Jesus: A Meditation on His Stories and His Relationships with Women
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About this ebook
"We must begin our story of Jesus by granting him permission to surprise us endlessly...." ---from the Introduction
Jesus of Galilee taught through stories, which even today contain the power to startle us out of our prejudices and preconceptions. Now Father Andrew M. Greeley, one of America's most beloved storytellers, examines the parables told by Jesus in search of a fuller understanding of the man and his message.
This engaging and informal collection of homilies reveals a Jesus whose simple parables carry profound lessons about the Kingdom of Heaven. Along the way, Father Greeley touches on such provocative topics as the significance of Jesus's Jewish roots, his deep and revolutionary relationship with women, The Da Vinci Code, and The Passion of the Christ. He also singles out the four greatest parables, which best illustrate the infinite love and mercy of the God whose kingdom began with Jesus and continues even today.
As a storyteller, Jesus often surprised his listeners with unexpected twists that challenged them to see the world in a whole new light. Father Greeley's insightful tour of the Gospels provides a fresh look at the parables that strips away centuries of false and mistaken interpretations to get at the essential truth of who Jesus really was and what he believed.
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Andrew M. Greeley
Priest, sociologist, author and journalist, Father Andrew M. Greeley built an international assemblage of devout fans over a career spanning five decades. His books include the Bishop Blackie Ryan novels, including The Archbishop in Andalusia, the Nuala Anne McGrail novels, including Irish Tweed, and The Cardinal Virtues. He was the author of over 50 best-selling novels and more than 100 works of non-fiction, and his writing has been translated into 12 languages. Father Greeley was a Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona and a Research Associate with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. In addition to scholarly studies and popular fiction, for many years he penned a weekly column appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers. He was also a frequent contributor to The New York Times, the National Catholic Reporter, America and Commonweal, and was interviewed regularly on national radio and television. He authored hundreds of articles on sociological topics, ranging from school desegregation to elder sex to politics and the environment. Throughout his priesthood, Father Greeley unflinchingly urged his beloved Church to become more responsive to evolving concerns of Catholics everywhere. His clear writing style, consistent themes and celebrity stature made him a leading spokesperson for generations of Catholics. He chronicled his service to the Church in two autobiographies, Confessions of a Parish Priest and Furthermore! In 1986, Father Greeley established a $1 million Catholic Inner-City School Fund, providing scholarships and financial support to schools in the Chicago Archdiocese with a minority student body of more than 50 percent. In 1984, he contributed a $1 million endowment to establish a chair in Roman Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago. He also funded an annual lecture series, “The Church in Society,” at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein, Illinois, from which he received his S.T.L. in 1954. Father Greeley received many honors and awards, including honorary degrees from the National University of Ireland at Galway, the University of Arizona and Bard College. A Chicago native, he earned his M.A. in 1961 and his Ph.D. in 1962 from the University of Chicago. Father Greeley was a penetrating student of popular culture, deeply engaged with the world around him, and a lifelong Chicago sports fan, cheering for the Bulls, Bears and the Cubs. Born in 1928, he died in May 2013 at the age of 85.
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Reviews for Jesus
12 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"... the God of Jesus is a God so deeply in love with his creatures that if humans should behave the same way, they would be deemed crazy.Any theology that questions this insight has no claim to be Christian."I picked this book up while browsing through our library's religion/philosophy shelves. Andrew Greeley is a Catholic priest. He's also a journalist, sociologist, and New York Times Bestselling Author. His name was familiar to me, but this is the first book of his I have read. It came as a nice revelation that I, a non-Catholic, and a Catholic priest, had so much in common with our views of Jesus and Christianity than differences. What was even more surprising was what I learned from this little book.Greeley's book is about exactly what the title says it is. Greeley's point about Jesus' relationship with women is that we fail to grasp how absolutely revolutionary it was that Jesus treated women with such respect and honor. Not only did he respect and honor them, but elevated them. Who was the first to have contact with the resurrected Jesus? A woman."The radical equality of everyone in the kingdom of God was an idea that was beyond their comprehension. It was absurd to think that Jesus would appear first of all to a woman and an unstable one at that - absurd and scandalous. We find it acceptable today only because the scene in the garden outside the tomb has become commonplace We have heard it told so often on Easter morning that we take it for granted. Same story as last year. We don't notice that it is the kind of story that a radical feminist might have composed."The "stories" Greeley is referring to are mostly Jesus' parables. I always appreciate it when someone can point out something in the Bible from a different angle. His perspective on these old familiar "stories" (at least familiar to those of us who have ever spent any amount of time in a church pew, Catholic or otherwise) is quite interesting. Some of these stories have become so familiar that they have lost their intended point and impact and are simply used for mere "homilies." The best example is the story of the Prodigal Son. You all know the story, junior gets his inheritance and goes off and squanders it on women and drinking and then when the money and fun runs out, repents and goes back home. It's fairly common for those in the pulpit to say, "see, junior had a change of heart, felt sorry, and went home." The truth of the matter is junior wasn't sorry at all; he was hungry! And he had a speech all ready to impress his "push-over" daddy with. A careful reading of the story shows that junior's manipulative speech never even made it out of his mouth; his daddy ran out to meet him while he was still on the road. A joyful father now reunited with his lost son, kills the fatted calf and has a large feast. This annoys the oldest son who, according to himself, has done everything right and nobody ever threw a party for him. (whine, whine). The emphasis on this story is often put on the returning son, this poor Jewish kid having to take care of the pigs, but "As John Shea remarks, if anyone in this story is a prodigal, it's the father. ... a generous and loving man with two sons who are losers, the one a wastrel, the other a rigid accountant of grievances. He spoils the two boys rotten and continues his excessive love even though they are miserably ungrateful in return...." The one thing I learned here is that there is a definitive pattern to Jesus' parables: "... the God person (the father), the helpless person - in this case a passive-aggressive and scheming wretch (the first son), and the third man (the second son)." By looking at the Parables from a different angle, they take on a new and more powerful meaning. These stories become elevated from nice little Sunday school lessons on how to behave and treat other people into insights into the personality of the God that Jesus was trying to show us.While the book itself is exactly what it says it is, Greeley does find ways to talk about the Church as a whole, the Catholic Church, forgiveness, politics, and even the death penalty. Some of the stances he takes (especially when criticizing his own organization) are pretty brave. Even though I don't agree with him 100 percent on everything, I certainly admire his chutzpah and I surely learned quite a bit in this little book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jesus : a meditation on his stories and his relationships with women is a look at the parables of Jesus and the passages about his relations with women from a slightly different angle. Greeley is a storyteller and so he analyzes them as stories. What do they say? What is the point of the story? Why was it written down and remembered when other events were not?This is a good method to break open a story and see something fresh within it. Many of us have read these texts as children, as young adults and as adults, have looked at them as sacred, as literature, as texts to be decoded. Examining them as stories takes us back to square one, where everything we have learned can still be applied. His comments about the parables (there are always three people in a parable, God, a person and a third party which is the audience/reader) are worth the price of admission by themselves. Quirky and idiosyncratic as always, Greeley enlightens not despite that, but because of it.