Sermons & Other Words

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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Our Suffering is for Your Consolation


Sermon Year C – Trinity 11 Evensong
2 Corinthians 1:1-22.
Revd. Alison Battye

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, oh Lord our strength and our redeemer.

I have to admit that I haven’t always got on too well with St Paul. There are the unfortunate comments about women… but mainly it is just he is so blooming sure of everything – particularly himself. As a lifelong Anglican I find this slightly alarming…

So when I first looked at tonight’s reading – I couldn’t get past Paul saying  “If we are being afflicted it is for your consolation” – it all seemed a bit self important of Paul – and didn’t make a lot of sense.

Then someone asked me if I would visit her neighbour – a lady whose husband of nearly 60 years is in St Gemma’s hospice and very poorly.

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Prayer is our Protest


Sermon Year C - Trinity 9
Hosea 1.2-10, Luke 11.1-13
Revd. Matthew Peat

Perhaps it’s something about being a reserved Englishman but I’m not a very good protestor.    I don’t really go in for marches or wearing lapel badges. Perhaps it’s something about a lack of passion in me or being kinder to myself a sense of being able to see many sides of an argument.

And so though I am privileged to have these few minutes in your week when you give your time to listen. l’m cautious about being too forthright about my opinions.

Preferring instead to open up ways for you to think about how this faith we share might impact the way in which you see the world around us. And that world is troubled, seldom can I recall in my own lifetime so much tragedy around us.

Tragic attacks in Germany, coups and purges, police officers killed are just some of the headlines from the last week. These ‘headlines’ are held alongside the ongoing tragedies unfolding around our world.

The problems of Syria and mass migration have not disappeared, the camp of Calais has not gone anywhere, and suicide bombers continue to take innocent lives. Faced with these things it is hard to know what to do.

We want to shout out. We want to protest that this is not right. That there is another way to live. A way rooted in the life and teaching, the death and resurrection of the Jesus who draws us here this morning.

That protest is expressed in some way through our prayers. For prayer, whether they be said here or offered quietly as you think of another with a cup of tea in hand is, in part at least, about resetting our focus. About lifting up our hearts, so often weighed down by our burdens to the God who renews our hope and restores our vision.

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The Queen and the Woman


Sermon Year C - Trinity 3
Luke 7.36-8.3
Revd. Matthew Peat

As a child it didn’t seem fair. Why should the Queen have two birthdays? I like to think that on the day she was born she celebrates with her family and on her official birthday she celebrates with her people.

So we at St. Mary’s together with so many others are celebrating the Queen’s 90th Birthday. Yesterday we feasted and sang just as you should at any party and at 12 noon today the sound of bells shall be heard from the tower.

It is for her majesty another milestone marked amongst so many others, she is a remarkable woman and amongst us will be our own memories of her, those glimpses from a distance to close encounters.

Over the years she will have met so many people both here and overseas. Seen a good number of prime ministers and Archbishops come and go. In times of change she has been that constant figure in our lives.

There are many stories of her. Stories of how lives have been touched by a simple gesture or kindness.   In a moment I shall I read one taken from the book ‘The Servant Queen, A tribute for Her Majesty’s 90th Birthday’ published by the Bible Society.

It’s a story which draws together something of why we celebrate our Queen and also the Gospel passage for today and was told by the former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

‘Punctuality, said Louis 18th of France, is the politeness of kings. Royalty arrives on time and leaves on time. So it is with Her Majesty the Queen, with one memorable exception.

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The Spirit of Truth will lead you into all Truth


Sermon Year C – Trinity Sunday
John 16.12-15
Revd. Matthew Peat

In a few minutes we shall say the Nicene Creed. In these carefully fashioned words from the fourth century we, together with millions around the world express something of what we believe.

They are words which witness to something Jesus said in our Gospel ‘I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.’

The creed, unlike the Ten Commandments, was not dictated to Mr Nicene up a mountain to be written on tablets of stone.

Instead in the centuries following Christ’s life and death, resurrection and ascension his followers strive to articulate what they believe about him and how that shaped their understanding of the nature of God.

So for hundreds of years there was discussion and dialogue, discernment and dissent. The truth was tested, some ideas and concepts discussed and then disregarded. Then in 325 in Turkey, at the city of Nicaea, Bishops, theologians and leaders gathered.

What emerged from their time together was a creed that bears the name of where it was formulated, a creed which has become the touchstone of our faith. A creed we say almost every week, part of that creed describes that which we believe and celebrate today, the Holy Trinity.

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