Sermons & Other Words

Never good enough


Sermon Year A 3rd before Lent
1 Cor 3.1-9, Matt 5.21-37
Revd. Matthew Peat

Fools and hell fire.   Insults and council.   Anger and judgement.  Look and lusts.   Adultery.   Divorce.   Cutting off hands and tearing out eyes.   Yes or no and nothing in between.

What are we to make of this challenging Gospel reading?    None of us can hear these words without feeling uncomfortable.    Indeed one might say these instructions are impossible and place them in the file marked Jesus having an off day.

And yet there is something here, for is not the point that they are indeed impossible.    Maybe Jesus never intended these words to be taken literally.

Maybe instead they were given to remind those who sought to guard faith by rules that however well we think we are doing, it’s never going to be enough.

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Seeing Salvation


Year A – The Presentation of Christ in the Temple
Luke 2.22-40
Revd. Matthew Peat

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.

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You are the salt of the earth


Matthew 5:13-20, 1 Corinthians 2:1-12.
Revd. Alison Battye

“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?

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Halleluiah chorus…


King of Kings and Lord of Lords
Revd. Alison Battye

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.

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Remembrance Sunday Sermon


Argue Well
2 Thessalonians 3.6-13, Luke 21.5-19
Revd. Matthew Peat

Let me begin with a statement of the obvious. We’re all different. Just take a look around, but we not only look different, we think differently too. This difference has consequences because no one sees the world quite like we do.

And so it’s inevitable as we go through life especially when we are sure about we believe and feel we are right that we shall sometimes disagree with people. In other words we argue.

We argue about little things, like leaving the top of the toothpaste, or socks not being unravelled before they’re put in the wash basket or Vimto Cordial not tasting like it used to.

We sometimes even argue with ourselves and whilst looking in the mirror give ourselves a good talking to.

We argue about big things too, like politics and religion, though we’re probably a bit more reluctant to make our views known mindful of the consequences.

So for example, here amongst us are Conservatives and Labour, Liberal Democrats, there may be UKIP members and for all I know members of the Monster Raving Looney Party. And yet here we are.

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Choral Evensong Sermon for All Saints


Joy and alright in the end
Isaiah 65.17-end, Hebrews 11.32-12.2
Revd. Matthew Peat

One of my jobs before ordination was working in the Parts Department for a firm of Agricultural Engineers.    Aside from getting to know the inner workings of tractors and diggers I spent a good deal of time with farmers.

Now farmers are in my experience pessimists.   And they’re seldom happy.   If it’s wet they want it to be dry.   If it’s dry they want it to be wet.   If it’s cold they want it to be warm.   And always, always they’ve no money.

I understood a bit why they’re like this for making a living from the land is precarious.   Indeed since then things seem to have got more difficult for farmers.

Yet there was a bit of me that thought their experience, especially those farmers who had tilled the same land for generations, might have a bit more confidence.

Confidence that the harvest would be safely gathered in.     Confidence that they would make a living.    In other words that, even if the tractor did conk out, it would be alright in the end.

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All Saints Sunday


Best Impressions
Ephesians 1.11-23 Luke 6.20-31
Revd. Matthew Peat

When you take funerals as I do, you soon discover that though it might sometimes seem otherwise we are surrounded by Saints.    I have buried hundreds of them!

Often when I go and see families they will speak of their loved one describing all that was good about them.   Sometimes though gaps will appear in the story, or I can sense that something has been left unsaid, and so will gently probe a bit deeper.    They might then tell me but then add “But we don’t want that mentioning at the funeral.”

What they’re doing is I think wanting to present the person who has died in the best light.   Telling me what was good in their life rather than dwell too long on what wasn’t.

Of course that’s important.    Funerals are not so much for the one who has died as for those who are left behind.    And so remembering all that was good in someone’s life helps punctuate the inevitable sadness with thanksgiving.

However I’m also there to help them be honest and remind them that these edited highlights are certainly not for God’s benefit, the one ‘from whom no secrets are hidden.’     Perhaps that’s where All Souls Day comes in later this week.

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Read All About It!


Giving Sermon
Revd. Matthew Peat

“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.

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