Hopefully you can hear me at the back. The sound is working okay, awesome, okay. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

It's a real honour to be stood here today speaking about some different topics, Black History Month. We're celebrating Black History Month. But what I would like us to do, first and foremost, is to show thanks to God for us being here today.

It's a true blessing that we're here for another day. And I think we should also thank you to Father Sam. He's an amazing vicar, inspiring all of us.

Our choir, amazing music, our organist, Patrick, and, of course, all of you gathered here today. Thank you very much. And we have Tony at the back.

And my son is our cameraman for this particular slot. My son is Kwesi, elder son. Okay, so why am I stood here today? As part of celebrating Black History Month, I'm going to share my story.

And then I'm also going to speak to how we can leverage our faith to make race relations better for all of us. So we are now an inclusive church, which is really amazing. When we look around us, we can see the diversity, which is very, very healthy.

I also understand that we had our harvest lunch last Sunday, and there was an awesome range of food, not just British dishes, but some international dishes there, too. So that's really, really great that we have that. And I also think that the church has a huge opportunity to influence positive change in this area of race relations.

And I'm hoping that from this particular talk, we'll all be inspired to do just that. So on the 6th of November, 1966, my parents welcomed their first son into the world, here in London. I was very, very fortunate to have parents who instilled in me at a very, very young age the importance of character.

At the age of 7, I traveled back to my native country, Ghana, because my father had to go back there to work. And what that helped me is that it actually helped me to experience a different part of the world other than the UK. So I started my schooling in Ghana, primary school, and I was also fortunate to be in a school that was quite diverse.

It was quite international. So there were not just Ghanaians. There were kids from other parts of the world and some from England, too, India, etc.

So this is really, really great. And we got along very, very well, most of us instilled with the foundation of our Christian faith. And then at the age of 13, I came back to London.

So again, my father traveling around, so we ended up back in London. And it was a bit different when I came back to London because when I started schooling, I noticed that relationships between different kinds of people were somewhat different, not quite the same as what I experienced back in Ghana. And I recall vividly saying to my father that maybe I would like to be back in Ghana because it seems like people are treating others differently because of how they look, the color of their skin, etc.

And this is when my father imparted some really great wisdom. A huge legacy for me is that what I should rather do is to focus on displaying the right character and showing respect for all my friends, regardless as to where they come from. And maybe when I do that, I could encourage others to do the same.

At the back of my mind, I kept thinking to myself that what can I do to change this narrative? It so happens that I'm still here talking about this very topic. And I had friends from different backgrounds, even here in this country. And I believe that I was a positive influence on all the friends that I interacted with, perhaps, I don't know, leading by example.

And let's think broadly about this. Discrimination is really a historical challenge for many, many years, centuries even. Some races have been seen as not being as important as other races.

Of course, we know different as Christians. And the challenge also has been with our social media and mainstream media. Because we see today that there's a lot of information that is being shared that is not entirely speaking to the truth.

And this is causing a lot of us to be misled in terms of our ways of thinking. So again, our Christian faith should help us to think differently about what we see and hear in mainstream media. We saw some weeks, months ago this march in central London with individuals claiming that we should have our United Kingdom back to ourselves.

Not really very healthy, really, for all of us. And so, more importantly, how can we leverage our faith to really change this narrative? And I was looking at, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. I was thinking very deeply about this particular passage from 2 Timothy 1-7.

And I thought, how can we apply this into this situation that we have in relation to our race relations? So God has created every single one of us. We have an incredible amount of power within us, each of us, really. We are very, very powerful creatures.

How can we leverage this in a way that will help to bring harmony between us? And when we look at love, this is an amazing way that we can show, because God loves each and every one of us, how can we share this love back to others, even those that don't like us? How can we do that? And, of course, we have been blessed with a very, very sound mind, which means that we can think in a way that is aligned with God's word. So I think that's a very, very important message there in our Christian faith. But then we can also look at the fact that we are very specially crafted creatures.

We are of divine, I'm not even sure how to put it to words, every single one of us. But there's three components that make up who we are. There's the body, there's the soul, and then there's the spirit.

So our bodies just help us to interact with each other, so we can actually feel and speak with each other. Our souls are a bit more deeper. These help us to feel, to think and reason, decide.

But the spirit, on the other hand, is even more powerful, isn't it? This is the connection with God, the lamp of God. It's this light that helps us to think, just like him. But today, there's the battle.

There's a battle going on, ladies and gentlemen. There's a battle going on. When I say battle, I'm not referring to the war in Ukraine or the war in Gaza, by the way, or any part of the world.

The battle that we have is in our mind, the battle between soul and spirit. This is really where the battle is for all of us. And when we choose to focus our attention to the spirit, then we become really aligned with God.

A lot of us are possibly aligned much more on the soul. We have feelings. We become angry.

Sometimes we're joyful. But that's all fleeting. We are emotional creatures by nature, but it's the spirit that helps us to develop a soul that is really aligned with what God would like to see in us.

The body is just the physical part. This is very, very temporary. But all these three elements really need to be connected, but led by the spirit and not by the soul.

So as disciples of Christ, what can we do? And I think that it would be really great if we take away from this short talk that I'm giving, is how can we influence change outside of our church here? This is really where we create this ripple effect, where we say to ourselves, okay, I am going to carry the spirit, the Holy Spirit, and I'm also going to find another friend and neighbor who thinks differently, and encourage them to think in the same way. And we have no idea what kind of impact this can have on those that we interact with. So there is this concept about sword sharpens sword.

And as disciples of Christ, I would like for us to really think deeply about our purpose here on Earth and how we can make a positive impact into the world by helping others to think like Jesus Christ. And the most important question we probably want to ask ourselves is what kind of legacy do I want to leave for those that are going to be coming after me? What kind of legacy do I want to leave? And how can this change the narrative in relation to race relations? Thank you very much. I'm going to... So I'm going to invite Father Sam to say a prayer for us to conclude.

Thank you, Solomon. Just before I pray, I'm very much reminded of our Gospel reading and everything that you're saying, that we are called to have a mind like Christ's. In our Gospel reading, we have Jesus interacting with a very strange group of people, Jews and Samaritans.

If we've read our history a little bit, we know that Jews and Samaritans didn't spend time together. They hated each other. They hated each other on racial grounds.

The Samaritans were derived from the people who were left behind after the deportation to Babylon. The Jews were those who were taken. The two cultures separated over a long period of time where the deported Israelites came back to their land when the Babylonian Empire fell.

Two different races tried to occupy the same place and they hated each other. But Jesus interacted with this group of people made up of people who really ought not to have spent time together. Why were they together? Because of desperation.

They were so desperate in their leprosy that they spent time together. Though they were Jews, though they were Samaritans, they cried out to Jesus and said, Jesus, please heal us. The expectation, perhaps, would have been that Jesus would heal only the Jews and set the Samaritan away.

But Jesus granted healing to all. What did it mean? What does it mean to have the mind of God? It means to look at people who separate themselves and say, you are not separate, but in fact you are one. What ripples did that create when those people went back to their homes? The Jews went back and perhaps they said, actually, I've spent some time with Samaritans.

They're not quite so bad as you think. The Samaritan went back to his home and said, you know, actually, it was a Jewish healer, a Jewish preacher who saved me. Perhaps they're not so bad as you think.

Cyril has reminded us that what we're called to do is to have the mind of Jesus Christ, who looks at each one of us, not according to where we're coming from, how we speak, what we say, but according to the fact that he made us and he loves us, and he calls each one of us into equality. Cyril, thank you so much for the great wisdom you've shared with us. Thank you so much for sharing a bit of your story, and I'd just like us to conclude with a prayer.

Let us pray together. Almighty God, we pray that you would help us to have that mind of Christ, that mind that looks at all people and sees not difference but rather equality. Help us, Father, to look at each person before us and see them as a beloved child of God, precious and made by you, worthy of infinite love.

Help us, Lord, to overcome fear and anger which separates and instead to embrace the love which made us and which makes us whole. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Amen. Cyril, thank you again so much. Thank you.