Archbishop of York's inspiring sermon at St Cuthbert's on April 26th

Sermon for St Cuthberts’s, Darlington
Sunday 26 April 2026
Life in all its fulness

St John's gospel, Chapter 10 and Verse 10, Jesus says, ‘The thief comes to steal and
to destroy, but I have come that you may have life...’ And as it said in the version we
just heard, ‘life to the full.’ Or I love the translations that say, ‘life in abundance.’
That's what God comes to offer us in Jesus Christ, the very fullness of life, a life which
is a full measure poured into our laps, pressed down and overflowing; a life we can
hardly dare imagine.

An old friend and colleague of mine, quite a few years ago now, wrote a book that
was called Being human, being Church. It's a great book. And in the book, there was a
single sentence which struck me really powerfully. The sentence was this – ‘God's
way of being human has been revealed in Jesus Christ, is available to everyone by the
outpouring and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and is currently being demonstrated
down at your local church.’

I love this sentence. It spoke to my heart of everything that I believe about the
Christian faith and the life and witness of God's Church. The sentence has three
clauses. One, God's way of being human has been revealed in Jesus Christ. Two, is
available to everyone by the outpouring and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And
three, is currently being demonstrated down at your local church. Please don't take
this personally, I've never been here before - after this sermon, you'll probably never
invite me again! - but I absolutely believe the first two clauses of that sentence, and
as I'll come on to in a moment, I have a few issues about the third clause. But let's
start with the first two.

God's way of being human has been revealed in Jesus Christ. There are so many
things that we could say about the person of Jesus Christ, but this seems to me to be
a great place to start; that Jesus shows us what our humanity is meant to be like. I
don't know what you think when you look at our world at the moment, but I look at
our world and I see such sorrow, such confusion, such hurt, such uncertainty.
What our world needs is a heart transplant. Or, let me put it more personally, what I
need is a heart transplant. I think the world has a serious heart condition, and I
believe that if I had the heart of Jesus, I would be a better person, and I believe our
world would be a better place. Oh, come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my
heart for thee.

We human beings, we are meant to be kind; we are meant to be merciful; we are
meant to be generous; we are meant to be forgiving. We see this in Jesus and oh, we
see the lack of it in our world today, and maybe even in our own hearts.
God's way of being human has been revealed in Jesus Christ. There's lots more we
can say about Jesus, but it's a good place to start: that Jesus shows us what our
humanity could be.

In fact, I think if you want to share the gospel with Darlington - which I think you do! -
it's a great place to start.
Are you like me, a bit anxious about our world at the moment? Wouldn't our world
be a better place if we were all a bit more like Jesus? If you want to find out how to
be a bit more like Jesus, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to be like Jesus.
You know, sometimes people say to me, ‘Oh, the Church of England, it's full of
hypocrites.’ I always reply, ‘Yes, and there's room for one more! Come and join us.
We don't pretend to be anything other than sinners taking the cure.
That's all. We're not here this morning because you think you're so good. We strive
to be good. We strive to follow after the example of Jesus. But we are here because
we know we need help.

There's a paradox in the Christian faith - that you can't be yourself on your own. We
need help to become the people that we long to be, let alone the people God wants
us to be.

I don't like the sound bite culture that we live in, but if you pushed me into a corner
and said, ‘Well, come on, Archbishop, what's a sound bite for our world today, for
the Christian faith?’ I think I might say this: ‘In Jesus, you can become yourself. You
can become the person you are meant to be. God has a picture in God's heart of
what every single one of us is capable of becoming, and he wants to work that in us.’
God's way of being human has been revealed in Jesus Christ, we can give a very big
tick to that first clause in the sentence.

And the second one: it’s available to everyone. How? Through the outpouring and
indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it's not about gritting your teeth and
working hard at it. You do need to work hard at it, but it's a free gift. It's the free gift
of a loving Father who loves you very much, and what God wants is for you to
become the beautiful person you're meant to be.
I know we live in a world which is constantly telling us that somehow being you isn't
good enough. You know, in my case, I need to get a hair transplant, lose a bit of
weight. I’ve committed the terrible sin of getting older. Don't worry, we can solve all

that. And it's true, isn't it, you can't switch on your ‘phone, switch on the telly, drive
100 metres down the road without being bombarded with images of what you're
meant to be like. And the world is constantly saying, actually you're not good
enough, you're not young enough, you're not thin enough, you're not good looking
enough, you're not wealthy enough. Don't worry, there's help available. If you drove
this car, if you wore that designer pair of jeans, if you wore that perfume, you'd
become beautiful and attractive.

Only none of it works.

Or perhaps we might say it works just enough to get you hooked, just enough to get
you addicted to the idea that you might be able to purchase your way to happiness -
or just work down the gym a bit more.

No, God's way of being human has been revealed in Jesus Christ and is available to
everyone. How? By the outpouring of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy
Spirit that can bring you the peace, the joy, the gentleness, the goodness that we
need in order to be fulfilled, in order to become ourselves; that God does have a
picture in God's heart of the beautiful you, you are meant to be, and God will help
you to become yourself. Only we know that you can't become yourself on your own.
You only become yourself in relationship with God, in Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit.
Sisters and brothers, this is very good news, and it is freely available to every single
human being in Darlington and all points east, west and south.
No, my question is with the third clause of the sentence. God's way of being human
has been revealed, is available through the Holy Spirit, and is currently being
demonstrated down at your local church. That's the challenge. And I believe that is
the challenge that you in your church are rising to meet, with that wonderful image
of opening doors, not just opening the doors of your building, opening the doors of
your hearts to say we need help if we are going to be the people we are meant to be.
We need help if we're going to be the community and the nation that we need to be.

We cannot do it on our own.

And so I thank God for your vision, for the amazing things that under God you're
beginning to do. But what my prayer for your church is that as people, as you grow
and as God transforms you into yourselves, into the church you're meant to be, then
people will see, oh, wow, here's a group of women and men and boys and girls who
are trying to live life to the full.

Because there's a lot of thieves out there. There's a lot of seductions and
temptations. There's a lot of snares. But in the end, they will only steal and destroy. I
have come, says Jesus, that you can have life, and life in all its fullness. Our job as the
people of God in this place is to be a sign of what real humanity in Jesus starts to look
like.

That's kind of the end of the sermon. And I’d love to go on much longer, but I realise
we've all got other things to do. I can talk about these things all day, as you will have
noticed. But I do want to add a little PS.

Have you noticed, first of all, that the Bible begins in a garden but ends in a city? I
think this is very good news. It means, first of all, there will be kebab shops in
heaven. I love the countryside, but this is an urban, communal vision: the City of God,
where every tribe and every tongue, and every race, and every nation, gathered
together. So you may have noticed that it begins in a garden, it ends in a city, but
have you also noticed that it begins with a closed door and ends with an open door?
So when Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden, it says the gates to the Garden
of Eden are shut and locked, and angels with fiery torches and goodness knows what
are on sentry. And then right at the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, Jesus,
in the vision received by St John says this,
‘I set before you an open door.’ (Revelation 3. 8)
And Paul, over and over again in his letters, prays that God will open for him a door
of opportunity that he can bear witness to Christ.

I long for all of us to find our full humanity in Jesus Christ and I pray each day for the
outpouring and the indwelling of the Spirit to reveal Jesus in me and to help me
become myself.

And I long for this church - and every church - to have open doors for those whose
lives are hard, who are mired by the confusions and sorrows of this life, that they can
see what God has for them in Jesus Christ, the Jesus who, in that same third chapter
of the Book of Revelation, says, ‘I stand at the door and I knock’ (Revelation 3. 20).
Our doors need to be open to him; but so often they are closed.

So let me finish with a story.
And the story is about a priest preaching his heart out on a Sunday morning, not on
the 10th chapter of John's gospel, but on the 15th. There's a strong connection here.
The 15th chapter is where Jesus says, ‘I am the vine, you and the branches, abide in
me’ (John 15. 5).

So the priest is preaching his heart out and there's a little boy in the congregation
who comes up to the priest after the service and says, ‘Father, I was listening
carefully to your sermon, but I didn't really understand what you're saying.’ ‘Oh,’
says the priest, ‘what was it you didn't understand?’ And the little boy says, ‘I
thought you were saying that we need to open our hearts to Jesus, and we need to
invite Jesus to come and live in our hearts,’ - to have, as I was saying earlier a kind of
spiritual heart transplant, to have the heart of Jesus – ‘ I thought that's what you
were saying.’

And the priest replies, ‘Well, that is what I was saying. You've understood the sermon
really well. I couldn't have put it better myself.’
‘So,’ the little boy continues, ‘my problem is this: God is so big, and I am so small. If
Jesus came and lived in my heart, wouldn't he burst out all over the place?’
‘Yes,’ said the priest, ‘that's how it works.’
Amen.

Stephen Cottrell
Archbishop of York