The studies collected in Preaching after Easter examine the festal history and homiletics of Mid-Pentecost, Ascension, and Pentecost in the late antique Mediterranean world. Articles on individual sermons or the work of individual preachers such as John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, Peter Chrysologus, Leo the Great, and Severus of Antioch exhibit the richness of late antique festal preaching. Questions of authenticity, heresiology, and theological, exegetical, or liturgical history are addressed with methodological rigor. Complementary contributions that deal with ancient Jewish-Christian dialogue, art-historical reception, and contemporary liturgical theology illustrate the wide ramifications of ancient Christian festal practice. Students and scholars of these feasts and the interpretive traditions devoted to them will find this volume to be an indispensable source of information and analysis.

Instead of being a dour task on the checklist, what if the process of homily prep renewed you? Instead of feeling insecure about your message, what if your skills made you confident to preach a consistently clear message of Good News, authentic to you, relevant to your listeners, holding their attention and inviting transformation? Backstory Preaching: Integrating Life, Spirituality, and Craft shows you how. By integrating your life and spirituality with the practical skills necessary for effective preaching, you can move beyond the boredom, stress, or insecurity of preaching so it is no longer you who preach but Christ who preaches in you. By connecting with God in the midst of your sermon prep, the Gospel will be spread deeper and further. God’s joy—and yours—will be made complete.

Preachers Dare is adapted from Will Willimon’s Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale and is inspired by a quote from the great theologian Karl Barth. In a world in which sermons too often become hackneyed conventional wisdom or tame common sense, preachers dare to speak about the God who speaks to us as Jesus Christ. Willimon draws upon his decades of preaching, as well as his many books on the practice of homiletics, to present a bold theology of preaching. This work emphasizes preaching as a distinctively theological endeavor that begins with and is enabled by God. God speaks, preachers dare to speak the speech of God, and the church dares to listen. By moving from the biblical text to the contemporary context, preachers dare to speak up for God so that God might speak today. With fresh biblical insights, creativity and pointed humor, Willimon gives today’s preachers and congregations encouragement to speak with the God who has so graciously and effusively spoken to us.

Jesus willingly endured unimaginable depths of suffering for his friends. John 13:1 says he loved us to the uttermost. To love to the uttermost is to love freely, without reserve or limit, and without flaw or failure. As we journey with Jesus for eight days-from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday-from triumphal entry, to arrest and trial, to death and burial and triumphant resurrection, we gaze on a God-man who begrudges no pain or reproach on his pathway to redeem lost sinners. Here is the one who "humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8). In Love to the Uttermost: Devotional Readings for Holy Week, John Piper calls you to fix your eyes steadily on Jesus as he loves you to the uttermost.

Author Biography: Paul Tillich (1886-1965), an early critic of Hitler, was barred from teaching in Germany in 1933. He emigrated to the United States, holding teaching positions at Union Theological Seminary, New York (1933-1955); Harvard Divinity School (1955-1962); and the University of Chicago Divinity School (1962-1965). Among his many books are "Theology of Culture, Dynamics of Faith," and the three volumes of "Systematic Theology."