Welcome to the web site for The Words of Jesus - A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord. I am glad of your coming and hopeful that what you find here will draw you back many more times, both as a commentator and as a reader of what others have to say.
During this week of February 3-9, 2008, The Words of Jesus is being deployed to stores and booksellers all over this country and Canada. For a writer, the public launch of a work usually marks the end of the authorial process. What could be done has, at that point, all been done. The book rests in the hands of the publisher’s sales and marketing staff. Such is not the case this time and for this book. All that could be done has not even begun to begin to be done. Pray God, it will not be for many, many years to come.
The Words of Jesus is exactly what the title says it is - a Sayings gospel. It is all the words Our Lord is recorded as having said, from His birth until His ascension, merged into one whole. In effect, Jesus becomes the author here, not Matthew or Mark or Luke, or John. Gone as well are the duplications and triplets. Gone also are the cushioning pace of narrative wrap and the comfortable diversion of commentary. He is. He speaks. The result can be unsettling. I know the unsettling part from experience.
As I worked over the months of compilation, I became unsettled several times over. The prefatory pages of The Words are my record of some of those times. I earnestly hope that after you have begun to read Jesus’ Sayings in this format, you too will be so engaged that you will want to post here your own discoveries and experiences for others to see.
And one more thing…During the autumn of 2007 and working from manuscript, a group of our fellow-Christians gathered weekly at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Mary in Memphis, Tennessee, to study Jesus’ words in the Sayings format. Their experiences and discoveries are also recorded and available here as The Reader’s Guide to The Words of Jesus. Please feel free to download, enjoy, and/or share that Guide at any time.
Meanwhile, may peace, mercy, and grace attend us all.
Phyllis Tickle
