Luke A. Powery

Valuable not only for their sublime musical expression, the African American spirituals provide profound insights into the human condition and Christian life. Many spirituals focus on the climax of the Christian drama, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the ways in which those events bring about the liberation of God's people. In these devotions for the season of Lent, Luke A. Powery leads the reader through the spirituals as they confront the mystery of Christ's atoning death and victory over the grave. Each selection includes the lyrics of the spiritual, a reflection by the author on the spiritual's meaning, a Scripture verse related to that meaning, and a brief prayer.

Lenten Reflections on the Spirituals

Were You There?

Joel B. Green

Carolyn J. Sharp

Thomas G. Long

Cynthia L. Rigby

Designed to empower preachers as they lead their congregations to connect their lives to Scripture, Connections features a broad set of interpretive tools that provide commentary and worship aids on the Revised Common Lectionary. This nine-volume series offers creative commentary on each reading through the lens of its connections to the rest of Scripture and then seeing the reading through the lenses of culture, film, fiction, ethics, and other aspects of contemporary life. Commentaries on the Psalms make connections to other readings and to the congregation's experience of worship. Connections is published in partnership with Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Season after Pentecost

Connections: Year B, Volume 3

Designed to empower preachers as they lead congregations to connect their lives to Scripture, Connections features a broad set of interpretive tools that provide commentary and worship aids on the Revised Common Lectionary. This nine-volume series offers creative commentary on each reading in the three-year lectionary cycle by viewing that reading through the lens of its connections to the rest of Scripture and then seeing the reading through the lenses of culture, film, fiction, ethics, and other aspects of contemporary life. Commentaries on the Psalms make connections to the other readings and to the congregations experience of worship. Connections is published in partnership with Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Year A, Volume 3, Season After Pentecost

Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship

Sally A. Brown

Preaching, and the discipline of preaching, is at a crossroads. The changing realities of church and theological education, the diversity of our classrooms, and our increasingly complex community contexts leave us in search of tools to help train a rising generation of preachers for a future whose contours are far from clear. The questions are immense: How to support preachers in contexts that are diverse religiously, culturally, and ethnically, both inside and outside the church? How to help students take varied contexts seriously as they are formed as leaders? In Ways of the Word, a dynamic team of master preachers brings much-needed help. Different in race, gender, age, and tradition, both Sally A. Brown and Luke A. Powery speak with one voice their belief that preaching is Spirit-empowered event: an embodied, vocalized, actively received, here-and-now witness to the ongoing work of God in the world. They aspire to help students and preachers alike to reflect on a journey of learning by doing. They aim to help preachers to become more attuned to the Spirit, more adept in preaching’s component skills, and more self-aware about all that is at stake in proclaiming the redemptive work of God in specific contexts.

Learning to Preach for Your Time and Place

Ways of the Word

Lent through Pentecost

Connections: Year B, Volume 2

Valuable not only for their sublime musical expression, the African American spirituals give us profound insights into the human condition and the Christian life. Many focus on an essential scene of the Christian drama: the coming of God as the child in Bethlehem and as the hope of the world and the liberator of God's oppressed people. In these devotions for the season of Advent, Luke Powery leads the reader through the spirituals as they confront the mystery of incarnation and redemption. In Rise Up, Shepherd! each devotion features the lyrics of the spiritual, a reflection on the spiritual's meaning, a Scripture verse, and a brief prayer.

Advent Reflections on the Spirituals

Rise Up, Shepherd!

In an age when the so-called prosperity gospel holds sway in many Christian communities or the good news of Christ is reduced to feel-good bromides, it would seem that death has little place in contemporary preaching. Embracing the vision of the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37 as a metaphor for preaching in the Spirit, acclaimed homiletician Luke Powery asserts that death is the context for all preaching. In fact, the Spirit leads preachers to the context of death each Sunday in order to proclaim a word of life that ultimately breathes hope into people's lives. Yet many preachers avoid death because they are at a loss of what to say about it and do not realize its vital connection to the substance of Christian hope. As a result the church is too often left with sermons that are fundamentally devoid of hope. Dem Dry Bones aims to remedy some of the theological and homiletical shortcomings in contemporary preaching by looking closely at the African American spirituals tradition, which Powery describes as "sung sermons" that embrace death. Thus, not only is death the context for preaching hope, but hope is generated by experiencing death through the Spirit who is the ultimate source of hope. Through this study, Powery demonstrates how to preach in the Spirit so that proclaiming death becomes an avenue toward hope. In short: no death, no hope.

Luke A. Powery

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