James Lawrence: Sermons from Blackburn Cathedral

As Lent begins again, James preaches on the dust to which we return — and the breath of God that first animated it. A sermon on mortality, mercy, and the strange freedom of knowing how small we are before a God of inexhaustible grace.

On the feast of Paul's Damascus Road encounter, James explores the most dramatic conversion in Christian history — asking what it means for a life to be turned inside out by a meeting with the risen Christ, and what this says to us today.

At the Baptism of Christ, James returns to the theme of repentance — exploring how Jesus's own baptism inaugurates a ministry of transformation, and what it means to follow him into the waters of new life and new identity.

James explores the Advent call to repentance — not as guilt-inducing self-flagellation but as a liberating reorientation toward God. To repent is to turn from whatever diminishes us toward the one who makes us fully and lastingly alive.

On All Saints' Day, James celebrates the extraordinary company of the faithful — those remembered and those forgotten — and reflects on what it means to belong to a community that spans death itself.

In the first of a creation care series, James reflects on the doctrine of creation — not Gaia as a self-sustaining system, but a world held moment by moment in the hands of a personal, loving God who calls us to be its careful stewards.

James turns to Paul's shortest letter — the personal, urgent plea to Philemon regarding the slave Onesimus — exploring what this remarkable document says about freedom, dignity, forgiveness, and the social revolution of the Gospel.

Jesus's warning about the dangers of wealth and the parable of the rich fool lead James to explore what genuine wisdom looks like — and why the accumulation of things is such a poor substitute for the life that is truly life.

James explores the sending of the seventy in Luke 10 — the harvest is plentiful, the labourers few — as a model for mission: travelling light, depending on hospitality, and announcing the nearness of the Kingdom.

On the feast of the two great apostles, James explores what Peter and Paul — so different in temperament and background — share: a transforming encounter with the risen Christ and a life given wholly to the Gospel.

As the long Trinity season begins, James reflects on what it means to live as people of the resurrection — shaped by the pattern of Christ's dying and rising, and sent into the world with the good news of the Kingdom.

James preaches on the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost — the rushing wind and tongues of fire that transformed a frightened group of disciples into a fearless, boundary-crossing community of witnesses.

James explores the beach breakfast of John 21 — Jesus cooking fish for exhausted disciples, the threefold restoration of Peter, and the simple, repeated question: do you love me? A sermon on failure, grace, and re-commissioning.

On Mothering Sunday, James holds together the joy of family and the pain of broken relationships — exploring what the New Testament means by the Church as mother, and the healing that comes from belonging. 

At the imposition of ashes, James preaches on the ancient words — remember you are dust — and their strange power to free us from pretension, to open us to grace, and to set us on the Lenten road.

As the Christmas season draws to a close, James reflects on John's great prologue — the Word that was with God and was God, become flesh and full of grace and truth — and what it means to receive him.

In the final days before Christmas, James reflects on the Annunciation — Mary's yes to the angel, the overshadowing of the Spirit, and the courage required to carry the word of God into the world.

James opens another Advent season with the Church's urgent and beautiful invitation: stay awake, keep watch, for the one who came and the one who is coming is already closer than we think.

James explores the upside-down kingdom of Jesus — where greatness is measured in service and the first shall be last — asking what genuine servant leadership looks like in church, family, and public life.

On the mountain of Transfiguration, the voice from the cloud says simply: listen to him. James explores what it might mean to truly hear Jesus — and to let his words reshape our lives from the inside out.

James engages Jesus's radical challenge to the purity codes of his day — arguing that what defiles a person comes not from outside but from within — and asks what this means for our own patterns of religion and righteousness.

In one of his most creative sermons, James uses the cultural lens of the zombie to explore what it means to be truly alive — and how Jesus offers not mere existence but resurrection life, a life that begins now and cannot be extinguished.

John's account of the feeding miracle leads James to explore the Bread of Life discourse — Jesus's astonishing claim to be the bread that comes down from heaven, given for the life of the world. What does it mean to feed on him?

Drawing on Amos's vision of the plumbline, James asks what it looks like to measure our lives, our churches, and our communities against God's standards of justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

James explores the feeding of the five thousand — one of the most dramatic and multi-layered miracles in the Gospels — as a sign of Christ's provision, his compassion, and the abundance of the Kingdom of God.