patience Archives - Gerry Lynch: Priest, Writer, Photographer

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

18 December 202514 December 2025 by Gerry Lynch

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.

Wait Patiently in Faith: Sermon Preached on 5th October 2025 (Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity)

10 October 2025 by Gerry Lynch

Preached at Christ Church, Worton and Christ Church, Bulkington

Habakkuk 1.1-4, 2.1-4; Luke 17. 5-10

“I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.”

“Anarchy and violence break out, quarrels and fights all over the place. Law and order fall to pieces. Justice is a joke. The wicked have the righteous hamstrung and stand justice on its head.” That’s a translation from the Bible version known as ‘The Message’ of the first of our readings today. It was penned by the prophet Habakkuk (isn’t that a great name) in what turned out to be the years just before an era came to an end; something that Habakkuk seems to have understood even as most of those around him scoffed. He wrote at a time when standards had collapsed, when wrongdoers seemed to get whatever they wanted and ordinary people saw no justice, when neighbours were bitterly divided from one another. Nobody really knew how to turn the country round from the decline it had settled into.

An old black-and-white illustration depicting a dramatic scene with a person standing on a rooftop, arms raised, overlooking a city with domed buildings. In the background, a hilltop fortress is engulfed in flames and smoke, suggesting a battle or destruction. Another figure is crouched nearby, and the sky is filled with dark, swirling clouds. — Jerusalem is On Fire, from the Art Bible (1896) – public domain image.

Truly, Habakuk was a prophet for our times—but He wrote around the year 600 BC in the Kingdom of Judah. He didn’t know that the Fall of Jerusalem was only a few years in the future, but knew his society was in trouble. Yet he also had faith that his people weren’t coming to the end a story, but merely the end of a chapter. Despite the state of his country, Habakuk still watched and waited for God to speak to him. He didn’t lose faith. And God did indeed speak to him. God told Habakkuk to do something that is now very unfashionable – to wait! – to be patient, for God would indeed grant His people a vision of a better future, but only at the appointed time.

We live at a time when everyone in public life is expected to give an instant reaction to every issue under the Sun, and this reaction has to fit in a two-sentence tweet or thirty-second video on TikTok. We demand our politicians tells us their views about sport and the entertainment business, ridiculing them if they confess to being uninterested in football or too serious-minded for the soaps. At the same time, we demand sportspeople and singers and actors give us their political opinions and act as our moral leaders. Serious problems are trivialised, while trivia is elevated

Patience and Obedience: Sermon Preached on 24th December 2023 (Fourth Sunday in Advent)

24 December 2023 by Gerry Lynch

A painting in realist style. Elizabeth, standing at the top of the steps of her house, is smiling with her arms outstretched, while Mary, at the foot of the steps, looks up at her.

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend (Benefice Service)

Readings – Romans 16. 25-27; Luke 1. 26-38

“Then Mary said, ‘Let it be with me according to your word…’”

Advent is a season about patience and obedience. If, as we do this morning, we follow the Church’s calendar obediently, and keep the season patiently to the end, Advent reminds us that God is always breaking into the world in ways that are little noticed and often among people who are held to be of little account by the conventional standards of the day.

This morning’s Gospel reading is about how God launched His great rescue plan for the human race thanks to the obedience of two ordinary women, who lived in rural communities, as members of a people under foreign occupation, at a time when women were held to be inferior and were excluded from public life.

Elizabeth, who kept faith patiently through years of barrenness, is given a child she could never have expected; Mary is given a child earlier than she could ever have imagined, in circumstances that will be difficult, but her obedience is such that she accepts.

Neither patience nor obedience are exactly fashionable virtues at the moment. Consumer culture mitigates against patience, while we too easily get obedience confused with acceptance of authoritarianism—they aren’t the same thing at all. Like people in every time and every nation, the presumptions of our culture leave us with much to learn and to unlearn about what God requires of us. That learning requires patience.

In our epistle reading, St Paul writes that in Jesus Christ, “the mystery that was kept secret for long ages…is now disclosed”. Why was the mystery kept for all these long ages? Why could God have not just given people some simple rules for living well together?

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

17 December 2023 by Gerry Lynch

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.

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.