midnight mass

Only Human: Sermon Preached on 24th December 2025 (Midnight Mass)

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This panoramic view captures the serene beauty of Bethlehem's old city at twilight. The sky transitions into a deep, soft purple-blue dusk, casting a calm and ethereal glow over the historic landscape as evening settles in.In the foreground and across the scene, clusters of ancient limestone buildings and rooftops spread densely, their warm, weathered stone tones standing out against the cooling light. Scattered lights begin to sparkle from windows and streets below, adding gentle points of warmth.Rising prominently are several towers that punctuate the skyline: the distinctive bell tower of the Church of the Nativity, with its classic design and cross, stands out alongside slender minarets—such as the elegant one from the nearby Mosque of Omar—featuring intricate details and illuminated outlines against the twilight sky.The overall composition conveys a peaceful, timeless atmosphere, blending architectural forms of stone, domes, and vertical spires in a harmonious urban tapestry.

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend

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

“the Word became flesh and lived among us”      

On a rainy night, outside the rundown Dave's City Motel, a weary middle-aged man with a beard stands under glowing neon signs. Wearing a fur-lined parka and baseball cap, he holds an old payphone receiver to his ear with one hand and a folded newspaper in the other. Heavy rain streaks across the entire scene. Right beside him, a young Black girl in a hooded sweatshirt reading "Elizabeth High School" sits confidently astride a faded pink coin-operated mechanical pony (marked "Out of Order"). She grips a small plastic bag and looks straight ahead with quiet determination. The motel window blazes with eclectic neon beer signs including "Good News," "Starr," a large green "BEVER" with starburst, and cigarette advertisements. A "No Vacancy" sign glows nearby, while wet newspapers and a sprouting weed near the curb add to the moody, nostalgic, slightly gritty atmosphere.
Jose y Maria, Everett Patterson, 2014.

“I’m only human.” It’s a phrase we usually offer by way of an apology—as if being human was something inadequate or second rate. Humans aren’t perfect. What torments us is that somehow we think we’re supposed be perfect, so when we can’t manage to be the perfect people we think we should be, we think we’ve failed.

We’re supposed to be good at our jobs, to run a perfect home, to be a cheerful friend and companion while also being capable of giving frank and realistic advice if needed, a wonderful spouse or partner, an absolutely perfect parent, to give regularly to charity, to feel deeply for a range of worthy causes and always say the right things about them, to never hit the credit card too heavily, never drink more than 14 units of alcohol per week, never smoke, and have a clean driving licence and a Body Mass Index below 25 – or, if we’re Black or Asian, a Body Mass Index below 23.

Of course we don’t manage to achieve all that. We’re only human. Although there are always Instagram influencers and people in the lifestyle magazines who claim to manage it all, and tell us we all could too if only we tried hard enough. Maybe they’re not human—better than human?—superhuman?

We’re so negative about the idea of being human – but being human was good enough for God. That’s what that strange mystical passage from St John’s Gospel that I read a moment ago is saying. I freely admit that it is strange stuff, and I don’t see that as a problem. After all, if God is real, then any human attempt to describe God must strain the limits of human language. The passage writes of two beings, the Word, and God who created the universe. The Word, it says, was God, every bit as much as the creator of the universe—somehow these two beings while being distinct, were one. The Word was with God before time began. And then the Word became flesh—God became human. That is the unique and distinctive point of the Christian faith

Now, we have much in common with Jews, something I think we all know, and we also have quite a lot in common with Muslims, something that is quite difficult to say with being latched on to as a Culture War point by one side or another. But it is a simple statement of fact. Like Muslims and Jews, we believe that there is a God, one God, who created the universe. This is very different from what atheists believe about the universe, or Buddhists, or Hindus. And like Muslims and Jews we believe that God will judge us at the end of our lives for what we have done on this Earth: which is a pretty scary prospect; we’d better hope that God judges us with more mercy than the lifestyle magazines and the folks on social media.

But one belief that separates Christians dramatically from Jews and Muslims is that we believe God actually became human. He did so in the person of Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ was truly God, then God got the cold and blew His nose, went to the toilet, told jokes, ate breakfast, and was so fond of eating and drinking with the wrong company that his enemies called him a glutton and a drunkard. If this festival we celebrate tonight is true, then God got so exhausted by the crowds who mobbed Him like a modern celebrity that He fled to the hills for peace, and God was perceived as such a threat by powerful men that they had Him executed. That’s very different from what Jews believe, and very different from what Muslims believe.

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True Light and Deep Darkness: Sermon Preached on 24th December 2024 (Midnight Mass)

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The image captures a breathtaking night sky filled with countless stars, with the Milky Way galaxy prominently visible, stretching diagonally from the top right to the bottom left. The sky is a deep, rich blue, contrasting with the bright, sparkling stars. A faint, white streak of a shooting star or meteor is visible near the top right, adding a dynamic element to the scene. In the foreground, on the left side, stands a large, rugged boulder. This boulder has a rough texture, with visible cracks and crevices, and appears to be part of a natural landscape. The ground around the boulder is covered in grass, which appears slightly illuminated, possibly by moonlight or a distant light source. In the background, there are a few trees, their dark silhouettes adding depth and framing the scene. The trees are spaced out, suggesting an open field or meadow. The overall composition of the image evokes a sense of tranquility and the vastness of the universe, with the ancient rock contrasting against the eternal expanse of the cosmos.

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

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

“…the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”         

The image captures a breathtaking night sky filled with countless stars, with the Milky Way galaxy prominently visible, stretching diagonally from the top right to the bottom left. The sky is a deep, rich blue, contrasting with the bright, sparkling stars. A faint, white streak of a shooting star or meteor is visible near the top right, adding a dynamic element to the scene. In the foreground, on the left side, stands a large, rugged boulder. This boulder has a rough texture, with visible cracks and crevices, and appears to be part of a natural landscape. The ground around the boulder is covered in grass, which appears slightly illuminated, possibly by moonlight or a distant light source. In the background, there are a few trees, their dark silhouettes adding depth and framing the scene. The trees are spaced out, suggesting an open field or meadow. The overall composition of the image evokes a sense of tranquility and the vastness of the universe, with the ancient rock contrasting against the eternal expanse of the cosmos.
The dark skies of Wiltshire,13 August 2024 © Gerry Lynch

It’s a pity that it’s so cloudy tonight, because the night sky is magnificent at present, especially around midnight. The winter stars, held together by Orion and Sirius are all rising in the south-east about this time of night, with the brilliant white of Jupiter and jaunty red of Mars making a cameo appearance for this winter only.

One of the first things I noticed when I moved to Devizes four years ago was how dark the skies are in this part of Wiltshire, especially as one looks south towards Salisbury Plain, where there is very little artificial light to ruin the view.

A sad reality of the present is that only a small minority of people in the world now ever see the night stars in all their glory. Most people now live in cities, where thousands of streetlights waste much of their energy by leaking upwards, doing no good to anyone below but ruining the night sky.

The human race now has so much power that the light we waste is enough to obliterate the glories of nature.

The light that really dominates our lives in the 21st Century, however, is that of flickering screens, the sickly blue glow that comes from our phones, tablets, and televisions, which impacts our system so profoundly that it even disturbs our sleep. Beyond that, these screens make us agitated about things that we can do little about and could probably quite easily ignore. The programmes on our TVs and apps on our phones are also intentionally designed to seize our attention, to distract us from anything that might encourage us to tune away from the channel, or close the app.

By possessing our attention these screens crowd out the space we might have to think, or just to allow our minds to slow down. I am as guilty of being distracted by all this as anyone; I am constantly flipping between tabs as I try to write my sermons.

None of this technology ever seems to make us better. We live in a society surrounded by all sorts of light we have generated ourselves. But our souls are as dark as they ever have been. In fact all this artificial light just seems to make that spiritual darkness more visible. We parade our anger and intolerance on social media apps and radio phone in shows.

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Good Enough As We Are: Sermon Preached on 24th December 2022 (Midnight Mass)

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Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

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

“For a child has been born for us … authority rests upon his shoulders.” 

The international situation is darkening with a series of protracted and frightening wars, while domestically people are setting their hearts against God. Religiously-minded people see that abandonment of God as a direct cause of the obvious collapse in standards in public life, especially among political leaders. I am not referring to the present day, but to the time when our Old Testament reading was written by Isaiah, around two-thousand seven hundred years ago.

In the midst of this darkness, Isaiah wrote down a vision of a brighter future.  In it, a child is born who will have authority to lead people from darkness into light. He will establish peace and justice, and even be known as “Mighty God”.

Hundreds of years later, about the same distance in time as separates us from knights in armour and feudal lords, the vision still inspired many people to keep hope in difficult times. Some of them had been followers of a wandering preacher called Jesus, whose life was so extraordinary and so surrounded by miracles and the seemingly impossible that they reached the conclusion he was the Son of God. As they reflected on the sacred writings of the Jewish faith which they all devoutly held, this was one of the pieces they thought had foretold Jesus all along.

Our Gospel reading was also a product of those followers, as they wrote down their own reflections on what they had experienced through Jesus. Its first sentence is particularly famous – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Famous it might be, but it can be a little difficult to unpack. So let me try to explain. The Word is God – God who made the universe, God who was there in the very beginning, God who existed when the Big Bang went bang, God who made the Big Bang go bang. But the Word was also apparently with God in the beginning. So we have two beings in the beginning, who make the Big Bang go bang – God and the Word; but the Word is also God. It’s very odd, isn’t it?

Virgin and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele by Jan van Eyck (1436)

Now here’s another strange phrase from our Gospel reading – “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” You might have noticed that I knelt when I read that phrase. That’s because it expresses the thing that is so unique about the Christian faith – not only that there is a God, but also that God holds us human beings in such high esteem that He actually became one of us, took on human flesh Himself, to open the way to eternal life for us.

And it’s not just the fact that God became a human being that is amazing, but how He did it, the sort of human being He became. For there couldn’t be more of a contrast between Jesus’ supernatural beginnings and his earthly beginnings. Jesus was with the creator of the universe when it all started, and indeed was Himself the creator of the universe, grand concepts that seem to be full of paradox and which aren’t really understandable in human language. At the same time, Jesus became one of us in the womb of a woman, who gave birth to Him in poverty in a stable, as physically weak as any other baby, and absolutely vulnerable and dependent like any other baby. The maker of the universe and the baby in the stall are one and the same: both are the baby who was prophesied by Isaiah all those centuries before.

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