diff --git a/lucene/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/BufferedDeletesStream.java b/lucene/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/BufferedDeletesStream.java
index 295222991df..bfddf73f2c1 100644
--- a/lucene/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/BufferedDeletesStream.java
+++ b/lucene/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/BufferedDeletesStream.java
@@ -432,7 +432,7 @@ class BufferedDeletesStream {
   }
 
   // Delete by query
-  private synchronized long applyQueryDeletes(Iterable<QueryAndLimit> queriesIter, SegmentReader reader) throws IOException {
+  private static long applyQueryDeletes(Iterable<QueryAndLimit> queriesIter, SegmentReader reader) throws IOException {
     long delCount = 0;
     final AtomicReaderContext readerContext = (AtomicReaderContext) reader.getTopReaderContext();
     for (QueryAndLimit ent : queriesIter) {