Sermons & Other Words

Our Gospel this evening is such an evocative scene.    We know the story well.    The old man Simeon on seeing Jesus ‘took him in his arms and praised God.’    His words of praise reverberating down the centuries.

They are memorably captured for me at least, the in language of the Book of Common Prayer.   We shall hear them sung later on.    It begins ‘Lord now lettest thou they servant depart in peace’ and goes on to include these words ‘For mine eyes have seen: thy salvation; Which thou hast prepared: before the face of all people;’         

I want to think about seeing salvation in these words tonight, and I do so using this familiar story something of which we can picture in our minds, not least because we know what’s it like to hold a baby.

And though babies can be infuriating; they smell, they cry, they eat, they don’t do much.    When they’re on form, when they smile and giggle and look at you in a way that only a child can, we are, like Simeon, filled with wonder and praise.

Continue reading “Seeing Salvation”

“You are the salt of the earth.”

“You are the light of the world.”

When we moved house in the summer, there was the usual cupboard clearing – and discarding of foods with use by dates somewhere in the last century…

But not the salt. I am ridiculously irritated by use by dates on salt. Salt from Cheshire has been there about 220 million years…we dig it up and suddenly it seems it will lose its saltiness if we don’t use it up within the year.

But that perhaps, is Jesus’ point. It is ridiculous to think salt can lose its saltiness, it would be ridiculous to light a lamp and hide it.

So we can’t avoid it – we’ve accepted God’s offer of grace and love in Jesus, so we have also accepted the cost of being his disciples. We are the salt of the earth – what might that look like in 2017?

Continue reading “You are the salt of the earth”

Part of Halleluiah chorus…

I guess many of you know how it goes on – “King of kings and Lord of lords”

Today we celebrate the feast of Christ the King. I don’t know about you – but thinking about Jesus – ‘King’ is not the first image that comes to my mind.

But he is the person I hope rules my life; he is a ruler who I think is worth following; and he is building a kingdom.

Our gospel reading gave us an idea what kind of kingdom. Here is Jesus, nailed to the cross – mocked, humiliated – but his only words are of forgiveness. Forgiveness for the criminal who at the last minute recognises Jesus as king; forgiveness even for those who crucified him.

Christ our king wants a kingdom built on forgiveness – and he relies on his followers to build this kingdom here on earth. A kingdom built on forgiveness – I once had a glimpse of what that might look like…

They were the sort of class you get once in a teaching career – motivated, well behaved and they just got on well together… From their first day in school they were a lovely class.

Continue reading “Halleluiah chorus…”

“Read all about it! Read all about it! Whitkirk Church in danger of paying their Parish Share” so goes the headline of the ‘The Whitkirk Weekly Pound’, a new tabloid you will get a copy of as you leave this morning.

The Parish Share is our gift to the diocese. However it’s a gift that, in part at least, comes back to us. For the Parish Share pays my wages, my stipend, together with all the costs involved with having a stipendiary priest.

At the moment that costs is just over £50,000. Now I don’t get paid that but that figure includes housing (I pay for heat and light!), pension, training, council tax and water rates. I think I’m cheap. You may beg to differ.

St. Mary’s Whitkirk are at the moment invited by the Diocese to give £107,000 a year. It’s a lot of money. It’s more than my wages. But it’s an amount arrived at taking into account various factors, our regular Sunday attendance, a bit of on the socio-economic picture of this bit of Leeds and our income.

It is a lot of money but it is by no means beyond us, we are getting there.

In 2013 we paid £60,000.

This year we shall pay £90,000. That is truly good news and we have been able to achieve that increase for a number of reasons not least because many of you have increased your giving over the last couple of years however we are not quite there.

Continue reading “Read All About It!”