Charles A. Baird Missouri from 1921 until at least 1937, also acting as the President of the Board for several years. In his later years, Baird became a benefactor of the University of Michigan. His most prominent gift was the Charles Baird Carillon, a carillon consisting of 53 bells that was the third heaviest in the world in 1936. The carillon was purchased with a $70,000 gift from Baird. When Baird first offered the carillon to the university, the Burton Memorial Tower had not been built. The school initially set aside $35,000 to house the carillon in the tower of the Michigan Union.
A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer It was published later in the same year, and the work's first performance was given by the Basler Kammerorchester, conducted by the dedicatee, on 23 February 1962 in Basel . According to a note sent by the composer to Paul Sacher on 7 August 1961, Stravinsky regarded this cantata as a New-Testament counterpart to "Threni", composed three years earlier to an Old-Testament text, the Lamentations of Jeremiah. For his text, Stravinsky chose passages from the Pauline epistles and the Acts of the Apostles, as well as a prayer by the Elizabethan poet Thomas Dekker, written in a style of English