Accessible essays about deep topics

By: By Beth Woodard | JOURNAL BOOK REVIEWER
Published: February 01, 2009

TO TASTE AND SEE: Exploring Incarnation and The Ambiguities of Faith. By Thomas W. Mann. Wipf & Stock. 150 pages. $18.

Often when an ordained minister produces a book of essays, it reads like a collection of sermons. That may not be a bad thing, depending on the quality of the sermons, but it can still make for tedious reading. Thomas Mann (no relation to the notable German author) has avoided that temptation and instead created a selection of thoughtful and provocative epiphanies, reflecting on the holiness of the everyday.

To a listening heart, fumbled table graces; the unlikeliness of John the Baptist as a messenger of God; and the unlikely grace of an Anne Tyler novel all are incarnational moments: moments at which God's presence is patent if we could but see it.

Mann even reflects on announcements, the communal warm-up to Sunday worship, as a community-forming occasion. As, perhaps, an incarnational one, an occasion reminding us that we are on holy ground -- in more places and at more times than 11 a.m. on Sunday.

Too often, theological books take refuge in dense, almost indigestible passages using words laden with so much history and complexity that they sink, uncomprehended, into the brain. Mann writes with a deftly accessible touch that nevertheless puts forward challenging ideas for readers attempting to live as believers.

There are, to be sure, occasional stumpers: "The inescapably somatic character of Christian spirituality derives from both a theological and an anthropological source," he writes.

On the other hand, the abundance of plain language setting out plain thoughts more than balances the densities. Discussing the idea of God as changeless, he wrestles with the difficulty of imagining "changeless" to mean "immovable," when in fact there is a very real difference.

"A God who is beyond change and beyond time cannot understand that I am a radically temporal creature," Mann writes. This God, while timeless, to be sure, is also what Mann calls "a God in conjugation."

He refers to the second chapter of Exodus, when the Israelites in bondage call upon God for help. "God remembered his covenant … and … understood."

Mann clearly and concisely offers an interpretation of "God in conjugation" with this Scripture passage:

"In order for the future to be as it was anticipated in the past, something will have to happen in the present. Something will have to happen to God. God will have to change." In no way does Mann diminish God's eternal nature: instead, he suggests that in a covenant relationship, both parties -- God and humankind -- must understand that relationship to be active and ongoing: "God in conjugation."

Mann is a former minister of Parkway United Church of Christ on Silas Creek Parkway in Winston-Salem. This little book of thoughtful and reflective essays has given me a tempting taste of what Mann's preaching and teaching must be like, and I wish for more.

■ Beth Woodard, a former Journal editorial assistant, now writes from Greensboro.