Two Reviews

Thursdays are for Reviews

In a previous post, I mentioned the difficulty that readers face in filling in the gaps of biblical texts. One of the great benefits of gaps is that it leaves a narrative space for creative reflection on the rest of the text itself. The artist is invited to dialogue with the text by carefully reading and noting these narrative gaps.

I recently received one artist’s attempts to creatively interact with biblical texts. After a recent review in which I noted the paucity of pink books on my bookshelf, Benjamin Potter graciously sent me two works which fill in some of the literary gaps in the infancy narratives of the gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke.

Something Special at Leonard’s Inn (Loom and Wheel Publishing, 1999) is the story of the birth of Jesus told through the eyes of the innkeeper in Bethlehem who let Joseph and Mary use a stable and the manger.

Just a Simple Carpenter: the Story of Joseph (Loom and Wheel Publishing, 2000) retells the same story from a different vantage point: the perspective of Joseph. In this work, Potter casts a wider net as he begins months before the birth of Christ and ends his story right after Mary and Joseph lose Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem.

I enjoyed each of these works a great deal and would recommend hem highly. I was reminded as I read them about the great challenge that we have as Christians to retell the Story to others and to ourselves. As we read the Christmas story year after year, it can become repetitive and comfortable. Potter resists the comfortable reading by engaging each text from the first person perspective. He fleshes out the characters of the inn-keeper and of Joseph with much care.

One consequence of Potter’s telling of these tales is that they are darker than the sunny Christmas story we set out on our lawns every December. As Potter rightly (writely?) notes, the splendor of the visit of the Magi is shortly followed by the (no doubt) desperate flight of the first family to Egypt before the murderous edict of King Herod.

And in Leonard, Potter reminds us that each of the peripheral characters in these narratives bring their attendant hurts and sorrows to these stories. The shepherds, the inn keepers, the wives, and the Magi were all genuine people with actual thoughts and feelings. Far from the two dimensional images we meet in Christmas pageants throughout December, they were real, actual people.

Each of these books remind us that the people surrounding Jesus shared sorrows and rages, pleasures and joys. Just like us.