Books on Sermons

I'm not sure how many pastors like or read books of sermons but I do. Some of my favourite writers of sermons are Stanley Hauerwas, Herbert McCabe, Rowan Williams, N. T. Wright, Barbara Brown Taylor and Frederick Buechner. But two I've recently come across are also high on my list. Speaking the Truth: Preaching in a Pluralistic Culture by Samuel Wells and The Word in Small Boats: Sermons from Oxford by Oliver O'Donovan are excellent collections from two scholars at their rhetorical and prophetic best. Samuel Wells is the Research Professor of Christian Ethics at Duke University and the Dean of Duke Chapel. Presently at the University of Edinburgh, Oliver O'Donovan was for many years the Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University and a Canon of Christchurch.

At the moment I'm finishing Samuel Wells' volume and I've decided the the sheer oddness of it is why I like it. Having heard variants on the "Three Point Sermon" for most of my life, Wells comes as a significant exponent of "narrative preaching." His eye for details, his creativity in speaking to culture and the ability to hear "the strangeness of Scripture" is a tonic to preachers who sometimes feel jaded or recycle old ideas. Moreover, as a primer to Wells' theology, I can think of no better or accessible a book.

This being Advent, here is a sample of Wells' sermon on Matthew's account of the virgin birth of Christ.

   "The Bible is the story of salvation, but it starts with the story of creation that we call Genesis. The Gospel is the story of salvation but it begins with the story of creation that Matthew calls "genesis."
   What that word genesis means is that the conception of Jesus is the beginning of all things. Not chronologically, maybe, but the conception of Jesus names God's decision never to be except to be for us in Christ - and that decision is the beginning of all creation. of all life, of all salvation, of everything that matters. And so we see that creation itself is a kind of virgin birth because it was creation from nothing, and it was brought about by the Holy Spirit. And the virgin birth is a new creation - or perhaps even the original creation - because it, too, is brought about in some ways out of nothing, by the action of the Holy Spirit, although this time, gloriously, with a woman at the center of God's action. We have been brought out of nothing to be made for relationship with God, and God has made a home among us to unite our hearts with his. Creation is a virgin birth. A virgin birth is creation. As we say in North America, "How about that?"
   Maybe it's time believing in the virgin birth came into fashion."

Samuel Wells, "The Action of God and Miracle" in Speaking the Truth