it is loved.

We human beings are made in the image and likeness of our creator God; we reflect that image most clearly when we love. We are called both to receive God’s love as seed sown in us, and to sow seeds of that love in others.

God is constantly sowing seeds in our lives out of His love for us, usually without us really noticing. Some fall on the path, in the rocky ground, or amid the thorns. Sometimes our hearts are too hard for the seed to flourish; sometimes we’re too distracted by material things to respond; sometimes to respond to God’s love would mean doing unpopular or costly things, so we back off. We fear the condemnation of those around us, but the only condemnation we should truly fear is that of God, and when we respond to God’s love by sharing that love with others, then we are truly in Christ, and we need not, as St Paul reminds us, fear God’s condemnation. If you fear your harvest is thin, trust that the same God who sows in love also forgives and restores.

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Fake Miracles and True Love (The Sunday After Ascension, 1st June 2025)

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The image is a colorful, pop-art style reinterpretation of Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper." It features a long table with Jesus and his twelve disciples seated, depicted in vibrant vertical color blocks. The sections are divided into shades of orange, pink, yellow, blue, red, and magenta, creating a striking contrast with the original muted tones. The figures are engaged in various gestures, with Jesus at the center and the disciples surrounding him, mirroring the composition of the classic painting.

Preached at Christ Church, Worton

Readings – Acts 16. 16-34; Luke 17. 20-26

“I … will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them…”

The image depicts a dramatic scene set in a dimly lit, arched interior, likely a prison or dungeon. A central figure, dressed in a red and green robe with a blue cloak, stands with arms raised, appearing to be in a moment of liberation or proclamation. In front of him, a man in a white garment kneels on the ground, his hands extended upward in a gesture of supplication or release. Surrounding them are several other figures, some standing and others reaching out, all dressed in ancient robes, conveying a sense of urgency or emotion. In the background, a staircase leads to an upper level where armed guards with spears and a lit candle are visible, adding to the tense atmosphere. Chains and scattered objects on the floor suggest a recent struggle or captivity.
Nicolas de Plattemontagne, Paul and Silas in Prison (1666). Hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts, Basel.

When I was in my mid-teens and just starting to get serious about my Christianity, I went to a week of prayer services near where I lived in Belfast, simply because I saw it advertised on a poster in a shop. It was held in a very conventional Anglican parish church, in an overwhelmingly Catholic area, but with a very definite mission revivalist atmosphere. Sometimes a few of the ladies danced in the aisles. On the first five nights, a small congregation of perhaps twenty or so, from all sections of a divided community, gathered to pray and hear God’s word preached. They seemed to be very sincere and warm-hearted and I really enjoyed it.

Then Friday night came, the culmination of the week’s events. This service had obviously been advertised more widely, and there were several hundred people there. A high proportion of the congregation were women in the sort of 55-to-75 age bracket.

At one point during that Friday service, a man got up saying that he had some words to pass on from the Lord. He spoke as if God was speaking to him down a sort of invisible telephone line, and he was just repeating God’s words. Even at the age of 15 or 16, this left me feeling very uncomfortable. Then he said, “God’s telling me there’s a lady here with a bad back, and she’s in a lot of pain with it” – I looked around the room at literally dozens of ladies who might plausibly be struggling with back pain – then he continued, “But God says to tell you everything’s alright, it’s going to get better soon.”

I never knew this man’s name or where he came from: perhaps he just liked being the centre of attention for five minutes on a Friday night. It reminded me a bit of how astrologers work. If you ever pick at a horoscope description you’ll find it’s full of fluff that could apply to anyone. Thankfully it didn’t put me off Christianity for life; in fact I think the cheap emotional manipulation involved was a useful lesson at a formative age.

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The Cost of Love: Sermon Preached at Holy Cross, Seend, Sunday 27th March 2022 (Mothering Sunday)

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Readings – Colossians 3: 12–17; John 19: 25b–27

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

Let me start this morning’s sermon with a verse of poetry:

Morning glory, starlit sky,
soaring music, scholar’s truth,
flight of swallows, autumn leaves,
memory’s treasure, grace of youth.

So begins the greatest poem of Bill Vanstone, seen by many as the most impressive Anglican thinker and theologian of the latter part of the Twentieth Century. At this time of year, with the weather magnificent and the air full of the scents and new life of spring, even in times as troubled as those we are in, one can be enraptured by this sort of mood, simply by being alive. It feels like heaven! Perhaps indeed it is an intimation of heaven.

A beautiful morning for another away match at Holy Cross, Seend. © Gerry Lynch

Of course, even in our brightest moments, that is never the whole story. Many of us will come here this morning with serious problems of our own; even those of us fortunate enough not to be in that position will be deeply worried about serious problems faced by people we love.

Love is the greatest gift given to any of us by God. It is the most wonderful and miraculous and life-giving thing about being human. Yet it also has a tremendous cost. It opens us up to feeling the pains of the people we love.  The second stanza of Vanstone’s poem is clear about that cost, as it continues:

Open are the gifts of God,
gifts of love to mind and sense;
hidden is love’s agony,
love’s endeavour, love’s expense.

Some people seem to think that even to celebrate this Sunday as Mother’s Day is somehow excluding and potentially wounding for those without children or whose relationships with their mothers were difficult. Well, as a childless, single man, let me say that it is simply an obvious statement of fact that mothers have a particular and unique relationship with the children they have born in their womb, an intensely physical connection that no male can ever have. Mothers perhaps more than any of us know just how costly and agonising love can be.

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