Thank God It's Friday: Encountering the Seven Last Words from the Cross Author: Visit Amazon's William H. Willimon Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0687464900 | Format: PDF
Thank God It's Friday: Encountering the Seven Last Words from the Cross Description
About the Author
Feeling most at home behind a pulpit, Bishop William H. Willimon’s deepest calling is to be a preacher and truth-teller of Jesus Christ. Willimon is Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke University Divinity School and retired Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of The United Methodist Church, after serving for 20 years as faculty member and Dean of the Chapel at Duke University. He continues to give lectures and teach at universities around the world. Willimon earned a doctoral degree from Emory University and has been honored with 13 additional doctorates. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama. A study by the Pulpit and Pew Research Center found that Willimon is one of the most widely read authors among mainline Protestant pastors. An international survey conducted by Baylor University named him one of the "Twelve Most Effective Preachers" in the English-speaking world. With over a million copies of more than 60 books sold, his popularity is undeniable.
- Paperback: 104 pages
- Publisher: Abingdon Press; annotated edition edition (October 1, 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0687464900
- ISBN-13: 978-0687464906
- Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.2 x 0.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Let me say that I have been a long-time fan of Willimon's sermons and writings (such as 'Resident Aliens', 'The Service of God', 'Pastor', 'Conversations with Barth on Preaching') but this book which I had looked forward to reading for the Holy Week was a letdown. It could be that Willimon had written some really excellent stuff in the past that my expectation from him has been unrealistically set. My disappointment stems from the uneasy feeling that he is trying too hard here to make Jesus stranger, more subversive and offensive than he really is. Alright, I take it as a given that Jesus is larger than anyone can conceive. It is true that Jesus has been tamed by centuries of domestication and remaking him in our own image...but I am not convinced by the silly portraits Willimon here made him out to be.
For example, the first sermon which zeroes in on Jesus' forgiving his enemies, calling it his 'pre-emptive forgiveness' (a phrase coined to counter the pre-emptive strikes of American military campaigns?) appears to be an exercise in caricaturing what forgiveness is. He seems to take the first of 'Jesus' last words on the cross' as the first and the last word the whole bible has to say about forgiveness. It is true that we have put too many hedges and qualifiers around the gracious act of forgiving but Willimon's taking his words to a one-dimensional extreme seems to fly in the face of the bible's own complex and nuanced conception of that divine-human transaction. It does not take into account that forgiveness proffered is not the same as forgiveness received. It breezes over the fact that God does sometimes withhold mercy (Mt6:14) and that Jesus calls the apostles to sometimes do likewise in their ministry (Jn 20:23).
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