One of the things you can normally expect from a visit to church is that at some stage you will have to listen to a sermon. You can call it what you will – homily, talk, reflection – it will be a sermon, basically. Getting ready to preach is one of the major activities of the week, reading the readings, thinking about it, perhaps doing some study around the texts, sitting down in a dark room with a cold flannel on your head and putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. So it was wonderful when, last week, I was invited along to address a Seminar Supper for some of the members of Sion College which was being held in the gilded splendour of the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall.
For the uninitiated Sion College is a kind of ‘Livery Company’ for clergy, it used to run a wonderful theological library on the Embankment close to Blackfriars Bridge (you can still see the wonderful Victorian Neo-Gothic building which was the home of the College) but the books are now part of both Lambeth Palace and King’s College libraries. So instead the College does a lot to entertain, support and increase the well-being of clergy. Which of those three things I was supposed to be helping with I don’t know. But I was asked to speak about ‘Preaching through Lent’.
As Paul writes to Timothy
‘Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season.’ (2 Timothy 4.2)
So I suppose this was about preparing ‘out of season’ for ‘in season’! I interpreted the subject quite broadly so what they got was quite a few of my thoughts about preaching, as well as preaching in Lent. So if you are interested, read on.

A Staffordshire pottery image of the pulpit
Goodness! The audacity that I must have to stand here and speak to you all about preaching. We’re all preachers and we all live with that pressure that is on us to somehow come up with the goods week after week, festival after festival, season after season, year after year. Every week as I look in my diary and see that I’m preaching at this or that service I always fear that this will be the week when I get the preacher’s equivalent of writers’ block, that some how I won’t be able to preach, that I’ll have nothing to say. But some how – and it must be simply the grace of God – I always end up with a text in my hand with which to climb into the pulpit or stand at the lectern.
I want to say first of all that I love preaching – I really do. And I think that above anything else that shows. I hope that I never look as though I don’t want to be in the pulpit. I take seriously what George Herbert says in his book ‘The Country Parson’
‘The Country Parson preacheth constantly, the pulpit is his joy and his throne.’
But then I love being a priest. My colleagues know that I will leap at the chance to say Mass or do something and am never really reluctant to take on a chance to preach – whatever the occasion. I was a shy little boy but I was also a bit of a show-off – some analyst amongst you can tell me how that can be – and I have an overriding sin in that I like to be liked. All of that added together means that I adore ascending those steps and the pulpit lights coming on. This is my moment, my west end moment, my Mr DeMille moment, lights camera action. And preaching has to be a performance, it has to be, it is a performance art, like it or not.
Just think about your context for the moment. 10, 40, 50, 80, 100, 200, 500 people have turned up for a service and they are basically going to shut up and watch and listen to you. In the main they won’t be on their phones, they won’t be whispering to their neighbour, they’re relatively eager and expectant, they want to hear something that’s worth hearing and they want to be able to take something away with them from the service. That’s a huge amount of expectation to live up to and none of us can achieve it in 10-15 minutes which I suppose is what we give ourselves as a time slot.
Louisa May Alcott, of ‘Little Women’ fame, wrote
“I don’t want a religion that I put away with my Sunday clothes, and don’t take out till the day comes around again; I want something to see and feel and live day by day.”
The sermon has to be part of that week long sustaining just as the sacrament that the people of God receive is. My favourite passage in the Gospels and my model for everything that I do in the Eucharist is the account of the journey on the Emmaus Road. I know I’m meant to be talking about Lent and this is an Easter story but it is something that every priest and every preacher should have as a kind of checklist for every liturgy that they’re involved in.
You know it well and I haven’t time to read it to you – but there are some key elements.

On the road to Emmaus
There’s the opening – the way in which the two travellers are talking over what has happened. We all arrive at a service with a back story, things that have been happening, that we need to process.
Then the stranger arrives and begins to open up the scriptures to them. He goes at their speed, just as Philip does with the Ethiopian eunuch. What they have been talking about is tested against the word of God.
Then they arrive at their house and there’s a moment of invitation to stay and to eat. Then the guest becomes the host and bread is broken and they recognise the real presence of Jesus in the midst. Then they head back, they leave, renewed, invigorated, with good news to share.
Emmaus is the experience of the church when we make Eucharist together – we arrive with our stories, we hear the word of God, we are invited to eat, we break the bread and we head back out on a mission. Word and bread are broken – opened up and in both we experience the real presence of Jesus. Because the most important thing is what the two companions say to each other after they’d recognised Jesus as he broke the bread
They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’
Goodness – that is EXACTLY what we want people to be feeling when they listen to a sermon. Their hearts on fire. Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, a great Orthodox spiritual teacher of the twentieth century wrote
“One should preach not from one’s rational mind but rather from the heart. Only that which is from the heart can touch another heart. “
And someone closer to home, Richard Baxter put it differently but the force of it is the same
“I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.”
It’s about passion, passion for God, passion for the people, passion for ministry. It has to be there in our preaching just as it has to be there in our presiding. We preside each time as though it is the first and the last time, we preach as a dying person to dying people, we preach not from the mind but from the heart informed by the mind.
I always preach as I hope to hear sermons myself. I hear a lot of sermons in my role as Dean, I’m obviously in a large team of clergy and we’re on a preaching rota. We’re all committed to preaching but some enjoy it more than others. But we also have visiting preachers and I have to say that I am more often disappointed than thrilled by what I hear. Being a visiting preacher is not easy – it’s not as easy as preaching to the people you know, preaching into the community that you know. But I want to hear a sermon that makes my heart burn within me, that makes me think, yes, but makes me want to respond to God from the very depths of my being. As the Psalmist says is Psalm 42 – ‘Deep calls to deep’. There has to be a real element of altar call, for me, something that’s going to make me come forward and renew my commitment to Christ and hold my hands open to receive him in the sacrament (that, by the way is why I find it much more of a struggle to preach at evensong – not weddings or funerals etc – but evensong because everyone is so passive).
I heard some great sermons when I was growing up. We always went to the National Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and I remember great preachers and great sermons that made me excited to be a Christian in the catholic tradition and which played their part in my vocation. We hear a prayer fairly regularly which contains the line
‘continually stir up the gift that is within you’
Sermons should stir up the people and stir up the preacher. It’s our only chance to do this and waste the opportunity and you have wasted so much. No one will leave your church saying how perfect your manual acts were this week but they will leave church talking about the sermon; no one will experience that deeper conversion because you know your purificator from your lavabo towel or whether it’s a slug or three drops of water into a chalice – but the sermon can convert the heart within the context of a well prepared and well performed liturgy.
But I was asked to speak specifically about preaching through Lent and I need to do that.
I think that with whatever we’re doing during Lent there are a number of important factors to bear in mind.
First, Lent is a journey that we are making – from the wilderness to the cross to the empty tomb. The whole concept of journey and pilgrimage is a huge one nowadays. People like that kind of talk and so we need to acknowledge the journey and make the most of the concept. This means that the same person preaching each Sunday, with a theme and a purpose is not a bad thing. It makes sense of the season and the person who is preaching becomes the accompanier.
Second, people are still quite eager to learn during Lent. Sermons are not the place to do teaching – that is not their purpose and certainly not nowadays. But how the sermon can lead to what happens in Lent groups or discussions is an important one to think about. The Wendy Beckett book last year on ‘The Art of Lent’ was great and very popular and placing an image in the hands of people as part of the sermon keys into the need for visual stimulus. Get to the National Gallery and buy some postcards!
Third, people often feel guilty in Lent that they are not doing enough, that they haven’t given up the right thing, that they haven’t taken something on, that they are crap at serious religion and the greater understanding that we now have of the practice of our Muslim sisters and brothers makes us even more guilty. So preaching should be encouraging and intended to helping people respond corporately – as Muslims do – rather than individually might be really helpful – a week when you all abstain from alcohol, a week when you all do a good deed – that kind of thing.
Fourthly, Lent can be exhausting – certainly for clergy but also for others who are in church. So take advantage of the fact that Lent is in two halves and make a big thing of Mothering Sunday using another title for it – Refreshment Sunday – and then give a real change to the Sundays after. Treat Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday and Easter Day as a distinct grouping.
Don’t preach at the Mass on Palm Sunday – there is enough already that is going on and the reading of the Passion should take the Gospel and Sermon slots if done properly. Be imaginative with Passion Sunday. The gospel this year is about Jesus in the House at Bethany and the wonderful line about the fragrance of the perfume filling the house – so anoint each other with fragrant oil for the journey we all face with Jesus – preach about that. After all, whether St Francis said it or not it is true
“Go into all the world and preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.”
This is Year C of course and so most of the gospel passages are from Luke’s Gospel. We of course get the Temptation on the First Sunday – so what do you say about that this year? “One does not live by bread alone.” So what is truly life-giving?
The Second Sunday involves a moment of confrontation but ends with that great quote which we then use in the Eucharist “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” What does that mean as we hear it week by week?
The Third Sunday makes us deal with some tough stuff about what happens to the innocent but is also about giving each other another chance and the gardener saying to the landowner that if next year the tree doesn’t come up with the goods “you can cut it down.” Hard words!
Then on the Fourth Sunday/Mothering Sunday we have the opportunity, if we don’t go for Mothering Sunday readings to read what we used to call the story of the Prodigal Son – but maybe we should call it the story of the ‘Parent with two difficult sons’ which must be one of the greatest stories along with the Good Samaritan and ends with that memorable line “this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” ’ Remember that it is also the Sunday after we may have crashed out of Europe as a result of Brexit – how will you handle that!?
I hope this has stimulated some thoughts from you. There’s more I could say about preaching – humour of course, using up-to-date references from contemporary culture – Mary Poppins Returns – pace, voice, language – avoid telling people what it means in the Greek unless it is REALLY interesting and making yourself open and vulnerable in the process. They want to see that you believe it.
Many a preacher will pray before they preach, words from the psalms (Psalm 19:14) which we could pray for all who have this ministry.
May the words of my mouth
and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you, O Lord,
my strength and my redeemer.
Amen.