Book excerpt: Testifies to the presence of God as both our post-earthly hope and our present-world existence. / These thought-provoking sermons by Ralph Wood, a layman who has taught religion and literature for many years, seek to till new soil in the fertile field of Christian faith and life. They draw on a wide range of reading not only in Christian theology but also in both classical and contemporary literature and culture. And they also mine Wood s own professorial and personal experience in dealing with both the old and the young amid "the chances and changes of life." / Wood squarely engages the American "culture of death" by wrestling with such vexing questions as sexuality and marriage, war and peace, abortion, racial injustice, and abuse of the elderly. By grounding his homilies in specific times, places, and quandaries, Wood demonstrates that Christianity remains a vigorous set of doctrines and morals precisely as preaching and ethics give shape to our worship and living in the here and now. Focusing not so much on our "getting to heaven," Wood's Preaching and Professing shows concretely how the gospel "gets heaven into us."