Reviews for Jesus: A Meditation on His Stories and His Relationships with Women

The average rating for Jesus: A Meditation on His Stories and His Relationships with Women based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-02-21 00:00:00 Jiaying Mao In my "forgo the library, read books from my shelves" campaign, I started with this. My intention was to read it, think about it, and then give it away to clear space on my shelf. I will still give it away, but for entirely different reasons. I don't remember the last time I read a book that felt so intensely genuine. Before passing away in 2013, Greeley was a Catholic priest and a professor of sociology at Arizona. Those two occupations often coincide with writings styles of inflated importance, but not so here. Greeley didn't write exhortatively, emotionally, or expositorily as is the norm with authors in anything labelled "Christian". The book is called "a meditation" and it truly is, an even-keeled contemplation of elements of Jesus often ignored from the pulpit, namely his radically feminist treatment of women and his pedagogy. Greeley's discussion of Jesus' relationships to women shouldn't be radical, but pragmatically is for many. Women were the witnesses to Jesus' resurrection. Yet we deny them pastorates. A woman, Jesus' mother, exerted enough authority over him and he yielded to that authority, resulting in the miracle at Cana. Yet we denigrate their authority. Where many want to exegete the ever-loving Jesus out of His parables, Greeley goes the opposite direction, claiming the great parables are not analogies, but have a single, unified subject: God. God is the vinter, the Good Samaritan, the indulgent father. The stories are not about human beings beyond us being called to emulate him. To find further analogy in these parables is to "diffuse [the point] among many clever interpretations" and destroy the intended message. What Christian among us hasn't heard thirty different analogies for the "Prodigal Son"? Greeley sprinkles his "hot takes" across the book in passing references, some of which will affront the reader while other will pass unnoticed. He makes known his acceptance of modern science alongside the Bible with the two phrases: "before we swung down from the trees" and "the one who created the Big Bang [...] with us in mind". He rather overtly states his disbelief in Inerrancy stating that "The explanation of [the parable of the sower] in Matthew's Gospel is an allegory that perverts the point of the parable" and "I doubt that Jesus ever explained a parable." I take these as attempts to normalize liberal beliefs working together with Christianity to form a complete worldview, attempts I wholeheartedly appreciate, having seen few if any in other Christian books that weren't written for that explicit purpose. Part of the genuineness of the book stems from a man - learned in both academic and religious circles - not squeezing every drop of meaning from a two centimeter passage, but accepting the offered parabolic fruit for what it is, regardless of what it is. I can think of no higher praise for Greeley or his work than this.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-12-08 00:00:00 Michelle Vandegrift This is a case where the format may make the difference in my ability to appreciate a book. I generally like Andrew Greeley as an author, albeit only being familiar with his fiction and not having read his nonfiction, but after getting just a short ways into this, I am abandoning it as the narrator did not work for me in the audiobook version. Dick Hill reminded me of an inexperienced preacher that endeavors to throw emphasis into every other word to the extent that that speech style began to draw and predominate in my attention, utterly distracting from content. The high accentuation of pitch rise and fall felt unnatural to the material and I began to feel irritated rather than engaged. I may try to find the paper version of this book to read, but the audiobook is a no for me.