Sermon or sacrament?

A trans-Tiberian brother, Tim Bayly, brings up an interesting point in regard to worship and the centrality of preaching. While he doesn't try to downplay the importance of the Eucharist in worship, he does feel that the preaching of the word should be the primary focus: first among equals, as it were.

I think his point is worth heeding, at least with some caveats. Preaching is no substitute for the sacrament, which takes the inncarnation to its conclusion (can we call it "inpanation"?) and should not be sidelined. But I wonder if the Mass doesn't go too far in eclipsing the homily. The first time my daughter brought her (Campbellite) boyfriend home for a weekend visit and they attended Mass with us, he actually had to ask afterward if there had been a sermon at all. He'd noticed that the priest stood and spoken for a few minutes after the Bible readings, but it seemed more like an afterthought. Having grown up in a Baptist environment, I can sympathize. I've gotten a lot of good information out of sermons, and a well-delivered one is an art form in itself. Does this abbreviated homily happen at other parishes, or is it just mine?

Something else that Tim's post made me wonder about is this statement:

... it is my understanding that, from the beginning, the reading and proclamation of God's Word were more central to the worship of the Church than the Lord's Supper, although changes occurred in this almost immediately following the Apostolic Age. (“More central” here is to be understood as a slight differentiation among equals, not superiority and inferiority.) It wasn't that the Lord's Supper wasn't central to worship but that it did not always occur every time the Word was preached, whereas any time the Lord's Supper was observed, it occurred in the context of the Word preached. The traditional reformed way of referring to these elements is by saying that, in worship, the Word is present through preaching and the Sacraments.

I don't know enough about the Apostolic Age to be able to agree or disagree with this, so I'm asking readers for some help here. Does anybody know a good source for Christian worship between Pentecost and the First Apology of Justin Martyr (155, if I recall)? I once attended an Orthodox "Typica" or "Reader's Service" where there was no priest available, and the whole liturgy centered around the readings and homily instead. Is it possible that the earliest Christians resorted to this when there was no apostle available to celebrate the Mass? And at what point in the Church's history were presbyters authorized to confect the Eucharist instead of a bishop?