Tell Me, Jesus, Who Are You

Since 1969 the Church has benefited from the new lectionary for Sundays with its three-year cycle of readings. As a result, the faithful now get to hear the distinctive voices of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. At the same time, they appear to need more than the comments of the homilist to appreciate the distinctive portrait of Jesus in each evangelist. This work addresses itself to the needs of worshippers who seek to recover the identity of Jesus of Nazareth in the course of the three-year cycle. The four Gospel-writers shape their messages about Jesus to address the specific needs of the communities in which they lived and worshipped. In this, they focus on perennial issues that confront all followers of Jesus – the meaning of faith, the demands of community life, and the need to live out the gospel message in the fray of daily existence. John Craghan is professor emeritus of religious studies at St Norbert College, De Pere, Wisconsin. His published works include Yesterday’s Word Today, The Gospels of the Weekday Lectionary, Beads and the Bible, I Was Ill and You Cared for Me. He has contributed over the years to Scripture in Church and has served as North American editor for the same publication. His chief interest is to make the best of biblical scholarship available to a wider audience.