{"id":1099,"date":"2008-03-05T18:46:26","date_gmt":"2008-03-05T18:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2008\/03\/anne-rices-road-to-cana.html"},"modified":"2008-03-05T18:46:26","modified_gmt":"2008-03-05T18:46:26","slug":"anne-rices-road-to-cana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/03\/anne-rices-road-to-cana.html","title":{"rendered":"Anne Rice’s Road to Cana"},"content":{"rendered":"

I did the following review<\/a> for NPR’s All Things Considered today. I’m excited about it because it is one of the best things I’ve written in a long time. I’m more excited because it almost (almost) does justice to Ms. Rice’s breathtaking now book, The Road to Cana.<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

“Who is Christ the Lord?”
\nWith those words, Anne Rice opens her new novel.
\nThe question is posed by Jesus, the narrator of the book. That Rice has chosen to write the book from the point of view of, well, God, is an artistic challenge and a gutsy move.
\nSpiritually, it is the question of the past 2,000 years \u2014 desperately needed in this day, where some theologians have rendered Jesus little more than the accidentally crucified socialist, and others as an aspiring head of the RNC.
\nThe reality is that Jesus has been lost in the context of our time \u2014 reduced to an almost cartoonish amalgam of Cesar Chavez, Mister Rogers and Pat Robertson.
\nIt is precisely this caricature of Jesus that Anne Rice undoes in her new book, The Road to Cana, the second in her Christ the Lord series. The novel is a wonder. Rice clearly revels in the artistic and spiritual challenge of creating a fully human Jesus. And she succeeds. This Jesus that she brings to life transfixes. In narrative pacing and character development, Rice’s Jesus is \u2014 a revelation.
\nHe is vulnerable, grasping at the contrasts of his life, the amazing stories of his birth \u2014 magi and shepherds and angels. He is an unmarried man “in a worn woolen robe” in a dusty, drought-stricken town.
\nHe is fierce \u2014 confronting an accusing crowd and calling down torrential rains from heaven with an unspoken thought.
\nHe is brilliant. An accusing Scribe who had marveled at his theological insights when he was a boy now despises him because he is a carpenter. Jesus reduces him to mere breath by saying a carpenter is exactly who God needs to work in this world of “wood and stone and iron and grass and air.”
\nHe is a man in love; in that love, we find the dramatic and theological core of The Road to Cana.
\nHer name is Avagail. She is the town’s beauty, and she is tenderly crafted by Rice.
\nJesus dreams of her in dreams he cannot control, dreams “all men dream.” Dreams of “lips against lips.”
\nBut he cannot have her. This he knows, though he does now know why. The heartbreak over the loss of this very human love is profound. It reintroduces Jesus as a man of sorrows in an approachable way.
\nBut Avagail is more than a love interest. She also serves as a metaphor for our own brokenness and the extent to which Jesus will go to heal that brokenness.
\nThere is a scene that left me gasping at some points and crying at others. Avagail \u2014 victimized by the culture’s violence and her bitter, broken father \u2014 goes out of her mind with grief. She appears in a hidden grove where Jesus rests, pleading with him to take her, to make her the harlot she concludes she must be.
\nHe resists, but not because he is some asexual being. He does not take her because he knows who she really is \u2014 a precious and innocent soul in the midst of great anguish \u2014 and because he knows who He is: the sacrificial lover. To her, yes, but also to humanity. At tremendous personal cost, Jesus shields and shepherds her through the crisis and into the arms of a man who can give her what she needs and longs for.
\nWe are all Avagail. We spin unaware, lost, reaching for comforts we do not really want. But in the midst of this occasional confusion and panic, Rice reminds us that there is one who knows the way of sorrow and confusion and loneliness and temptation. And who wants to comfort and shield us.
\nThe Road to Cana is a masterful book written by an extraordinary writer at the height of her powers. It deserves to be read for that reason alone. But it also deserves to be read to better understand the most dynamic and important person in human history \u2014 Christ the Lord.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I did the following review for NPR’s All Things Considered today. I’m excited about it because it is one of the best things I’ve written in a long time. I’m more excited because it almost (almost) does justice to Ms. Rice’s breathtaking now book, The Road to Cana. “Who is Christ the Lord?” With those…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith"],"yoast_head":"\nAnne Rice's Road to Cana - J Walking<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/03\/anne-rices-road-to-cana.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Anne Rice's Road to Cana - J Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I did the following review for NPR’s All Things Considered today. I’m excited about it because it is one of the best things I’ve written in a long time. 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