Icing on the cake

Too much of something, however good it is, sooner or later creates a sort of distaste for it. Very often hearing the very lofty and over pietistic sermons makes me feel a bit nauseated. It is like eating the cream on a cake – only the cream! The cake can very well be eaten without the icing. However, the icing does give it an aesthetic look (of course, not necessary for the gospel message, but that's all a sermon or some healthy advice often turns out to be). It may add to the taste as well. But if one eats that and that alone, that too much of it, one surely is not going to feel better. In such cases, the sermon is more a distraction than anything helpful. It certainly puts me off.

If only Jesus had said, “let your sermons be like the salt of your talk”... perhaps our preachers would have taken that seriously – at least some of them.