Sermons & Other Words

Advent Schizophrenia, Little Things and Charlie Bucket


Sermon Year C – Advent Sunday
1 Thessalonians 3.9-end, Luke 21.25-36
Revd. Matthew Peat

This morning I want to talk a little about Advent Schizophrenia, Little things and Charlie Bucket. I want to begin with schizophrenia because for me that’s what we become in Advent. For on the one hand we’re surrounded by Christmas, indeed we had a jolly Christmas Bazaar yesterday. In contrast to that the church, in words, music and our building is saying hang on a minute, we’re not there yet.

It’s tricky living in these two worlds. Part of me feels a bit miserable if I get all humbug to the Christmas Cheer. Yet another part of me says I need Advent. I need that sense of hopeful waiting. I need some space to think about things framed by the perspective that this blessed season brings. Advent is good for me.

So perhaps what I need to do is simply accept that we’re a bit schizophrenic over the next few weeks, not being too grumpy “harrumph its not Christmas yet” nor wholly giving oneself to the party spirit as if there’s nothing to be said for waiting. But how?

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Christ the King – Terror and Truth


Sermon Year B
Daniel 7.9-10,13-14, John 18.33-37
Revd. Matthew Peat

Christ is the King, O friends rejoice!

Brothers and sisters with one voice.

Let all men know he is your choice.

These words of Bishop George Bell seem an appropriate place to begin this sermon thinking about Christ the King.

And I want to explore a little what that choice might look like for us and its consequences for how we see the world around us. Particularly in these days following those horrific terrorist attacks in Paris nine days ago.

The readings this morning offer us;

Firstly a vision of the Messiah King in the Old Testament as Daniel dreams of the future.

And secondly an encounter with that king who is before Pilate a short time before his death.

In that memorable scene, Pilate is trying to work out who is this man before him. He asks legitimate questions. The answers though are frustrating for Jesus speaks elusively of kingdoms ‘not of this world’ and that he is here to ‘testify to the truth’.

A bewildered Pilate ends the reading by almost inevitably asking ‘what is truth?’

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What we do helps when words run out


Sermon Year B - Remembrance Sunday
Revd. Matthew Peat

Every year on the second Sunday of November, in some way we step into that place where words run out. In a little while we shall gather at the War Memorial and there, though words are used they are given to surround the silence.

We might think that nothing much happens in that silence and stillness that will envelope our nation at 11am, but it’s an intense two minutes when we are deliberately doing something important, stopping, being still and remembering.

And though we do so to remember those who have given their lives in the service of our nation, I think we all have some experience of those times when words run out, when we are speechless.

Silence is such a powerful thing and for me is an integral part of every funeral I take, the silence even if just for a few moments is often powerful and moving.

However there is more, for when faced with sadness and loss, though silence has its place, we often cope by doing something more tangible than staying in the place where words run out because we cannot stay there for ever anyway.

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Graceful Judgement


Sermon Year B - Trinity 19
Hebrews 4.12-end, Mark 10.17-31
Revd. Matthew Peat

It’s the stuff of fire and brimstone. The words we have heard this morning are just the ammunition a preacher needs to frighten his listeners. It’s what captivated the imaginations of medieval artists who depicted the words they heard on wall paintings in churches. Just take a trip to Easby near Richmond or Pickering and see just how vivid the images are.

Nowadays we tend to treat those wall paintings as historic artefacts, something to be gazed upon with curiosity and so we don’t take them too seriously. That might even be true when we think about judgement as a whole. If that’s so then our readings this morning invite us to think again.

In Hebrews we heard that ‘all are naked and laid bare to the one whom we must render an account.’

And then in our Gospel Jesus when asked ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ speaks of both the commandments but also more. His questioner is sent away ‘shocked’ and ‘grieving’ because though he has followed the commandments it isn’t enough.

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Blackberries and the Kingdom of God


Sermon Year B - Harvest Thanksgiving
Joel 2.21-27, Matthew 6.25-33
Revd. Matthew Peat

Where do blackberries come from? Was one of the questions I asked at an Assembly at Austhorpe School last week. One little boy with his hand up replied “The supermarket.” Thankfully a good many more knew that at this time of year blackberries are quote “in the bushes”.

The humble blackberry is one of the joys of this time of year, something we can all harvest and take home for our pies and crumbles. Yet as I went on to tell the children the blackberry is not a cost free fruit.

The bramble on which it grows is prickly and if you pick them you’ll acquire a few thorns along the way too. The blackberry the fruit that makes us glad. The prickly picking that elicits the cry “ouch.”

And there lies the connection with our Gospel. At its end we heard ‘Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness’ whilst being commanded not to worry. The fruit- the kingdom of God. The prickly stem – the worry, the struggle to keep that kingdom in our minds amidst our daily lives.

And how we worry. We worry about small things. We worry about big things. We know, intellectually at least that worry cannot ‘add a single hour to our span of life’ and yet we do it anyway.

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Giving is Good for You


Sermon Year B - Giving Sunday
2 Corinthians 8.1-9, Matthew 6.19-21
Revd. Matthew Peat

In giving we receive. That’s what we called it this time last year when we launched a giving campaign to increase our financial income. It ended two weeks later with a Harvest Lunch of Thanksgiving. I was delighted with the result. We increased our income, including gift aid by just under a third. There was much to be thankful for.

However we were starting from what I felt given our number and our relative affluence was a low income. Consequently though we’ve made good progress there is more to be done. We are still some way short of meeting our commitments not least to our diocese through our parish share. We have not paid what we have been asked for over a number of years which is something of an embarrassment.

Yet we will get there not because I stand here and make you feel guilty, I don’t want to do that anyway, but because we are growing and know that our giving is central to who we are as followers of Jesus Christ.

Money is of course part of our life. We need it to pay the bills, to support those whom we love, to enjoy our life and to be free from worry. I am not immune to those feelings, quite the opposite and so I have to keep asking myself, as we all should, whether these notes have an excessive hold on me. Continue reading “Giving is Good for You”

The Fear of the Lord


Choral Evensong
Job 28, Hebrews 11.17-31
Revd. Matthew Peat

I have what I think of as a healthy fear of mountains. It’s been fashioned by a good deal of experience climbing them in the Lake District. It’s a fear that recognises their danger. How they need to be treated with respect. How one should not set off to climb them without being prepared.

So even on the sunniest day, treading familiar paths, all weather gear and the right maps are in my rucksack. Importantly however this fear of the mountains is a good thing. Without that fear I might take stupid risks.

Fear then though we might often think otherwise can be a good thing, it can help us. Job in our first reading had discovered that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ So I want us tonight to think a bit about how fear and wisdom belong together.

If we hand in mind images of God solely based on some verses we could highlight from the Bible, then we would understand fear in a very particular way. Indeed we’d likely be here with knees knocking ready to hear a bit of fire and brimstone from the pulpit, “We’re all doomed!”

Thankfully we hold those texts alongside that of what we know of God through Jesus. The fear we know then comes to us in a human face, a face who looks on us with love.

And whilst that shouldn’t undermine the potency or sense of reality of what might happen if… (think climbing the mountain on a winters day in trainers) or as if we don’t know our place, we are not God after all – this Godly fear, understood properly, helps shape our living and in some mysterious way fashions in us something of the wisdom of which Job spoke. Continue reading “The Fear of the Lord”

Holy Hands


Sermon Year B – Trinity 9
Ephesians 4.1-16, John 6.24-34
Revd. Matthew Peat

Have you ever wondered what Jesus’ hands looked like? I don’t think I had until last week. I was sat in Leeds Station waiting for a train and found myself thinking about this sermon, looking at peoples’ hands.

So as I looked around, I saw children’s hands, holding onto their parent. Hands grasping baggage; holiday or business. Lovers holding hands and there was even a gentleman with a prosthetic hand.   And I had been thinking about hands for three reasons.

Firstly the post communion prayer from last week that had been in my mind since we prayed it last week ‘strengthen for service, Lord, the hands that have taken holy things’.

Secondly because of that demand at the end of the Gospel, when those who have followed Jesus, heard his teaching on the bread of heaven and say to him ‘Give us this bread always.’ The bread Jesus talked about was himself and we when we come here we open our hands to receive him.

And lastly because of that connection between strengthening our hands for service, receiving Christ and the theme of that first reading from St. Paul where he writes of growing up and of ministry used in the service of Christ to build up his body.

Put together, they seem to be telling me that we are invited to see our hands as holy.

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