A Note on the Sermons

Some students of preaching argue that a sermon is, by its very nature, an interaction (if not necessarily a conversation) between a particular preacher and a particular group of people--for that reason, they disapprove of the publication of sermons altogether. Certainly, the reading of sermons hardly plays the same role in the literary world for us today that it did a hundred and fifty years ago (nor, for that matter, does the reading of secular speeches). That being said, most preachers have had the experience fairly often of being asked for a written copy of the day's sermon, if only because of bad acoustics in the church, and collections of sermons do continue to be published, continuing a tradition that goes back to the earliest days of the Christian community--and indeed before that into the Jewish community from which Christianity springs. Herewith, then, a few sermons, on some of the major Christian feasts and on two or three occasional topics.