Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Fifth Sunday after Trinity 2026

In 1916, when Franz-Josef, the Emperor of Austria, died. The funeral procession carried his coffin, draped in the imperial colours of black and gold, to the Capuchin Church in Vienna. Hapsburg emperors are buried there, in the Kaisergruft.

Inside the crypt, behind the closed and bolted door, stood His Eminence, The Cardinal-Archbishop of Vienna. The Chamberlain stood outside the crypt, with the coffin. ‘Open!’ he demanded (in Latin). ‘Who seeks admission?’ replied the Cardinal (probably in the much better Latin). And then the Chamberlain rattled off the imperial titles, ‘We bear the remains of his Imperial and Apostolic Majesty, Franz-Josef I, by the grace of God Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Defender of the Faith, Prince of Bohemia-Moravia, King of Lombardy, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Lodomeria, and Illyria; King of Jerusalem, Archduke of Austria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Kraków, Duke of Lorraine, of Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia...’

I could go on; there were thirty-seven claims to fame. But you will start to worry about your lunch. We will hasten on.

Behind that bolted door the Cardinal Archbishop was unimpressed. ‘We know him not.’ And then, again, ‘Who seeks admission?’ 

So, the Chamberlain tried again, this time offering up a list of victories and achievements—Franz Josef he argued was very distinguished. ‘We know him not,’ the Cardinal said. And then a third time, ‘Who seeks admission?’ 

The Chamberlain was beaten, ‘We bear the body of Franz-Josef, our brother, a sinner like us all.’ 

‘Him we know’, and the door opened.

Who seeks admission? ‘A sinner like us all.’ I need to talk about sin and sinners. I must do that because we have just heard St Paul. Romans Chapter 7—a challenging passage in a challenging letter and all about sin. 

I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Romans 7: 19)

As readings go, this one is tricky, it is brow-furrowingly difficult. ‘The evil I do not want is what I do.’ Paul tells us that sin is an issue. 

So, I must talk about sin. But I am not going to talk about overdosing on Bendick’s Bittermints, or kicking the cat, or curious things you can look at on the internet, because Paul was not talking about greed, or anger, or lust. He wasn’t talking about specific sins, bad deeds, naughtiness. He was trying to explain why sin is a problem. He was telling us what sin is. And sin does not look like Bittermints, nor the dodgier things you can do online.

To explain what Paul meant, allow me to introduce myself. My name is David Hoyle. David Hoyle is a human being; I am English, white and I am male. I have an identity, I am human, I am not a halibut, and I am not from Hawaii. I also have a character, some skills and weaknesses, some likes and dislikes. I can ride a bicycle, but I do not like to, I cannot sing, but I wish I could. All that is significant. A human can be Dean of Westminster, a halibut cannot. The fact that I cannot sing affects the way I do my job. But, but… most people would be less interested in my identity or character and more interested in the choices I make. Choices are where things get interesting. So, Canon Hawkey who sits next to me knows I cannot sing and that must cause him some distress, but he would be much more upset if I made bad choices, to sing loudly perhaps, or suppose I had chosen not to shower through all our hot weather and then turned up in lederhosen. 

Choices make us interesting, or difficult. That is why St Paul was writing about choices this morning. He described the effort that goes into choices, about trying to do one thing but failing and actually doing another,

I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

We make choices and the choices are interesting, even exciting. We also know that we make choices and sometimes, often even, we mess up. George Eliot wrote about the evil that we love. Auden told us sin is addictive. Again and again, voices telling us that we go wrong. We want to succeed. We want a test we can pass, we want to succeed, in sport, in business, in life, in love. We really want to do well. And over and over, as we choose and choose it goes wrong, it ends badly. We keep choosing badly and sometimes we even enjoy it. Mae West remarked, ‘to err is human, but it feels divine’. Choosing, going wrong. That is what St Paul is writing about.

Even religious people suffer from this; in fact, we might have this problem more than most. We want to prove we are religious; we want to impress one another and impress God. We want to make the choices that will demonstrate how well we are doing. Is there a law? Let me show you my obedience. Is there holiness? Let me prove how holy I can be. Are there good works? Let me demonstrate how hard I can work. 

And, wrong says St Paul. It does not work like that. It never has worked like that, and it never will. Faith is not a test, it is not a thing to put on your CV, after cycling proficiency and before A levels, because you and I are not built for religious success. We are disposed to mess things up. We will not succeed, we will fail.

So let me introduce myself again. I am David Hoyle. I am a human being; I have a character—and I am a sinner. I am not a sinner because I occasionally make bad choices. I am a sinner because there is a bit of wiring in me that keeps pushing me in the wrong direction. It is part of my character. It is who I am. That is what Paul means when he says,

I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

Sitting just in front of me, by chance today, is a group of my friends who have come here from Bristol. Let me tell you that are good people, at least two of them are judges, there are doctors, public servants, women and men who have done good deeds. They are awash in act of kindness. They have medals and certificates in the wall. So, it seems harsh that they should come all this way today to be told that they too are sinners. This afternoon we will have lunch together. The sun will shine, we will be gracious and courteous, and we will drink some rather good red wine. It will be lovely; your great aunt could come and be pleased with the company. But we will still all be sinners. We will not be sinners because we have drunk red wine. We will not be tripped up because we have been trapped by a bad thing. There are no bad things, God made only good things, and the red wine will be very good. And we will not be sinners because one or two of us will be a little careless in counting how many glasses we have had, choosing carelessly. We will be sinners because it is in our character to mess up now and again and often. Even if you come from Bristol.

All of us here have the faulty wiring, all of us sinners, Paul had it too—he could not escape. That is what he says, he is a sinner. Why? Why did he go to all this trouble? Because he knew we have to stop trying so hard. We have to stop trying to save ourselves with our obedience and our constant attempts to be better than we are. The message of St Paul, the word he has for us, is that the thing we keep trying to do for ourselves has already been done for us. It was never our effort that would save us, it was always the gift of God in Christ. We will mess up, he won’t. Not us, but him. Jesus is the one human being who managed to be properly, fully human and did not have that bit of faulty wiring. Christian faith does not begin in better choices, or holiness, or being suspicious of Bittermints. The fundamental and crucial truth is that we are already loved, already forgiven. Already free. Even you. Even me. Christian faith is a turning to Christ.

The big idea here, in St Paul, is that instead of the effort of trying to do it ourselves. Instead of my trying to get it right—which always turns out just like my attempts to sing better or much like a halibut trying to be the Dean of Westminster. Instead of effort, and all those choices, instead of me trying to do it, Christ takes up the strain. Little by little, if I accept the gift, he will make me more like him. He will make me more human, better equipped for relationship, forgiven and forgiving. Not an effort, a gift. The gift of being better than I am.

At the bolted door of a chapel with all eyes on a coffin, in Westminster Abbey on a Sunday morning, surrounded by the memory of a nation, in the week ahead in all the decisions and choices we must make, in a garden over lunch. Not effort, not the endless striving for a success that never quite comes off, but a gift. A gift of love and forgiveness and the promise of a life that is offered if we will only let go of ourselves and accept it.