Calling All Eugene Peterson Fans!

Friends! Ever feel like you’ve struck a gold mine of information and you can’t take it in fast enough? Such was the case when a friend gave me a book chock full of sermons by Eugene Peterson.

After having read his biography, A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H.Peterson, Translator of The Message, by Winn Collier (***Here’s the link to my review of it***), I was elated to receive the book we’ll be talking about this week, a rich storehouse of information a la Eugene Peterson.

First, here’s a pic of the biography:

And then, here’s a pic of the book we’ll be talking about today: As Kingfishers Catch Fire: A Conversation on the Ways of God Formed by the Words of God by Eugene H. Peterson

What’s extra cool about this book is it’s divided into seven sections where Eugene takes different characters from the Bible and calls these “Preaching in the Company of:

Moses,
David,
Isaiah,
Solomon,
Peter,
Paul,
John of Patmos”

Quite the line-up, right? Each section contains seven sermons from the texts—where these characters are in the Bible, using an Old Testament passage coupled with a New Testament passage.

We learn from the intro’ Eugene spent “twenty-nine years as pastor of the same church in Bel Air, Maryland, faithfully sharing his heart with his congregation Sunday after Sunday and all the days in between.”

The WaterBrook editorial team tells us our reading experience will be akin to being a fly on the wall in Eugene’s church’s sanctuary. How fun, especially since Eugene went to Heaven in 2019.

Eugene tells us in the Preface, “the sermons gathered here document this collaboration of pastor and congregation in acts of worship and a life together for twenty-nine years (1962 - 1991) at Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Harford County, Maryland. They are not selected because of any merit as my “best” sermons, but because I have come to think of them as three decades of representative collaboration with my congregation.”

These sermons are a call for us as Christians to live lives of congruence. I call this being a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get). Another phrase which became yet another book by Eugene is how we must strive to live a faith of “a long obedience in the same direction.” Ponder that phrase for a hot second!

In the preface, Eugene expounds on the idea of congruence as a lifelong practice:

“Congruence between ends and means,
Congruence between what we do and the way we do it,
Congruence between what is written in Scripture and our living out what is written,
Congruence between a ship and its prow,
Congruence between preaching and living,
Congruence between the sermon and what is lived in both preacher and congregation,
The congruence of the Word made flesh in Jesus with what is lived in our flesh.”

Favorite phrases you’ll want to explore and to find out why Eugene is giving them to us include:

“Friend of God” (From the section on Moses.)
“The Beauty of Holiness” (This is from the section on David.)
“Prophets don’t fit into our way of life. They’re hard to take and easy to dismiss.” (Find out why in the section on Isaiah.)
“Living in Robust Sanity” (This is from the section on Solomon.)

Two sentences with an interesting twist:

“Mark wrote the Gospel of Jesus as Peter had preached it…
The story of Jesus then became the first gospel of Jesus with Mark as Peter’s ‘secretary.’” (This is from the section on Peter.)

Paul’s language is a “living energy field.”
“Paul’s mind is entirely harnessed to Scripture.” (Both of these statements are from the section on Paul.)

Eugene quotes our very own Wendell Berry (more than once) with regard to another one of his books, Eat This Book, telling us he found a “companion metaphor” in Berry’s poem, “From the Crest”. The farm is a metaphor, where “we bear the long, slow growth of the fields.” Don’t miss this part! (This is from the section on John of Patmos.)

Since we’re witnessing the beauty of Fall right now in Kentucky, and I suspect many of you are elsewhere, I’d like to give you just one of Eugene’s many picturesque visuals he gifts us with. (Of the forty-nine sermons, I predict you’ll have many favorites as well.)

Where the Petersons lived, they were also currently enjoying the many colors of the leaves. Eugene says to his congregation, “I’m sure many of you have recently enjoyed the panorama of autumn color in the great forests of the Appalachian Mountains. These are splendid and beautiful forests that we are neighbors to. The forms and colors are magnificent, dazzling. When we look at them and walk in them, we are drawn into ancient orders of strength and serenity. Most of you have experienced these forests, seen them, appreciated them, enjoyed them.”

I snapped this pic while out on a walk in a nearby neighborhood the other day. LOVE these colors!!! What a beautiful season for us to savor.

So now while we readers are on a fun high, imagining the gorgeous fall colors, Eugene stops us dead in our tracks. He now asks us to imagine such a forest with all its trees rendered to mere stumps—not a single tree standing. Gulp. “How would you feel? Angry? Depressed? Empty? Would you weep?…”

Eugene parallels such a wasteland as that of Israel at the time of Isaiah’s sermon…And yet, “while you’re surveying the desolation, you notice one sprout of green. From one stump there is a shoot coming up…a surprising marvel of new life.”

This particular sermon is # 3 in the section on Isaiah called “the Root of Jesse”, from Isaiah 11:1, 10 and Romans 15:12. It’s full of hope.

Then, as an added bonus, we discover a story of hope Eugene shares from a time when he got to hear Ellie Wiesel speak. We learn of several of Ellie’s books Eugene has read only to learn he did indeed find the Lord somewhere somehow and makes no apologies about it after all he went thru’ in a concentration camp, losing his family, etc. Don’t miss this in the same section of “the Root of Jesse.” I promise you will flip out and at the same time be hugely encouraged.

If you have a favorite preacher or friend in ministry, I believe this book would make a great gift for them. Also guys and gals will enjoy it. It’s a resource you can return to over and over. Start that Christmas shopping early!

Run, don’t walk to your nearest bookstore and grab As Kingfishers Catch Fire.

‘Til next time!

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the page above are “affiliate links.”