Wonder Reborn: Creating Sermons on Hymns, Music, and Poetry

by Thomas Troeger

Overview

This book explores an issue at the nerve of the long term health of all churches: how godly wonder can be reborn through renewed attention to the place of beauty in preaching and worship. The book opens with an exploration of the theological and cultural difficulties of defining beauty. It traces the church's historical ambivalence about beauty and art and describes how, in our own day, the concept of beauty has been commercialized and degraded. Troeger develops a theologically informed aesthetic that provides a counter-cultural vision of beauty flowing from the love of God. The book demonstrates how preachers can reclaim the place of beauty in preaching and worship. Chapter two employs the concept of midrash to mine the history of congregational song as a resource for sermons. Chapter three introduces methods from musicology for creating sermons on instrumental and choral works and for integrating word and music more effectively. Chapter four explores how the close relationship between poetry and prayer can stir the homiletical imagination. Each of these chapters includes a selection of the author's sermons illustrating how preachers can use these varied art forms to open a congregation to the beauty of God. A final chapter recounts the responses of congregation members to whom the sermons were delivered. It uses the insights gained from those experiences to affirm how the human heart hungers for a vision of wonder and beauty that empowers people to live more faithfully in the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199889686
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/27/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Thomas Troeger is J. Edward and Ruth Cox Lantz Professor of Christian Communication, Yale University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1 The place of beauty in preaching Chapter 2 To make the wounded whole: preaching on hymns Chapter 3 Hear how the whole creation longs: preaching on music Chapter 4 Quick- eyed love draws near: preaching on poetry Chapter 5 Wonder reborn through beauty Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"Thomas Troeger gives beauty its "rightful place" in the pulpit. He combines rich evidence with keen insight to expose the aesthetic dimension of religious activity. He answers a previously unmet need for a homiletics based on art, producing an eclectic theory wherein preaching grows from works of art. He fortifies his theory with a wide and discerning selection of scriptural passages, music texts, hymns, and poems and with his own model sermons on the arts."

— William D. Dean, author of The American Spiritual Culture: And the Invention of Jazz, Football, and the Movies

"Thomas Troeger, one of our finest hymn writers and homiletical scholars, has joined his gifts to produce this stirring doxology to beauty in preaching. This book elevates the art of preaching, but what is even more impressive, it lifts the soul."

—Thomas G. Long, Candler School of Theology, Emory University

"Through the centuries the church has had an approach-avoidance relationship with beauty. In this insightful volume Troeger defines and stretches our concepts of wonder, beauty and aesthetics. He helps us understand their power - especially in music - to inspire the worshipper as well as to shape the church and its mission. Casting the sermon as a 'theomusical homiletic,' he illuminates multiple layers of meaning that form the 'soundscape' of our faith. Those who lead worship know intuitively the spiritual vibrancy that results from these encounters - here, Troeger gives us the reasons behind that intuition."

— Eileen Guenther, Associate Professor of Church Music and Director of the Summer Program, Wesley Theological Seminary

"Like all good books, this one begs the reader to enter into the argument and go beyond it. All Troeger's examples are the result of artistic expressions of the Christian faith...For most of us, this sort of preaching will require hard work in discovering the meanings of poetry and music, but Troeger assures us that we will find God in those meanings and have our wonder reborn."—Interpretation

From the Publisher