Posts by Nick Jackson

The Well of Life


Choral Evensong Sermon
Deuteronomy 6.10-end, Psalm 36
Revd. Matthew Peat

‘Take care that you do not forget the Lord’ wrote the author of Deuteronomy but if we’re honest we sometimes do.

We live as though we are the centre of the world. As though we can manage perfectly well thank you very much, we forget who and what we are made for.

One way we counter our forgetfulness is through worship, what we are about this evening when we deliberately stepping into that place where we remember who we are.

When we remember that the God whom we worship is the God of all things, who we are to worship and adore in all times and seasons, good and bad.

Even those times when we want to tell God to get lost, we come and through worship remember who we are, remember amidst the frustrations and sadness’s of life that we are but dust.

The psalm for this evening, 36, captures something of the paradox of what it is to be human.

On the one hand it speaks of self-deception and guile ‘Sin whispers to the wicked, in the depths of their heart; there is no fear of God before their eyes.’ 

And on the other speaks of how though we may strive to deceive ourselves, we cannot deceive God and in him we find life. ‘With you is the well of life and in your light shall we see light.’

Super words those, likening a well, a place where life giving water is found with what happens when we don’t forget the Lord. I shall return to that image a bit later.

Water and life is also picked up in other verses of the psalm, reminding us that with God we shall ‘drink from the rivers of your delights.’

So my friends ‘take care you do not forget the Lord.’

But how do we do that amidst so many demands, people to see and places to be and so many other supposedly more exciting things to do? Continue reading “The Well of Life”

Behold what you are, become what you receive.


Feast of Corpus Christi
Revd. Matthew Peat

What one thing would make all the difference to your spiritual life?

What is the one easy win that could make a real difference?

What to do amidst the mountains of worthy books on prayer and worship that doesn’t feel too difficult?

I guess we all struggle with those questions sometimes yet take heart for the one thing you do tonight simply by being here makes all the difference. For here we receive Christ, what more could we ask and we take his life into our own.

In an age when we sometimes think of mission as seeking to be ever more relevant and accessible, tonight we remember that the beating heart of the church has been and always will be this Eucharist.    For here the bread and wine, by the power of the Holy Spirit become for us Christ’s body and blood.

So the one thing we can do, the easy win, is simply turn up as you have done because that’s what Christ does. Every single time we do this in remembrance of him, he is here with us.

But there is more, the transformation we think of tonight isn’t just about bread and wine but about ourselves. St. Augustine when writing about that moment in the liturgy when the consecrated elements are held up before the faithful, said ‘Behold what you are, become what you receive.’ Continue reading “Behold what you are, become what you receive.”

Living the Trinity – Creative Community


Sermon Year B – Trinity Sunday
Romans 8.12-17, John 3.1-17
Revd. Matthew Peat

Last week in the Gospel for Pentecost Jesus said ‘the spirit will lead you into all truth’. The Holy Trinity, three persons and yet one God which we celebrate today is surely one example of what that means because there is of course no mention of it in the New Testament.

The three persons are there, Father, Son and Holy Spirit but the idea of the Holy Trinity was something that was worked out in the early centuries in the life of the church, in response to differing ideas and truth claims surrounding what we believe about the nature of God.

So there we have it, easy. Well yes and no because if you spend any time reading about the trinity, about “perichoresis” and “ousias” and all that before long your head will start to hurt – in simple terms it’s not easy to get your head round the trinity.

I used to visit a lovely chap as a curate on Walney Island. He never came to church but was widely read and for him the trinity was a great stumbling block “three persons and one God” he would say shaking his head and walking off. I fear my responses weren’t very helpful to him, too many “errms” and “hmmms” but I’ll return to Bill at the end.

I suppose he wanted a neat and tidy answer. Maybe an image like the one on our banner, but though that might be tidy and neat, there is more to the trinity than that.

Instead I’m happier beginning with that great Orthodox Bishop, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. I once heard him speak on the Trinity.

The first thing he did, gazing out to his audience with his wonderfully holy face and a glint in his eye was to say, “the Trinity is a Mystery”.

And for me that is where we begin and end today. A mystery is held before us(1), something we can never fully understand or comprehend and like so many things to do with faith, it’s only when we stand before it; pray it and perhaps most of all live it that it begins, just begins to make sense. Continue reading “Living the Trinity – Creative Community”

References

References
↑11 Corinthians 15.51

Big and Small – Pentecost is for All


Acts 2.1-21,Ezekiel 37.1-14, John 15, 26-27, 16:4b-15
Revd. Matthew Peat

Sometimes I struggle a bit with this great day for I sometimes feel as though I’m celebrating a birthday of someone or rather something I don’t know that well. Yet though that’s where this sermon began, I’m thankful that as my words today will show, it’s not where I end up.

So why the struggle?

It’s something about that feeling of being excluded.

Often we human beings are good at finding ways to divide ourselves. It’s understandable enough I suppose, we’re all different with different gifts and abilities. No use trying to say we’re the same when we are not. Continue reading “Big and Small – Pentecost is for All”

Four Weddings and a Funeral


Memorial Service Address
Revd. Matthew Peat

In the early 90’s the film Four Weddings and a Funeral was a great success. It was the movie that launched Hugh Grant’s career as he tries to find love.

It was successful, it seems to me, because it wasn’t just a conventional chick flick. It was a film which alongside the joy of life, the weddings; recognised that every story no matter how we might wish otherwise doesn’t always have an apparently happy ending.

If you remember at one of the four weddings, which is taking place in the picturesque Scottish Highlands, one of the main characters collapses and dies. It was a moment when to use some words often used at funerals ‘in the midst of life we are in death’ ring true.

I guess we all know something about that of how in the midst of life, when everything else seems to carry on as if nothing has happened, something profound has happened. Life has been wrenched from someone we love and nothing will be the same again. Continue reading “Four Weddings and a Funeral”

The Brief Encounter Patchwork


Sermon Year B – Easter 5
Acts 8.26-end, John 15.1-8
Revd. Matthew Peat

The God who draws us here this morning is the God of brief encounters. In that, although God’s presence is constant we are limited to glimpses and hints of his life and love in the world, brief encounters.

And the God of brief encounters is present in the lives we lead and the patchwork of brief encounters that make up our lives. Of course some of these brief encounters turn out to be rather more, the first date that turns into marriage for example.

But sometimes they are just a few minutes and I guess all of us if we think back over our lives we can all recall brief encounters which have shaped our lives. Moments that have enriched our living as we are encouraged or inspired.

Let me share one example from my story. I remember meeting the great jazz and rock drummer Jon Hiseman, who at a concert made eye contact with this young drummer and then spoke with me, made me feel important.

But there are also difficult brief encounters are also often vivid memories. When we receive bad news from a medical professional for example. These few minutes in a life of thousands of minutes, are vivid and often perfectly recalled.

Just this last week I was with someone as they recalled with great clarity some of the most traumatic few days of her life.

Brief Encounters good and bad are etched on our minds. Continue reading “The Brief Encounter Patchwork”

And what now?


Sermon for Choral Evensong
Isaiah 26.1-9,19, Luke 24. 1-
Revd. Matthew Peat

Those of you who have heard me preach at weddings will know that one of the things I often say is around the love they proclaim for each other at these steps being made real in the ordinary sometimes humdrum stuff of daily life.

The wedding day has occupied much of their thinking over the last few months and it is when things return to normal that they really work out what marriage is all about loving and cherishing each other amidst the dishwater and the to do list.

Now there is a parallel for us here when we think about the great Christian festivals we celebrate year after year.

At Christmas we’re invited us to renew our understanding of the miracle of the incarnation. Of how God in Christ took flesh and lived as one of us.

Then at Easter we journey with Christ through his passion, his death and ultimately his resurrection. A Holy Week indeed inviting all who believe in him to see the depth of God’s love, a love that even death cannot defeat.

Continue reading “And what now?”

Addresses from St Mary’s Quiet Day at Ripon Cathedral


Revd. Matthew Peat

Address 1: Bread as Story

As some of you may already know from the age of 7 to about 14, I lived in Skelsmergh, it’s a small community made up of a few scattered houses and one village just outside Kendal on the edge of the Lake District.

Looking back it was a great privilege to spend some of my formative years in that place, though of course you don’t realise it at the time.

One family had a particular place of esteem in the church and wider community. I spent a good deal of time with during these years. They were farmers and so as a young boy I would spend days and afternoons with them up at Burton House.

What more could a young boy ask than the chance to learn to drive tractors or play in barns and be well fed?

 For food was always plentiful and one of the highlights was Sunday tea. To a boy like me mountains of fly pie, other cakes and especially bread and jam was a glimpse of heaven.

Perhaps heaven might be afternoon tea and the most amazing thing was because they had it early about 4, I could get another tea when I got home. Is it any wonder I am the shape I am? Simply white bread, thick with butter with jam on top, simplicity itself but close to heaven.

For most of us bread, such a staple of our diet, the staff of life as it’s sometimes called is in some way linked to our stories. It’s interesting that the food writer and chef Nigel Slater’s auto-biography is entitled ‘Toast’ for him, as for me, as for many of us memories are formed around this simple food, yeast, water, salt and flour.

So what of your memories, do you have similar memories to me? And what about now, is bread or toast or a teacake the thing you turn to when you need a bit of comfort.

Indeed perhaps the best comfort food might be bread pudding or bread and butter pudding, the best of both worlds but that’s another story.

For now think about how bread is woven into your story, how the smell of toast or a teacake or of freshly baked bread takes you to another time and place. Continue reading “Addresses from St Mary’s Quiet Day at Ripon Cathedral”