What exactly are we angry about? That is the excellent question asked by sports journalist Rana Hussain in response to the scandal that has engulfed the Sydney Swans. Five players have been suspended for the remainder of the season after a late-night gathering in a Melbourne hotel. A police investigation into an alleged sexual assault continues, but, at the time of writing, no player has been charged, and the club’s sanctions were imposed for breaches of its standards, independently of that investigation.

This Sunday we begin a new nine-week sermon series called The Seven: From Vice to Virtue. It has nothing to do with the Seven Wonders of the World, The Magnificent Seven, or even the rather less magnificent seven dwarfs. Instead, we will be exploring seven patterns of thought, desire and behaviour that Christian tradition has identified as particularly destructive: pride, envy, sloth, wrath, greed, gluttony and lust.
In case you are already thinking, “This sounds like the perfect time to try another church for a couple of months,” let me try to dissuade you!