Greeley book offers refreshing, unconventional look at life of Christ

Stuffy it’s not; surprising it is and written with an engaging simplicity and sincerity absent from so many religious books.

The book is “Jesus: A Meditation On His Stories and His Relationship With Women” published this month just in time for the spring season of rebirth and renewal.

Never say that Father Andrew Greeley, a liberal and literate Roman Catholic priest, who has written more than 50 best-selling novels and more than 100 works of non-fiction, is a slouch in the marketing department, where timing is crucial.

Nor is he a slouch in the writing department and this short, 172-page paperback should interest those of all religions interested in gaining some new, perhaps deeper and more profound, insights on the life and lessons Jesus brought to the world, lessons just as applicable today as they were hundreds of years ago.

Jesus as storyteller

Greeley is a storyteller and storytelling, he contends, was a big part of Jesus’ appeal to those often regarded as a motley crew who followed him and became part of his inner circle.

The stories, all simple parables, such as that of the Good Samaritan, the Good Shepherd, Mary Magdelene, raising Lazarus from the dead, turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana, the Prodigal Son and more have a common thread, Greeley writes “because he (Jesus) insisted on ending the stories with a disturbing twist, a disconcerting finale.”

Always surprising

“We must begin our story of Jesus by granting him permission to surprise us endlessly—not that he needs our permission because he will surprise even without our permission,” Greeley writes.

“...he is deliberately elusive, mysterious, enigmatic, paradoxical. Hence, we will never finish our search. We will never understand him. He is a man of surprises, appropriate for one who claims to witness a God of surprises.”

Too good to be true

Jesus’ good news, Greeley continues, sounded to many to be too good to be true.

Nor did it didn’t fit the expectations of his followers, even those apostles closest to him, who expected him to act like a revolutionary Messiah and crush the Jews and Romans who rejected, ridiculed and, ultimately, crucified him.

Jesus’ message about his Father and the Kingdom of Heaven disturbed his followers greatly. In fact , Jesus disturbed them, Greeley writes, but that was his nature—to challenge conventional thought and ancient traditions, to bring a message never before heard.

“If he doesn’t disturb us, then he’s not Jesus,” Greeley contends.

Meditation on a life

Greeley calls his book a mediation because it “is a reflection on more than a half century of Sunday preaching and almost that long a time of writing homily notes for priests.

Moreover, as a seanachie, an Irish storyteller, I am ever more fascinated by the skill in the stories of Jesus and his insidious ability to surprise.”

Greeley transports the reader back to the Palestine of a couple of millennia ago, for some reflections on the stories of Jesus and on his relationship with women, probably the most controversial aspect of his mediations.

Greeley says that Jesus was an attractive charming man who held a magnetic appeal for women whom he treated as equals.

This is heresy?

Many of us don’t think so.

“He was the kind of man on whom women could easily form what we today call crushes,” Greeley writes .

“He did not demean them or talk down to them or keep them in their place—whatever that place might be.”

The book notes that though Jesus had the same hormones as do all male humans, he focused his sexual energies on the task of announcing the kingdom of God,

Needless to say, that innocuous sounding statement, has stirred some controversy in the more conservative corners of the Catholic Church and others.

Greeley’s critics

The older Father Greeley gets, the more obsessed he becomes with sex, some of his critics contend.

Father Tom Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, decries those passages that suggest Jesus made an impact on women and vice-versa.

“Conjecturing on women having crushes on Jesus and Jesus’ hormonal patterns, is, well, typical Greeley, whose fixation with sex was solidified when he started writing sex novels.

“They used to say the prolific Greeley did not have an unpublished thought. Now it seems, Greeley does not even have an unpublished fantasy,” Euteneuer writes

Certainly, Greeley has earned a well-deserved reputation as a prolific writer who deals frequently with heterosexual relationships in his novels.

But perhaps Father Euteneuer did not read “Jesus” carefully, for in it Greeley writes that no one knows what Jesus really thought, felt or did in regard to the women in his life.

Misses the point

“Nor, in principle, would he have been any less the Chosen’ if he had married and fathered children,” Greeley says, adding that the modern-day preoccupation, in films and books, with Jesus’ private life, misses the essential point of Jesus’ dual humanity and divinity and the meaning of his life, his death, and his resurrection.

This is an inspirational book, one which provokes thought and reflection about the role of religion in our lives regardless of whether you agree with it or not, you’ll find “Jesus” an exceptional, enlightening reading experience.

The book, published by Tom Doherty Associates, New York, can be ordered from local bookstores.

kengle@gvnews.com|547-9732