Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was one of the finest thinkers and most influential preachers of his era. Yet Thurman's importance goes well beyond his influence on Martin Luther King, Jr. and oth-ers in the freedom struggle. His spiritual gifts and dreams, as well as his unique response to his troubled times, were as extraordinarily cre-ative as they were vast and far-reaching. This collection of fifteen of Thurman's unpub-lished sermons on the parables of Jesus captures the power of the parables to challenge, trans-form, and inspire us to declare or reaffirm our commitment to the reign of God and the hu-man community proclaimed by Jesus .