As the Church approaches Lent, some Christians might have begun thinking about what to give up, or what to take up. Perhaps a small resolution of abstinence – alcohol or chocolate – and a desire to read something that will draw us a step closer to understanding everything to which Lent points. In some churches, while Holy Week might feature a visiting speaker to lead people through the final week, it has been the custom in cathedrals and elsewhere to have a different guest preacher each Sunday. This practice goes back a long way and can be found in various notices and signs that have survived the passage of time.

In 1725 Ash Wednesday fell on February 10th. Or did it? This statement requires some qualification. The calendar at that stage was still in the Julian form, meaning that the year began on 25 March, hence the Lent preachers list for St Paul’s is described as the year 1724-25. This practice was known as ‘dual dating‘ and caused considerable confusion. It finally ended in England in 1751 with the British Calendar Act and an effective transfer to the Gregorian calendar used by most of the rest of the world.

As the notice from St Paul’s demonstrates, Lent sermons were not confined to Sundays. The advertisement offers distinguished clerics on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, throughout the 40 days. These occasions were not for the minor clergy, but moments when the cathedral staff themselves, or various other deans and bishops, might pronounce their theology and spiritual message.

Laurence Sterne, who was a well known and popular preacher, was aware that his humble station in the Church meant that he was unlikely to be invited into the nation’s highest pulpits. The steps that grace the cover of A Sterne Lent – Forty Days with the Celebrity Parson the Church Forgot, are elegant, simple and modest. They are the pulpit steps of All Hallows, Sutton on the Forest, where the preacher stands only a few feet higher than the congregation. Today, I understand that a less formal way of leading worship (and perhaps fewer parishioners) means that this beautiful 18th century piece of furniture is seldom used.

Many of Sterne’s surviving 45 sermons were first preached in the season of Lent. In keeping with the motif found across Sterne’s work, he was mindful of the contrast between success as an author and the skepticism about his character which would keep him out of high office in the Church.

“I just received a Translation into french of my Sermon upon the house of Mourning, from a Lady of Quality – who proposes to print it, for the Caresm, & to give ye people here a specimen of my Sermons – so You see, I shall be Lent Preacher at Paris, tho’ I shall never have the honour at London”

Letter from Laurence Sterne to Henry Egerton, written in Paris, March 8 1762. Quoted in Volume 7 page 233 of The Florida Edition

In a style characteristic of Sterne’s humour, his letter to Henry Egerton in March 1762 makes reference to the fact that his own death had been reported in newspapers back in England. Sterne’s congregation in Coxwold went into mourning. It took more than a week for corrections to appear in the English press. Sterne would undoubtedly have been fascinated by the eulogies which were published in the intervening days.

St Paul’s never beckoned the peculiar rural parson who had found fame – and a little fortune – through both his published sermons and Tristram Shandy. Undoubtedly Sterne has the last laugh, as the great names of that era, who graced the pulpits of the nation’s cathedrals, are now unknown. Yet, somehow, Sterne’s radical approach to the novel continues to stir the creative spirit of contemporary artists and authors across the world. I believe they also have a much neglected spiritual significance.

Perhaps one of the most attractive things about Sterne is his refusal to conform simply in order to ‘get on’. Yes, it rankled with him that there would be no palace to live in, or ample stipend to live off in a lavish style. Sterne can’t quite let go of the cost – the sacrifice – which witty writing and ecclesiastical satire had imposed on his prospects. Friends advised him to temper his writing until he was in the kind of exalted position no one could touch. However, I suspect that Sterne knew this beguiling suggestion for what it was, and that it would blunt the sharpness of his writing. Too many people have entered the church, or politics, certain that when they ‘arrive’ they will enact their intention to do something dazzling and different. Alas, how often do these well-intentioned ambitions become paralysed in the sticky web of power’s compromise? Sterne may not have preached in England’s most exalted pulpits – but the life we encounter in his writing is an enduring lesson on human weakness and hypocrisy, redeemed only by a God whose sense of forgiving humour is so much greater than the dismal depths of our everyday folly.