READING GROUPS
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Were You There? Finding Ourselves at the Foot of the Cross is a compelling and hope-filled book that explores how each person or group present at the time responded differently to Jesus’ predicament, and shows us how these people, taken together, represent the great range of human responses also available to us. 

“Yes, we were all there.  Erik Kolbell invites us to reflect on the manifold ways that we get our faith right and live it all wrong, not because we are bad but because we are human.  And it is our humanity, as he notes, that is both the source of our shortcomings and the promise of our future with God.  This book is a marvelous resource not just for Lent but for every season of the year.”
Dr. Alison Boden
Chaplain for Princeton University

Library Journal Review
The former minister of social justice at Riverside Church in New York Kolbell (What Jesus Meant) here offers an intriguing meditation on the last days of Jesus, using as examples witnesses seen in the Gospels, e.g., Peter, Caiaphas, Judas, Mary, Joseph of Arimathea, and Thomas. According to Kolbell, we can see ourselves in each of these witnesses, whether they believed, doubted, loved, or wronged Jesus. The result is an interesting kind of revival in words of medieval paintings of the Crucifixion; Kolbell aims to make the salvation story a timely and timeless narrative. For most collections.

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From Spirituality & Health
In our review of Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ, we included a meditation based on the stations of the cross in which we asked readers to empathize with those around Jesus including his frightened disciples who abandoned him, the Roman soldiers who tortured him, and the loyal and devoted women who watched him suffer and die. In light of all the anger and disagreements about the movie, we thought that this approach would speak to both progressive Christians and their more conservative brothers and sisters and perhaps even build some bridges between them. We don't know how well this approach worked. But we are happy now to find a kindred soul in Erik Kolbell, author of What Jesus Meant: The Beatitudes and a Meaningful Life, winner of a Spirituality and Health Award as one of the Best Spiritual Books of 2003.

Kolbell is a freelance writer, psychotherapist, and former Minister of Social Justice at Riverside Church in New York. In this well-written Christian work, he finds in the story of the Passion some universal themes that speak to the hearts and minds of all people â?" guilt and forgiveness, compassion and injustice, cowardice and valor, loyalty and betrayal, and "the awesome power of life to prevail over death." Kolbell challenges us to identify and empathize with the varied characters mentioned in the biblical account of Jesus' last days. There are chapters on the woman who anointed Jesus' feet, the slave who was attacked and then healed in the Garden of Gethsemane, Caiphas, Peter, Judas, the mob calling for the execution of Jesus, Simone of Cyrene, the good thief, Jesus' mother Mary, the centurion, the women of the cross, Joseph of Arimathea, Cleopas, and Thomas. Kolbell states: "The Passion is the story of one person with echoes of many, and while I stand in awe of the one person who laid down his life for me, I stand in sympathy with those around him, because in their stories I so readily see my own."

The author has great respect for the woman who anointed Jesus' feet with precious ointments and sees her act of love as one of deep reverence. We need to always be on the alert for such acts of selflessness: "We are a nation that accords greater status to the movie stars who entertain our children than to the school teachers who educate them. This America of ours, of neon and asphalt, of strip malls and e-baying, of fast foods and sit coms and 'reality' shows, does not readily lend itself to the kind of introspection that draws us closer to God. So on a given day we might, say, find ourselves in a hospital or a synagogue, a mosque or maybe a prison or a food pantry, and be moved to tears by an act of breathtaking kindness in which God's love peeks through the pollutions of everyday life."

In his examination of the incident in the Garden of Gethsemane where Peter impulsively cuts off the ear of a slave, Kolbell finds another act of unexpected kindness and uses it as a meditation on the demonstration of God's love: "Jesus did not want to make the slave promise to become his follower. He did not even want to make him confess that he believed in God. He simply wanted to make him well. A gesture of wondrous promise and daunting challenge. His action is a promise, for it assures us that God's love leaves none of us behind; it unites all humanity in a way that is bigger than anything that might divide us. And it is daunting for exactly that reason â?" because it means that God's love extends to people we regard as our enemies or do not regard at all. It means that we must come to terms with the fact that God loves everyone â?" the mean-spirited, the stingy, the dishonest. It means that God loves the politician who abuses his power and the parent who abuses hers, the road rager and the drug-dealer, the pimp and the punk, He loves the smug and the self-centered, the inveterate criminal and the incurable racist. And, more to the point, Jesus' action means that we must decide what it means for us to sheathe the sword of self-righteousness and to love them too; to object to the people we find objectionable but to find it in our hearts to care about them as well."

Through two minor incidents in the Passion story, both about the spiritual practice of kindness, Kolbell inspires us to see afresh our connection with the woman from Bethany and then with the startled slave whose ear was healed. We are living in a time of widespread and divisive religious intolerance, the author notes. Christian denominations are being torn apart from within over sexuality issues, while liberals and conservatives seem unable to find a common ground beyond their theological disagreements. Perhaps this is the perfect moment for Christians to unite during Lent in a consideration of what people everywhere share with Peter, Mary, Simon of Cyrene, Judas, Thomas. and the women of the Cross.

Were You There? is a soul-stirring resource that is overflowing with stirring passages like those quoted above and down-to-earth illustrations of how God is working through all of us to establish his kingdom in our midst through our foibles, failings, and small acts of courage and conviction and compassion. We recommend this book as a wise spiritual companion for your Lenten journey.
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
www.spiritualityhealth.com

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Religion News Service
A moving and provocative new book.

Kolbell's book offers a perspective promising self-understanding and a deeper appreciation of the courage and cowardice human beings showed at Jesus' death. "We were all there in the lives of the saints and the sinners who played pivotal roles in the last hours of Jesus' life," William Sloane Coffin, former senior minister of New York City's Riverside Church, said of Kolbell's book. "This very readable book is a mirror to our humanity."

Kolbell describes the Crucifixion as "the ultimate symbol of a world turned upside down because it represents the purest expression of love, not in the form of power over people, but in weakness and surrender laid out before people." Approaching it this way makes it an intensely human drama, influenced by the behavior of James and John, Peter, Mary and Mary Magdalene.

"Instead of seeing St. Mary at the foot of the cross, see a mother watching her son die," Kolbell said of his approach. "See a parent whose greatest wish in life is that her son live a long, joyous and meaningful life. What parent doesn't?" Then Mary sees her wishes stripped from her in a violent fashion. But this Mary, Kolbell said, is the same mother who made sure Jesus ate his vegetables, did his studies, came home before dark and did his chores. Taking the analogy one step farther, Kolbell suggests that readers may then see a mother "whose child is killed in an automobile accident, a drive- by shooting, a street in Baghdad or the balcony of a motel room in Memphis, Tenn. There is no greater pain than that reflected in this woman who would one day be called the Holy Mother, but who on this day was simply a heartbroken mom."

Kolbell suspects that the apostle Peter felt enormous shame that he denied Jesus "in his hour of need and enormous dread because not long before this moment Jesus had proclaimed to Peter that he was to be the rock on which the church would be built." Maybe Peter even felt that accepting that responsibility might redeem him for his cowardice. "Perhaps, too, he knew that when Jesus anointed him as the symbol of the church he was taking into account both his wisdom and his cowardice," Kolbell said. "For what is the church but a body that is at times wise and at times cowardly?"
Cecile S.Holme