December 1 is the anniversary of this monumental series and a good day to start reading one sermon per day

... or six sermons per week (leaving out Sundays, if you want to be exact), which will take you to Christmas Eve. 

This December 1 is the 501st anniversary of the beginning of the preaching of the series, which was published in 1524. (So in terms of publication, it is still the 500th, if anyone else is keeping track.)

Here is the hardcover at B&NPress, here is the paperback at Amazon, here is the Kindle, and here is the playlist of introductions to the series. See previous post for the soundtrack to the videos.

Heinrich Bullinger's Sermons on the Apocalypse The First Vision (Revelation 1—3)

The first 22 of Bullinger's 101 sermons on Revelation. What more orthodox and trustworthy (human) interpreter of the Apocalypse could the church ask for than the author of the Second Helvetic Confession? 

Very reasonably priced hard cover with d.j.

First Year in Basel

This latest volume in the series, The First Year in Basel, fills the gap between Sown on Rock: The Sermon on the Vernacular and the Correspondence with Hedio, and the Sermons on the First Epistle of John (A Handbook for the Christian Life).

[Links to images lead to paperbacks. Links in the paragraph above lead to hardcover options.]

"Sown on Rock": Oecolampadius' Sermon on the Vernacular (1522) is finally — after 500 years — in English translation

The late Phyllis Tickle famously observed that, every 500 years, the Church cleans out its attic. Well, here you go, Church: a 500-year old classic, now translated into English for the first time. 

If any one sermon is emblematic of the Reformation of preaching itself, this is it. Preached and promptly published in the spring of 1522, it made the biblical and practical case for reading and preaching in the local language. Oecolampadius, serving as chaplain for the household of Franz von Sickingen, noted how time was wasted in worship with the Latin readings, since no one understood them, and in fact they were read so poorly that those in attendance ridiculed the whole thing. But the Word of God himself wants to speak plainly his promises of eternal life and salvation to his people and, of course, to be understood, so the love of God for his people motivated Oecolampadius to read and preach in German. 

Rarely has a single sermon ever caused such a stir. To this sermon, preached three months before the publication of Zwingli's famous "Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God" (September 1522), can be traced the most important homiletical development in Reformation, a simple pastoral decision made by a chaplain and former monk who, at the time, was also reaching back 1000 (500 x 2) years or so into the church's attic and translating the sermons of the Greek fathers, especially Chrysostom, and refreshing the preaching office with the greatest examples of public proclamation in the Christian era. Sure enough, Oecolampadius' sermon itself, and the "Beautiful Letter" in which he explained his modest, common sense liturgical changes to his friend Caspar Hedio, became one of the great sermonic moments of all time.

To Hedio, Oecolampadius wrote of his service on the Ebernburg, "here I carry on sowing on rock," a clear reference to the quintessential parable of the Word, and thus to preaching itself. The parable of the sower, of course, as Jesus told it, promised no harvest from seed that falls on the path or among stones or thorns, but — another major point of emphasis in the sermon — the miracle of preaching is at work here. Yes, by a sheer miracle of God, when Jesus himself preaches with us as we preach, even a single seed, like this sermon, can strike such a strong root as to break through rock, find water, and bear a harvest to surpass all expectations. Has the last 500 years seen or heard a more seminal sermon than The Sermon on the Vernacular? 

The whole of Oecolampadius 1522 correspondence is included here, as is the balance of his letters with Hedio through 1525. Among the latter is Hedio's (1524) Foreword to his German translation of Oecolampadius' Sermons on the First Epistle of John. In the generous Supplement to this new volume the reader also finds the first English translation of Ernst Staehelin's exhaustive and groundbreaking 1916 essay on Oecolampadius' translations of the patriarchs.

 
Dedicated with thanksgiving to the Triune God for preachers of the Word everywhere.

BTW, Amazon's hardcover platform is still in Beta, so the two JO translations linked here (in hardcover with djs), plus this hardcover reprint of Sime's short double biography of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, are all available at Barnes & Noble. Paperback will go live in a day or so. Don't expect Amazon to list BN titles, though. I'm not sure "do unto others" has quite penetrated the greatest retailer on earth. For that reason, it would be most helpful if you would spread the word, link, like, share, gift, recommend, purchase, order through your local BN, ask your library to acquire it, shout it from the rooftops, all of the above, etc. Don't let Behemoths go unchallenged. But the current paragraph constitutes the major part of my very low-tech and organic marketing plan. May the Lord give the growth. Thank you and may the Lord be with you.

The Good Confession

Released today, The Good Confession, a collection of twenty-one recent sermons and five short table rites for the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

  

Errata Corrected

This is to document the recent correction of several errata in the first pressings of Johannes Oecolampadius (1482—1531), Sermons on the First Epistle of John (A Handbook for the Christian Life). In addition to a number of spelling corrections, two dates on p. 5 were off by a factor of ten: JO matriculated in Tübingen in 1513, not 1523, and he left Tübingen in the summer of 1514, not 1524. [Apologies to Jeff Fisher for introducing this error into a quotation taken from his fine work.] Also, on p. 9, I have changed "John Chrysostom" to "the Greek Fathers", and after "the sermons of Chrysostom," inserted the phrase, "begun in Mainz," which is more accurate. The influence of Chrysostom on JO is undoubtedly the most decisive, but as Staehelin's reconstruction makes clear at several points, it is only in Mainz that JO's work on this particular Greek Father begins. Any copies of this translation ordered after November 16, 2018 will reflect these most recent corrections. Anyone with earlier copies may wish to pencil in these corrections.

Intergenerational Sermons

A speaker I heard last evening, a representative of my denomination, seems to think sermons should be jettisoned in order to make worship more conducive to intergenerational experience. This was not an offhand comment, but is apparently a regular feature of this talk which he takes on the road. According to his reasoning, since the sermon is the element that children cannot endure and often becomes the reason for their dismissal, we should get rid of the sermon. No thought given to what might make the sermon more intergenerational. No thought given to what God might have at stake or be doing in the sermon. No thought given to what the Bible has to say about preaching. No reference that I can recall even to the presence of God in worship. While I am all for keeping children in worship and fostering intergenerational church, I find this attack on the sermon (which included a direct attack on the children's sermon), let us say, weighed and found wanting, to put it as mildly as possible.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of humble attempts at intergenerational sermons (both in the narrative mode) that, after being shopped to numerous publishers, were finally self-published, since envisioning an intergenerational audience fails every acquisitions editor's first test, which is that the author has clearly defined a very specific audience and written everything directly for that level of cognitive development and that particular context.

          

Also, here is a recently reprinted denominational publication from the late 19th c., which advocates for the children's sermon and includes sixteen such sermons from the period that should challenge any notion that we are able to clearly define or sector discrete levels of cognitive development. In short, just as adults can read, enjoy, and be formed by children's literature, these sermons too can be read with formational value by an intergenerational readership.

 

The Freedom of Christ

So what can happen when one superimposes lectio continua over Lent? Well, for one thing: this short series of six sermons on Galatians, preached ten years ago as I was designing and experimenting with Year D. With so many homiletical options on the table these days, one would not presume to issue such a collection with the expectation that such a series would ever be considered normative or exemplary—by anyone, least of all an author whose job it is to study and teach manifold approaches to preaching—nevertheless, this little book is at least a fair representation, a non-exemplary example, so to speak, of how preaching can cover significant territory with (I hope) some depth, yet at a fairly brisk pace.

More specifically and somewhat pedagogically, I offer it as an example of what I call "reiterative exposition," which is, as I understand it, akin to what Walter Brueggemann calls "re-utterance." For the record, I do realize that while Brueggemann favors, promotes, and envisions preaching as "re-utterance" of the Word, he is less positive about "reiteration." The difference, if there is one, seems to me less clear and stark than it evidently does to him. So with that expression of intent, i.e., that I think we are aiming at the same thing, here it is: a reiteration or a reutterance (as you like) of the gospel of freedom, The Freedom of Christ.

Here's hoping that, after all the flailing and failed fleshly attempts at freedom we see displayed in the weeks leading up to Lent, this articulation of and invitation to the freedom of Christ will find its way home in many a reader's heart.

UPDATE: For some reason, according to Google Trends, there seems to be particular interest in Galatians in Zimbabwe these days, so perhaps this title will grab some African readers. Note as well the rising interest in the epistle itself, in contrast to the diminishing interest in the lectionary.