146 - Rejoice and Take It Away

Rejoice and Take It Away
By Gerard S. Sloyan
Wilmington, Michael Glazier, 1984. 2 vols. 464 pp. $15.00.

These two volumes of sermons by a prominent Roman Catholic scholar constitute nothing less than a find, a "Schliemann's Troy" of preaching that is outstanding in a number of ways-historical-critical scholarship of pellucid clarity and practical helpfulness; lengthy, sympathetic expositions of Catholic (and Protestant) culture, coupled with critiques of that same culture decisive as a guillotine; a psalm-like pastoral touch, fiercely loyal to vulnerable people coupled with lucid anger toward those who oppress them (including the church and its hierarchy); a handling of social issues (Vietnam, poverty, women, the disenfranchised in the church [divorced, lapsed priests, others]) that is penetratingly informed, thought through, and fearless, yet never partisan or bereft of transcendence; an occasional, unassuming interjection of his own person that is poignant and pastoral beyond telling ("I have two friends dying this season. You may have more."); a capacity to use a staggering variety of material, from bumper stickers and the moods of weather to Greek terms (oxox, that is, common wine, "the soldier's daily ration of rotgut") with no sense of clutter; and all in a spare, burning literary style of clarity and pungency and unaffected grace that easily rivals George Buttrick's.

To single out a few samples from this treasury: "Jesus gave us Mary to keep us free and we have used her as a symbol of bondage. Who needs a mother like that"? "The personality is the special vision that each one of us has of God." "We are not gods, God

148 - Rejoice and Take It Away

knows, but God is in us." And of the pope: "... he is young and he is keen and in God's providence he has time to learn." Of women's ordination: "Nothing human is likely to be done well-except childbearing-that half the human race has no part in." "Our age is sick over guilt. It is laden with it, drowns in it. Yet it knows next to nothing of sin. If it could acknowledge sin, it might be rid of guilt." And both testaments he describes as "survival literature." Xenophobia, put briefly: "Why can't everybody be like us?"

Positively what emerges clear as a high flute is a vision of a community drenched in a lively understanding of Scripture and tradition, eucharistic in its sharing of self, vulnerable in its cruciform committedness to a wronged and hurting humanity, steadied in the tabernacling monotheism of its this-worldly, Jewish Jesus ("Jesus, being a good Jew, was not much for heaven or the after-life").

These sermons are a 'find' of a rare order.

Peter Fribley
First Presbyterian Church
Oskaloosa, Ia.