cover image A GOD OF INCREDIBLE SURPRISES: Jesus of Galilee

A GOD OF INCREDIBLE SURPRISES: Jesus of Galilee

Virgilio P. Elizondo, . . Rowman & Littlefield, $19.95 (160pp) ISBN 978-0-7425-3388-2

What would happen if Jesus came to San Antonio? Would Jesus feel at home in this Texas city? In a series of reflections about Jesus' humanity, Elizondo concludes that Jesus' Galilee was indeed much like modern-day San Antonio. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, like the Jews of Jesus' time, are marginalized by the dominant powers. San Antonio, like Galilee, is a melting pot where people from all nations and ethnic groups come to live. Like many of these dispossessed people, Jesus grew up in an environment where he would have assimilated many of the traits of these peoples. He would have empathized with the marginalized and would have appeared to them as their hope in the midst of a broken world. According to Elizondo, this Jesus of Galilee brings the same measure of hope to the dispossessed of San Antonio as he brought to the marginalized of Galilee. Although the religious authorities in Galilee also rejected Jesus, he sought to reconcile all peoples, uniting them in love. Elizondo passionately proclaims the human Jesus as the living "Mestizo Messiah" who offers hope and liberation to the oppressed. Although Elizondo writes with the ardor and enthusiasm of an evangelist, his reflections on Jesus offer little that is truly new or compelling, and the book's main point that Jesus would have identified with the marginalized Mexicans and Mexican-Americans of modern-day San Antonio is repeated again and again. (Jan.)