Customer Reviews

Preaching Creation: Throughout the Church Year

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I purchased this at the Episcopal Bookshop at St. Mary's Cathedral in Memphis. I've been slowly building a collection of books on Christian environmentalism, as I've been helping the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee develop its Creation Care Ministry. This is a handy desk reference that can give you a scriptural-based starting point in planning sermons, Sunday School lessons, etc. around any (and I mean ANY) passage from the Bible.

Episcopalian and Anglican clergy and lay leaders are the book's primary intended audience (since it's organized along the lectionary calendar), but it can be useful and inspirational for any people of faith.

I have also copied below this book's review, written by Martha K. Baker and published in the March 18, 2001 issue of _The Living Church_:

The Rev. Jennifer Phillips, vicar of St. Augustine's Church, Kingston, R.I., knows a challenge when she hears one. A fellow priest protested to her that although he'd like to preach more on the world and its care, so little of the lectionary fit the topic. His chance remark slapped her like a gauntlet. Phillips developed Preaching Creation Throughout the Church Year to nudge him and other homilists to see the science in the religion of the readings. But this lectionary guide also serves laity who want, who need, a focus to their daily Bible readings.

Phillips reaches to the ancients and the futurists; she tackles the complex without neglecting the simple: "If the sun went out, so would we." Her range extends from topics to tones. She is not afraid to be indignant, even righteous: "The creation exists not just for our comfort and our use, but ultimately to serve God's purposes." She is often witty - meaning both amusing and intelligent, even when she's correcting the translation of eagles' wings to vultures' wings.

She can wag her finger: "...it is a spiritual as well as a health discipline for us to take responsibility for the weariness of our bodies and for finding a sane and holy pace of life"; but she can also comfort, noting, for example, that Nativity images guide us to picture "God's entry into the humble, natural world to draw forth its gifts -- the warming breath of oxen, the hay of the livestock for bedding, the manger for a cradle, the protective watch of the beasts by night over the newborn child and his parents -- and to transform it with radiant holiness into the 'peaceable kingdom' of Isaiah 11:65 that is to come in the fullness of God's reign."

Many of Phillips' discourses end in questions. On landmines: "What is the church's responsibility regarding their creation, use, and removal?" On sin: "Which of our societal sins need gentle forgiveness and a fresh start, and which require firm and forceful intervention?"

The daughter of a research scientist and a nurse, her lifelong interest in science shows, but she is also a gardener and a poet, a reader and a priest. In developing "Preaching Creation," Phillips has a forum for her multi-faceted persona. "Preaching Creation" answered a challenge, yes, but it offers one, too -- on every page.