Sermons are spoken in a context.
Many are spoken in the specific context of a worship service, with things (mainly though not always acts of worship) before and after.
Whether we like it or not, these other things are part of the event of communication which will either enhance or detract from the specific message of the sermon.
These acts frame it. Meaning takes place in such frames.
This is why preachers need to have a clarity and a connection with what else is going on or they can end up speaking against the wider ethos of the service rather than with it.
Clarity and connection includes paying attention to content.
A disjunction in content can be like a clashing cymbal. Oh boy can it clash!!! Boom.
For example, a sermon on how we should love everyone (seems to be a general favourite) followed or preceded by announcements about signing a petition against the rights of groups we do not like, grinds with screeching incongruity. More, it destroys the ethos of the service suggesting at best that what is being said is not clear and at worst is quite simply untrustworthy.
Clarity and connection also includes paying attention to congruity in terms of movement. People have gathered and people will leave, so where or how does the sermon and other parts fit into that movement.
For example, a sermon that finishes sending out to radical mission, which is then followed by the notices of the forthcoming “pot luck luncheon”, fizzles to flatness before the service is even over.
The context of the service and the sermons role and place in it, are very significant for the communication of the message.
politurgy 