I was sure that I must have preached on Candlemas at least once over the past fifteen twenty twenty-five-plus years, but if so, the sermon has not survived the passing years and changing word-processing formats. I furrowed my brow, and applied my fountain pen to paper, and eventually turned up the following.
(Yes, this another of those “I don’t really blog any more, but I still post my sermons” posts. I am still trying to ratchet up my commitment to blogging (as opposed to F-Book), and at least posting sermons keeps me aware of the benefits and ease of genuine blogs.)
Anyway, I had not really clocked to the fact that a sizeable proportion of the congregation this morning would be from Wycliffe Hall (our low-church, evangelical counterpart in Oxford), honest I hadn’t. I just bumped into Prof. Sarah Foot’s Facebook mention of Bede’s sermon on the Purification, and I found myself immersed in the historic sermons of the saints. One thing led to another, Samuel Pepys elbowed in, and eventually there was a sermon. It wasn’t meant as a poke in the eye; that’s just the way I preach (and once it occurred to me just how catholic a sermon it was, I tried to imagine how I’d have tried to accommodate our visitors if I’d thought to, and I failed miserably; I hate to think now what the sermon would have been like if I had been, as the Apostle saith, trying to please people).
So there’s the sermon. Maybe I’ll put something non-homiletical in here again sometime.
(This is a link to a PDF of my sermon for Candlemas, 2014.)