For Holy Week Reflection:  1. Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

As we prepare to enter Holy Week, I wanted to share two books that I have found helpful as resources for Holy Week reflection from two very different directions. 

The first is last year’s novel, Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen. Set in late 1971 and into 1972, it is the story of the Hillebrand family.  Russ, the father, is a disaffected  associate pastor at a liberal suburban Reformed church. We will get to know all five members of the family as they struggle with issues of faith, failure, forgiveness and redemption.

While I am generally not wanting to get into books some 600 pages long, it is a tribute to Franzen’s writing style and plotting of his narrative that I would finish one section and want to dive right into the next.  This is in part because he introduces us to each character one long chapter at a time looking at the events of the same days of the week before Christmas from five different perspectives. Your attitude  towards the characters shifts and changes as you enter into each character and you realize soon enough that you’ve got a lot of pages to turn to see what happens next.

The book’s title, Crossroads, has several meanings. At the base, it is the name of the church’s youth group led by a charismatic young seminary intern. Anyone who lived through those 1970’s youth groups will immediately feel at home and perhaps even painfully so, in this one.  Events in and around the youth group provide the substance o 4th novels narrative.

Crossroads also refers to the traditional Delta  blues song by Robert Johnson and the  legend of how Johnson meets the devil at the crossroads and sells his soul to the devil in exchange for the power to sing the blues. Pastor Hillebrand is a blues aficionado and resents the Cream’s appropriation of the song.

Finally, each of the characters  is at one level or another at a crossroads moment of their life with critical decisions to make. And at this crossroads, they, each in their way, have to deal with the cross and its implications for their lives.

Franzen structures his book liturgically. The beginning, the set up of the book is called Christmas. The critical dramatic moments and resolution, even redemption, such as it is, occur in the second section entitled Easter.

By locating his story in a church in the Reformed tradition, Johnson can explore the theological concept, frequently misunderstood, of total depravity. Best understood as we are all imperfect. All come up short. Sinners all. (Truth be told, in the world of fiction, nobody does the better than Marilynne Robinson,) All in need of moving past guilt to forgiveness, to redemption. 

While I didn’t necessarily love all the characters, their struggles are familiar.   The social and cultural Vietnam era milieu in which the book is set was my coming of age time, and one might argue, an American coming of age time, and so especially resonant for me.

For a fiction based Lenten reflection, Crossroads works well.  A good read.