If a flying machine without an engine is a glider, a service of worship without a sermon is a balloon. We worship by giving praise to God with the help of music. We state our beliefs according to prescribed forms. We intercede for others in a litany or other list. And we are taught and encouraged in a sermon.
But in a digital age a sermon has lost its privileged place. When a population can read, it has access to a wealth of informative material. This is particularly true of a religion of revelation, such as Christianity, which has texts for all to see.
The implications are clear. A preacher must take soundings among his hearers. He may find that what his hearers are hoping for is some help of an apologetic kind. They pass their working day in the company of colleagues who long ago concluded that religion was not of singular importance in the daily routine, that talk of God is mere theory and that the people who get things done are people who know about a particular science or the economy or the practice of politics.
Of course it must occur to parents and others who take decisions that affect other people’s lives and have to look more deeply into choices of education, philosophy than that or they will find the help they need elsewhere than in sermons.
Today’s preacher must expect to find that some of his pet subjects will be off-limits. Much of his interest during his student days will have been directed towards opinions held by seasoned theologians. And theologians are good at talking to each other.
Does this mean that a sermon is s shared enterprise? Yes and no. Yes, because the effect of the sermon is incomplete if it does not lodge in the hearer’s mind and alter his way of looking at things. (People say the same about stories, novels, narrative poems.) No, because a sermon is like a painting. An artist in a smock does the best he can with the materials on his thumb-set. He’s like a F1 driver. There is only one of him at the controls.
MELROSE CENTRE
The purposeful spiritual life of Melrose, in the Scottish Borders can be seen in the Trinity Centre, opened in 2000. This provides a meeting-place for churches and other groups in a town by the Tweed known for its ruined abbey.
Holy Trinity Scottish Episcopal church plays a full part in proceedings and has an extensive programme of its own. It has recently worked through a £72,000 project of repair and maintenance to its church building. A new side-chapel has just been consecrated with the name of St Basil. Liz and Ed have been licensed as lay readers. Leading the ministry team is the Rector, Philip Blackledge. In a previous parish he ran his car on bio-diesel made in his garage from used chip fat.
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