The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons on the Gospel of Matthew

Rating:
Summary: Barbara Brown Taylor spins new stories from St Matthew
Review: She paints mesmerizing pictures from Matthew's Gospel. Bound in the colorful cover outlining two hands around a tender green plant above brown earth, Barbara Brown Taylor is symbolized as the Gardener who brings forth fruit from The Seeds Of Heaven!

"As the world grows smaller and followers of the world religions become our literal next-door neighbors, the question of Christianity's relationship with these neighbors gains new urgency; It may take us awhile to sort out proximity to Hinduism or Taoism, our nearest neighbor is and always has been Judaism."

On hearing from her close friends tell of Barbara Brown's time-off to write her new book, I anxiously awaited my first reading. About the same time my close friend who is a Muslim Chaplain, spoke about her Columbia Seminary class visiting his Dec. Muslim Worship near the season of RAMADAN.

Her first chapter, "Exceeding Righteousness" pictures her unique way of interpreting the Gospel for other religions. Her urgency gains new momentum in the next sermon, "The Marginal Messiah, I wish I could tell you that Jesus death and resurrection changed everything...That once the word got out what God had done with Him everybody saw the Light and turned toward it on the spot."

From her tough CPE experience in a downtown Atlanta Hospital, she takes us into the inner lives of Matthew, Thomas, Peter with her inner thoughts about the Kingdom. After five flashes of the Gospel coming quickly, she says, "Jesus zings us with snapshot-like scenes glimpsed thru windows of a fast-moving train!" Her vivid use of the today's vernacular shows relentless urgency as she pursues her goal of showing us "how the Kingdom of Heaven is like this, and this, and this!"

Although I'm familiar with more of her Sermons as compared to hearing her lecture delivery, it is interesting to see how much more transparent these passages from Matthew's Gospel give an inside perspective of Barbara Brown Taylor! I first notated this in the margin of Chapter 13, when she speaks of not being sure this Parable of the Golden Rule sounds like Jesus. "It becomes necessary to look below the surface!" Her previous books do not move as intensely forward with such interest and energy in their reliving the early miracle teaching of our Master, as "The Seeds Of Heaven!" AMEN! From Retired Chaplain Fred W Hood