The Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall Harmon (yes Anglicans love their titles ;-)) has posted a video on his site which he calls “Archbishop Rowan Williams’s video message to mark the beginning of Lent 2010”. When I clicked to watch it I straight away recalled I had seen it before. It is in fact last year’s video. It’s a good reminder that many people regularly make too much of sermons. I don’t want to deny their value, but let’s keep them in perspective – if you don’t believe me, survey your community a month from now what the sermon was about on, say, Sunday Feb 7 and see what proportion remember. Meanwhile, if you want to hear the Archbishop of Canterbury on Lent again, here it is:
Related Posts
St Benedict Feast Day
liturgy / By
Bosco Peters
Appropriately on the feast day of St Benedict (for a blog interested in monasticism and liturgy)
St Benedict at Lambeth
liturgy / By
Bosco Peters
The Anglican bishops meeting for the Lambeth Conference are following a consultative process called Indaba. This is reminiscent of Benedictine and other styles of meeting.
Praying ecumenically
liturgy / By
Bosco Peters
This Sunday, 27 July, Roman Catholics and Episcopalians and others will essentially pray the same prayer.
Humanae Vitae forty years on
liturgy / By
Bosco Peters
July 25 1968 Pope Paul VI published his Encyclical letter Humanae Vitae. His commissions, set up in response to the development of oral contraceptives in…
Lambeth Bible study on John 4
liturgy / By
Bosco Peters
Lambeth Bible Study with Joanna Clegg A famous poet representing the other party (Alexander Pope), once said ‘know thyself, presume not God to scan; the…
This is very bad advice, Bosco, to use last year’s sermons. I have it on good authority that once upon a time an unwise colleague tried this and found that he started receiving last year’s payslips 🙂
Perhaps your observations say more about the dire state of modern Anglican sermons than about the importance of the sermon within the liturgy?