For the churchgoing Christian, there's plenty to like about "The Da Vinci Code": The whole time, people are talking about the faith. The important places are locales like museums, libraries, and sanctuaries. Knowledge of ancient languages, (Western) history, culture, and art is essential. And it's oh, so literary, even to the point of playing with words, so that the keys to the puzzles lie with being able to figure out the clues within the words. Just delicious.
Ah, but for the churchgoing Christian, there's plenty not to like, as well.
by Anne Rice. New York: Knopf, 2005. ISBN 0-375-41201-8. Hb., 336 pp. $25.95.
Jesus has lived the first seven years of his life in Alexandria, Egypt. The novel covers his family's move back to Galilee after King Herod's death and Jesus' first year in Nazareth. The plot concerns how the boy Jesus discovers his birth story and true identity.
Two incidents found in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas open the novel. Jesus' blunt words to a bully result in the bully's death. In view of the ensuing ruckus caused by the dead boy's family, Jesus decides to raise him from the dead. In the context of that incident, we also learn that the child Jesus had earlier fashioned sparrows out of clay on the Sabbath day, and then clapped his hands to make them fly away after he was criticized for working on the Sabbath. In an afterword, Rice defends her decision to embrace these apocryphal accounts because she finds a deep truth in them that speaks to her.
Both films feature, prominently, the country's president--a fit, trim, handsome, well-dressed, well-manicured white man somewhere in his 50's. Both feature terrorist plots against the president. In both, the terrorists themselves are somewhat shadowy foreign figures whose motivations are uncertain, but seem more political than personal. In both, an affair not only undercuts the integrity of the participants, but puts everyone else at risk, as well. One is a deadly serious drama and the other a completely satirical goof, but both have somber, sober, cynical undertones.
by Thomas G. Long. Louisville: WJKP, 2005. ISBN 0-664-22943-3. Pb., 267 pp., $24.95.
In the preface to this Second Edition, Tom Long writes that when he first wrote The Witness of Preaching in the late 1980s, he was attempting to do two things. First, he sought to provide a basic textbook on preaching that would be both accessible to new preachers and yet still helpful to experienced pastors. Second, he hoped "to create a textbook that was in direct conversation with other voices and opinions in the field of preaching" (p. ix).
It is easy to see that Long delivered on his first promise. The textbook immediately found its way into introductory preaching courses in divinity schools and seminaries of all types, and countless experienced preachers found renewed passion for their preaching after reading The Witness of Preaching. What made the original particularly helpful was its rich theology of proclamation that clearly gave life to the nuts and bolts of sermon crafting that Long espoused.
by Wendy Farley. Louisville, KY: WJKP, 2005. ISBN 0-664-22976-X. Pb., 208 pp., $19.95.
On the back of Wendy Farley's new book, The Wounding and Healing of Desire, the brief description of her project uses appropriate descriptive language like "inspiring" and "passionate" to invite the reader into this beautiful work. The description ends by calling Farley's book a "theological memoir." If this categorization entices you to pick it up and read it, then I am happy with the choice of genre the publisher made. As a theologian, however, I find the description unsatisfying even as I grope for an alternative way to capture what Farley has accomplished. Indeed this book does pour forth from an intimate integrity that connects her experience with the way she constructs theology. Her project, however, is more ontological than it is a narrative of or theological reflection on her life.
by David L Goetz. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006. ISBN-13-978-0-06-075670-3 Hb., 214 pp., $23.95.
The inspiration behind this new book is fascinating. Author David L. Goetz asks whether or not life in the suburbs is harmful to a living faith. As an answer, he claims it can be, but with the deliberate method he delineates in this book it does not have to be.
We recognize the concerns he raises: that showiness and barrenness are the suburbia stereotype. In the lovely bedroom communities of America, it can appear that the inhabitants are more worried about orderly landscaping than they are the landscape of the soul. Such a message is intriguing to me and would be to many clergy. If you serve a congregation in which a large number of your members are suburbanites, the question is there, even if unasked: In the hectic pace and everyday diversions of the suburbs, is it possible for people to discern, to have a word with and have a word from the Living God?
by Robert W. Jenson. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville, John Knox Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8042-3117-6. 106 pp, $24.95
"It may be," says the author, "that the chief purpose of a commentary on (the Song of Songs) is not to provide interpretation but to provoke it" (p. 12). In this masterful commentary, Robert Jenson does both.
From the author's engaging preface, through a most informative introduction that makes one eager to read on, and throughout the commentary, Jenson leads the reader on an extraordinary adventure in the study of Scripture.
"Tsotsi" means "thug" in South African dialect. Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae, in a remarkable debut) is a thug, all right, from the slums of Johannesburg. He glares constantly, as if always boiling with rage. He is cruel, violent, and humorless. He surrounds himself with other thugs, and together they go to the central train terminal, where they find their victims. They rob people who are unguarded enough to flash a wad of bills when they are paying for a newspaper. When they return to their slums, they spend their stolen money gambling at dice, and when it runs out, they go steal again. Tsotsi seems to be practically unredeemable. And then something unexpected happens.
With Easter Week, spring break and other incentives to use our time to read something inspiring, we recommend the following:
For adults
Were You There? Finding Ourselves at the Foot of the Cross, by Erik Kolbell. Louisville: WJKP, 2005. ISBN 0-664-22778-3. Hb., 163 pp., $14.95.
What would you have done were you there during Jesus' passion? Would you have provided comfort, as did Mary? Would you have betrayed him, as did Judas? Would you have abused the power entrusted to you, as did Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate? Kolbell skillfully puts us into the story of Jesus' passion and death in such a way that we are there--and that then is somehow now, too. Retelling Jesus' passion from the perspective of multiple characters, he offers rich insight into Jesus' story, and into our stories, as well.
by Wes Avram. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005. ISBN 1587430886. Pb., 156 pp., $14.99.
In the first of the sermonic essays in this collection, Wes Avram recounts a story from a physician's memoirs about a young man who lost his leg to bone cancer. The young man went through long and difficult therapy to learn to live without his leg. During his physical therapy, the doctor sometimes asked the young man to draw a picture of how he was feeling. On one occasion he drew a picture of a cracked vase, depicting his feeling of being broken right at the center of his being. As the years went on, the young man gradually accepted his new life and learned to find joy again. Much later, the doctor met the patient again, and had an opportunity to pull out of his files the old picture of the cracked vase. The former patient took the picture back and said, "This isn't finished." He added something to the drawing. "'Now it's complete,' he said and turned it back to the doctor. He had drawn rays of light shining from inside the vase. He said, 'Now I know that the crack is where the light shows through.'" [p. 31]
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