We do the Kyrie during Advent and Lent, and the Gloria the rest of the year. (When I took Liturgics, I was the head of one of the student teams working up a communion service. We did it using Rite I and both the Kyrie and the Gloria. One of the older and more irascible priests (fortunately one without grading powers for that course) was furious. It apparently "takes too long".
Me, being the High Chief Musician where I work, have this argument thrown at me all the time. At no time during my tenure have both Kyrie and Gloria been used back to back. This is so unwise. A recent new rector was on a "streamlining" pathway, and applied it to hymns too. Too many verses, too slowly played/sung- deleting everything deletable. Using a 'hymn of praise' instead seems wrong. The present rector is more reasonable, but under the Vestry insisting the 10 AM service be done with NO LATER than precisely 11:00.
I have a bit of an attitude when it comes to folks protesting about the length of the service. In previous parish we had one or two people who would regularly give you brain damage if you went over sixty minutes, so I went on a hymn pruning exercise. The first victim was the sermon hymn, then I used to restrict the gradual and communion hymns to one or two verses, went on a campaign against waffling in the Prayer for the Church, and lastly decreed that notices had to be given in writing to the officiating minister. This saved about fifteen minutes without having to do any violence to the liturgy getting us back down to about hour to an hour and five which is about right for a MOTR small town church.
The more reasonable, more liturgically minded people at my place-most of the choir people- have said (essentially) "how irreverent and self centered to limit the worship of God, once a week, to 60 minutes, no matter what." I agree.
Also, "silence" is ignored during the service, except for some visiting priests filling in. You can almost hear the dissatisfaction with not galloping onward with the next item. What's UP with people nowadays?
Me, being the High Chief Musician where I work, have this argument thrown at me all the time. At no time during my tenure have both Kyrie and Gloria been used back to back. This is so unwise. A recent new rector was on a "streamlining" pathway, and applied it to hymns too. Too many verses, too slowly played/sung- deleting everything deletable. Using a 'hymn of praise' instead seems wrong. The present rector is more reasonable, but under the Vestry insisting the 10 AM service be done with NO LATER than precisely 11:00.
The APBA 2nd Order, which is the Eucharist you'll find in the vast majority of non-Sydney services, has the Kyrie, confession and pronouncement of the absolution, and then the Gloria - except of course in Lent and Advent when the Trisagion follows the Great Commandments and confession is moved to the alternative position after humble access.
As to length of service: the main complaint is not that simpliciter but rather the length of the sermon. A good sermon can be given in under 15 minutes with an excellent one in under 10. Beyond that, a sermon gets waffly and any message gets lost.
As to length of service: the main complaint is not that simpliciter but rather the length of the sermon. A good sermon can be given in under 15 minutes with an excellent one in under 10. Beyond that, a sermon gets waffly and any message gets lost.
As has been noted many times on the Ship, this isn’t necessarily true. Much depends on what the congregation—and the particular tradition of the congregation—expects out of a sermon. And expectations, of course, are directly related to willingness to listen attentively for more than 15 minutes and willingness to shorten the sermon rather than other parts of the service.
In my experience, for example, Anglican/Episcopal expectations of the sermon (or homily) are not the same as Reformed/Presbyterian expectations. I am not saying either tradition’s expectations are better. Just different. Nor am I saying that I haven’t heard Episcopal preachers give excellent 20+ minute sermons, and Presbyterian preachers give excellent 10 minute sermons.
I’m just saying simple statements like “a sermon gets waffly and any message gets lost” after 15 minutes aren’t helpful in my estimation. Much better, I think, to discard any ideas that there are uniformly “right” or “wrong” lengths of sermons, and instead ask “what does this congregation expect from the sermon, and how does that expectation fit into expectations for the service as a whole?”
Meanwhile, at our place we came to an understanding some years ago that if all the congregation’s expectations are to be met, we should assume an hour and fifteen minutes for a typical service.
On occasion I’ll go to the Roman Catholic cathedral across the way. They have an old battle-axe of a priest they roll out for the Sunday 5pm Mass. Man, his sermon is something else. It includes long quotes, citations, numbered arguments, and plenty of Aquinas. I think the sermon must clock in at 25 minutes, on average. He’s also stone deaf. What a hoot.
Have you ever heard any of the homilies in the daily Masses on EWTN Network? Oy! Painful.
Tagging on to what I said above, knowing how long the sermon should be is only half the equation. The other half is knowing how to use that time most effectively, be it less than 10 minutes, more than 20, or something in between.
Some of the best "sermons" I've ever heard were the little meditations at daily mass given by the Abbot of Mount St. Bernard in Leicestershire, or sometimes by another monk -- none of them more than a minute or two long. At that length of course, there was, of course, no time to begin with a "humorous" anecdote, nor to go through the readings in detail (remember that this a Trappist monastery -- between the mass and the offices, they read a lot of scripture), and certainly not to retell the readings that the congregation had just heard (which is my particular pet peeve). Nor was there any room for a great show of erudition (although the abbot has two doctorates). Just a wise word that shone light on the relevance of the liturgy and its readings. One fine example stands out to me so well that I can remember it almost verbatim. I was there for Epiphany, and after the gospel the monk said:
"We live in age of anxiety and dissatisfaction. But we must remember that even these can be gifts from the Holy Spirit. For, without them, what cause would the Wise Men have had to look to the sky for a star?"
Those three sentences remain, by some measure, the best Epiphany sermon I've ever heard. Perhaps only a Trappist could have preached it, though. I found that the emphasis they place on silence makes them acutely aware of not only what needs to be said, but of precisely how much needs to be said. This is not a gift that I, for one, share.
Certainly, a good sermon can be long, and I have heard some of those as well. But sometimes the best are very short indeed. Austin Farrer's Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament are another great example of this, being the published form of his homilies for Sunday low masses. He deliberately restricted his length so that no homily had more words than the gospel for the day (often, they have far fewer).
As for the total length of services, I don't mind it when the service is prolonged because of lengthy music or a lengthy sermon (provided both are good). And I will never complain that the ceremonial of a rite takes too long (at least in the Western Rite!). But I hate it when the peace lasts forever and turns into a social hour, or when a person doing the notices decides to turn it into a self-indulgent soporific soliloquy. Unfortunately, both are far too common. And, what's worse is when people then argue that, "oh, we can't do 'x,' it would make the service too long!" (Where "x" is invariably some essential or at least normative part of the liturgy).
On occasion I’ll go to the Roman Catholic cathedral across the way. They have an old battle-axe of a priest they roll out for the Sunday 5pm Mass. Man, his sermon is something else. It includes long quotes, citations, numbered arguments, and plenty of Aquinas. I think the sermon must clock in at 25 minutes, on average. He’s also stone deaf. What a hoot.
I wish more Catholic priests would give homilies like this (aside from the deafness) rather than the Reader's Digest type homilies you usually hear. I almost never hear RC priests cite any work of theology, any papal or conciliar teaching, or any devotional or mystical text written between the Bible and the 20th Century in their homilies. The problem is that those priests that I have heard make use of the richness of Catholic tradition in their preaching tend to be pretty reactionary. It doesn't have to be this way! The tradition of the Church needs to be liberated from arch-conservatives.
Nick Tamen, in many respects you are right and I was both far too general and far too Anglican in my comments. It depends on what you want from the sermon. For us, the sermon is a step along the path to the Eucharist. We'd rather have the preacher pick one of the readings for the day, clarify some of the difficulties in it and then give a lesson on how the message (a message) from it can guide us in our daily life. What it should not be is an opportunity for the preacher to demonstrate superior knowledge by turning the sermon into an exercise in biblical scholarship over 25 minutes.
What [the sermon] should not be is an opportunity for the preacher to demonstrate superior knowledge by turning the sermon into an exercise in biblical scholarship over 25 minutes.
On service length, I used to strap myself in for the 3 hour or so Orthodox ones. My mind did wander at times, but at the end I always felt sad they were ending and wished there was more. Then again, I was there for about 2.5 hours each Sunday for Matins and Liturgy, so not sure why 3 hours instilled such trepidation.
I had a period of the "let me show you how much Greek I know and let me teach you some too" sermon variety. I was glad when that ended.
At my Anglican Cathedral we have the Kyrie and Gloria back to back, chanted almost always to Merbecke (occasionally McNeil-Robinson).
On the question of the homily, the Cathedral's rotating cast, while different stylistically, are all very good. This past Sunday was just over 15 minutes on Mary and Martha, and very engaging.
My local shack OTOH has, it seems, dropped the Kyrie during my prolonged absence. I consider it and the Gloria integral to communion. Without asking for mercy, how can we then eventually make our confession? There will be a conversation in September. I assure you.
My local shack OTOH has, it seems, dropped the Kyrie during my prolonged absence. I consider it and the Gloria integral to communion. Without asking for mercy, how can we then eventually make our confession? There will be a conversation in September. I assure you.
You can of course argue that the Kyrie is effectively included in the Gloria (or at least the Agnus Dei, with similar sentiments). But I'm not convinced by the 'either/or' practice either.
On the other hand, a general confession (it seems to me) provides adequate asking for mercy. Especially if using the 1662 confession ("have mercy on us, have mercy on us...").
re Length of Service: One summer in my former parish we did this: Organ prelude as usual, choir and altar party in place at back of church. Prelude ended priest did the opening greeting and then full congregation shared in saying the Collect for Purity. Procession singing a hymn of praise in place of the Gloria. Once priest in place in chancel s/he said Collect of the Day and we went right on to the first lesson. With careful trimming of the sermon, and noting that announcements were already in the bulletin, we could be done in under an hour. Yes, the service should take what time it needs to be complete and reverent. But there is the commendment Thou Shalt Not Weary the People......
The Anglican church claim to be Reformed and yet for the Reformed the sermon and not the Bible readings are the important part of the proclamation of the Word of God. The Reformed would question whether Christ is present in the Eucharist if he is not first heard in the proclamation of the Word. The Eucharist is insubstantial without the proclamation of the Word and the Word is desiccated without the Eucharist.
The Anglican church claim to be Reformed and yet for the Reformed the sermon and not the Bible readings are the important part of the proclamation of the Word of God. The Reformed would question whether Christ is present in the Eucharist if he is not first heard in the proclamation of the Word. The Eucharist is insubstantial without the proclamation of the Word and the Word is desiccated without the Eucharist.
That's certainly not this Anglican's understanding. But I, for one, have never claimed to be "Reformed."
On occasion I’ll go to the Roman Catholic cathedral across the way. They have an old battle-axe of a priest they roll out for the Sunday 5pm Mass. Man, his sermon is something else. It includes long quotes, citations, numbered arguments, and plenty of Aquinas. I think the sermon must clock in at 25 minutes, on average. He’s also stone deaf. What a hoot.
The sort of preacher I enjoy listening to, and, to be honest, the sort of sermon I enjoy preaching when I have a congregation that will put up with it. Most of the time I aim for 12 minutes and come out between 10 and 15. I tend not to be long on anecdotes and filler which enables me to get through a decent amount of material in a normal length of time. The main danger for me seems to be that I can come over as a bit of an intellectual snob/lacking the common touch.
Having one foot planted firmly in the Protestant side of Anglicanism I rarely celebrate HC without preaching, though, at 7:30am on a winter's morning you are probably going to get me trying to achieve something close to @Columba_in_a_Currach's ideal of Trappist brevity and concentration. One reason for this is the handful of people that you get a midweek communions and offices seem to have a higher proportion of those who subconsciously think of themselves as part of "a religious community" than "consumers of religious services."
Historically it is clear that the Church of England is reformed (albeit not ReformedTM). It is not true for all Anglicans to say
For us, the sermon is a step along the path to the Eucharist.
For some (maybe many) Anglicans (not just in the evangelical wing), opening up the Scriptures is as important an element in worship as breaking the bread at communion - it is the means by which everyone is enabled to share in receiving God’s grace through the Scriptures. Obviously it has to go along with the public reading of Scripture as well. It would be very odd to expound something which had not first been read.
It would be very odd to expound something which had not first been read.
And yet I have heard it done—fortunately, not in an Anglican/Episcopal church nor a Reformed/Presbyterian church, but rather in a denomination that prides itself on its fidelity to Scripture.
I understand not overly taxing the patience of the congregation, but aiming at<60 min. strikes me as an unseemly sprint, especially if that requires trimming the liturgy. It raises the question, if one is so impatient in the presence of, or reaching out to, the Divine, why would one even bother to show up. If our Saviour could endure crucifixion, surely we can endure a service >60 minutes.
Yes, the service should take what time it needs to be complete and reverent. But there is the commendment Thou Shalt Not Weary the People......
It can be important to remember that sometimes it’s about more than wearying the people. For example, we have long-time members who now live in retirement communities. If we run more than a little bit longer than usual, they may not be able to get back in time for the lunch they’ve already paid for as part of their monthly fees.
I understand not overly taxing the patience of the congregation, but aiming at<60 min. strikes me as an unseemly sprint, especially if that requires trimming the liturgy. It raises the question, if one is so impatient in the presence of, or reaching out to, the Divine, why would one even bother to show up. If our Saviour could endure crucifixion, surely we can endure a service >60 minutes.
I do not worry about the one hour rule, but I do worry about keeping it tight. By tight I mean avoiding waste of time through poor liturgical practice. In many cases, liturgy is improved by a hefty dose of humility - i.e. just let the liturgy do the work, and do not let your stupid ego get in the way.
The Anglican church claim to be Reformed and yet for the Reformed the sermon and not the Bible readings are the important part of the proclamation of the Word of God. The Reformed would question whether Christ is present in the Eucharist if he is not first heard in the proclamation of the Word. The Eucharist is insubstantial without the proclamation of the Word and the Word is desiccated without the Eucharist.
Why is it necessary to have the sermon to proclaim the Word please? To put it another way, why are the readings insufficient? As I read it, that makes the sermon of greater worth than the words themselves, and the preacher greater than the author.
The Anglican church claim to be Reformed and yet for the Reformed the sermon and not the Bible readings are the important part of the proclamation of the Word of God. The Reformed would question whether Christ is present in the Eucharist if he is not first heard in the proclamation of the Word. The Eucharist is insubstantial without the proclamation of the Word and the Word is desiccated without the Eucharist.
Why is it necessary to have the sermon to proclaim the Word please? To put it another way, why are the readings insufficient? As I read it, that makes the sermon of greater worth than the words themselves, and the preacher greater than the author.
I agree. Both with the idea that the Eucharist is less than effective (albeit not, presumably, 'invalid') without the Word, and that the proclamation of the Word does not necessarily involve a sermon. As for preaching the Word in a sermon without having proclaimed it by reading the scripture as part of the liturgy, that seems to me much more corrupt than anything in medieval or pre-Vatican 2 practice.
The Anglican church claim to be Reformed and yet for the Reformed the sermon and not the Bible readings are the important part of the proclamation of the Word of God. The Reformed would question whether Christ is present in the Eucharist if he is not first heard in the proclamation of the Word. The Eucharist is insubstantial without the proclamation of the Word and the Word is desiccated without the Eucharist.
Why is it necessary to have the sermon to proclaim the Word please? To put it another way, why are the readings insufficient? As I read it, that makes the sermon of greater worth than the words themselves, and the preacher greater than the author.
From an Anglican perspective, it may not be necessary, and the readings may be sufficient. From a Reformed perspective, it generally is necessary to have more than the readings, at least in some form.
It’s a different expectation of the role of the sermon, and for that matter, possibly of the listening congregation. But I think we’ve been through all this before. (There was another thread on the topic, but I can’t find it right now.)
The Anglican church claim to be Reformed and yet for the Reformed the sermon and not the Bible readings are the important part of the proclamation of the Word of God. The Reformed would question whether Christ is present in the Eucharist if he is not first heard in the proclamation of the Word. The Eucharist is insubstantial without the proclamation of the Word and the Word is desiccated without the Eucharist.
Why is it necessary to have the sermon to proclaim the Word please? To put it another way, why are the readings insufficient? As I read it, that makes the sermon of greater worth than the words themselves, and the preacher greater than the author.
The readings are insufficient because we do not believe in God's Word a something static but something dynamic that needs to be broken open or at least attempted to be within the current context. The sermon is thus the culmination of the pastoral visiting and Biblical engagement of the preacher in which he leads the congregation into a communal discernment of the Word.
@angloid - One thing you have to remember is that the Reformed rarely celebrate the Lord's Supper except as part of the main Sunday service, though in times past it could be an adjunct rather than the main service. For the most part, though, this custom of having a 'stay behind' service has faded now that the tide of Pietism and Rationalism has gone out, and there is a better perspective on worship.
Anglicanism, at least in its 16th and 17th century origins, was Reformed in its perspective in that it expects that the proper place for the sermon as indicated by the BCP is as part of the Eucharistic liturgy. It seemed strange to the Reformers to read scripture, and not also explain its meaning via preaching at the main services because at that time the Bible was an unknown book.* We have all seen the harm that can be done by folks misunderstanding Scripture and running away with strange ideas. Some of them even come knocking on the door!
The old BCP had a bit of a hierarchy going on with teaching because, as Mattins was seen as preparatory for the Lord's Supper, there was no official order to preach. That became common custom in the 19th century when the old Morning Service of Mattins, Litany, and Ante-Communion began to be broken up. Evening Prayer was though to be the appropriate time to catechize because that was the service servants, apprentices, and so on were like to attend. A sermon with a catechetical focus was often substituted for the catechism later on, but that doesn't invalidate the point. Evening catechesis was also pretty common in Reformed circles, so Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Parker, Grindal, etc., were not thinking outside of the Reformed box when making these provisions. The odd thing, from the Reformed perspective was the retention of the quire office, but that's a whole other issue.
* - some 21st Christians are not that familiar with it either. Same goes for some of their preachers...
@angloid - One thing you have to remember is that the Reformed rarely celebrate the Lord's Supper except as part of the main Sunday service, though in times past it could be an adjunct rather than the main service.
I'm not sure what this has to do with my comments. And I am sure traditional Reformed practice is very different from that of some modern evangelicals (Anglican ones anyway) who seem quite happy to have 'worship services' with very little scriptural content. I agree that preaching is important, but it doesn't seem to make much sense to expound the scriptures without first reading them.
Anglican custom has tended to err in the opposite direction by being happy to celebrate the Eucharist without a sermon. This should never happen at a main Sunday service, but at a short midweek mass I think it is forgivable; often the Gospel reading does speak for itself but a few words of contextualisation are usually helpful.
The readings are insufficient because we do not believe in God's Word a something static but something dynamic that needs to be broken open or at least attempted to be within the current context. The sermon is thus the culmination of the pastoral visiting and Biblical engagement of the preacher in which he leads the congregation into a communal discernment of the Word.
You (i.e. Christians of the Reformed tradition) may well believe that. But, as I tried to say above, this is not everyone's tradition. Or, rather, I suspect most Christians would agree with the portion I've quoted. But, for many of us, the idea that a Eucharist without a sermon is incomplete -- let alone invalid, as you seem to suggest -- is utterly alien to our sacramental theology. For us, Christ is present in the Eucharist not because the word is preached, but because the Word was made flesh and assured us that he would continue to present in the bread and wine offered on the altar.
The readings are insufficient because we do not believe in God's Word a something static but something dynamic that needs to be broken open or at least attempted to be within the current context. The sermon is thus the culmination of the pastoral visiting and Biblical engagement of the preacher in which he leads the congregation into a communal discernment of the Word.
You (i.e. Christians of the Reformed tradition) may well believe that. But, as I tried to say above, this is not everyone's tradition. Or, rather, I suspect most Christians would agree with the portion I've quoted. But, for many of us, the idea that a Eucharist without a sermon is incomplete -- let alone invalid, as you seem to suggest -- is utterly alien to our sacramental theology. For us, Christ is present in the Eucharist not because the word is preached, but because the Word was made flesh and assured us that he would continue to present in the bread and wine offered on the altar.
Yes, but just to be clear, it's plain that sermons, some of them very long, were a part of widespread liturgical practice long, long before the Reformation came about. It was obviously important that scripture not only be read but that it be explained. Volumes after volumes of patristic homilies attest to that. There should be preaching even if its absence does not invalidate the eucharist.
At Our Place, Father NewPriest usually gives us a few words of contextualisation after the Gospel at daily Mass. No more is needed, IMHO.
I, as a Lay Reader, get to preach at Sunday Mass about every other month. I try to limit my homily to one page of A4 text (I'm afraid I need to write it out in full, even if I diverge slightly 'on the day'). 5-8 minutes max.
Similarly, believing that Christ is present in the bread and the wine on the Holy Table is not everyone's tradition either. Some of us hold to the idea that we are fed spiritually with Christ body and blood through the Bread and Wine, but that the elements themselves do not become anything other than effectual signs.
Ideally, both the Word preached and the Bread broken, should be part of the Eucharistic celebration. If you are in tradition which allows frequent midweek celebrations of the Lord's Supper (which I am) then on weekdays then that isn't always possible. However, on Sundays and major Holydays, then yes - the main service should - to be understood as meaning in this context just short MUST - contain both the Word read and preached, and the Sacrament. Of course YMMV, but that was the message I got from both the Evangelical and the Anglo-Catholic who attempted to train me.
The readings are insufficient because we do not believe in God's Word a something static but something dynamic that needs to be broken open or at least attempted to be within the current context. The sermon is thus the culmination of the pastoral visiting and Biblical engagement of the preacher in which he leads the congregation into a communal discernment of the Word.
You (i.e. Christians of the Reformed tradition) may well believe that. But, as I tried to say above, this is not everyone's tradition.
I don't think anyone suggested it's part of everyone's tradition. Jengie Jon's initial statement was specifically aimed at those Anglicans who claim to be Reformed:
The Anglican church claim to be Reformed and yet for the Reformed the sermon and not the Bible readings are the important part of the proclamation of the Word of God.
Yes, the way it was phrased may have been overstated to the extent it says "the Anglican Church" claims to be Reformed, especially if "Anglican Church" is read to mean "churches of the Anglican Communion" rather than the Church of England. And as BroJames noted, even within the CofE, there may well be a difference between "reformed" and "Reformed."
But I think it was clear that the comment was not trying to make a statement for all Christian traditions, but rather was talking only about those who claim to be Reformed but don't act like it. If the "claim to be Reformed" shoe doesn't fit to start with, then there's no need to worry about whether the wearer of the shoe is acting Reformed.
Yes, the way it was phrased may have been overstated to the extent it says "the Anglican Church" claims to be Reformed, especially if "Anglican Church" is read to mean "churches of the Anglican Communion" rather than the Church of England. And as BroJames noted, even within the CofE, there may well be a difference between "reformed" and "Reformed."
The difference between "reformed" and "Reformed" is one that has often tested my extremely limited peace making skills. I can get quite sour with what I think of as "Westminster Anglicans" who think that the 39 Articles are simply the warm up match for the real thing - the Westminster Confession of Faith, or Dortian Anglicans who think that the 39As have to be interpreted through the lens of the Canons of Dort.
Personally, I would tend to think of myself as being as much Reformed as reformed, and the Reformed theologians that float my boat are folks like Bucer and Bullinger rather than Beza and Perkins. I once got rather fed-up with a "Westminster Anglican" layman bashing the concept of baptismal regeneration, so I sent him Bullinger's sermon on Baptism, and then sat back and listened to the squawking. Not the most pastoral of responses, but the poor dear had obviously read only a limited number of cornflake packets. I am glad I did not enlighten him on the views of Bullinger on the Assumption - his might head have exploded completely...
The Anglican church claim to be Reformed and yet for the Reformed the sermon and not the Bible readings are the important part of the proclamation of the Word of God. The Reformed would question whether Christ is present in the Eucharist if he is not first heard in the proclamation of the Word. The Eucharist is insubstantial without the proclamation of the Word and the Word is desiccated without the Eucharist.
Why is it necessary to have the sermon to proclaim the Word please? To put it another way, why are the readings insufficient? As I read it, that makes the sermon of greater worth than the words themselves, and the preacher greater than the author.
The readings are insufficient because we do not believe in God's Word a something static but something dynamic that needs to be broken open or at least attempted to be within the current context. The sermon is thus the culmination of the pastoral visiting and Biblical engagement of the preacher in which he leads the congregation into a communal discernment of the Word.
For me this is clearly a YMMV question. I have found the readings themselves, even when they use rather cryptic passages, very useful and even fascinating, but am challenged to think of more than 3 or 4 sermons (out of-- quick math-- over 1,500) which I can remember or which had any impact. Now, I have primarily heard sermons in Anglican, Presbie, UCC, or RC settings (I except the Orthodox from this list as sermons in Arabic etc...) rather than from evangelical or Holiness churches, but as often as not they do not address the readings and frequently seem to be "Reader's Digest" excerpts of one sort or the other. As an over-generalization, Presbyterian ones are the meatiest and some of the UCC ones appear to have been composed with seriousness.
This has had the perhaps unfortunate effect that I no longer really pay attention to sermons unless my attention is twigged by an attempt to explain or comment on the text.
FWIW, I can think of just 3 sermons - over a period of 50 years! - which I can recall, and which have stayed in my mind. Two of them are relatively recent - within the past 5 years - but the other dates from a good 40 years ago...
Not that that's important, or significant. Sermons (especially at a Sunday Mass) are for the specific time, and place. If they affect, positively, the lives of the Faithful Few during the subsequent week, they've done their job.
<snip>challenged to think of more than 3 or 4 sermons (out of-- quick math-- over 1,500) which I can remember or which had any impact.<snip>
I know there are plenty of bad sermons around I have sat through some, and probably delivered some too, but I wonder how many meals you can remember or which had any impact. That doesn’t mean that you weren’t nourished by those meals.
Certainly, if sermons do not address or flow from the readings then their value is different. To me failing to preach on or from the text of the read scripture would be like consecrating the elements and then going along the rail and administering Pringles.
FWIW, I can think of just 3 sermons - over a period of 50 years! - which I can recall, and which have stayed in my mind. Two of them are relatively recent - within the past 5 years - but the other dates from a good 40 years ago...
Not that that's important, or significant. Sermons (especially at a Sunday Mass) are for the specific time, and place. If they affect, positively, the lives of the Faithful Few during the subsequent week, they've done their job.
This. In the "Bizarre preaching" thread, @Cathscats said this last month, which makes much the same point:
A sermon should be of the moment, for its time and place. Doesn't mean that it should necessarily be forgettable afterwards, of course, but it has met its situation, it has done its job. They preacher doesn't want you to remember his or her words, but to get the message that was behind them and act on it or let it act on you.
Bad sermons don't do this,and so they are things in themselves and also we always remember what makes us cringe.
I responded that
I liken it to a good meal with family or friends. Yes, there may be a few really good where later on details about the food can be remembered. And you often remember the bad ones. But a good meal has done its work if you are fed and nourished, and if you’re drawn closer at least for a time to friends and family.
ETA: And I see that while I was composing this post, @BroJames made very much the same point with the same metaphor. Great minds and all . . . .
Given the general quality of preaching today, it may very well be that the shorter the better. But, say, the theological and festal orations of St Gregory of Nazianzen show what a stunning work of art a good homily can be. It also requires a good training in rhetoric, poetics, etc., something which I gather is pretty absent in most clergy training today.
The Anglican church claim to be Reformed and yet for the Reformed the sermon and not the Bible readings are the important part of the proclamation of the Word of God. The Reformed would question whether Christ is present in the Eucharist if he is not first heard in the proclamation of the Word. The Eucharist is insubstantial without the proclamation of the Word and the Word is desiccated without the Eucharist.
Why is it necessary to have the sermon to proclaim the Word please? To put it another way, why are the readings insufficient? As I read it, that makes the sermon of greater worth than the words themselves, and the preacher greater than the author.
The readings are insufficient because we do not believe in God's Word a something static but something dynamic that needs to be broken open or at least attempted to be within the current context. The sermon is thus the culmination of the pastoral visiting and Biblical engagement of the preacher in which he leads the congregation into a communal discernment of the Word.
For me this is clearly a YMMV question. I have found the readings themselves, even when they use rather cryptic passages, very useful and even fascinating, but am challenged to think of more than 3 or 4 sermons (out of-- quick math-- over 1,500) which I can remember or which had any impact. Now, I have primarily heard sermons in Anglican, Presbie, UCC, or RC settings (I except the Orthodox from this list as sermons in Arabic etc...) rather than from evangelical or Holiness churches, but as often as not they do not address the readings and frequently seem to be "Reader's Digest" excerpts of one sort or the other. As an over-generalization, Presbyterian ones are the meatiest and some of the UCC ones appear to have been composed with seriousness.
This has had the perhaps unfortunate effect that I no longer really pay attention to sermons unless my attention is twigged by an attempt to explain or comment on the text.
You missed the keyword 'communal', what you recall at some distance is not relevant, how the community understands and responds is. The congregation is the hermeneutic community within which the Word is sought. If you are claiming to be Reformed this shared task (and sorry, therefore, private thoughts do not count) is the key to understanding the activity of the Word. The Reformed really do not go in for private revelation of the Word.
How does that work when people understand the preacher differently? This is a genuine question - I’m not in the least intending to be snarky. It flows from my experience as a preacher of people’s responses afterwards.
The Anglican church claim to be Reformed and yet for the Reformed the sermon and not the Bible readings are the important part of the proclamation of the Word of God. The Reformed would question whether Christ is present in the Eucharist if he is not first heard in the proclamation of the Word. The Eucharist is insubstantial without the proclamation of the Word and the Word is desiccated without the Eucharist.
Why is it necessary to have the sermon to proclaim the Word please? To put it another way, why are the readings insufficient? As I read it, that makes the sermon of greater worth than the words themselves, and the preacher greater than the author.
The readings are insufficient because we do not believe in God's Word a something static but something dynamic that needs to be broken open or at least attempted to be within the current context. The sermon is thus the culmination of the pastoral visiting and Biblical engagement of the preacher in which he leads the congregation into a communal discernment of the Word.
For me this is clearly a YMMV question. I have found the readings themselves, even when they use rather cryptic passages, very useful and even fascinating, but am challenged to think of more than 3 or 4 sermons (out of-- quick math-- over 1,500) which I can remember or which had any impact. Now, I have primarily heard sermons in Anglican, Presbie, UCC, or RC settings (I except the Orthodox from this list as sermons in Arabic etc...) rather than from evangelical or Holiness churches, but as often as not they do not address the readings and frequently seem to be "Reader's Digest" excerpts of one sort or the other. As an over-generalization, Presbyterian ones are the meatiest and some of the UCC ones appear to have been composed with seriousness.
This has had the perhaps unfortunate effect that I no longer really pay attention to sermons unless my attention is twigged by an attempt to explain or comment on the text.
You missed the keyword 'communal', what you recall at some distance is not relevant, how the community understands and responds is. The congregation is the hermeneutic community within which the Word is sought. If you are claiming to be Reformed this shared task (and sorry, therefore, private thoughts do not count) is the key to understanding the activity of the Word. The Reformed really do not go in for private revelation of the Word.
Hmm. I would have thought, as part of the community, how I understood and responded was relevant, and my recollections (even at a distance) are part of that. But as I am not claiming to be Reformed, perhaps I'm not part of this shared task.
Of course people respond differently. How that is treated and developed is important. One understanding does not invalidate another. God's Word is always heteroglossial but the discernment comes in the building up of the a complex and cohesive understanding.
The Anglican church claim to be Reformed and yet for the Reformed the sermon and not the Bible readings are the important part of the proclamation of the Word of God. The Reformed would question whether Christ is present in the Eucharist if he is not first heard in the proclamation of the Word. The Eucharist is insubstantial without the proclamation of the Word and the Word is desiccated without the Eucharist.
Why is it necessary to have the sermon to proclaim the Word please? To put it another way, why are the readings insufficient? As I read it, that makes the sermon of greater worth than the words themselves, and the preacher greater than the author.
The readings are insufficient because we do not believe in God's Word a something static but something dynamic that needs to be broken open or at least attempted to be within the current context. The sermon is thus the culmination of the pastoral visiting and Biblical engagement of the preacher in which he leads the congregation into a communal discernment of the Word.
Thanks to both you and Nick Tamen. I can see great value in having a sermon, based on at least on of the readings to clarify difficulties in comprehension, to give us a lesson for daily living, or both. But what I'm having trouble with is the idea that it's necessary before moving to the eucharist. Probably because I'm Anglican and you're both Reformed
Before the Oxford Movement Anglicans and Reformed would have been on much the same page about the need for preaching at the Eucharist. The fact we are even having this discussion is a tribute to the way in which Oxford Movement and the Ritualists changed the views of High and MOTR Anglicans as to the relative importance of the ministries of Word and Sacrament.
The Anglican church claim to be Reformed and yet for the Reformed the sermon and not the Bible readings are the important part of the proclamation of the Word of God. The Reformed would question whether Christ is present in the Eucharist if he is not first heard in the proclamation of the Word. The Eucharist is insubstantial without the proclamation of the Word and the Word is desiccated without the Eucharist.
Why is it necessary to have the sermon to proclaim the Word please? To put it another way, why are the readings insufficient? As I read it, that makes the sermon of greater worth than the words themselves, and the preacher greater than the author.
The readings are insufficient because we do not believe in God's Word a something static but something dynamic that needs to be broken open or at least attempted to be within the current context. The sermon is thus the culmination of the pastoral visiting and Biblical engagement of the preacher in which he leads the congregation into a communal discernment of the Word.
Thanks to both you and Nick Tamen. I can see great value in having a sermon, based on at least on of the readings to clarify difficulties in comprehension, to give us a lesson for daily living, or both. But what I'm having trouble with is the idea that it's necessary before moving to the eucharist. Probably because I'm Anglican and you're both Reformed
I think there are a couple of related answers to what you're having trouble understanding, Gee D.
First—and this probably does play into "because I'm Anglican and you're both Reformed"—from a Reformed perspective, a sermon that clarified difficulties in comprehension and gave us a lesson for daily living would generally, at least in my experience, be considered a fairly "meh" sermon, and a preacher who regularly preached such sermons would probably be considered a fairly "meh" preacher. Not that there's anything wrong with either of those two things, and not that it's not good when a sermon can include those things, but that's not what we typically expect from a sermon. (NB: I'm not in any way criticizing those traditions where these things are the expectation for the sermon, or those traditions where there really isn't any expectation of a sermon at all. I simply trying to explain how our expectations are different, and how that difference plays into the relationship we see between sermon and Eucharist. No claim at all of superior or inferior.)
I'm struggling a bit to come up with how to express this. I've said on the Ship before that I think the Reformed understanding of Scripture and preaching in worship could be described as quasi-sacramental. That is to say, our understanding is that the point of preaching is to proclaim the activity of Jesus in the church and in the world, and our understanding is that Jesus is present in the community in the proclamation of the Word. To put it another way, we expect the sermon to be an encounter with the divine, an opportunity for God to speak to us (sometimes in spite of the preacher) and to call forth a response from us. As Jengie Jon, noted, it is for us the difference between the words of Scripture being static words on a page and something dynamic in this community in this moment. It doesn't always have to be a 15 or 20+ minute sermon (nor does it have to be a sermon at all), but it does need to be something more than just the reading of Scripture, something that proclaims the gospel in this place at this time.
I think I've also noted before on the Ship that I think perhaps the most distinctive Reformed liturgical element as compared to other traditions might be the Prayer for Illumination, which is said just prior to the reading of Scripture, and which asks in some way or another for God to be present in the ministry of the Word (Scripture and preaching). These prayers are typically short, similar to a collect. One I often use when I am the reader in church is "Overwhelm us with your Spirit, O God, that the words we hear may speak to our hearts as your Word, made known to us in Jesus Christ the Lord." I've never known the Prayer for Illumination to be omitted in a Presbyterian service, and I don't think I've ever encountered one in a non-Reformed church.
In the Reformed understanding, the Eucharist enacts and "seals" (to use Calvin's term) the gospel that is proclaimed in the ministry of the Word. Word and Sacrament are like the two parts of a hinge, and either is incomplete without the other. Of course, the reality is that historically we have been much better at maintaining that the Eucharist is incomplete without the ministry of the Word, and not nearly as good at maintaining—or at least practicing what we preach—that the ministry of the Word is incomplete without the Eucharist. At least in my corner of the Reformed world, and I think in others, there have been many signs in the recent decades that that is finally changing, and many efforts to bring about that change.
Comments
Me, being the High Chief Musician where I work, have this argument thrown at me all the time. At no time during my tenure have both Kyrie and Gloria been used back to back. This is so unwise. A recent new rector was on a "streamlining" pathway, and applied it to hymns too. Too many verses, too slowly played/sung- deleting everything deletable. Using a 'hymn of praise' instead seems wrong. The present rector is more reasonable, but under the Vestry insisting the 10 AM service be done with NO LATER than precisely 11:00.
Also, "silence" is ignored during the service, except for some visiting priests filling in. You can almost hear the dissatisfaction with not galloping onward with the next item. What's UP with people nowadays?
The APBA 2nd Order, which is the Eucharist you'll find in the vast majority of non-Sydney services, has the Kyrie, confession and pronouncement of the absolution, and then the Gloria - except of course in Lent and Advent when the Trisagion follows the Great Commandments and confession is moved to the alternative position after humble access.
As to length of service: the main complaint is not that simpliciter but rather the length of the sermon. A good sermon can be given in under 15 minutes with an excellent one in under 10. Beyond that, a sermon gets waffly and any message gets lost.
In my experience, for example, Anglican/Episcopal expectations of the sermon (or homily) are not the same as Reformed/Presbyterian expectations. I am not saying either tradition’s expectations are better. Just different. Nor am I saying that I haven’t heard Episcopal preachers give excellent 20+ minute sermons, and Presbyterian preachers give excellent 10 minute sermons.
I’m just saying simple statements like “a sermon gets waffly and any message gets lost” after 15 minutes aren’t helpful in my estimation. Much better, I think, to discard any ideas that there are uniformly “right” or “wrong” lengths of sermons, and instead ask “what does this congregation expect from the sermon, and how does that expectation fit into expectations for the service as a whole?”
Meanwhile, at our place we came to an understanding some years ago that if all the congregation’s expectations are to be met, we should assume an hour and fifteen minutes for a typical service.
Tagging on to what I said above, knowing how long the sermon should be is only half the equation. The other half is knowing how to use that time most effectively, be it less than 10 minutes, more than 20, or something in between.
"We live in age of anxiety and dissatisfaction. But we must remember that even these can be gifts from the Holy Spirit. For, without them, what cause would the Wise Men have had to look to the sky for a star?"
Those three sentences remain, by some measure, the best Epiphany sermon I've ever heard. Perhaps only a Trappist could have preached it, though. I found that the emphasis they place on silence makes them acutely aware of not only what needs to be said, but of precisely how much needs to be said. This is not a gift that I, for one, share.
Certainly, a good sermon can be long, and I have heard some of those as well. But sometimes the best are very short indeed. Austin Farrer's Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament are another great example of this, being the published form of his homilies for Sunday low masses. He deliberately restricted his length so that no homily had more words than the gospel for the day (often, they have far fewer).
As for the total length of services, I don't mind it when the service is prolonged because of lengthy music or a lengthy sermon (provided both are good). And I will never complain that the ceremonial of a rite takes too long (at least in the Western Rite!). But I hate it when the peace lasts forever and turns into a social hour, or when a person doing the notices decides to turn it into a self-indulgent soporific soliloquy. Unfortunately, both are far too common. And, what's worse is when people then argue that, "oh, we can't do 'x,' it would make the service too long!" (Where "x" is invariably some essential or at least normative part of the liturgy).
I wish more Catholic priests would give homilies like this (aside from the deafness) rather than the Reader's Digest type homilies you usually hear. I almost never hear RC priests cite any work of theology, any papal or conciliar teaching, or any devotional or mystical text written between the Bible and the 20th Century in their homilies. The problem is that those priests that I have heard make use of the richness of Catholic tradition in their preaching tend to be pretty reactionary. It doesn't have to be this way! The tradition of the Church needs to be liberated from arch-conservatives.
Completely agree!
I had a period of the "let me show you how much Greek I know and let me teach you some too" sermon variety. I was glad when that ended.
On the question of the homily, the Cathedral's rotating cast, while different stylistically, are all very good. This past Sunday was just over 15 minutes on Mary and Martha, and very engaging.
My local shack OTOH has, it seems, dropped the Kyrie during my prolonged absence. I consider it and the Gloria integral to communion. Without asking for mercy, how can we then eventually make our confession? There will be a conversation in September. I assure you.
You can of course argue that the Kyrie is effectively included in the Gloria (or at least the Agnus Dei, with similar sentiments). But I'm not convinced by the 'either/or' practice either.
That's certainly not this Anglican's understanding. But I, for one, have never claimed to be "Reformed."
The sort of preacher I enjoy listening to, and, to be honest, the sort of sermon I enjoy preaching when I have a congregation that will put up with it. Most of the time I aim for 12 minutes and come out between 10 and 15. I tend not to be long on anecdotes and filler which enables me to get through a decent amount of material in a normal length of time. The main danger for me seems to be that I can come over as a bit of an intellectual snob/lacking the common touch.
Having one foot planted firmly in the Protestant side of Anglicanism I rarely celebrate HC without preaching, though, at 7:30am on a winter's morning you are probably going to get me trying to achieve something close to @Columba_in_a_Currach's ideal of Trappist brevity and concentration. One reason for this is the handful of people that you get a midweek communions and offices seem to have a higher proportion of those who subconsciously think of themselves as part of "a religious community" than "consumers of religious services."
For some (maybe many) Anglicans (not just in the evangelical wing), opening up the Scriptures is as important an element in worship as breaking the bread at communion - it is the means by which everyone is enabled to share in receiving God’s grace through the Scriptures. Obviously it has to go along with the public reading of Scripture as well. It would be very odd to expound something which had not first been read.
I do not worry about the one hour rule, but I do worry about keeping it tight. By tight I mean avoiding waste of time through poor liturgical practice. In many cases, liturgy is improved by a hefty dose of humility - i.e. just let the liturgy do the work, and do not let your stupid ego get in the way.
Why is it necessary to have the sermon to proclaim the Word please? To put it another way, why are the readings insufficient? As I read it, that makes the sermon of greater worth than the words themselves, and the preacher greater than the author.
I agree. Both with the idea that the Eucharist is less than effective (albeit not, presumably, 'invalid') without the Word, and that the proclamation of the Word does not necessarily involve a sermon. As for preaching the Word in a sermon without having proclaimed it by reading the scripture as part of the liturgy, that seems to me much more corrupt than anything in medieval or pre-Vatican 2 practice.
It’s a different expectation of the role of the sermon, and for that matter, possibly of the listening congregation. But I think we’ve been through all this before. (There was another thread on the topic, but I can’t find it right now.)
The readings are insufficient because we do not believe in God's Word a something static but something dynamic that needs to be broken open or at least attempted to be within the current context. The sermon is thus the culmination of the pastoral visiting and Biblical engagement of the preacher in which he leads the congregation into a communal discernment of the Word.
Anglicanism, at least in its 16th and 17th century origins, was Reformed in its perspective in that it expects that the proper place for the sermon as indicated by the BCP is as part of the Eucharistic liturgy. It seemed strange to the Reformers to read scripture, and not also explain its meaning via preaching at the main services because at that time the Bible was an unknown book.* We have all seen the harm that can be done by folks misunderstanding Scripture and running away with strange ideas. Some of them even come knocking on the door!
The old BCP had a bit of a hierarchy going on with teaching because, as Mattins was seen as preparatory for the Lord's Supper, there was no official order to preach. That became common custom in the 19th century when the old Morning Service of Mattins, Litany, and Ante-Communion began to be broken up. Evening Prayer was though to be the appropriate time to catechize because that was the service servants, apprentices, and so on were like to attend. A sermon with a catechetical focus was often substituted for the catechism later on, but that doesn't invalidate the point. Evening catechesis was also pretty common in Reformed circles, so Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Parker, Grindal, etc., were not thinking outside of the Reformed box when making these provisions. The odd thing, from the Reformed perspective was the retention of the quire office, but that's a whole other issue.
* - some 21st Christians are not that familiar with it either. Same goes for some of their preachers...
I'm not sure what this has to do with my comments. And I am sure traditional Reformed practice is very different from that of some modern evangelicals (Anglican ones anyway) who seem quite happy to have 'worship services' with very little scriptural content. I agree that preaching is important, but it doesn't seem to make much sense to expound the scriptures without first reading them.
Anglican custom has tended to err in the opposite direction by being happy to celebrate the Eucharist without a sermon. This should never happen at a main Sunday service, but at a short midweek mass I think it is forgivable; often the Gospel reading does speak for itself but a few words of contextualisation are usually helpful.
You (i.e. Christians of the Reformed tradition) may well believe that. But, as I tried to say above, this is not everyone's tradition. Or, rather, I suspect most Christians would agree with the portion I've quoted. But, for many of us, the idea that a Eucharist without a sermon is incomplete -- let alone invalid, as you seem to suggest -- is utterly alien to our sacramental theology. For us, Christ is present in the Eucharist not because the word is preached, but because the Word was made flesh and assured us that he would continue to present in the bread and wine offered on the altar.
Yes, but just to be clear, it's plain that sermons, some of them very long, were a part of widespread liturgical practice long, long before the Reformation came about. It was obviously important that scripture not only be read but that it be explained. Volumes after volumes of patristic homilies attest to that. There should be preaching even if its absence does not invalidate the eucharist.
I, as a Lay Reader, get to preach at Sunday Mass about every other month. I try to limit my homily to one page of A4 text (I'm afraid I need to write it out in full, even if I diverge slightly 'on the day'). 5-8 minutes max.
Ideally, both the Word preached and the Bread broken, should be part of the Eucharistic celebration. If you are in tradition which allows frequent midweek celebrations of the Lord's Supper (which I am) then on weekdays then that isn't always possible. However, on Sundays and major Holydays, then yes - the main service should - to be understood as meaning in this context just short MUST - contain both the Word read and preached, and the Sacrament. Of course YMMV, but that was the message I got from both the Evangelical and the Anglo-Catholic who attempted to train me.
Yes, the way it was phrased may have been overstated to the extent it says "the Anglican Church" claims to be Reformed, especially if "Anglican Church" is read to mean "churches of the Anglican Communion" rather than the Church of England. And as BroJames noted, even within the CofE, there may well be a difference between "reformed" and "Reformed."
But I think it was clear that the comment was not trying to make a statement for all Christian traditions, but rather was talking only about those who claim to be Reformed but don't act like it. If the "claim to be Reformed" shoe doesn't fit to start with, then there's no need to worry about whether the wearer of the shoe is acting Reformed.
Personally, I would tend to think of myself as being as much Reformed as reformed, and the Reformed theologians that float my boat are folks like Bucer and Bullinger rather than Beza and Perkins. I once got rather fed-up with a "Westminster Anglican" layman bashing the concept of baptismal regeneration, so I sent him Bullinger's sermon on Baptism, and then sat back and listened to the squawking. Not the most pastoral of responses, but the poor dear had obviously read only a limited number of cornflake packets. I am glad I did not enlighten him on the views of Bullinger on the Assumption - his might head have exploded completely...
For me this is clearly a YMMV question. I have found the readings themselves, even when they use rather cryptic passages, very useful and even fascinating, but am challenged to think of more than 3 or 4 sermons (out of-- quick math-- over 1,500) which I can remember or which had any impact. Now, I have primarily heard sermons in Anglican, Presbie, UCC, or RC settings (I except the Orthodox from this list as sermons in Arabic etc...) rather than from evangelical or Holiness churches, but as often as not they do not address the readings and frequently seem to be "Reader's Digest" excerpts of one sort or the other. As an over-generalization, Presbyterian ones are the meatiest and some of the UCC ones appear to have been composed with seriousness.
This has had the perhaps unfortunate effect that I no longer really pay attention to sermons unless my attention is twigged by an attempt to explain or comment on the text.
Not that that's important, or significant. Sermons (especially at a Sunday Mass) are for the specific time, and place. If they affect, positively, the lives of the Faithful Few during the subsequent week, they've done their job.
Certainly, if sermons do not address or flow from the readings then their value is different. To me failing to preach on or from the text of the read scripture would be like consecrating the elements and then going along the rail and administering Pringles.
I responded that
ETA: And I see that while I was composing this post, @BroJames made very much the same point with the same metaphor. Great minds and all . . . .
And something preachers would do well to remember! The days of publishing weighty Sermons, in equally weighty Tomes, are (I hope) over.
You missed the keyword 'communal', what you recall at some distance is not relevant, how the community understands and responds is. The congregation is the hermeneutic community within which the Word is sought. If you are claiming to be Reformed this shared task (and sorry, therefore, private thoughts do not count) is the key to understanding the activity of the Word. The Reformed really do not go in for private revelation of the Word.
Hmm. I would have thought, as part of the community, how I understood and responded was relevant, and my recollections (even at a distance) are part of that. But as I am not claiming to be Reformed, perhaps I'm not part of this shared task.
Thanks to both you and Nick Tamen. I can see great value in having a sermon, based on at least on of the readings to clarify difficulties in comprehension, to give us a lesson for daily living, or both. But what I'm having trouble with is the idea that it's necessary before moving to the eucharist. Probably because I'm Anglican and you're both Reformed
First—and this probably does play into "because I'm Anglican and you're both Reformed"—from a Reformed perspective, a sermon that clarified difficulties in comprehension and gave us a lesson for daily living would generally, at least in my experience, be considered a fairly "meh" sermon, and a preacher who regularly preached such sermons would probably be considered a fairly "meh" preacher. Not that there's anything wrong with either of those two things, and not that it's not good when a sermon can include those things, but that's not what we typically expect from a sermon. (NB: I'm not in any way criticizing those traditions where these things are the expectation for the sermon, or those traditions where there really isn't any expectation of a sermon at all. I simply trying to explain how our expectations are different, and how that difference plays into the relationship we see between sermon and Eucharist. No claim at all of superior or inferior.)
I'm struggling a bit to come up with how to express this. I've said on the Ship before that I think the Reformed understanding of Scripture and preaching in worship could be described as quasi-sacramental. That is to say, our understanding is that the point of preaching is to proclaim the activity of Jesus in the church and in the world, and our understanding is that Jesus is present in the community in the proclamation of the Word. To put it another way, we expect the sermon to be an encounter with the divine, an opportunity for God to speak to us (sometimes in spite of the preacher) and to call forth a response from us. As Jengie Jon, noted, it is for us the difference between the words of Scripture being static words on a page and something dynamic in this community in this moment. It doesn't always have to be a 15 or 20+ minute sermon (nor does it have to be a sermon at all), but it does need to be something more than just the reading of Scripture, something that proclaims the gospel in this place at this time.
I think I've also noted before on the Ship that I think perhaps the most distinctive Reformed liturgical element as compared to other traditions might be the Prayer for Illumination, which is said just prior to the reading of Scripture, and which asks in some way or another for God to be present in the ministry of the Word (Scripture and preaching). These prayers are typically short, similar to a collect. One I often use when I am the reader in church is "Overwhelm us with your Spirit, O God, that the words we hear may speak to our hearts as your Word, made known to us in Jesus Christ the Lord." I've never known the Prayer for Illumination to be omitted in a Presbyterian service, and I don't think I've ever encountered one in a non-Reformed church.
In the Reformed understanding, the Eucharist enacts and "seals" (to use Calvin's term) the gospel that is proclaimed in the ministry of the Word. Word and Sacrament are like the two parts of a hinge, and either is incomplete without the other. Of course, the reality is that historically we have been much better at maintaining that the Eucharist is incomplete without the ministry of the Word, and not nearly as good at maintaining—or at least practicing what we preach—that the ministry of the Word is incomplete without the Eucharist. At least in my corner of the Reformed world, and I think in others, there have been many signs in the recent decades that that is finally changing, and many efforts to bring about that change.
I hope this is at least somewhat helpful.