Jesus' Son: Stories Denis Johnson
Publisher: Harper Perennial

Nonetheless, it brings for me the same sense of discomfort and self-scrutiny that many of Jesus' parables also evoke. Harlem woman dies jumping from 8th story window with son in her arms. Jesus Raises the Son of the Widow of Nain You may remember that last week, as we were looking at the story of Elijah competing with the prophets of Ba'al, I said that Elijah was an unpleasant person. For whatever reason, despite others reading it and recommending it highly, I avoided it. I was recently listening to an old episode of The New Yorker's excellent Fiction podcast a few weeks ago on which Tobias Wolffe read Denis Johnson's story Emergency from the collection Jesus' Son. The woman was a widow – Mary was also a widow by this point. The young man who died was his mother's only son – as Jesus was Mary's only son. John's birth was spectacular in that he was born to postmenopausal parents, a repeat of the Abraham and Sarah story. Jesus…the Son of God who gave up His rightful place in heaven to come to earth and die for you and for me so we could have a relationship with God. I have had Johnson's story collection (connected story collection, that is) Jesus' Son (1992) on my shelf for a long time. [June 9, 2013] The story of Jesus raising the only son of a widow in the town of Nain concludes Luke's introduction of Jesus as the Lord and Bringer of the coming Jubilee (see Luke 4:16-21). In Hebrews 11 we find the faith stories of many of the giants of our faith. Both stories end with the son no longer dead. This is strong evidence either that the gospel writers knew of (and could have been influenced by) resurrecting god stories from other cultures or that these stories influenced the Jesus story when it was told from person to person. Remember the Sunday school stories? Where we read ourselves in sometimes relates to the titles we give the stories (cf.