Peter J. Gomes is Plummer Professor of Religion and Pusey Minister at Memorial Church, Harvard. An American Baptist, he is one of our foremost preachers, a top national media resource, and a frequent preacher and lecturer. This was a gift book.

A superb summary is given in the three paragraphs on the front flap: “JESUS CAME PREACHING, but the church wound up preaching Jesus. Why does the church insist upon making Jesus the object of its attention rather than heeding his message? Esteemed Harvard minister Peter J. Gomes believes that excessive focus on the Bible and doctrines about Jesus have led the Christian church astray. ‘What did Jesus preach?’ asks Gomes. To recover the transformative power of the gospel – ‘the good news’ – Gomes says we must go beyond the Bible and rediscover how to live out Jesus’ original revolutionary message of hope.

“Dietrich Bonhoeffer once warned against cheap grace, and I warn now about cheap hope. Hope is not merely the optimistic view that somehow everything will turn out all right in the end if everyone just does as we do. Hope is the more rugged, the more muscular view that even if things don’t turn out all right and aren’t all right, we endure through and beyond the times that disappoint or threaten to destroy us.

“This gospel is offensive and always overturns the status quo, Gomes tells us. It’s not good news for those who wish not to be disturbed, and today our churches rebound with shrill speeches of fear and exclusivity or tepid retellings of a health-and-wealth gospel. With his unique blend of eloquence and insight, Gomes invites us to hear anew the radical nature of Jesus’ message of hope and change. Using examples from ancient times as well as from modern pop culture, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus shows us why the good news is every bit as relevant today as when it was first preached.”

If the book’s title or, better yet, the first two statements from the book’s front flap don’t grab your attention, I don’t think anything will. Gomes makes an excellent case for why the church has failed to give the gospel that Jesus gave and wanted his followers to continue giving. I didn’t expect such clear arguments as I found here from Peter J. Gomes. Expanding upon the front flap, his 5-pp Introduction mentions two of his other books – The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart (2002) and The Good Life: Truths that Last in Times of Need” (2003) and states: “Now I write another Bible book, with the radical suggestion that we use the Bible to go beyond the Bible and embrace that to which it points: the gospel, or the good news. In a time when it is easier to write about doom and gloom than about hope and promise, I suggest that Jesus came into the world not as a Bible teacher directing us back into a text, but as one who proclaimed a realm beyond the Bible. He proclaimed his good news against the conventional wisdom of his day, taking up with unacceptable people and advancing dangerous, even revolutionary, ideas, nearly all of which remain to be discovered and acted upon. I have always been persuaded of the truth of the aphorism attributed to G.K. Chesterton, that ‘Christianity is not a faith that has been tried and found wanting, but a faith that has been wanted and never tried’.”

Near the end of the Introduction he says “I do not offer this book as a polemic, although I do from time to time take strong issue with the conventional wisdom of both the pious and the secular. I am not out to bash anyone, and I hope I can improve the quality of discourse among the many sincere people of goodwill who differ greatly in their views on faith in our times. I do worry that with so much religion about, and with ever-increasing polarization of our convictions, sooner rather than later we will discover that the problem in our culture is not religion but the religious. It is my highest hope to appeal not so much to those who are already set in their convictions, but to that vast company of readers willing to investigate a point of view that may not be its own.”

He continues in 11 chapters as the Contents show. PART I – The Trouble with Scripture – Ch 1: We Start with the Bible; Ch 2: An Offending Gospel; Ch 3: The Risks of Nonconformity; Ch 4: What Would Jesus Have Me Do? PART 2 – The Gospel and the Conventional Wisdom – Ch 5: The Gospel and Fear; Ch 6: The Gospel and Conflict; Ch 7: The Gospel and the Future. PART 3 – Where Do We Go from Here? – Ch 8: A Social Gospel; Ch 9: An Inclusive Gospel; Ch 10: A Gospel of Hope; Ch 11: Conclusion.

I chose these three important quotes from his conclusion: “There are two bits of conventional wisdom having to do with religion to which I have tried to speak in this book. The first view is that religion is part of the problem and not part of the solution to the human problem, and the second view is that for Christians in particular, the Bible is too tempting a diversion from the hard work of attempting to live a religious life worthy of the times in which we find ourselves.” …”For readers of all traditions, including those who are just discovering the Christian faith or are discouraged by their experience of it, I have written this book. As I am at pains to point out, the Bible is not the end of the Christian faith; rather it is the point of departure, and I am convinced that it offers more good news than bad, and points away from itself to what is called the gospel. Jesus, after all, did not become incarnate in the world as a great Bible teacher; he came to proclaim the glad tidings, to preach the gospel.”

I am thankful to the friend who gave me this insightful book about the “good news” from Jesus. Although Peter J. Gomes comes on a bit strong, I think he needed to, so I recommend it for the important food for thought that it provides. I end with Gomes’ final words. ”God’s love, present at our creation, will also sustain our redemption, and to be redeemed is to become what God has always intended us to be. We are accepted, as Paul Tillich noted, but it is our joyful task to accept what God has promised for us, a future in which promise and fulfillment meet. To that end we live and work and pray, and that is good news for those who dare to hear it. Nothing less than this confidence in God’s future and ours is what Jesus means when he said: ‘I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.’ The future is God’s, it is ours, it is good; and that is good news.”