What's New, What's Old: Telling Stories, Trading Quips, Brainstorming, Spitballing, and Arguing with Saint Matthew

Cordell Strug has always loved collages, those jumbled forms assembled from parts of other, usually more coherent, forms. During the pandemic, when everyone had time to meditate and entertain possibilities, it came to him that by extracting the stories, wisecracks, and reflections from the sermons he'd given through the years, he might construct a kind of collage-commentary on the passages of Scripture that he had addressed. This book is what he came up with from the sermons preached on Matthew's Gospel. Like any living tradition, Christianity is always hearing the voices of its past. It echoes them, expands them, argues with them; it finds light in them or stands bewildered by their darkness. In every living Christian voice, we hear the present both questioning the past and trying to guide the future. In this book, the reader can hear some of the layers of those overlapping conversations in one pastor's preaching ministry.