Yesterday morning I preached the sermon I posted here on Saturday night, and got an interesting reaction afterwards. One lady swore I had preached it before.

‘But I couldn’t have done,’ I replied, ‘ that passage only crops up in the Lectionary every three years.’

‘Oh, I’ve got a very good memory for these things,’ she said. ‘I told you at the time how you had preached on the passage very differently from your predecessor.’

I had another conversation with a member of the congregation, who was quite animated about the story. As she talked, there was something vaguely familiar about the language she used.

So I searched the computer when I got home. The first lady was right. I preached on this very passage in February last year. The sermon is here, on the ordinary website where I used to post my sermons. Thus my text document for it was in a different folder from the one I use now. No wonder the sermon seemed to come easily (something that relieved me at the time of writing, because all Saturday afternoon had gone to seeing our daughter perform for the first time with her ballet school).

Now apart from those of you who might like to do a bit of deconstruction by contrasting the two sermons, I had a more prosaic question in my mind: has anybody else had a similar experience? It’s not like the times when I deliberately repeat a sermon, after all.

Technorati Tags: sermons, preaching, Lectionary

Yesterday morning I preached the sermon I posted here on Saturday night, and got an interesting reaction afterwards. One lady swore I had preached it before.

‘But I couldn’t have done,’ I replied, ‘ that passage only crops up in the Lectionary every three years.’

‘Oh, I’ve got a very good memory for these things,’ she said. ‘I told you at the time how you had preached on the passage very differently from your predecessor.’

I had another conversation with a member of the congregation, who was quite animated about the story. As she talked, there was something vaguely familiar about the language she used.

So I searched the computer when I got home. The first lady was right. I preached on this very passage in February last year. The sermon is here, on the ordinary website where I used to post my sermons. Thus my text document for it was in a different folder from the one I use now. No wonder the sermon seemed to come easily (something that relieved me at the time of writing, because all Saturday afternoon had gone to seeing our daughter perform for the first time with her ballet school).

Now apart from those of you who might like to do a bit of deconstruction by contrasting the two sermons, I had a more prosaic question in my mind: has anybody else had a similar experience? It’s not like the times when I deliberately repeat a sermon, after all.

Technorati Tags: sermons, preaching, Lectionary