Since I am working today, I cannot sip tea and read and pray. But, later, I hope to re-read some in one of my all time favorite books, a collection of sermons by the ever-elequent Episcopal preacher, Fleming Rutledge, The Undoing of Death. Published by Eerdmans a few years back, it has meant much to me and her use of paintings and sculptures depicting Christ’s entry into and victory over death makes it especially interesting and a lovely book to own. These sermons for Holy Week and Easter are passionate, moving, nuanced, theologically rich, edifying. Along with numerous rave reviewers, we commend it to you. I haven’t read her little book on the seven last words from the cross, although I had intended to.
Her other sermon collections are wonderful, too— The Gospel and the New York Times and Help My Unbelief as is her major work on Tolkein, The Battle for Middle Earth.
I would be remiss not to mention the thick book–I think the only book—on Holy Saturday, Between Cross and Resurrection by Alan E. Lewis (also published by Eerdmans). When somebody like the esteemed theologian Thomas Torrence says it is one of the best books he’s ever read, one must take notice. That the beloved Princeton professor was dying of cancer as he wrote gives an extra poignancy to this serious scholarship. I wanted you to know of it.