This set of seven sermons follows the traditional church sequence of "The Seven Last Words of the Cross," utterances that the gospel narratives place on the lips of Jesus. These utterances are drawn from the several gospel narratives. In the liturgical life of the church, however, the sequence has a significance and staying power of its own quite apart from the gospel narratives in which the utterances are embedded. These sermons take seriously the faith voiced by Jesus in his context of wretched abuse by the Roman Empire. They attempt, moreover, to connect that reality of faith and abuse in...

Description: Prison is a strange land, a land of deep heartache and sadness. Over two million people are serving prison time in America. Millions more are carrying the mark of prison as those who were formerly incarcerated, including large numbers of men and women who have been released on parole. In the midst of such human misery, when ""loosened tongues"" are freed to sing of God's redemptive love, grief is diminished and the prison loses its power. Endorsements: ""Prison in our society is just another word for abandonment and loneliness. But Wes and Marilyn Stevens refused to abandon their...

Biblical faith is passionately and relentlessly material in its accent. This claim is rooted in the conviction that the creator God loves and cares for the creation and summons creation to be in sync with the will of the creator God. This collection of essays is focused on the bodily life of the world as it is ordered in all of its problematic political and economic forms. The phrase of the title, ""all flesh,"" in the flood narrative of Genesis 9, refers to all living creatures who are in covenant with God--human beings, animals, birds, and fish--as recipients of God's grace, as dependent...

Description: ""Walter Brueggemann is the master of finding fresh and compelling dimensions of meaning in texts so familiar they barely scratch the surface of our consciousness. In this exciting collection, Brueggemann finds that when we admit we are dust, we can be liberated. Why? Because we are free from acting like God. We are free to choose obedience to the one living, true Sovereign. The idols lose their grip on us and we live faithfully and in authentic joy."" --Ronald J. Allen, Christian Theological Seminary ""According to Walter Brueggemann, the autonomy, secularity, and individualism...

About the Contributor(s): Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament Emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He is past President of the Society of Biblical Literature and the author of numerous books, including Truth-Telling as Subversive Obedience, David and His Theologian, Praying the Psalms, A Pathway of Interpretation, and Ichabod toward Home.

About the Contributor(s): Paul Riemann taught Old Testament at Harvard University and at Drew University. His special interest has been the psalms of complaint and the proper nature of prayer. Riemann and his wife now live alongside Burnham Cove in Maine.

Live Like You Give a Damn declares the very good news that God is raising up a new generation, largely outside the church, to bring impressive change to the lives of our neighbors locally and globally by creating innovative forms of social enterprise and community empowerment. The even better news is that those of us within the church can join this changemaking celebration and discover creative new ways God can use our mustard seeds to make a more remarkable difference than we ever imagined possible. In this book Tom Sine offers practical ways you can join those who are creating their best...

A critical examination of political Zionism, a topic often considered taboo in the West, is long overdue. Moreover, the discussion of Christian Zionism is usually confined to Evangelical and fundamentalist settings. The present volume will break the silence currently reigning in many religious, political, and academic circles and, in so doing, will provoke and inspire a new, challenging conversation on theological and ethical issues arising from various aspects of Zionism--a conversation that is vital to the quest for a just peace in Israel and Palestine. The eight authors offer a rich...

The Shoah is without question the defining moment in modern history, and it has transformed the manner in which the Bible is read and how God is understood. Questions that hitherto were rarely posed publicly must now be posed, and the human drama born out of exile, bondage, and genocide must be reckoned with in a new light.

These are issues that are predicated on a faithful God to whom challenging and even unanswerable questions must be voiced. So, how might the Hebrew prophets address such contemporary issues as imperial militarism, eminent domain, trust and trauma, hunger and power,...

This collection of poetic reflections is a rich resource for a faithful imagination. Michael Coffeys poems explore the deep questions and joyful affirmations of Christian faith. Never settling for easy answers or straight-forward interpretations, Coffeys writing invites the reader into new spiritual territory where the strange and unexpected, the beautiful and painful, become an encounter with the holy.

Anyone preparing to preach or teach on biblical texts will find here words that inspire, challenge, and create new inroads for faith. Anyone seeking meditative or devotional readings of...