As a potential ordinand, concerned with how to hear from God or how to identify a ‘call’, I read one of the most transformative paragraphs I could have wished for. It was written about someone else’s ‘call’ but it resonated so clearly with my experience I have never forgotten it:

‘“Do anything that pleases you,” the voice in my head said again, “and belong to me.” That simplified things considerably. I could pump gas in Idaho or dig latrines in Pago Pago, as far as God was concerned, as long as I remembered whose I was. With no further distress, I decided that it would please me to become a priest, and to spend the rest of my life with a community willing to help me figure out what that meant.’ (from Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life: Living out Your Vocation, 2013)

Barbara Brown Taylor is nothing if not engagingly honest. She confesses to one congregation at the start of a sermon that she has no idea how she got to the point of deciding to preach on this passage at this time. Hand in hand with this honesty is a deep spirituality that she expresses simply and elegantly. At least one of her sermons has begun with words that are well-crafted and theologically astute, ‘Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire. For if you are with us, nothing else matters. And if you are not with us, nothing else matters.’ I confess to having used that prayer myself!

Brown Taylor does not so much begin preaching, as welcome you into her sermon. She instantly gives the impression that she is glad to be there, and she is glad you are there too. ‘You do my heart good,’ she tells one congregation. I remember her once congratulating the congregation on being in church that day when there was so much else they might be getting on with. Her intent seems always to be sharing, empowering and encouraging.

She is theologically hospitable and undefended. She resists barriers of any kind – whether between sacred and secular or religion and neighbour. She finds some of the profoundest of encounters in the kind of everyday experience she highly values – in An Altar in the World: a Geography of Faith (2009), she writes: ‘My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.’

She speaks of finding God in planting potatoes, tending animals, feeling soil run through her fingers or observing the faces of strangers. It is life, not sacrament, that is a means of grace. Being present in the moment is worship. Brown Taylor’s theology is not constructed in a system or denomination, but nurtured in an incarnational, experiential understanding of faith. Theologically, Brown Taylor consistently resists Christian triumphalism. In Learning to Walk in the Dark, she reframes darkness as a place of learning and challenges the assumption that faith should always feel bright, victorious and certain. She critiques the Christian tendency to turn on the lights rather than face darkness. Like the ordinary things in life, she also values things traditionally seen as dark: ‘I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.’

On her retirement, Brown Taylor acknowledges a key transition. In an interview with Isaac Anderson for Image Journal, she described the transition from public ministry where she spoke for a congregation to retirement where she speaks for herself as ‘like driving on a winding mountain road with no guardrails.’ Sometimes hearing her preach or reading her work can feel similarly risky. She is consistently gentle with hearers and listeners, however. Contrast the gentleness of what she says in An Altar in the World with the kind of strident preaching that demands we give more, go further, drive ourselves harder: ‘No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.’

Perhaps it is this deep engagement with the whole of life that inspires her to think in terms of living a preaching life, rather than preparing sermons, a principle I have adopted for myself. Alongside the welcoming openness of her preaching and writing, Barbara Brown Taylor demonstrates poetic use of language. She crafts her words carefully so that sermons and books are replete with memorable phrases and use of just the right word. Consider the beauty and truth of sentences like this:

• ‘Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.’ (from An Altar in the World)
• ‘I think we’d like life to be like a . but it turns out to be a sailboat.’ (from Learning to Walk in the Dark)

Similarly, she resists traditional or mundane interpretations of Bible passages, and reaches for meaning that resonates with the lives of her hearers. In a published sermon entitled ‘How to Live with High Anxiety’ (in Always a Guest: Speaking of Faith Far from Home) she says ‘How did Jesus speak to their anxiety? … He did not tell them to cut it out. “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world,” he said. Who could have known better than him?’ Here she resists judging anxiety and shows how Jesus himself might have learnt from life. In another sermon she resists the often weaponised parable of the talents, and suggests that rather than it being concerned with money, it is about how we read the Bible. In an Advent sermon, rather than preach the certainty of Christ’s coming she reminds hearers that wonder and hope persist in mystery and that faith is not bounded by certainty. It is clear that she highly values language and ideas. Equally, she values preaching. In a course on preaching that she was co-presenting, Brown Taylor gave a reason for all the work that goes into one of her sermons. Preaching, she said, is the one occasion in the week when a minister has chance to pastor, disciple and teach so many people all at once. Her delivery is clear and careful, no wasted words, no hurried sentences. There is always time for her congregations to savour the riches laid out before them.

Finally, as a preacher myself, I appreciate Barbara Brown Taylor’s willingness for her congregation, whether of hearers or of readers, to journey with her. She earns my admiration for the fact that she personally continues to learn and grow as a Christian and as a person. Her book Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others is a tour de force. In it she teaches religion by conducting class visits to Piedmont’s places of worship - synagogues, mosques, gurdwaras, Hindu temples, and Buddhist monasteries. She embraces the wisdom of other faiths and finds deeper spiritual understanding by being respectfully curious. Beginning with Stendahl’s injunction to avoid comparing the worst of other religions with the best of your own and to leave room for ‘holy envy’, Brown Taylor reaches the conclusion that ‘the only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbour, I will choose my neighbour... Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.’ At this stage of the 21st century, I can think of no better message from a faith leader than that.

Barbara Brown Taylor is an American Episcopal priest, theologian, university professor, and New York Times bestselling author. Her writing blends accounts of her own life with spiritual insight. She was ordained in 1984, and was in parish ministry for 20 years. She taught religion at Piedmont College until 2017, and also at Columbia Theological Seminary. Her books, which she describes as ‘more personal’ than preaching, explore faith, doubt and the presence of God in the world rather than restricted to church buildings.