I did something today that I have never done before. I recycled a sermon I preached in 1996 on the same texts as today. Mitigating circumstances are:
- It was delivered 15 years ago.
- It was delivered to a different congregation.
Nearly every year the Vicar at St. John's takes Low Sunday off and asks me to preach. Every year the Gospel is John 20:19-31—Doubting Thomas. Even before I started preaching at St. John's, I preached on Doubting Thomas. In fact, I believe the first sermon I ever preached, at Integrity/New York in the early 1990's, was on this Gospel text.
The first couple of times one preaches on a certain text, it's fairly easy to get some inspiration. Once you've preached on it 10 times or more, it starts to get difficult to have that inspired moment. I had trouble yesterday; I wrote about 1-1/2 pages, and stopped. Then I looked through my old sermons and, abracadabra!
Please forgive me. If any other of you are preachers, tell me: do
you recycle sermons occasionally?
( For those who aren't interested, I'll put it behind a cut. )