Sunday, March 11, 2007

Sermon collections

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:

At 3/11/2007 1:53 AM, Anonymous Jim said...

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.

 
At 3/11/2007 4:32 AM, Anonymous Pastor Bob Cornwall said...

Okay Chris, now for us non-German readers, how do we read Moltmann's sermons? Perhaps you and Scott could translate them!

 
At 3/11/2007 8:26 AM, Anonymous J.Jones said...

'The Collected Sermons of Jim West' are my habitual bedtime reading.

Before I started reading them, I used to be an insomniac . . .

 
At 3/11/2007 12:43 PM, Anonymous Chris Tilling said...

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!

 
At 3/11/2007 2:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bossuet's sermons!

 
At 3/11/2007 3:26 PM, Anonymous Exiled Preacher said...

For me it's Lloyd-Jones on Romans. Magnificent.

 
At 3/11/2007 6:42 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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

 
At 3/11/2007 9:38 PM, Anonymous J. B. Hood said...

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)?

 
At 3/12/2007 4:19 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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.

 
At 3/12/2007 11:13 AM, Anonymous Chris Tilling said...

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.

 
At 3/12/2007 7:16 PM, Anonymous Phil said...

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.

 
At 3/12/2007 7:28 PM, Anonymous Chris Tilling said...

Hi Phil!
Rad, Gerhard von
Predigt-Meditationen / Gerhard von Rad. - Göttingen : Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1973.

 
At 3/13/2007 11:12 AM, Anonymous Michael Westmoreland-White, Ph.D. said...

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.

 
At 3/13/2007 11:15 PM, Anonymous Chris Tilling said...

Brilliant! Thanks MWW, plenty for me to dig up.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home