Everyone understands human pain. But many Christians have difficulty comprehending God's pain, especially God's pain in the death of Christ. Is it atonement or child abuse? To speak of God in pain, says Barbara Brown Taylor, is not only to address the biblical stories of Christ's suffering and death but also to proclaim the God who is present in our pain.
This volume of teaching sermons on suffering presents different approaches to the problem of God in pain. In each sermon, Taylor speaks with sensitivity and profound insight as she addresses both the human and divine impact of pain.
"Barbara Brown Taylor makes a decisive difference in how we are addressed by the biblical text. After all, what she does is so simple: She trusts and attends to the text in all its detail; she notices what is going on around; she connects in specific and particular ways. And then, she 'adds a twist whereby we are confronted and transformed in revelatory ways.' - Walter Brueggemann, William Marcellus McPheters Professor of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.
"Barbara Brown Taylor has the exceptional qift of crafting sermons which are both preachable and readable. With an active imagination she engages both the biblical texts and the contexts of our own lives, seeing the familiar in the new and the new in the familiar. No matter that the sermons in God in Pain deal with sometimes heavy and always profound topics. Reading them is like eating exquisite candy: one is torn between devouring one after another, or savoring them slowly." - Richard A. Kauffman, Associate Editor, Christianity Today.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR is an Episcopal priest in the diocese of Atlanta, and holds the Harry R. Butman Chair in Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia. She is widely sought after as a preacher and guest lecturer, and is the author of five books, including Preaching Life and Bread of Angels.
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