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March 30, 2005

A Book of Sermons?

Home By Another Way - Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor

That might strike you as an odd thing to be reading, a book of nothing but sermons, but there was a time when the collected sermons of well known preachers were very popular reading. In the Episcopal Church, we take pride (occasionally deservedly) for high-quality preaching, and a few of the best have published their weekly homilies for the benefit of all of us.

One of the very best preachers in the Episcopal Church, and according to Baylor University one of the 12 most effective preachers in the English-speaking world, is Barbara Brown Taylor. Rev. Taylor is now a professor at Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia and has published a number of books, including several selections of sermons. One of my personal favorites is Home By Another Way. (Also here through Amazon)

The collection of 39 sermons covers the various seasons of the church calendar. Taylor has been described as a master storyteller, and all of her sermons have that gripping sense of story, but she also stays true to the traditional role for the sermon as interpretation of scriptural. Each piece is closely focused on the appointed text, but is not really about the text. Rather she has a way of talking through the scripture to the underlying meaning and lesson.

Taylor also has a wonderful way with words. Her style cannot really be described as "witty" or humorous, but it is remarkably clear and powerfully emotional. That's why Taylor is so widely quoted by other preachers. She can supply the potent line that drives home the meaning of the whole sermon. Very typical is her oft quoted response to folks who see the ashes on her forehead on Ash Wednesday and helpfully tell her that there's a smudge on her face. "I know", she says, "that's my mortality. I thought I'd let it show today"

In an earlier book Taylor published a series of sermons on Jesus' words from the cross, some of which are available on-line here, if you would like a sampling. Home By Another Way includes most of my personal favorites from her published sermons, including "Hands and Feet", a sermon on Luke 24:36-49. Again, typically for Taylor she takes an unusual approach to the text. The resurrected Jesus has appeared to the disciples, and asks them to verify that it is really he by observing his hands and feet. Most preachers focus on the wounds we know are there, as evidence of his suffering, Taylor addresses the odd request to identify him by his hands and feet. She talks a bit about recognizing people by their hands or feet.

I could identify some of you by your hands, I think. I have had the privilege of putting brown bread into them over the past two years, and I know some of them by heart. I don't know which I like better: the hands with some wear and tear on them, who have some clue what this meal cost, or the little children's hands, who reach out and take it entirely for granted. This is God's table, I am God's child. Give me my bread.

...What I like about hands is that they do not lie...

Then we get back to Jesus and the scene with the disciples.

"Look at my hands and feet," Jesus said, and when they did they saw everything he had ever been to them. They saw the hands that had broken bread and blessed broiled fish, holding it out to them over and over. They saw the hands that had pressed mud into a blind man's eyes and had taken a dead girl by the hand so that she rose and walked. They saw the hands that danced through the air when he taught...

And his feet - the ones that had carried him hundreds of miles, taking his good news to all who were starving for it - into the homes of criminals and corrupt bureaucrats, whom he treated like long-lost kin...

They were wounded now - all of them - the hands that had joined him to other people and the feet that had joined him to the earth. They had holes in them, sore, angry-looking bruises that hurt them to look at, only it was important for the disciples to look, because they had never done it before.

Look, he said to them afterwords, when the danger was past, You can look at them now. He wanted them to know that he had gone through the danger and not around it, so he told them to look - not at his face, not into his eyes - but at his hands and feet, which told the truth about what had happened to him...Some of us wish he had come back all cleaned up, but he did not.. He left us something to recognize him by - his hands and feet -, just like ours, or almost like ours. You now what his said about him. What do ours say about us? Where have they been, whom have they touched, how have they served, what have they proclaimed?

This is just a taste of how Rev. Taylor speaks in all of the 39 sermons in this book. Indeed, if you like this book you will very likely enjoy her others as well. I recommend them all, and will post more detailed reviews of each in the coming weeks. Do not be concerned if you are not Episcopalian, Taylor's books are very popular with Christians of any sort and are often quoted by non-Episcopalian clergy. If you don't affiliate with a specific denomination or are just curious about Christian ideas, Taylor will give you plenty of food for the soul without the churchy language. Even if you just like good writing, sample Taylor's considerable talent.

We Episcopalians need to read the great voices of our church. We have a proud history of great preachers, and you'll find that the tradition lives on.

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