Mixed Blessings

This is a wonderful little book, full of elegance and grace while addressing important life issues. Very readable. I have purchased several copies as gifts.

Mixed Blessings is a compilation of sermons written by Barbara Brown Taylor (Episcopalian preacher), written in the first few years in her ministry (mid-1980s). Reading Taylor is like reading candy to me. I appreciate not only her sermon structure (narrative), but also her phrasing and her theology. Specific sermons I felt to be remarkable to me in this read were: "Saving Space" (Isaiah 40:3-8), "Decked Out in Flesh" (Isaiah 9:6), "Blood Kin" (Matthew 26:36-38), "Mixed Blessings" (Deuteronomy 8:2-4), "Are You the One?" (Matthew 11:2-6), although, honestly, I can imagine reading this book again in a matter of months/years and being struck by different sermons. Reading this book inspires spiritual devotion and purpose in me, as well as gives me a reference to see how sermons are constructed well.

What would it be like...to hear Barbara Brown Taylor preaching her first sermons at All Saints Episcopal Church in downtown Atlanta? To be able to hear and see these simple yet profound illuminations of Gospel stories and parables? How often in reading her sermons, do I see and hear in my imagination the first time I heard her in the Lectionary Homiletics Preaching conference of 1995? More than a few times! Here are a few of them in "Mixed Blessings."She is the epitome of one who can spin a new parable out of her rich creative imagination. She proves one of the demands of a good sermon coming from the overflow of days of prepararion. One of Thomas Long prescriptions of a good sermon - "the exegesis of the Text determines everything about the sermon!" We approach our choice of Text, Parable, Translation, Outline, Flow, Income, Outcome to draw the listener into the Sermon. Professor Taylor does all of this from her shortest sermon, "The Familiar Stranger" to the longest, "After Words" taking us from Romans 8 to the roof-top of an ancient mansion, "at the end of my rope I prayed and sang to God 'point me to what You would have me do.'" It was her Calling! - All of them are WOW!