Book excerpt: What if you could encounter the words of Jesus on their own, lifted up from the surrounding narratives and presented in their full power and mystery? That’s the question Phyllis Tickle—one of America’s most beloved writers on Christian spirituality—asked when she set out to write what she calls a “Sayings gospel.” In The Words of Jesus Tickle has compiled and arranged all the sayings of Jesus from the first four books of the New Testament and the first chapter of the Book of Acts in a way that creates an entirely new kind of encounter with the texts. And she has accompanied those sayings with her own personal reflections and commentaries not just on the words themselves but on the One who spoke them.