russian invasion of ukraine

Faith in a Geopolitical Wilderness: Sermon Preached on 9th March 2025 (First Sunday in Lent)

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A wide desert landscape under a clear blue sky, with scattered dry, golden-brown shrubs dotting the sandy terrain. In the background, a range of rugged, brown mountains stretches across the horizon, creating a stark contrast with the flat, arid foreground.

Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and Christ Church, Bulkington

Romans 10. 8b-13; Luke 4. 1-13     

“Jesus… was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.”

In the wilderness, the rules and habits that helped us to flourish in civilised life no longer work; in fact, they can be a hindrance to survival. In the wilderness, we are thrown back entirely on our own resources. There is nobody to help us—except, of course, for God. The wilderness can kill us—or we can use it to allow our illusions about ourselves and the world to die. We can use it to teach us to trust in God, and God alone.

A barren desert landscape featuring a twisted, leafless tree with sprawling branches in the foreground. The ground is covered with dry, sparse vegetation and sandy soil. In the background, rugged, layered mountains rise under a vibrant blue sky with wispy, streaked clouds. Explain desert ecosystems Discuss desert photography
In the wilderness, Tankwa Karoo National Park, South Africa © Gerry Lynch, 27 January 2025

“We now live in a geopolitical wilderness where the post-Cold War order has collapsed.” I last used that phrase in a sermon three years and three days ago, on the First Sunday in Lent 2022, when we last had this pair of readings set for us. That was less than a fortnight after Russia launched its massive invasion of Ukraine. It is even more obvious today that the assumptions most of us held about the nature of the 21st Century world have turned out to be illusions.

We hear that frightening geopolitical wilderness reported every day in the news bulletins, so let us keep it in mind as we turn to today’s Gospel reading, for its detail is easy to overlook. 

Christ is challenged with three very specific temptations: the temptation to put worldly comfort before the Mission given to Him by His Father, symbolised by turning stones into bread; the temptation to take no responsibility for His own wellbeing, abusing God’s care for Him, symbolised by throwing Himself from a building and trusting in angels to catch Him; and the temptation to take power Himself as the solution for all the world’s problems, at the price of worshipping Satan.

These events take place immediately after Jesus was baptised by John, and immediately before He began His ministry of healing and teaching in Galilee. It is seems Christ, truly human as well as truly God, had to confront these temptations before He could brave the crowds who would for a time cheer Him as a wonder-worker, crowds who would try to seize him by force and make Him king.

Christian leaders in every age must confront these three temptations: the temptation to use the Faith as a means of obtaining worldly comfort; the temptation to hide behind the Faith as a means of avoiding personal responsibility; and the temptation to see the Faith as a means of solving the world’s problems.

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Wilderness and the Garden: Sermon Preached on 31st March 2024 (Easter Day)

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Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and Holy Cross, Seend

Readings – Acts 10: 34-43; John 20: 1-18

“Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher).”

When we get to the end of a journey, it’s sometimes helpful to remind ourselves where it started.

Painting of a garden, in which Mary Magdalen, in a red dress and bending down, is trying to touch Jesus cloak - he is walking away from her, but looking back at her, and putting his palm out in admonishment.
Fra Angelico, Noli Me Tangere (1440-2), in the Basilica di San Marco, Florence.

Jesus’ public ministry started with His baptism by John the Baptist, then immediately being taken out into the wilderness for forty days. His public ministry ended with His crucifixion, or so it seemed. Because on the first Easter morning, a few of His closest followers encountered Him risen from the dead. They were the first witnesses to the Resurrection.

The season of Lent consists of forty days of fasting that are intentionally modelled on Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness. Lent also ends on Easter morning—in other words, it too ends in Resurrection.

So travelling through the wilderness seems to be an essential part of experiencing Resurrection. In the wilderness we are confronted by the sheer scale of God’s creation, and how much of that creation lies outside our normal day-to-day experience. In the wilderness, our illusions of being in control die, and we learn just how limited the power of human beings is.

It seems to me that the Western world is entering a wilderness. The financial crisis of 2008, and the very slow recovery from it, was perhaps first warning signthat the existing political and economic order might be in trouble. Other signs include the ever widening gap between the rich and the rest, the fact that it’s often easier to make money by speculation than doing something worthwhile, and the increasing difficulties even relatively well-off young people have in finding security. All these have been warning signs, throughout history, of civilisations in trouble.

A gathering sense of crisis became acute after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One thing the two years since have told us is that the Western world is weaker than is thought by our pundits, our politicians, and the lobbyists and campaignerswho try to influence them. Western attempts to hobble the Russian economy through sanctions have, regrettably, been at best partially effective, and have been ignored by the rising powers of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Western fantasies of power and control lie in tatters, and we seem to have entered a geopolitical wilderness.

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War and the Devil: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 6th March 2022 (The First Sunday in Lent)

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Readings – Romans 10:8–13; Luke 4: 1–13

“Jesus … was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” 

One of my favourite films is a movie made eleven years ago named Margin Call. It is a fictionalised version of 24 hours in the life of a big New York merchant bank at the start of the 2008 financial crisis.

In the small hours of the morning, two well-tailored bankers assimilate the possibility of the world economy collapsing thanks, in part, to their extreme investment risks. At one point, the younger one turns to the older and says, “This is bizarre. It’s like a dream.”

“Oh, I don’t know”, comes the reply, “Seems like we may have just woken up.”

The world of these men and women collapses in the space of a day, to their shock and horror. As the movie progresses, however, it becomes apparent that they knew all along that they were following a path that was unsustainable, but one that was making them all rich. They were lying to the rest of us, of course, but mostly they were lying to themselves. Part of the movie’s power comes from the way it depicts how the system rapidly seduces the young graduate trainees into believing that this world of greed and lies is normal, even good.

Subsequently disgraced – Kevin Spacey in Margin Call (2011).

Ironically, the wise old trader in that exchange was Kevin Spacey – soon afterwards disgraced, and deservedly so, for using his artistic genius as bait to exploit young men who dreamed of being stars.

Both the movie and the real-life story of its star are metaphors for the world of the last thirty years, which indulged itself in the myth that humanity was starting to escape the restrictions of its nature, and that freedom and prosperity for all could be best ensured by each of us pursuing our desires and demands to the maximum extent.

We need to face facts: we are never far away from the wilderness, where the Devil lurks.

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