Preaching Mark's Unsettling Messiah

by David Fleer

Fleer and Bland have brought together an impressive list of homileticians and preachers to answer the question "How can we draw our congregations into the world that Mark has imagined for us in his gospel?" At the heart of this book is the homiletic work of Fred Craddock, addressing issues of whether the sermon says and does what the biblical text says and does and what qualities can enrich the sermon's form. Using concrete images and examples, Preaching Mark's Unsettling Messiah combines the best of Markan scholarship (Morna Hooker) with the best of homiletic theory (Fred Craddock and Richard Ward) with the skill of preachers who connect the biblical text of Mark to the specific task of preaching.

Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 2006

Reviews

[Ben Fike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently re-read this collection of essays and sermons as I'm preparing for sermons in Mark's gospel this year. As with all Fleer and Bland collections, this book contains an excellent set of essays approaching the task of preaching biblical texts from a variety of different perspectives. On this read, Fred Aquino's article, "Mark and Becoming Fully Human" helped to clarify how Mark's apocalyptic bent enters into conversation with ethics (particularly character formation). The Fred Craddock sermon and essay that begins the collection had the unfortunate side-effect of my shaping a sermon that was trying very hard to be a Fred Craddock sermon last week. Lesson learned: be careful when you read Craddock in relation to sermon prep. Overall, a great resource to stimulate thought for preachers working with texts in the Gospel of Mark.