Bishop Michael preaches at St Paul’s

On Sunday (25 October 2026 ) Bishop Michael preached at the Barts Health NHS Trust and St Joseph’s Hospice Annual Service of Remembrance held at St Paul’s Cathedral, London. The service, which was dedicated to the memory of those who have died, is especially aimed at people who’ve been bereaved, their friends and families.

Speaking to those gathered Bishop Michael said, “Before all of us is held the promise of being ‘looked after’, held in God’s hands. How this works is put in the reading like this: ‘In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster and their going from us to be their destruction, but they are at peace.’ The reading speaks too of light, telling us that those we see no more will ‘shine forth and will run like sparks through the stubble’. The ultimate promise is of peace because ‘grace and mercy are upon his holy ones, and he watches over his elect’.

“The invitation of tonight’s service is this. Will you allow yourself to be a looked after adult? Or a looked after child? Or perhaps I should say to us all, a looked after child of God? We’re gathered from so many traditions and backgrounds, of all kinds of faith and of none. Wherever you come from, I invite you to see in this story of Jesus with the family who were his especial friends, in his grief for the one he loved, that that though death is real and painful, though it’s rubbish and it hurts, that nonetheless it is not the whole of the story that is to be told. That even though we weep, each one of us is called into hope, light, promise and life. To be unbound. To be set free. To be looked after.”

Read the sermon in full.

Bishop Michael was in London ahead of his formal introduction into the House of Lords as one of the Church of England’s Lords Spiritual on Tuesday, 27 October.