James Lawrence: Sermons from Blackburn Cathedral
Canon James Lawrence is Canon Missioner at Blackburn Cathedral, one of England's great historic churches. In this collection, you will find sermons spanning more than three years of Sunday and festival preaching — through the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and the long stretch of Ordinary Time.
James preaches with intellectual rigour, pastoral warmth, and a gift for connecting ancient texts to the questions of contemporary life. His sermons range across the great themes of Christian faith: the nature of God, the call to discipleship, the work of the Spirit, the demands of justice, and the inexhaustible mystery of grace.
This collection was assembled as a gift and archive for those who have heard James preach at Blackburn Cathedral, and for anyone who wishes to encounter these sermons for the first time.
Episodes
43 episodes
Ash Wednesday 2026
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.
Feast of the Conversion of St Paul 2026
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.
Feast of the Baptism of Christ 2026
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.
Second Sunday of Advent 2025
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.
All Saints' Sunday 2025
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.
Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity / Creation Care 2025
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.
Twelfth Sunday after Trinity 2025
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.
Seventh Sunday after Trinity 2025
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.
Third Sunday after Trinity 2025
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.
Second Sunday after Trinity / Feast of Peter and Paul 2025
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.
First Sunday after Trinity 2025
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.
Day of Pentecost 2025
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.
Third Sunday of Easter 2025
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.
Fourth Sunday of Lent / Mothering Sunday 2025
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.
Ash Wednesday 2025
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.
Second Sunday of Christmas 2025
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.
Fourth Sunday of Advent 2024
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.
First Sunday of Advent 2024
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.
Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity 2024
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.
Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity 2024
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.
Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity 2024
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.
Twelfth Sunday after Trinity 2024
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.
Tenth Sunday after Trinity 2024
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?