Reading Jesus: A Writer's Encounter with the Gospels [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Mary Gordon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 27, 2009

In the introduction to this remarkable book, Mary Gordon is riding in a taxi as the driver listens to a religious broadcast, and she reflects that, though a lifelong Christian, she is at odds with many others who identify themselves as Christians. In an effort to understand whether or not she had “invented a Jesus to fulfill my own wishes,” she determined to read the Gospels as literature and to study Jesus as a character. What results is a vibrantly fresh and personal journey through the Gospels, as Gordon plumbs the mysteries surrounding one of history's most central figures.

In this impassioned and eye-opening book, Gordon takes us through all the fundamental stories—the Prodigal Son, the Temptation in the Desert, the parable of Lazarus, the Agony in the Garden—pondering the intense strangeness of a deity in human form, the unresolved more ambiguities, the problem posed to her as an enlightened reader by the miracle of the Resurrection. What she rediscovers—and reinterprets with her signature candor, intelligence, and straightforwardness—is a rich store of overlapping, sometimes conflicting teachings that feel both familiar and tantalizingly elusive.

It is this unsolvable conundrum that rests at the heart of Reading Jesus and with which Gordon keeps us in thrall on every page.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist and memoirist Gordon (Circling My Mother) examines her faith by closely reading, in a kind of literary lectio divina (sacred reading), the four Christian gospels that recount the life of Christ. The accounts by evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John of the life of Jesus have a common subject and amazingly different treatments. Gordon tackles the power and puzzle of the Christian gospels with measure and imagination, providing welcome relief for those left cold by scholarly or fundamentalist parsing. Raised Catholic, she writes as a layperson and cradle believer thrilled and troubled by these history-shaping texts, unafraid to articulate questions: what does it mean to be perfect? what exactly is a miracle? Her savoring of particular lines is poetic and amplifies the beauty and sometimes ambiguous challenge of the language, stories and injunctions of the gospels. Gordon writes to find out what she thinks and lets readers listen in. Those whose faith is infused with humanism and love of the power of words will love Gordon's words about matters and mysteries of faith. (Oct. 27)
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Review

Advance Praise for Reading Jesus"A fresh and humane take on the Gospels. Gordon's approach is aware of, but not burdened by, doctrine. Her many insightful questions give expression to thoughts which have, for many readers and for many years, been waiting to be asked aloud."
—Mark Jarman, author of Epistles

"Gordon tackles the power and puzzle of the Christian gospels with measure and imagination, providing welcome relief for those left cold by scholarly or fundamentalist parsing . . . Her savoring of particular lines is poetic and amplifies the beauty and sometimes ambiguous challenge of the language, stories, and injunctions of the gospels."
—Publishers Weekly

Praise for Circling My Mother"What's inspiring about Circling My Mother is Gordon's deeply personal portrayal of her mother . . . a woman in full belief of the love of God . . . Accompanying the author while she comes to terms with her is thrilling."
—The New York Times Book Review

"Everywhere she looks, Gordon finds the same mix of life and strife, beauty and decay. There's no escaping the fact that one way or another, we lost what we hold dear. But remembrance is preservation. Art, we believe, immortalizes. Gordon's encircled portrait of her mother is a daring and perceptive work or memory, catharsis, and literary grace."
—Los Angeles Times

"Both wrenching and enlivening, resonant with candid emotion."
—The Boston Globe

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1 edition (October 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375424571
• ISBN-13: 978-0375424571
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #370,768 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Catholic Girl grown up, December 25, 2009

By 

DJ Rix (NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reading Jesus: A Writer's Encounter with the Gospels (Hardcover)

I entered in, I know not where,
And I remained, though knowing naught,
Transcending knowledge with my thought.

St. John of the Cross

Mary Gordon is a rare enough bird: a well-known writer, critic, intellectual, lecturer, college professor, Manhattanite, feminist, who also happens to be a lifelong observant Roman Catholic. (I admit I'm not one of her ideal readers) A few years ago, she heard a protestant preacher ranting on a taxicab radio & decided to read & study all four Gospels, in canonical order, in various translations, & see what kind of reaction she had. The result is a book resisting categorization - memoir, spiritual meditation, literary criticism. It most feels like a collection of exploratory homilies for herself, & the kind of prose book poets dream of writing.

Catholics of Gordon's generation were not much encouraged to read the Bible. Even Methodist Sunday School kids like myself read it haphazardly. Like Gordon, I also was filled with composite New Testament stories loaded with details not found in the Bible, & our teachers avoided particularly strange, contradictory, troublesome passages & encounters whenever they could. It's interesting to see her try to sort out those stories , confront miracles, & deal with the paradoxes. She attempts to maintain some intellectual distance, but memories & associations cut through.

The book is in three parts, each chapter in a part beginning with the same passage as recounted in different Gospels & versions. The table contents itself is a poem.

One strength of Catholicism I've always admired is its acceptance of mystery, of the unexplainable. Oh, there's a long & venerable history of brilliant theologians trying to explain, but there's a parallel history of mysticism & a tradition of practical observance - you don't have to understand. Catholics have more wiggle room than they are generally given credit for by conservative protestants, for whom everything must be just so.

Part III - The Seven Last Words And The Last Words, is, for me, the least enlightening. Gordon wiggles, shrugs, & fully exposes the Cafeteria Catholic we already know she is. Too much unexplainable mystery. She cannot accept that Jesus could be the only incarnation of God. But Jesus is the one she grew up worshipping, & still does - if skeptically.

Part II - The Problem Of Jesus: Reading Through Anger, Confusion, Disappointment, Loss, deals with various problems, paradoxes, & contradictions that create differences of attitude, doctrine, & ethics among Christians, although I'm vastly simplifying it. "The Problem Of Asceticism: Do We Want To Live Like This?" "The Problem Of Perfection: Could We Live The Way He Says Even If We Wanted To?" An excellent, brief chapter on "The problem of the Jews." Some passages Christians have good reason to wish could be wished away, written for their time & intended audience they have contributed no good ever since. They are artifacts.

Part I - These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruin, is the best. Here we find Mary & Martha - for whom Gordon shows a special affinity. Also the demonic man living among the tombs, Jesus converses with his demon[s], casts them into a herd of pigs, which run off a cliff. Mainstream protestants are uncomfortable with the idea of demonic possession; these days I suppose nearly everyone is. There is the brief appearance of a man in the Garden of Gethsemane, cloaked only in linen, who goes running naked into the night. Who is he? Why is he there? Everyone looks away from the naked man. A petulant Jesus withers a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season, a harsh judgment on a living thing with no free will doing what it's supposed to do.

Unlike Garry Wills in his books ( Why I Am a Catholic ), at no point in Reading Jesus does Gordon sound like she'd be more comfortable as a protestant. I think she'd be a Catholic or nothing in particular. However Gordon managed to accommodate herself to institutional Roman Catholicism, she did long ago & it's unlikely she loses sleep mulling over the history of the popes. Her Catholicism, like that of most active Catholics you & I know, is observed mainly in the heart, home, & parish, & is a practice, not a "denomination." What she does want is her own Jesus, with all the uncertainties, questions, puzzles, impossible demands, & miraculous occurrences. The Jesus who is both fully God & fully human. She doesn't want the sure thing, step-right-up Gospels blaring from the taxicab radio; the Gospels where all pieces fit because they're whacked into place with a mallet; the preacher pretending to have no doubts about the meaning of the Gospels, or, even worse, the preacher with no doubts. A lovely, thoughtful book for thoughtful, educated readers.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful book for thinking believers., September 29, 2010

By 

Imogen13 "Imogen13" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reading Jesus: A Writer's Encounter with the Gospels (Hardcover)

Mary Gordon's faith is not the kind that is an armor of certainty, security, and clarity, but the kind that embraces doubt, the kind that allows itself to be troubled, to ask questions, to argue.

A lapsed (it seems) Catholic, Gordon, novelist and lover of words, decided one day to read and reread the four Gospels, in different translations. This book is the fruit of that reading; each chapter is a reflection on passages that either move or trouble her the most.

In the first part, Gordon reflects on the passages from the Gospel that are closest to her heart. Here, Gordon is at her best, incisive, keen, thoroughly spiritual. She reveals the human Christ she knows and has rediscovered in this exercise. I was edified and at times moved almost to tears with her reflections.

The second part is more intellectual. Gordon confronts those passages she finds most jarring and upsetting: the ones which paint a Jesus (not to mention, a Church) who seems less easy to follow, and maybe even less easy to love.

Gordon closes the book with a reflection on what for Catholics, is the most profound mystery of all: the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ.

This book is an act of honesty and generosity. I imagine the book will be fruitful for all Christians who understand what it means to struggle with their faith.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reading Jesus Carefully, January 9, 2010

By 

William B. Jones - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Reading Jesus: A Writer's Encounter with the Gospels (Hardcover)

Mary Gordon is very much concerned with the Jesus presented in the Gospel texts, and what it means to encounter that presentation as an adult reader after having received the typical mash-up one encounters in church and culture. Reading more with questions in mind than answers to defend, her approach is reminiscent of Annie Dillard's. As with Dillard's insights gained on her own "close reading" of nature, neither does Gordon demure from clinging to insights gained on her "close reading" of Jesus. Take and read.

It was fascinating to read Gordon's Jesus in tandem with two other authors whose new works also take Jesus seriously. The Christ of Christian faith is informed by the Jesus rendered in the biblical text, and Robin Meyers' "Saving Jesus from the Church" is as committed to an adult reading of the former as Gordon is to the latter. Gordon may not necessarily concur with Meyer's social application of the gospel, but for this United Church of Christ pastor, at least, Jesus is meant to be experienced as a humane and humanizing presence in the world, despite the manifest failures of the past and present church.

As to Thomas Moore's "Writing in the Sand," his subtitle, "Jesus and the Soul of the Gospels," links this work to his earlier "Care of the Soul," "Soul Mates," and "Dark Nights of the Soul." Moore pays not only close attention to what the text tells us of Jesus (Gordon) and how some may live more faithfully (Meyers), but also how gospel stories connect to God and one another on both a spiritual and psychological level. If Gordon takes us to the heart of the gospel and Meyers along the horizontal axis of the cross into the world, Moore leads us to view the height and depth of the soul seeking communion with God. Take and read -- one or all three.