quiet revival

Persistence: Sermon Preached on 19th October 2025 (Eighteenth Sunday After Trinity)

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Preached at Holy Cross, Seend

2 Timothy 3.14 – 4.5; Luke 18.1–8

“Preach the word… in season, out of season”

Do you want to be a record breaker? For me, it all depends what sort of record I might be breaking. I wouldn’t to be like former Nottingham Forest manager Ange Postecoglou, sacked yesterday just 39 days after being appointed, and setting a new record for brevity of managerial tenure in the English Premier League.

Perhaps Mr Postecoglou might take comfort from the fact that he is probably the victim of forces well beyond his own control—a short-termist mentality that demands instant results, which has been produced by a culture that promises instant gratification, as long as we have the money to pay for it.

A classical painting depicting an elderly woman dressed in a dark robe and white headscarf, sitting and holding a young child who is nestled against her. The child, wearing a golden robe, is reading or holding a small book. The background is dark and muted, with warm lighting highlighting the figures' faces and clothing.
William Drost, Timothy With His Grandmother, Lois (early 1650s). hangs in the Hermitage, St Petersburg.

Today’s readings, although different in terms of form and style, both commend to us a different approach to life—one of constancy and persistence, especially when it comes to our Christian Faith.

Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy is written in the style of an old man, realising he is nearing the end of his life, giving advice to a younger protégé. Timothy has clearly been earmarked by Paul as a future Church leader, and his background contrasts dramatically with the first generation of Christian leaders, who all started following Christ as adults, many of them literally following Jesus Christ around the Holy Land while he walked the Earth. Timothy, in contrast, was born into a Christian family, and Paul seems to think His backbone needs a little stiffening.

We see another change—the earliest Christians expected Jesus to return and enact the Last Judgement very soon; in this passage, we get signs that they are starting to realise this Christianity business is for the long haul.

So Paul writes: “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season”. ‘Instant’ in the language of the Authorised Version means persistent; Timothy is to be persistent in preaching the Gospel even when it feels like he isn’t getting anywhere, and even when people who had been faithful Christians get distracted and drift into believing myths that seem to be Christian on the surface but lose the true essence of the Faith at their core.

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Things Don’t Always Get Better: Sermon Preached on 6th July 2025 (Third Sunday After Trinity)

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A large crowd of people is gathered on and around a graffiti-covered section of the Berlin Wall, with the Brandenburg Gate visible in the background. Many individuals are sitting or standing on the wall, some holding a German flag. The scene is lively, with people of various ages and styles, and the sky is clear, suggesting a celebratory or historic moment.

Preached at Christ Church, Worton and St Mary’s, Potterne

Galatians 6. 7-16; Luke 10. 1-11, 16-20

“…do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven”

We’re all shaped forever by the world of our young adulthood. Some eras leave a particularly profound mark. Those who were young adults during the Second World War were defined by the words “Never Again”. They were the generation who built international institutions to try to build peace between nations, and social safety nets within them to try to prevent the sort of embittering poverty that did so much to pave the road to war in the 1930s.

Two men in suits are shaking hands and embracing on a tarmac in front of an airplane. The man on the left has dark hair and a red tie, while the man on the right has gray hair and a blue tie. In the background, there is a staircase with "Belfast Int" written on it, and a few other individuals are visible. The scene appears to be a formal or diplomatic greeting.
The years when things could only get better? Clinton and Blair in Belfast, 1998.

That generation has mostly passed to its reward. Many of you here, however, were formed by the Swinging Sixties, when the world changed dramatically in just a few years, with a huge expansion of individual freedom and self-expression, and huge changes in the status of women.

Both of these were times when the Church urgently engaged with the task of making the world a better place. After the war it sought, in the name of the Prince of Peace, to help create the means for a permanently peaceful world. In the Sixties, the Church set itself the mission of updating itself, fearing the rapidly changing world might leave it obsolete.

The era that formed me was the 1990s Golden Age that followed the end of the Cold War. It was encapsulated in the title of the song that accompanied Tony Blair’s triumphal march into Downing Street twenty-eight years ago – D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better. By this time, the Church had become very much weaker. Although the Church itself still expected to play a part in helping things get better, few others expected it to. Mine was the generation that devoured the works of the New Atheists like Richard Dawkins, especially after our youthful Golden Age was brought to an end when two aeroplanes shattered a bright September morning in New York

The optimistic world of my youth is now a long time ago—the fall of the Berlin Wall and the election of President Mandela; the Play Station and the arrival of the Internet. For those of you who are young adults today, the world that shaped my outlook is something you read about in history books.

Your lives have instead been formed by a lengthy economic and cultural stagnation, by plague, and by failing institutions. Nobody believes anymore that things can only get better. The Church invested so much into trying to make the world a better place, but it may be getting worse anyway and, if it is, there’s probably little we can do about it. Like every generation before us, we are carried on great historical trends that are beyond the human capacity to identify fully, let alone control. It was always a bit naïve to think that these cycles of history would cease. Empires always rise and fall. Golden ages always turn to decadence. After any period of unity comes division. Thus it has ever been.

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