Fortress Press

“Gordon Lathrop has written a wise and remarkable book from which I have learned a great deal. He compellingly reflects on the shared work and dynamism of scripture and liturgy and sees how they converge in practical ways in the actual life of the Christian assembly. Lathrop’s deep appreciation of the generative power of images frees scripture from our excessive “historical” preoccupation. The generative work of images, fully operative in the life of the Christian congregation, resists both our thirst for certitude and our yearning for reasonableness, and opens for us transformative power that defies our “low ceilings” of certitude and reasonableness. Good Lutheran that he is, Lathrop sees that “word and sacrament” are the rich processing pad that moves from “gathering” to “sending.” This is a rich discussion that will greatly enhance the actual practice of the Christian assembly in its prayer, its singing, and its preaching.” 

“If we wish to climb inside the richness of what Gordon Lathrop does in his latest book, we cannot simply read the text. To savor not only the images of Bible and liturgy that Lathrop writes about, we best approach the text as lectio divina. The very reading of his beautiful, inspirit, informative words is prayer, is a liturgical immersion. Indeed, it takes great skill and love of Bible and liturgy to marry scholarship with prayer. Lathrop is eminently so skilled. This book has so many strengths: at once thoroughly Lutheran, yet ecumenically sensitive; at once competently scholarly, yet pastorally rich; at once converts our imaginations, yet challenges us to live each day what we receive in word and at table. Reading this book is truly an experience of mystagogy of word and table."

“Very few scholars are as qualified to speak to both the Bible and liturgy as Gordon Lathrop. Some will be surprised here to find how biblical the liturgy is. Others will be surprised to find how the Bible is so profoundly born of the liturgy. All readers will be inspired by Lathrop’s careful and instructive appraisal of the image in both Bible and liturgy. This book is a wonderful testimony to Lathrop’s passion for the Bible, for liturgy, for ecumenical engagement and for our Christian assemblies – all of this with creative attention to images and the imagination.”  

 “A tour de force of biblical and patristic scholarship, Gordon Lathrop offers an original, fundamental liturgical and biblical theology that develops how the encounter of God is given in the worshipping assembly as a way of life the reaches ecumenically across churches, cultures, and mission fields. This is a must-read for scholars across theological disciplines and an enlivening, spiritual journey for all readers.”