Mortified

'Sermonettes make Christianettes' a former vicar of mine commented when members of the congregation complained that his orations were creeping beyond the twenty-minute mark. I've never believed that sermons contribute that much towards the spiritual growth of a congregation, or at least that their effect is most unpredictable.

On Sunday at 10am I mentioned some of the themes I described in my last-but-one blog post. I was in a good mood, even a spiritual mood when I wrote it, full of thoughts of Blessed Mary Fearon and the Little Flower of Lisieux. On Monday at Morning Prayer Hannah who organises one of the house groups where they discuss the preceding Sunday's sermon said, 'I just want to check - your sermon was about the importance of worship?' I was taken aback as I hadn't any thought in that direction at all: unfortunately Hannah is extremely sensitive and any suggestion that she might have 'got it wrong' would propel her into worry. Lillian the lay reader at first said she couldn't recall what the sermon was 'about' as such, but then said that if pushed she would summarise it as being concerned with the power, and also the ambiguity of prayer. I said both of those had come into it, but I thought it was important not to tell people 'what it was about' but to let them take away what they needed.

In fact I thought I was preaching about the vocation of all God's people. Perhaps I was; perhaps I wasn't. Perhaps, indeed, I should take a poll, and then I'd know.