After exploring several aspects of the craft of homily, How to Listen to a Sermon explains how listening to a sermon is different from attending to other forms of public address. This view presupposes a distinctive understanding of the sermonic or preaching event and this is illustrated by two homiletical assemblies -- for "ordinary time" and for "extraordinary times." These sermons exemplify the author's concern that public religious speech be done with care and with scholarly attention to biblical texts. These anthologies are framed autobiographically with "Honoring the Gospel" at the beginning, and with "Living an Epiphany" at the end.

This book addresses controversial issues in contemporary church life using liturgical commentary, homiletical illustration, and theological reflection. Issues examined include: gender and sexuality, relation of lay and ordained ministries, the relation of biblical Israel and the modern state, the differences between the Hebrew Scriptures and the Old Testament, the need for careful expository preaching, and deference to tradition as well as openness to new ways. The focus here is on the Episcopal Church in America, yet the examples and pleadings have relevance to the wider Christian community.

The origin, basic texts, central affirmations, and life-policy proposals of the Christian tradition are more ambiguous than either Christianity's critics or advocates often acknowledge. When the tradition is examined through the lens of ambiguity, certain elements appear to be both less threatening and more inviting than previously thought. Through a Glass Darkly considers how one might grant authority to the biblical texts without regarding them as inerrant or infallibly true. In detailed chapters, this work investigates the ambiguous way in which the tradition construes the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth as both fully human and divine; and how Jesus' special relationship with Mary Magdalene and "the Beloved Disciple" point to a life-enhancing picture of eros modulated in terms of friendship. Taking the ambiguity of the Christian tradition with utmost seriousness can make faith more honest, criticism and defense of the tradition more properly focused, relationships in a religiously plural world more humane, and the daily lives of women and men less fearful.