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Grace: a preaching commentary

Reviewed by John Matthews.

This is the newest addition to The Great Texts series (no details are given of previous volumes). The author, Professor of Homiletics at Vancouver School of Theology, expounds eleven passages of Scripture: three from ‘Paul and his followers’ (Ephesians is considered not to be by Paul), four from the gospels and four from the Old Testament, with the intention of helping them to be preached as illustrating grace.

Some of the passages chosen certainly meet the description of ‘great texts’ of grace, like 2 Corinthians 8.9, Ephesians 2.1-10, Jesus and Zacchaeus, and the healing of Naaman. But how many of us would include Cain’s murder of Abel, Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman, Psalm 119 or Isaiah 58 in this category? Farris says that “the only justification for selecting the particular texts…lies within the studies themselves” (p.15), but part of his purpose is to show that grace can be preached from texts that appear to be about other issues, like law or justice. He does this with varying degrees of success and has to admit, at times, that grace is not the dominant theme of the text. His interpretation of Jesus’ encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman in terms of Jesus learning something new is thought-provoking, but what has it to do with grace?

The book is written in a readable style and may well help ministers to wrestle with the texts concerned. There is certainly some helpful preaching material here, though no ready-made sermons, but this reviewer is left a little uneasy with a professor of preaching who advocates preaching texts to illustrate a theme which is not dominant - and, in one case, not even present!