The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus

Starred review from September 10, 2007
As minister of Harvard University's Memorial Church, Gomes was a popular preacher well before The Good Book
became a bestseller in 1996. Several subsequent books were, or read like, first-rate sermon collections, but this is an incisive original aimed at cautious defenders of conventional wisdom. Asserting that “we are meant to go beyond the Bible in order to discover the gospel,” Gomes points away from the past toward “a future in which promise and fulfillment meet.” Meanwhile, “we must manage to live in the world as it is”—a world steeped in hostility, suffering and injustice. If we take the gospel seriously, “then like Jesus we will risk all, and might even lose all.” Still, we hang on to a muscular hope that is “not mere nostalgia for what never was, but an earnest expectation of what is to be.” A born storyteller, Gomes knows how to spin an aphorism: “The opposite of fear is not courage but compassion.” And indeed his tone is compassionate even when he chides those who fear conflict and change, but especially when he extols God's provision “for the healing and care of all his creation, and not simply our little part of it.”

January 28, 2008
While veteran narrator Patrick Lawlor possesses ample talent for the general duties at hand, one can't help wondering how such a noted preacher as Gomes—Harvard's longtime religion professor and campus chaplain—might have presented some of the more fiery elements of his material. Gomes's thesis centers on the established Christian community's reluctance to embrace a socially relevant theology. Gomes, a self-avowed “blue-state” clergyman, offers a harsh assessment of rigid and exclusivist fundamentalism. Yet he also calls to task his theologically moderate-to-liberal brothers and sisters inside mainline Protestantism for abandoning their social gospel heritage in favor of a watered-down and highly personalized brand of faith. Lawlor demonstrates a capacity for vocal inflection, reading inspiring quotes from such figures as Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. and theologian Paul Tillich with particular enthusiasm. But the shifts in tone and delivery that might fully convey the distinction between Gomes's sermon to the choir and his broader message for the culture at large sometimes are lost in the shuffle. Simultaneous release with the HarperOne hardcover (Reviews, Sept. 10). (Dec.).