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BOOK REVIEW: The Preaching Life by Barbara Brown
Taylor

(Massachusetts: Cowley Publications, 1993).

Have you ever had a ‘prophetic serendipitous’ experience?
Occasionally

I’ve read a book which no one recommended, about
which I saw no

reviews, but I felt something of an ‘aha’ experience:
‘this one’s going

to be a best-seller’. I felt that about Scott Peck’s
The Road Less

Traveled back in 1982, before any of my acquaintainces
had heard of it.

And about Facey’s A Fortunate Life, Richard Foster’s
Celebration of

Discipline, Matthew Fox’s Original Blessing, and
John Claypool’s

books…

Here’s another author to watch. There aren’t many
really good ‘writing

preachers’: James Stewart, W.E.Sangster, John Claypool,
Fred Craddock,

and recently Walter Wink and William Willimon are
in a class of their

own. Barbara Brown Taylor belongs with this elite
group.

I first came across her sermons in The Christian
Century. If you can

find the February 25, 1996 issue in a theological
library, read her

sermon there on The Woman at the Well (John 4). I
think it’s brilliant.

The Preaching Life is not only about preaching: there
are excellent

chapters on the pastoral vocation, worship, and particularly
one on

imagination. Part two comprises thirteen of her sermons
(the best –

those on the ten lepers and the prodigal son).

Taylor is an American Episcopal priest, rector of
Grace-Calvary Church

in Clarkesville, Georgia. She’s written at least
three books of sermons

– Mixed Blessings, The Seeds of Heaven, and recently
Gospel Medicine.

She’s a good theologian, a good writer, she’s read
widely, but has a

wonderful ‘human touch’. Like Robert Webber, she’s
a good read for

‘evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail’. (In the Episcopal
Church, she

says she found what her heart was searching for:
liturgy, tradition,

tolerance, transcendence, communion, p.21). If she
speaks as well as

she writes, I’m going to book myself into one of
her conferences next

time I’m in the States.

I won’t spoil it for you. But here are some representative
gems:

* ‘While Jesus is… inscrutable, he is enough like
me to convince me

that relationship with God is not only possible,
but deeply desired by

God, who wants me to believe that love is the wide
net spread beneath

the most dangerous of my days’ (p.10).

* ‘Everyone who passes through the wilderness of
disillusionment passes

through those places where the wild beasts of wrath
and resignation

stalk their prey. There is a lot of attrition along
the way, but for

those who elect to go on the best advice is to keep
moving. Putting one

foot ahead of the other is the best way to survive
disillusionment,

because the real danger is not the territory itself
but getting stuck

in it.’ (p.9).

* ‘Some days we are as firm in our faith as apostles
and some days we

are like lost sheep, which means that we belong to
the flock not

because we are certain of God but because God is
certain of us, and no

one is able to snatch us out of God’s hand’ (p.145)

_