Ninth Sunday after Trinity

1 Kings 19:9-18 and Romans 10:5-15 and Matthew 14:22-33

Well, it is good to be with you today, having been away for our summer holidays. We spent a week sightseeing in Amsterdam, an amazing city drawn out of the sea by channelling the waters, and filled with creativity; followed by a week with 15,000 other people attending week 2 of New Wine, which is one of the major Christian gatherings in the UK. In fact, this evening’s Songs of Praise was filmed at week 1, if you’d like a taste of what we were up to. And in that second week I’ve been listening to and reading a young American pastor called John Mark Comer, and reflecting on what the Bible tells us about work and rest.

In the beginning, God created, and then took the time to enjoy the fruit of his work. And God made humans to share in that pattern. To take the raw materials of the world and bring creation to its fulfilment. To cease from work at the culmination of each week, on a day God blessed—that is, gave the ability to create life. And we came up with tools and agriculture and architecture and music. But we failed to trust God, and so we also came up with murder and rape and war and slavery. The blessing of work was frustrated, cursed, to limit destruction and in the hope that it might bring us back to God. And every so often, God would intervene to re-set the world, as in the story of the great flood. But it never lasted.

Later, in the writings of the prophets such as Isaiah, we see glimpses of a day when God will act decisively, once-and-for-all, after which the people will experience work and celebratory rest from work as God intended, without frustration.

Elijah, exhausted from his work and finding nothing life-giving in his rest, is graciously given a foretaste of the future. The earth—or at least that bit of the earth on which he stood—is scoured clean by fire that consumes everything in its path; and then, after stillness and silence—after rest—God begins again, choosing new humans to exercise their rule over creation. But this is not yet the decisive, for-ever, new beginning. It is only a foretaste.

Jump forward with me to our Gospel reading. The disciples are in the boat surrounded by a stormy sea. The imagery resonates with that of the flood story: God saving a few people with whom to begin again. But the episode also contains a revelation of who Jesus truly is, the human faithfully ruling over creation for God.

Years later, in a letter to the church, Peter looks back to the flood event and forward to a future day when God will visit not with flood but fire, to consume all miss-rule—all exploitation of the earth’s resources, all injustice and oppression, all that is sorry and sad and scary in the world—and reveal the earth as it has not been seen for millennia, in all its beauty.

Then Jesus, who is the first fruits of the Resurrection, will return; and with him in the Resurrection all those who have died and rest in him. And we will rule with him, as kings and queens, working and resting, for eternity.

And no, I don’t believe that God needs a helping hand—or, his hand forced—a nuclear Armageddon.

But I do believe that the church is also meant to be a foretaste of this future. The church upon which fire fell at Pentecost. We are not yet brought to perfection, nor is the world. But we are called to live in the present in the light of the future.

It is easy to lose focus, like Elijah, like Peter on the water. But we are all called to live in such a way that glorifies God and serves our neighbour, by joining in the divine narrative, through our work and our rest, through our witness and our investing in others.

Writing to the church in Rome—the very centre of a civilisation built on military technology and endless cheap labour—Paul says we are not called to be demi-gods who ascend the seat of the gods or descend into the inner pit of hell reserved for monsters, to fetch or rescue Jesus. No, we are already kings and queens; and it is through Jesus that God not only rescues us but recommissions us.

What you do matters, not only now but, potentially, into eternity. Tomorrow I am conducting the funeral of a woman who was a seamstress. In the Age to Come, our imperishable resurrected bodies will need clothes, not made by children in sweatshops or women working in firetraps so that a man can be rich; but the skilful work of taking materials and making something beautiful. This is a story worth telling, a hope worth living into. Will you step into it? Will you go, to tell others?

Workplace sermon 5 : Remembrance Sunday

Matthew 25:1-13

This autumn, whenever it has been allocated to me to preach, we have been looking together at work. Today we are reminded that there are times when we are called away from our work, to fight a great battle. Among the war memorials kept for future generations in this building is that one to the men of the flour mill. Called away from their work. And as eight out of every ten soldiers survived the First World War and returned, there were of course other men called away from the flour mill until the battle was done.

We might not have been called away from our work to fight battles with guns and mortar shells; but many of us have been called away from our work to fight battles. Against cancer. Against depression. Or to fight for the freedom of a close relative whose interior landscape is being invaded by dementia. And then again, for some, to rebuild their lives after the death of their partner or son or daughter in a more recent theatre of war, whether as a soldier or a civilian.

Some of these battles, we will overcome and return to our everyday work, albeit changed by the experience. In some of these battles, we will ultimately lose our lives, or the life of a loved one we have fought for.

In these times, we experience the dark night of the soul. Our beloved Jesus, who in times past might have felt so close, is experienced as in another place, delayed in coming to us. In that dark night, which seems more than we can bear, and where sleep comes as a blessed temporary relief, we need the oil of hope.

Hope is something the value of which is not recognised in our society. We have traded it for a cheaper alternative. We say ‘I hope that it won’t rain tomorrow’ or ‘I hope you are feeling better soon’. We use the word to mean a vague and general wish, which has no power in the world. It has nothing in common with the hope of a new beginning that sustained our parents and grandparents through War. It has nothing in common with the hope that might sustain us as we battle terminal illness.

Our Christian hope is this: that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8). No matter what we go through, and no matter how we feel; no matter how dark the night or how long the fight; and no matter whether we live or die: we are not abandoned.

Hope is not based on the strength of our will, but on God’s promises, which are in turn grounded in his character.

The oil of hope can be found in the midst of the dark night of the soul, but that is a risky place to find ourselves in. Better to store up hope when we do not need it, to remind ourselves daily of God’s promises – to soak ourselves in them, so that they stain into us – so that the reservoir is at hand when we find ourselves needing to draw on them. Then we do not need to fear the darkness. After all, it is only in the night that a lamp serves any purpose.

Workplace sermon series 4 : Philippians 4:1-9

Philippians 4:1-9

We are continuing with our series on the workplace. To recap, we are defining work as what we do, as an expression of ourselves, for the common good. That might be paid or voluntary, formal or informal, and it certainly includes the regular activities of the retired. We have taken a look at the common experience of frustration in our work, and experiencing grace in our work. And we have posed the questions in what ways has the work we have done been the place where we have encountered the risen Lord Jesus? and in what ways does our work invite others to consider his call?

This morning, I want to speak about being peace-makers in the places we work; interceding for our co-workers and exercising a ministry of reconciliation between them when people fall out with one another.

Much of the New Testament is a collection of letters, written by people to people. That might sound obvious, but it isn’t. Because ‘we’ as the Church possess the letters, we easily forget that they were not written for us. They are personal. Paul’s letter to the Christians in Philippi is a record of a deep personal relationship, the concern of a very young community of believers for a man who shared their life for a few weeks before he was taken from them, and who they now hear is in prison; and he, in turn, is concerned for them. It is all that remains of a correspondence between friends. And in the course of that correspondence, this little community has shared with Paul their concern for two of their number. Euodia and Syntyche have had a falling out. And it is having an impact on everyone. In part because it puts others in an awkward position: when you don’t want to take sides in your friends’ quarrel, but by not taking her side each accuses you of taking the side of the other. But also out of genuine concern for the cost of the falling out to these two loved friends and co-workers.

Paul’s plea to them, to be reconciled, surely comes from personal experience. You will remember the close friendship and working partnership between Paul and Barnabas, the man who first took a risk on Paul when no one else would trust him. Their shared history was a beautiful thing. But they had fallen out, over John Mark. Mark had accompanied them on their journey, but had abandoned them when the going got tough. Barnabas felt that it was important that Mark be given another chance, but Paul disagreed. Now, let us take a moment to consider what is going on here. Mark would later go on to write the Gospel According to Mark, and according to Church tradition he is the un-named young man who fled naked from the garden when Jesus was arrested. That this is handed down as tradition suggests that it was known among the early Christian community; and that would make his abandoning Paul and Barnabas a second running away. I want to suggest that Barnabas and Paul both had Mark’s best interests at heart: that Barnabas was concerned that if he didn’t get back on the bicycle, so to speak, he’d never risk riding again; whereas Paul was concerned that should he fall off a third time, he’d never get back on. A difference of opinion – and one over which they could not reach agreement, and, apparently fell out. We know that at a later point, Paul and Mark were reconciled; but we have no such assurance that Paul and Barnabas were reconciled, and I think that must have weighed heavy on Paul’s heart.

An un-thought but by no means malicious word from me, that looks like I have exposed your secret insecurity. That thing about you that grates me, because it reflects back to me that thing about myself that I don’t like. It is easy to fall out. In fact, I think it is inevitable. Anyone can do it – even the closest of friends. But it is harder to reconcile – and for that, we need someone to stand with us, to help us, to struggle with us to take hold of the life that has taken hold of us, when death tries to claim us back.

So how might we act as peace-makers between our co-workers? As Paul concludes his letter he writes down his ‘and finally’ – the last words, the if-you-forget-everything-else-I’ve-said-don’t-forget-this words. Finally, beloved. Beloved. See yourself and one another – including that person you have fallen out with – as loved by God. Warts and all, beloved. Take account of whatever is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable. If there is anything about that person which is excellent or worthy of praise, take account of that too.

When someone speaks ill of a third party, rather than agreeing, help them to take account of the good things. That isn’t to say that there aren’t things about us that are false or dishonourable or unjust or impure or displeasing or reproachable: there are. And the media trains us to express moral outrage against everyone. But we are called to train our response to be different, by disciplining ourselves to take into account the good.

Yes, Euodia and Syntyche, you have fallen out, and perhaps even with fair cause. But take into account the times you have been there for one another, the things you have gone through together, the love your community has for you both, the concerns of all who know you, the life to which you have been called.

In a world that daily provokes us to put ourselves in the place of the wronged and others in the place of the wrong-doer, being a peace-maker is both simple and hard. It is simple to insist that we look at the good in others. It is simple to call into question the attention-grabbing headlines and political conference sound-bites. And it is hard. Hard to take a stand as peace-maker, when everyone is stirring-up division. And so Paul has some other advice too: celebrate God’s goodness, trust that he is near, pray rather than worry, live guarded by God’s peace. Do it together.

Peace-makers help people to make peace with one another. Peace-makers can also help people to make peace with themselves – something plenty of people struggle with. And peace-makers help people to make peace with God. It may just be that being a peace-maker is the most significant work you can do in the place where you work, the most important focus of your intercession. And so this morning I would like to give to you a bookmark with the words of Philippians 4:8 written on it, to take away, and to place somewhere where you will come across it frequently in the days ahead, as a reminder of those things peace-makers take account of.

Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the peace-makers, for they will be called children of God.’ May it be so of us. Amen.

Workplace sermon series 3

Philippians 3:4b-14

On Monday evening, a good number of us went out for a meal together to celebrate our patronal festival, the Feast of St Michael and All Angels. We were treated to a lovely meal in a great setting, and we shared with one another the gift of conversation and company, a giving of ourselves. Our bodies were fed, and so were our hearts and minds and souls.

That meal looks somewhat different, these several days later. The potato-peelings and carrot-peelings and cauliflower leaves are, hopefully, rotting in a compost bin. They will become something rich again, but right now they are probably wet with condensation and crawling with slugs breaking them down further. As for the food we ate, our bodies will have extracted the goodness, and whatever was left has long since been flushed down the sewer.

Of course, there was more to the meal than the food. We were nourished by the company. But that night has passed, and we can’t point back to it as evidence of our companionship if we are not to join together at the Lord’s Table afresh today.

Today we heard read to us Paul’s reflections on his background – those things over which he had no say, for we do not get to choose our inheritance – and some of his notable achievements – those things to which he contributed effort and exerted some control, though the possibilities open to him were shaped by his background. Paul describes these things as rubbish, and as what the rather censorial translators have coyly termed loss. The point is not that these things were never of any worth, but rather that these things have been used by God to nourish him, but are not themselves the main thing.

The main thing is the call of Jesus Christ, to become united with him, to grow into what it looks like to have been made his own, to press on into the fullness of what he intends for us, knowing that we have not yet achieved this. For our true self is not located in our family background or in the strength of our Curriculum Vitae, but is hidden in Christ, and is revealed to us and to the watching world by the processes of dying to self and experiencing resurrection.

We are continuing with our sermon series on work [albeit in truncated form this morning, due to it being a service of Baptism as well as the Eucharist], and this morning I want to ask the question: In what ways is our work an invitation to consider the call of Jesus Christ?

In what ways has the work we have done been the place where we have encountered the risen Lord Jesus? Or in what ways does our work invite others to consider his call? Nursing, as both participation in and signpost to his compassion and healing. Law, as both participation in and signpost to his justice. Teaching, as both participation in and signpost to his wisdom. And as we come to baptise Kenaniah, who knows what will be added to his background, as the context within which he will encounter Jesus, and respond?

This morning we will be fed, by word and by sacrament, by the water of baptism and the sharing of the bread and the wine. Immediately after the service, the water in the font will become rubbish, will be poured down the sink: but being baptised into the family of God … that lies open ahead of us, an ongoing going and growing with Jesus. May we keep on pressing on …

Taken ... Blessed ... Broken ... Given ...

Taken … Blessed … Broken … Given …

One of the images St Paul employs in his letters, to help some of the earliest congregations of the Church to understand their new identity, is that they are ‘the body of Christ’ … Over several months, I have spent time with members of the congregation of Sunderland Minster, in the places where they are to be found throughout the week. As I watched them working and listened to their experiences, I was drawn to their hands, eyes and mouths … and to the tools that act as extensions of our hands, eyes and mouths … as well as to the ways in which the workplace overlapped with the home, and home-life spilled into work … The image that came to the fore was of the body of Christ: Taken and Blessed, as we gather together Sunday by Sunday and encounter Jesus in Word and Sacrament … and then Broken and Given, as we are sent back out into the world in ones and twos to love and serve the Lord and our neighbour … to be taken up again … At first I had intended to exhibit one photograph of each person I visited, as a means of celebrating ‘ordinarily extraordinary’ people … but as I looked through the images I had taken, the project became a series of photographs in groups of three. Like the body of Christ, these particular images are part of an ongoing work-in-progress, which will be added to over time …

the artist … Sarah

I visited Sarah at her home, where she showed me several pieces she had made, in different media. I was drawn to a pot she had fashioned from clay. The clay was scarred, and fired, and these processes had made it a thing of beauty. The pot itself was empty, a vessel, full of potential, waiting to be filled. The artist and her creation resonated with the rich biblical images of humanity … resonate with our humanity.

the solicitors … Hollie and Graeme

Husband-and-wife Graeme and Hollie work together at Hardings Solicitors, where Hollie is one of the Directors and Graeme is office manager. Hollie specialises in matters relating to Property and to Wills … our connections to place, and across time … Here professional and personal relationships are woven together … toys brought-in and left-behind by their sons … there is a sense of ‘family’ to the firm … And a commitment to justice as a universal righteous principle, and not a commodity to be bought by wealth.

the voluntary sector coordinator … Gillian

At the time I photographed her, Gillian was working for Age UK. She has since retired … Her team of volunteers made regular phone calls to elderly people at home, who might not otherwise have had that human contact. Encroaching isolation might be experienced as, to borrow a biblical image, entanglement in the cords of death. The play of hand with telephone cord suggests God’s intervention to set free … Conversely, the same action recalls another biblical image, our being knitted together by God in the womb … life, cherished …

the archaeologists … Becca and Chris

Daughter-and-father, Becca oversees a team of archaeologists, Chris volunteers on her dig … one generation serving, supporting, the next … and the past serving the present, by giving-up its stories, its wisdom and folly, offering corrective to the stories we tell in our search to be earthed … I joined them for one day, learning to patiently reveal pottery from the ground, from the ash and clay … bringing us full circle.

text and photographs … Andrew Dowsett

Workplace sermon series 2 : Feast of St Matthew

Matthew 9:9-13

Last Sunday, I introduced a five-part sermon series on work. Today, I’d like us to think about a particular aspect of work that came up again and again in the conversations I’ve had as I’ve spent time with some of you, and that is frustration. Frustration at not being able to do as much as you would like to do, to serve and to bless others through your work – often because of a bureaucratic burden in addition to your primary focus, or as a result of the cutting of funds or some other resource. And perhaps a frustration that what you do is not really understood, its value is not appreciated by others.

One of Jesus’ closest friends wrote an account of their friendship, and today we’ve read the excerpt where Matthew recalls their first significant meeting. It took place at Matthew’s place of work.

Matthew was a tax collector. Now, the people were living under a puppet-king, who raised taxes, who sat under the patronage of the Roman Emperor, who also raised taxes. It is likely that Matthew was one of the tax collectors for the local ruler rather than the imperial occupiers; but nonetheless, tax collectors were hated. Everyone knew that tax collectors took a cut for themselves – just like everyone knows that all politicians are liars, or that teachers work short days and have long holidays but still complain about their work conditions. I’m suspicious of things that ‘everyone knows’, but there we are …

Jesus takes the time to notice him. Not as a tax collector but as a person. And then Jesus makes him an intriguing offer: ‘Follow me.’

Where is Jesus going? To eat a meal. To share bread, from which we get the word companion. With other people like Matthew. People that respectable people worked hard not to notice. Only, now they can’t help but notice, and they demand to know what is going on.

One of the big ideas in the Bible is that of being a sinner. It is such a big idea that it is explored – that attempts are made to express it – in many different ways. There is wilful rebellion against God, certainly; but it is much bigger than that. A big part of it has to do with falling short of a target – of our own target as much as God’s. One time, Paul writes of his utter frustration at not being able to do the good things he desires to do, and cries out, who will set me free from this body of death? – thanks be to God, who has done something about it, sending Jesus!

And while the Bible speaks of how God transforms us so that we are drawn less and less to that wilful rebellion, there is a really positive sense to being a sinner. We see it in that short story Matthew recounts for us. It is the recognition that we are not self-sufficient, the recognition that we cannot do what we are called upon to do in our own strength. And it is those who recognise themselves as sinners who are open to that encounter with Jesus. Those who believe that they are doing just fine have no need for him. The Pharisees had learnt only to see sin in negative terms, and so it was hard for them to receive grace.

Like the other Gospel writers, Matthew took all the stories he might have told about Jesus and thought about which ones to include, and which ones he would have to leave out, and what order to put them down in. They aren’t strictly chronological. And he records the time Jesus invited him to supper right in the middle of a collection of accounts of Jesus healing people and restoring them to their loved ones, to their community. Indeed, Jesus even uses the analogy of a doctor here. You see, the grace of being recognised and of being blessed with companionship is a healing, albeit not a physical one.

We are sinners, and – whether people recognise that description of themselves or not – that is the only kind of person there is. We will always have that frustration of not being able to do all that we would like to do to serve and to bless others through our work. We know what it is like to have 10 things to do today and only manage to get 8, or 6, or sometimes 3 of them done … and for the back-log to accumulate so that we fall further and further behind. We know what it is like to get it all done, only for someone else to add number 11 to the list. But when we own our sinfulness, we also get to be saints: friends of Jesus, companions at the table, experiencing rest from our labour, experiencing the recreation that empowers us to work well and to God’s glory.

Frustration, and grace. May the one bring us to the other.

I’m going to invite Richard up now, and interview him about his experience of work. [Here followed a short interview with Richard Davison.]

Workplace sermon series 1

Philippians 2:6-11

This morning, I am beginning a five-part sermon series on work, and today we’ll explore what we might mean by work. The backdrop to the series is that I have been visiting members of our church family in the places where they work through the week. I intend to keep doing so through the autumn, and the Minster will be holding an exhibition of photographs celebrating our congregation as it is dispersed across the city – watch this space.

In the ancient world, there was a belief that the gods did what they liked, and that mere mortals were slaves, were workers. The exception were kings or emperors, who, as living representatives of the gods, as bearers of the divine likeness and partakers in the divine nature, god-like, did as they chose.

Of course, we are much more advanced today. We don’t believe in pantheons of gods, in whose image the great and the good are made. Or do we?

One of the things that has become even clearer to me as I have spent time listening to members of the congregation in work contexts is that our society has come to devalue work that does not generate money. That we find ourselves in a self-perpetuating system of slavery to money, where people are seen primarily as economic units, net contributors to generating money (high earners, financial sector) or a net drain on money (children, though they are a necessary investment; pensioners, the disabled or ill). We might be aware of a tension, in the public rhetoric of such a system, between affirming the voluntary sector as easing the financial burden and decrying the same people for perpetuating inefficiency in the machine. It seems to me that our advanced society hasn’t advanced anywhere since Pharaoh enslaved the Israelites, or the Emperor sat in Rome.

And like the Israelites, it is easy to fixate on the negative, on the problem we can do nothing about rather than look to the God who has set us free.

Let us turn to the church in Philippi. Philippi, in Greece, was an ex-pat retirement city for the Roman army, a place where those who had served the system might reap the rewards of their labours. (Not dissimilar to the English ex-pat enclaves in Spain?) It was the place of the first church Paul planted in Europe, a church composed of the household of a merchant-woman and the household of a prison governor. Their livelihoods were dependent on the Pax Romana – just as ours are dependent on western democracy and the free market economy. And Paul sends them a hymn. Paul sends a hymn, because those words that we rehearse over and over shape us, and he wants our attitude to be conformed to that of Jesus Christ.

This hymn is in fact a proclamation of the gospel, as the early church understood it: Because Jesus had faithfully represented God to his unfaithful people, God had overturned his unjust death at the hands of those who had rejected him; and had established this Jesus as Lord over a renewed people of God, composed of Jews and – surprisingly – Gentiles scattered across the Roman Empire, who would survive the imminent judgement of national Israel (this took place in AD70) and guarantee God’s ongoing intention to form a people through whom the nations would be blessed. And in the end, this servant-king would be acknowledged as faithfully representing God by all other claimants to God’s throne (in the context of the Church scattered throughout the Roman Empire, this was ‘fulfilled’ when the Roman Emperor Constantine submitted to Christ).

But what has this to do with work? Well first, in the verses preceding our reading, Paul contrasts work as a means of taking (verse 3) and work as a means of giving (verse 4). And against that backdrop, we are shown that the nature of God revealed in the humanity of Jesus is this: God is a slave, a worker (verses 6, 7). That is revolutionary. God, who does not need to work, chooses to work, to serve, to bless.

Work, then, might be understood as what we do, as an expression of ourselves, for the common good.

That might be paid or unpaid. It might be based in an office, or the open air. It might be as the primary carer of a relative. It might be, for the retired, the work of attending to community among those who would otherwise find themselves isolated – the work of keeping body and mind and heart and soul active – the work of going to the cinema and on to lunch.

Work, as what we do as an expression of ourselves for the common good. Such an understanding of work involves a self-humbling – it is for the common good – but the act of self-humbling finds us not only working for God but also working with God, partnering with the God who works to serve others in order that they might be blessed.

And in that sharing in the obedience of Christ – in the faithful representation of God’s likeness – we will also share in the liberating victory of the servant-king over the tyranny of false gods.

So what might it look like to recognise Jesus Christ as Lord over our lives, for the blessing of all people? Let me tell you some stories.

I have spent time with Liz, serving a hot meal to homeless men and women.

I have spent time with Sarah, a student of art, someone who challenges how we see the world. In shaping a vase, she reveals potential in unpromising clay. In fashioning a lightshade from plastic cups, she imagines new purpose for something considered ‘disposable’. Our society needs artists, who might tell an alternative story.

I have spent time with married couple Hollie and Graeme. Solicitors working in the same firm, Hollie is one of the directors, Graeme the office manager. Through Legal Aid, they insist that justice is a righteous and universal principle and not a commodity to be controlled by those with wealth. And yes, they live with the tension of cuts to Legal Aid and the need for their firm to provide for its family, but it is a tension they are committed to wrestling with. Likewise, they are committed to investing in the legal training path for local people. To blessing others.

I have spent time with Gillian, before she retired, at Age UK, where she has helped those considered ‘surplus to requirements’ to remain human in a society that would de-humanise them. Again, it is a constant struggle, in which we need to be reminded that Jesus is Lord.

I have spent time with father-and-daughter Chris and Becca on an archaeological dig, where Becca has been a team leader and Chris a volunteer. Our society has a very short memory, and needs those who reveal the past, who might reveal how flawed some of the stories we tell about ourselves are. It might sound like a strange way to bless a people, to tell a different story. But stories shape cultures: they can lock us in prison cells, and they can shake the prison foundations and burst open doors. At the dig at Binchester, a ring was found this summer that testifies to faith in Jesus as Lord. The political landscape has been drawn and redrawn many times since, and peoples come and go: but through the ages, God has kept his promise to secure a people for himself through whom the nations will be blessed. And we, in our turn, are part of that people.

And we take part in God’s intention in diverse ways, both together and dispersed. But as we do, we need to be encouraged, and my hope is that over this autumn, you will be. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be looking at particular workplace issues. Alongside the sermon series, there will be an opportunity to explore things further on Tuesday evenings, at a discipleship class I will be starting on the 23^rd. If you’d be interested in taking part, pick up a flyer this morning.

As we work out together what it means to be God’s new people in the world, may our attitude be increasingly conformed to that of Jesus Christ. Amen.