Simon’s Says
Just in time for Holy Week, I picked up the newest book by Elaine Pagels, Miracles and Wonder. Some of you will know Pagels’ work. Her first book, The Gnostic Gospels, was awarded both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle prize when it was published in 1979. Professor of Religion at Princeton University, she has gone on to write multiple books, essays and studies about Jewish and Christian scripture and tradition. Adam, Eve and the Serpent, The Origin of Satan and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas are among her other books I’ve read.
Miracles and Wonders is an approach to the life of Jesus and the stories the early church told about him. Beginning with the apostle Paul, who wrote his letters ten to fifteen years before the first gospel was ever penned, she examines the unfolding of many of the claims the scriptures and the early church made about the man. I have not read the book itself yet (I am finishing Hampton Sides’ The Wide Wide Sea, a wonderful recounting of the final voyage of Capt. James Cook, as a continuation of my sabbatical work). But reviews by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker and Jack Hanson in The New York Times whetted my appetite and gave me an idea of what to expect. Then again, I’ve learned to expect nothing short of excellence from Pagels. Her approach and some of her themes will inform my sermon this Sunday, as we look together at some of the strange and wondrous stories of the final week of Jesus’ life.
Next week will be a busy one for us. Maundy Thursday’s service of Tenebrae and Communion will be at 7:00 pm; Good Friday’s time for prayer and the reading of John’s story of the passion takes place at Noon; Sunrise Service at Fountian Hill in Deep River greets the dawn at 6:00 am; and our Easter Day celebration at the United Church begins at 10:00. Hope to see you at one or more of these observances.
Links to Palm Sunday’s bulletin and service are here: