The Overshadowed Preacher: Mary, the Spirit, and the Labor of Proclamation

by Jerusha Matsen Neal

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2020

Overview

Jerusha Matsen Neal’s The Overshadowed Preacher breaks open one of the most important, unexamined affirmations of preaching: the presence of the living Christ in the sermon.

Neal argues that Mary’s conceiving, bearing, and naming of Jesus in Luke’s nativity is a potent description of the mystery. Mary’s example calls preachers to leave behind the false shadows haunting Christian pulpits and be “overshadowed” by the Spirit of God.

The Overshadowed Preacher asks gospel proclaimers to own the limits and promise of their humanness as God’s Spirit-filled servants, rather than disappear behind a “pulpit prince” ideal. It is a preacher’s fully embodied witness, lived out through Spirit-filled acts of hospitality, dependence, and discernment, that bears the marks of a fully embodied Christ. This affirmation honors the particularity of preachers in a globally diverse context—challenging a status quo that has historically privileged masculinity and whiteness. It also offers the hope to ordinary souls who finds themselves daunted by the impossibility of the preaching task. Nothing, in the angel’s words, is impossible with God.

Key Features

• Examines the presence of the living Christ in the sermon
• Calls preachers to leave behind the false shadows haunting Christian pulpits and be “overshadowed” by the Spirit of God
• Explores the limits and promise of our humanness as God’s Spirit-filled servants

Contents

• Preface
• Uneasy Borders, Tricky Definitions
• Dangerous Deliveries: The Queen of Heaven and the Pulpit Prince
• Starting with the Body . . . the Resurrected Body
• The Spirit-filled Handmaid
• Fully Human Preaching
• Conceiving: The Labor of Hospitality
• Bearing: The Labor of Dependence
• Naming: The Labor of Discernment
• Epilogue: The Overshadowed Preacher

Product Details

• Title: The Overshadowed Preacher: Mary, the Spirit, and the Labor of Proclamation
• Author: Jerusha Matsen Neal
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Publication Date: 2020
• Pages: 256
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Topic: Preaching Resources

About Jerusha Matsen Neal

Jerusha Matsen Neal is assistant professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School. An ordained American Baptist pastor with broad ecumenical experience, she has spent her ministry preaching in cross-cultural spaces. She is a former actress, playwright, and Global Ministries missionary to the Fiji Islands.