Abstract
Luke Timothy Johnson, the Robert W. Woodruff Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins Emeritus at Emory University, provides a rich and poetic selection of homilies preached over fifty years of service to the Church and academe. The audiences range from his former monastic community, to ecumenical congregations across the country, and to students and colleagues at school chapel services, such as Yale Divinity School and the Candler School at Emory.
Each homily reflects the nuances of these assemblies, always engaging genuine biblical scholarship with an active faith engagement with the sacred texts and the current world context of the hearers. Preachers and assemblies will find insights that are not only illuminative of the texts but also the faith lives of those who encounter them. Never content with passive commentary, J.’s book is full of commonplace challenges that are poetic and yet cut to the heart. For example, preaching during Holy Week on the early community in Hebrews and the waning of their first fervor, he muses: “Persecution is much less hard on faith than is mockery. Persecution and martyrdom attack our flesh and bones. Mockery seeps into our minds and makes us ashamed” (58). Preachers can certainly mine that wisdom.
A companion piece to Out of Season: Sermons in Ordinary Time (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022), these homilies reflect the great events of the liturgical year in Advent, Lent, Holy Week, the Easter Season, and feasts of saints and angels—along with the engagement of communities in these focal ecclesial celebrations of the church. Some readers may find some of the commentaries on the texts to be more complex than they are hoping to absorb. However, preachers and those who engage in lectio divina on a regular basis are sure to find in J.’s preaching a way of approaching these familiar texts in a fresh and interesting way that can only deepen their engagement with the Word of God, to which J. has given his life to serving and breaking open. As J. wisely says, “these narratives participate in revelation by their distinctive way of interpreting experience” (138, emphasis original).