While other university professors embrace the latest technological innovation, Gomes favors an old IBM electric typewriter on the desk of his temporary office at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he is teaching this semester.

Voice mail? He doesn't know how to set it up.

Sermon notes? The 65-year-old Harvard University professor and the minister at Harvard University's Memorial Church pens his in longhand.

But there's nothing conventional about Gomes' sermons or about Gomes himself. As the title of his latest book suggests, Gomes believes Jesus advanced dangerous, even revolutionary ideas, most of which have never been acted on. In "The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus" (HarperOne $24.95), Gomes argues that Christians have for centuries domesticated Jesus' message, making it conform to social expectations, rather than taking it to heart or trying to live it out.

As he likes to put it, quoting the English writer G.K. Chesterton: "Christianity is not a faith that has been tried and found wanting, but a faith that has been wanted and never tried."

Gomes, who is the Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor at UNC-CH and Duke Divinity School this spring, is not the first to make the point that Jesus' message is radical. But from his pulpit at the Memorial Church, where he has preached for 38 years, he feels free to say what he wants. Considered one of the nation's finest preachers, he doesn't need to curry favor with church members to make a living.

And having spent years around students, and particularly divinity school students, he knows what true religious seekers crave.

"Most people are not content with a Jesus who is the head of the Lions Club or of a booster society," he said, describing the efforts of some to make Jesus into a model citizen or an all-around nice guy. "To hear an idea different from our own is at the heart of the religious experience."

To Gomes, any Bible sermon or lesson should have as its coda a gospel story -- literally a story of the good news that Jesus promises to establish God's kingdom on earth. Unfortunately, he said, most churches preach about Jesus rather than about his message. Lost are the themes Jesus preached: Turn the other cheek, love your neighbor, befriend the outcast, give away your wealth.

"Jesus takes us beyond our comfort level," he said. "That's why it's a scandal."

Richard Lischer, a professor of preaching at Duke Divinity School, said Gomes imbues his preaching with old-fashioned eloquence and clarity.

"Peter Gomes brings the highest classical standards of preaching to divinity school students who are more likely to savor a casual approach to preaching as conversation," said Lischer.

Yet, Gomes' personal life defies conventions. A Baptist, he is also gay. In 1991, after a conservative student magazine used the Bible to vilify homosexuals, Gomes told a rally of 200 students in Harvard Yard that the publication was wrong. All people are made in God's image, including gays, of which he was one, he announced. The audience was stunned.

But Gomes, who says he is called to a celibate life, weathered the storm -- and thrived. Since the 2002 publication of his best-seller, "The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart," Gomes' writings for lay readers have become a staple of Sunday school classes, especially in mainline Protestant churches.

Gomes' books ply a theological middle path between the Bible as a purely devotional text and recent critical and historical scholarship. His ability to weave together these two often discordant themes makes him particularly popular among traditional Christians.

"He doesn't dumb it down," said the Rev. Joseph Harvard, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Durham. "He translates it in ways people can grasp."

Gomes talked about his latest book at First Presbyterian last month. Harvard said it was raining so hard he considered canceling the event, but was surprised when hundreds of people showed up.

Urbane, erudite and funny, Gomes attracts audiences wherever he goes. And increasingly that's worldwide.

In February, he preached at Westminster Abbey in England. He has preached before Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle.

Yet despite his refined manner and sensibility, Gomes does not scorn popular tastes.

He watches televangelists on TV, he said, at least once a week. And though he doesn't always agree with the theology of megachurch pastors such as Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes and Creflo Dollar, he admires their communication skills. He's impressed by their preparation -- from having sat at one such sermon he's convinced they don't use notes -- and most of all, by their ability to relate to people's conditions.

He urges his students to watch them, too, and to take notes.

"I say to my students, 'You must be interesting. Then work on your orthodoxy.'"

After years of writing out every word he preached, Gomes now boils his sermon notes down to seven points scribbled on a half sheet of paper. That has freed him, he said, to improve on his points. He recommends the technique to his students, too.

In July, Gomes will return to Harvard University, where, he said, he looks forward to preaching five more years. He has already told the university president he plans to retire at 70, and said he looks forward to returning to his hometown, Plymouth, Mass., where he will write and "putter in the garden."

Most likely, he said, he will also continue to preach. Gomes said he's like a fire horse on Sunday mornings -- ready to bolt when the bell rings.

"It's not that I've perfected the system," he said. "It's that I get another chance to try."

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