Preaching Job

Drawing on both pastoral and scholarly experience, John Holbert offers a fresh approach to the preaching of a familiar scripture. To be a Joban preacher, he says, is to draw on the pain and honesty inherent in the text. Holbert understands the preacher's task as interpreting the whole of the book of job, not just the narrative and the poetry. This integrative approach allows the book's entire theology to inform sermons. Included for illustration are an embodied sermon and a narrative sermon based on passages from Job. ""This book is no ordinary preacher's help. John Holbert takes us into the very chambers of the suffering heart of Job. We feel his pain. We ask his questions. We rail with him against the antiseptic theology of the friends. We stand, unflinching, with Job before the living God. If you have the courage to preach in like manner, this book is for you."" Ronald J. Allen, Christian Theological Seminary John C. Holbert is Lois Craddock Perkins Professor of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University.