Customer Reviews

Reading Jesus: A Writer's Encounter with the Gospels

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book started out well but seemed to run out of energy as it went along. I give Mary Gordon credit for tackling an interesting subject, but wish that she had spent more time and effort on it. It is as though she had some good ideas, started writing, used up her good ideas early on, then just wanted to get the book over with. This is a shame, because her first few chapters are genuinely stimulating.

Part of the problem may be her own apparent puzzlement about religion. When she focuses on the actual text of the Gospels, as in the early chapters, she raises some intriguing issues, as in her discussion of Jesus withering the fig tree. But as the book progresses, Gordon seems to lose focus, and becomes more and more tentative in her writing. It is almost as if she is afraid of appearing to her readers as having settled any crucial faith-related religious questions in her own mind. As a result, her writing just seems to wander and drift. The end result is a good book that could have been much better. My rating is 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

Mary Gordon's wrestling with scripture from the gospels requires the reader to read incisively. I recommend it highly to Catholics in particular, but it would be a rich source of inquiry for all persons of faith. Each of the meditations could serve as a friutful Sunday homily for clergy.

I have personally recommended this book to several people. Those who are familiar with the Bible will find this a provocative book that will get them thinking in a new way.

A deeply penetrating reading of the Gospels. Honest at every turn, like a richly considered Theological Reflection.

I did not like this book very much. The author's own doubts interfere too much with her interpretations of the Gospels. In many instances, she over-simplifies and over-generalizes. Some of her assertions I think are wrong and seem to be based on her own overly emotional reading (that the Gospel of John promotes anti-Semitism, for example). She considers herself a Christian, but then questions whether Jesus was divine and whether the Resurrection actually happened. So in what sense is she a Christian?

It was a used book, that I knew. The book is in good condition. What I find a bit disconcerting, it is from a public library. The public library stamp is very obvious on the cover and inside pages. I am hapy to know that a public library would have a book of such religious nature. Qusstion, why did they offer it for sale? And if I loan this book to a friend they might wonder how long overdue it is. Other than that, "Reading Jesus" is a "good read." jh