Getting Jesus’ take on issues of our day

A Serious Way of Wondering

The Ethics of Jesus Imagined

Reynolds Price

Scribner: 148 pp., $23

A Serious Way of Wondering

The Ethics of Jesus Imagined

Reynolds Price

Scribner: 148 pp., $23

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Novelist and poet Reynolds Price has written a number of books in which he brings biblical stories to life for contemporary readers. In “Three Gospels” (1996), he provided new translations of the Gospels of Mark and John based on the original version of the Greek texts, along with his own apocryphal gospel, a concise narrative of the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth. In “A Palpable God” (1978), he translated 30 biblical stories telling of encounters between God and people. His newest work, “A Serious Way of Wondering,” abides in this realm as an investigation of the ethics of Jesus.

In “Wondering,” he looks into the four Gospels to extrapolate what he considers to be Jesus’ core ethics. Then Price applies those ethics to three subjects that confront American society today but on which there is no record of Jesus’ opinion: homosexuality, suicide and the position of women in male-dominated cultures. At heart, Price takes the cultural phrase “What would Jesus do?” and attempts to answer it.

Before launching into his imagined tales, Price provides an extensive look at what Jesus’ life might have been like, including when (and if) Jesus might have realized his messianic identity, and whether Jesus’ crucifixion marked the nadir of his belief. “The chance that Jesus died in despair of the love of God -- and in the profoundest bafflement of his hopes of commanding God’s kingdom -- is a chance, even a likelihood, that seems all but inescapable,” Price holds.

Price then introduces the three fictionalized stories. In the first, the risen Jesus meets up with Judas Iscariot, who is hiding out in a cave after the crucifixion. Judas confesses his passionate love for Christ and explains how his thwarted love resulted in Jesus’ betrayal.

According to Price, although Jesus denounces certain sexual behavior, his actions speak differently. “We do have ample evidence of Jesus’ calm patience, and apparent tolerance, in the presence of several forms of sexual behavior condemned in the Law -- prostitution, adultery and heterosexual cohabitation outside marriage.” Thus, Price imagines this encounter with Judas not as a condemnation of Judas’ homosexual longings, but as a reminder to Judas that he love the whole of God’s creation.

In Price’s second speculation, the risen Jesus comes to Judas just as the disciple is about to commit suicide. Jesus doesn’t try to talk Judas out of his plan but helps him to complete it. The final scenario features the historical Jesus with the adulteress whom he saves from stoning. After Jesus tells her to “sin no more,” Price imagines a conversation between the two, in which she pours out to him the difficulties of being a woman in that society.

Price summarizes what he feels is Jesus’ true message: “What God left to attentive creatures, when the risen Jesus vanished at the end of forty days,” he tells us, “was an enormous but remarkably trim inheritance -- the three sayings ... Love your neighbor as yourself, Feed my sheep, Do not resist an evil person: the command Love God is implicit in each of those three.”

Although the narrative is thoughtful and well-grounded, a divide exists between the language and cadence Price employs to explain the context of the stories and the voice he uses to tell them: The shift between his formal teaching voice and that of the fiction narrator is bumpy. And because so much time is spent establishing context, the stories seem meager when compared with the fascinating writing that frames them.

These imperfections aside, this is an insightful work combining thoughtful erudition with Price’s obvious love for the Gospel stories and his expansive artistic abilities, resulting in a text designed to help readers see anew Jesus of Nazareth.