At the Intersection of Hermeneutics and Homiletics
Transgressive Readings for Transformational Preaching
Edited by Yung Suk Kim (Pickwick, 2025)
While hermeneutics involves a comprehensive study of the text, ranging from historical to literary to reader-focused approaches, homiletics is concerned with a selected theme/message and composition and delivery of sermonic discourse set toward a particular audience. However, the border between hermeneutics and homiletics is blurred because both require readers to engage the text from their own contexts.
This collected volume deals with the intersection of hermeneutics and homiletics by exploring two revelatory texts—one from the Hebrew Bible and the other from the New Testament: the book of Ruth and Matthew 15:21–28 (a Canaanite woman’s encounter with Jesus), which reflect still-agonizing issues readers must tackle: (im)migration, family/community, identity/agency, race/ethnicity, gender, class, culture, economy, and religion, among others. A diverse group of scholars brings their transgressive perspectives to the above texts.Unfolding uncharted areas of interest, inquiry, or insight, they will transgress against the authoritative reading of texts, fashion hermeneutic horizon in dialogue with the text, and forge homiletic trajectories toward contemporary audiences. Without limiting interpretation to a box, this volume looks to register bold voices to perennial issues in our day. Homiletic transformation occurs through the relentless, resistant reading of the text and reimagining our world.
“This carefully crated volume is more than an ‘intersection.’ It is an enlivening, collaborative dialogue between exegetes and preachers exploring together certain biblical texts from a variety of interpretive lenses. Transgressive texts in their own right, the book of Ruth and the story of Jesus’s encounter with the Canaanite woman provide a perfect pairing for readings that challenge traditional assumptions while offering fresh insights for the work of transformation. This volume heralds the future of biblical interpretation for communities of faith.”
—William P. Brown, William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary, Atlanta, Georgia
“Yung Suk Kim has pursued the question of human transformation in his scholarship. In this edited volume, he invites thirteen distinguished scholars to create a creative space where transformation can occur through preaching—enacted and emboldened by transgressive readings of the Scriptures. Readers will be surprised by the surplus of meanings that flow through the art of embodied interpretation and proclamation, which profoundly engage with current sociopolitical and communal contexts. I highly recommend this book.”
—Jin Young Choi, Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Rochester, New York
—William P. Brown, William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary, Atlanta, Georgia
“Yung Suk Kim has pursued the question of human transformation in his scholarship. In this edited volume, he invites thirteen distinguished scholars to create a creative space where transformation can occur through preaching—enacted and emboldened by transgressive readings of the Scriptures. Readers will be surprised by the surplus of meanings that flow through the art of embodied interpretation and proclamation, which profoundly engage with current sociopolitical and communal contexts. I highly recommend this book.”
—Jin Young Choi, Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Rochester, New York