Sermon, Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 2025
We continue this Sunday to preach through the first book of homilies. The fifth homily is entitled:
A Sermon of Good Works Annexed Unto Faith
These sermons have been edited to shorten them and to update the language, with the intent of maintaining the content, or at least the core meaning. The original texts of the homilies can be found in the manuscripts after the edited text that were preached. For background on these homilies, see the links below.
The fifth homily begins by noting that without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith in Christ is the cornerstone upon which a righteous life must be built. The second part of the homily asks about the nature of good works. Too often we human beings come up with our own rules for pleasing God instead of just following His commandments. This is the criticism that Christ leveled against the Pharisees. In the third section of the homily, the author (presumably Thomas Cranmer), looks at the religious practices of his day and criticizes them as Pharisaical, invented “sacraments” that honor the traditions of men before obedience to God. Since these practices are not common for us moderns, the homily preached presents some of the practices to which we are accustomed, our “traditions of men”, and questions whether or not these also have displaced our loving obedience to the commandments of God.