The Master Teacher: Sermons From Mark
by Roy Sheldon MacKenzie
Fairway Press
A sermon is an oral/aural event that takes place in a specific time and context within a specific congregation. As the Spirit moves over the gathered community and brings the word to life through the words of the preacher, by God’s grace the people of God are blessed. Books of sermons, on the other hand, are often lifeless and dull when removed from worship and read instead of heard. How a sermon ‘reads’ can be like asking what ‘flavour’ a Mozart sonata is. The wrong context and the wrong sense are involved. Hence, publishing sermons takes great courage in the face of such difficulty.
Thankfully, Rev. Dr. Sheldon MacKenzie blesses us with such courage—pastor, preacher, teacher (and I am privileged to add friend) expands his series of books of sermons based on the gospels with this latest edition, The Master Teacher: Sermons from Mark. It follows on the heels of editions on Luke (The Master Story-Teller) and John (The Master Preacher) and continues their engaging qualities of good teaching and solid scholarship, deep devotion and accessible inspiration.
The 24 sermons in The Master Teacher take the reader through Mark from its beginning at Jesus’ baptism to its mysteriously truncated ending of the story of his resurrection. The journey tours from the streets of Galilee and Jerusalem through Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and British Columbia, and the guides quoted along the way range from Kierkegaard and Pope Benedict XVI to an anxious woman in an emergency room and a confused tourist who insisted that MacKenzie was, in fact, Michael Gorbachev traveling incognito.
MacKenzie’s unique gift is to convey to the reader deep faith, solid theology and practical lessons in Christian discipleship in a contemporary, humorous and personal way. Always true to the text under consideration, the sermons unfold the glories of the sacraments, the Christian hope for the future, the challenge of living for Christ in the midst of current dilemmas, and the generosity that springs up in anyone grasped by the generosity of God. They are refreshingly simple in language, personal in tone, and so well crafted that the reader barely notices how much they are learning and how deeply they are being challenged by the claims of Christ and his gospel.
Whether one occupies the pulpit or the pew, or stands aside wondering what “this Jesus fellow” is all about, one will find in MacKenzie’s The Master Teacher instruction, inspiration and delight.
