satan Archives - Gerry Lynch: Priest, Writer, Photographer

Where Did It All Go Wrong?: Sermon Preached on 22nd February 2026 (First Sunday of Lent)

22 February 2026 by Gerry Lynch

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

Romans 5. 12–19; Matthew 4. 1–11

“…just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.”

A dramatic oil painting depicting the biblical scene of the Temptation of Christ. In the foreground, a solemn figure in flowing pale robes sits with downcast eyes and a weary, resolute expression, his long brown hair and beard framing a gaunt face marked by deep shadows beneath the eyes. Behind him, a sinister hooded figure draped entirely in black leans in close, one hand gripping the seated figure's shoulder in a possessive, intimate gesture, whispering with a sly, menacing expression partially obscured by the dark cowl. The background features a turbulent sky of deep amber and burnt orange tones, suggesting a desolate wilderness. A dark bird, likely a crow, flies in the distant right. The painting's photorealistic style and chiaroscuro lighting create an intense atmosphere of psychological tension between spiritual steadfastness and evil persuasion. — *The Temptation of Christ,©*Eric Armusik (2017). In a private collection.

Where did it all go wrong?

Tuesday marks the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The 2020s have been a bumpy decade. The horrors of the 7 October attacks were followed by the horrors of the Israeli assault on Gaza, where the 75,000 dead include 18,000 children. These terrible figures are still much smaller than the number of those killed in Sudan’s largely ignored civil war, or in Burma’s entirely ignored civil war, or the terrible war fought in Northern Ethiopia between 2020 and 2022, which you probably haven’t even heard of and which looks in serious danger of flaring up again.

The story of the human race is glory interspersed with horror. Capable of great feats of technology, and art, and most profoundly of all of great self-sacrificing love, it nonetheless seems to be our lot to descend from time to time into the pit. On the grandest of scales, the golden ages of nations and civilisation are followed by spells of decline and even ruinous destruction. Meanwhile, in our own lives we find that time and again we fail to live up to the high ideals which we wish to live by. Time and again, we do selfish and stupid and self-destructive things in ways that often leave us horrified and mystified afterwards. Worst of all, it seems to be upon those we love most deeply that we are capable of inflicting the most grievous wounds. No matter how hard we try to live truly good lives, some force seems to drag us down into the worst version of ourselves.

Where did it all go wrong?

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

9 March 2025 by Gerry Lynch

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 21^st 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.

Sweetly Seductive Satan: Sermon Preached on 3rd September 2023 (13th Sunday after Trinity)

4 September 20233 September 2023 by Gerry Lynch

The cover of Iron Maiden's 1982 album, Number of the Beast

Preached at St John’s, Devizes

Readings – Romans 12.9-21; Matthew 16.21-28

“And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him…”

Conjure the scene in your mind: Peter tapping Jesus on the shoulder in front of James and John and all that lot and saying, “Jesus, can I have a word… in private?”

Sometimes there are revealing little details in the Bible that can pass us by our whole lives, even when the stories are very familiar. As I prepared this morning’s sermon, a phrase that caught in my mind for the first time was that when Peter told Jesus not to risk His life in Jerusalem, Peter “took him aside and began to rebuke him.” One wonders what the other disciples thought.

Now, Jesus doesn’t tell Peter off for embarrassing Him in front of the other disciple, but something more dramatic, famously telling him, “Get behind me, Satan!”

Why did Jesus give Peter such a blunt and probably rather hurtful answer? Well, can you remember what last week’s Gospel was? It was Peter working out the Jesus was indeed the Messiah, and Jesus telling Peter that he would be the rock on which He would build His Church. This morning’s reading follows directly on from that story without a break. In all three synoptic Gospels, once Peter works out that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus begins to tell the disciples that He must suffer and die in Jerusalem – although Luke doesn’t mention Jesus saying “Get behind me, Satan.”

Poor Peter must have been crushed by this. When Jesus told Peter that that He was indeed the Messiah and, better still, that Peter would be the rock of His community, suffering and death would have been the last thing in Peter’s mind. The Messiah was expected to be a great religious, political, and probably military leader. Peter will naturally have thought that Jesus the Messiah would march into Jerusalem, annihilate the Romans in a huge battle, overthrow Herod, and put the scribes and Pharisees in their place. Jesus would then reign as king, and Peter would be something like His Prime Minister. Peter thinks he’ll be a powerful figure in Jesus’s new Kingdom—and, in fact, he is entirely correct in that, but he completely misunderstands what the new Kingdom is.

Fear the Devil: Sermon Preached on 25th June 2023 (3rd Sunday After Trinity)

12 July 202325 June 2023 by Gerry Lynch

Al Pacino playing the Devil in the 1997 movie The Devil's Advocate. He is smiling towards the camera, Keanu Reeves, his "son" is standing with his back to the camera. They are in a New York subway car.

Preached at Christ Church, Bulkington

Readings – Romans 6.1b-11; Matthew 10.24-39

“fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Do you think about hell and the Devil much?

I thought that would be a good way to start a sermon on a glorious summer evening in an adorable little village like Bulkington!

We can scoff at talk of the Devil as ridiculous and primitive nonsense, and I have no doubt that some of you here tonight do. I did for a long time. We can even find ourselves glamorising the Devil – you know, the cool bloke who lets you drink and tells you dirty jokes, instead of making you sit on a cloud playing a harp forever like God (that boring old fart!) Yet whatever we think about an actual personification of evil in the form of the Devil, none of us can escape the reality of evil, obvious every time we hear a news bulletin.

If we believe that we have a soul, then we also need to consider seriously the possibility that it might be damaged or corrupted by evil. More than this, if we take the Gospels seriously as a record of what Jesus taught, then we need to embrace the reality that Jesus taught his followers about the Devil: among other places, in this evening’s Gospel reading. Satan is a recurring theme throughout the New Testament, where we are presented with a picture of Christians in a running battle with forces of evil that, without the grace of God, would be beyond our powers to resist or break.

The Devil is real, taunting us over the battlefields of Ukraine and our indifference to hungry children in a world of plenty. The Devil taunts us over every Saturday night stabbing, over every carefully nursed family feud, and every intentionally bitter dispute over the custody of the children. The Devil taunts us when we scream at the TV that we wish someone would shoot one of our least favourite politicians and when we lash out at the people who love us most because they’re the people we know we can hurt without fearing retaliation.

Most people in this country, unlike Jesus Christ, think the Devil is a silly fictional character that, at best, distracts us from dealing with the world’s real problems. That suits Satan fine; if we think he doesn’t exist it makes it so much easier to worm his way into people’s souls.

A cheerful picture, eh?

We Only See the Light in Darkness: Sermon Preached on 29th January 2023 (Candlemas Transferred)

29 January 202329 January 2023 by Gerry Lynch

A 13th Century drawing of Mary and Joseph presenting the infant Jesus to Simeon at the Temple in Jerusalem - or at least what a 13th Century artist thought that looked like - while Anna worships and nine onlookers watch.

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Hebrews 2. 14-18; Matthew 2. 22-40

“…a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

Today’s Gospel reading is set in a time when faith was thin and political realities were grim. Corruption and oppression reigned in the land but those most committed to change were often fanatical and violent. Religious leaders seemed more interested in power and privilege than praising God. It was a time and a place, in other words, like many others and not entirely different from our own.

Some did keep faith in these difficult circumstances – Mary and Joseph were two such people, presenting their baby son in the Temple for purification on the fortieth day after His birth as the Law of Moses required. The idea that ritual purification after birth might be important has become remote to us in recent generations. It can therefore surprise us that Candlemas, which we keep today as the feast that commemorates Christ being presented in the Temple, was one of the earliest Christian festivals and remains one of the most important.

Mary and Joseph were not the only people keeping the faith in those hard times. Simeon and Anna spent their lives deep in prayer and close to God. So much so that Simeon was led by the Holy Spirit to the infant Christ and knew he was the long-promised Messiah; Anna also knew the child was specially sent by God without anyone telling her. It is interesting that they were both very elderly, given that the elderly are often held to be of not much account in a world that is obsessed with vigour and power and achievement; but God has a more generous standard than the world of who is valuable and who is fit to do His work. The old are as valuable to Him as the young.

The marginal are also as valuable to God as those in the centre of things. God chose to become a human being in the person of Jesus Christ – not as a king, and not in one of the world’s power centres, but as the son of a woman who became pregnant in suspicious circumstances, to be raised as the son of an artisan, belonging to a people under a foreign occupation they bitterly resented.

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

9 December 20246 March 2022 by Gerry Lynch

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.