Marilynne Robinson. Gilead. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004.
Words almost fail to capture the essence of this challenging and well-written book. Using the device of an elderly preacher's letter summing up his life, Robinson has breathed life into a serendipity, and unexpected surprise, a gift, a blessing. Really, it is not so much a serendipity as a series of vignettes, each capable of provoking its own serendipity. Too jump out to me at the present moment.
Preacher
Robinson reminds us that the term "preacher" is means "prophet" and a prophet is one who elucidates meaning from the suffering we experience. They read the signs of the times like so many tea leaves and interpret the movements of God in the ways of humans to humankind. Of course, this is risky business. Remember the woe-words of Jeremiah (one of my favorite preacher prophets) on those who speak in God's name but have not been sent by God. They speak words of comfort, salving itching ears who need not salve but changed hearts. The comfort they need, that God requires, comes from obedience in the now rather than hopes of eschatological deliverance. However, there is hope for that deliverance also, just not as they have imagined.
But, going back to the original spark, a preacher is a provocateur, a watchman who calls to action. Not just a moralist. Not just a counter-culturist. There surely must be some of that, particularly in rereading the old law for a new day. That is not enough.
Sadly, as Gilead reminds us and as Jeremiah typified, it does not make life easy for the messenger, especially as the message takes new guises for each new day, i.e., for John Ames, his father, grandfather, and projecting into the future, his young son. No wonder it has to be a gift, a calling, one that one has to stand in the way of, to be receiving always, doubting, lamenting, reviving, and, of course, enacting.
Prodigals
The good bad thing about the parable of the prodigal son is its good and bad ending. It ends so well for everyone except the elder brother. Truly, we have the suspicion that the prodigal is very likely to waste the greatest of his father's new gifts, that of grace. It is all too set up, too outrageous. The elder brother has all the right on his side; all, except the father's right to be gracious to whomever he will.
But we hold not only to the amazing mystery of grace but to the equally incomprehensible mystery of human iniquity. Robinson reminds us of that, slowly and gradually enough to elicit hope for the story's prodigal, Jack, but warily enough not to be disappointed if grace does not stick. In fact, as I read, I become as wary as John Ames as to what the continued presence of his namesake could mean to Ames' family after his death. Might the circle of inquity grow to include them, or would their sphere grow to include him? Or, ...what? Some things are left better unresolved.
It all seems pretty Calvinist, in a rather good/bad way. Grace always seems to be around, behind and beneath everything. So, to an extent, is the appearance of human choice which Wesleyans might be quick to affirm as prevenient, available for choice because it is God's gift already on the scene. However, there are some prodigals whose hands are so full they cannot pick up what is being offered to them. At least not yet...
Another tour of duty in a foreign country might be in order.
When does God give up?
Perhaps we are more righteous than God is. Maybe that is why God leaves us in our rightness with the other ninety-eight.
Go figure.
4/10/05