Some valuable sermon collections to read on a Sunday afternoon:
- Walter Brueggemann, Inscribing the text: sermons and prayers of Walter Brueggemann (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2004)
- Eberhard Jüngel, Predigten Volumes 1-6, though I only have the first four volumes, 1) ...weil es ein gesprochen Wort war ..., 2) Geistesgegenwart, 3) Schmecken und Sehen 4) Unterbrechungen
- Jürgen Moltmann, Die Sprache der Befreiung : Predigten und Besinnungen (München: Kaiser, 1972)
- Not a book, but deserving of honourable mention is Conrad Gempf’s podcast of the entire text of his book, Jesus Asked, in 20 instalments.
Another I recently saw but don’t yet have is Ben Witherington’s Incandescence: Light Shed through the Word.
I should also mention Rudolf Bultmann’s Das verkuendigte Wort : Predigten, Andachten, Ansprachen; 1906 - 1941 (Tübingen : Mohr, 1984), though I have not yet made the time to get into this one, so I can’t really comment.
If at all, what sermon collection books do you most enjoy?
14 comments:
Zwingli's sermons are great fun, as are Luthers. Bultmanns too are grand (in the vol you mentioned and Marburger Predigten) and von Rads. I suppose those are about it for me. Though, I should go on to say, any person who takes someone else's sermon and preaches it is a scoundrel and a miscreant.
Okay Chris, now for us non-German readers, how do we read Moltmann's sermons? Perhaps you and Scott could translate them!
'The Collected Sermons of Jim West' are my habitual bedtime reading.
Before I started reading them, I used to be an insomniac . . .
Bob,
Pray for the gift of interpretation of tongues, brother.
;-)
Jim, I'd like to read von Rad's ---> off to the library tomorrow
Any Zwingli specific sermons you could recommend?
JJ, me too!
Bossuet's sermons!
For me it's Lloyd-Jones on Romans. Magnificent.
For a stroll into the mists of time. How about:
The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers: A Manual of Preaching, Spiritual Reading and Meditation. by M. F. Toal
With sermons by;
Basil the Great; Gregory Nazianzen; John Crysostom, Cyril of Alexandria;
Ambrose; Jerome; Augustine; Gregory the Great; Maximus; Origen, et.al.
John
If it's a dramatic, sorrowful Sunday afternoon, I like to read my own talks and sermons. If I need something a little more helpful and uplifting, weren't Calvin's commentaries originally sermons (or at least lectures)?
I love J.H. Newman's Plain and Parochial Sermons -- Heart Speaks to Heart! All 8 volumes have been crammed into one...small type, but payoff is grand!
Also, there is a small collection of Joseph Ratzinger's sermons translated into english, but I can't remember the title at the moment.
This is fun! I must admit that I haven't read most of the ones mentioned in the comments (except Calvin and Lloyd Jones), so these joys await me. Many thanks.
I've never read a collection of sermons. I'd love to get into von Rad. Could someone give me the title of the book? German or English will do.
Hi Phil!
Rad, Gerhard von
Predigt-Meditationen / Gerhard von Rad. - Göttingen : Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1973.
My taste in sermons is very eclectic: I haven't read Zwingli's, but agree with Jim West that Luther's are powerful--even when he's wrong. Wesley's sermons are often good, but sometimes they have that "overly flowery" quality of 18th C. English lit; same with Wesley's American contemporary Jonathon Edwards.
Karl Barth's prison sermons (I forget the title of the collection) are incredible and I enjoyed reading a German collection of Martin Niemöller's sermons when I was studying theological German years ago. I doubt they've ever been translated and should be. Strength to Love, a collection of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s sermons, is quite good. The dean of African-American preachers in the 20th C. is Gardner Taylor and his are always good even in writing--although there is no substitute for the oral/aural worship event that is Black Church preaching!
I have several differences with Reinhold Niebuhr as a theologian, but he was a great preacher and this really comes across in Justice and Mercy, the collection posthumously collected and published by his wife, Ursula.
I have also read several collections of sermons from women preachers--but most involved only one sermon per woman. Although my pastor is a woman (and an excellent preacher) and I am married to another preacher, I haven't met enough female preachers to know who are the best preachers. Not many seem to be publishing collections of their sermons--and neither are many feminist theologians.
Brilliant! Thanks MWW, plenty for me to dig up.
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