“How can we become more authentic in our living? How can we live more faithfully as disciples of Christ? As a first step I want to suggest we take our lead from another long-running TV show, Fake or Fortune. In this show the presenters are on the trail of paintings by old masters which have been lost for years. Often the paintings are covered in a thick layer of dust or dirt, or they have been overpainted by a later artist, and the first step in the investigation is to clean them. To take them back to what they were. To remove the layers of grime to reveal the true picture.

“Now that takes courage, and care. If you proceed too fast or too far you risk damage to the underlying picture. The preparation and the treatment has to be right. And the first step is the preparation. In Fake or Fortune the preparation is simply accepting the picture as it is, and taking it to a studio where the cleaning work will be done.

“So that is the first word – acceptance – in the sense of knowing that we are accepted, as we are. Before any cleaning up work has been done. This is a theme which recurs in Paul’s letters to the young churches. Acceptance. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 5 and verse 8 we have this: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In other words, God accepts us as we are. He does not wait until we have tidied up our act a bit. He steps into our sinful, messy and compromised lives and accepts us as we are. And that is good news.

“But – whilst he loves us as we are, he loves us too much to leave us that way. So something must be done. Like the old painting, the dust and dirt must be taken off to reveal what lies underneath. It really is no good continuing to hide behind it if we want to become more authentic in our living, if we want to be more faithful disciples of Christ.”

This is an excerpt from the sermon delivered by John Sawkins at Morning Worship on 3 May 2026. The readings were Matthew 5:13–20 and 1 Peter 2:2–10. Do read his whole sermon, available at this link, which will explain more about our title and why John is talking about another TV show!

Our picture of a piece of artwork being restored in Florence was taken by Maxim Kotov and made available on Unsplash