Religion: Not To Be Enjoyed

“I enjoyed your sermon very much.” Countless beamingly polite churchgoers so inform their preachers every Sunday. Last week the Rev. Robert E. Woods, veteran preacher of Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, took the wind out of their sails. Said he, from the pulpit: “Sermons are not intended to be enjoyed [but] to instruct, to inspire … to make you uneasy about yourself. Any sermon that doesn’t do that has misfired.”