Prosecuting Jesus: Finding Christ by Putting Him on Trial

Author:Mark Osler [Osler, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781611646733
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Published: 2016-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

1. Eminem, “Lose Yourself,” Marshall Mathers, Luis Resto, Jeff Bass, 8 Mile Soundtrack, Aftermath/Shady/Interscope, 2002.

At St. Thomas in Minneapolis. From left: Susan Stabile, Jerry Organ, Derek Hansen, Sara Sommervold, Jeanne Bishop, Mark Osler, Joy Tull, Phil Steger, David Best, Hank Shea

(photo courtesy of Henry Bishop; used by permission)

Chapter 8

Minneapolis

Having done the trial five times in the first three months of the year, we took a break for the next five months. I needed the time; there was a lot else going on. I had been chosen as the Richard Byrd Preaching Chair by St. Martin’s-by-the-Lake Episcopal Church and delivered a sermon before that congregation and a few others. I also began to do more academic writing and devoted the summer to articles that later appeared in law reviews at Stanford and Harvard.

Then, too, I was due a little time off at “The Island.” From age eight, I’ve been spending time in the summer at a family home on Lake Saganaga, which straddles Minnesota and Ontario; our place is just into the Canadian side of the lake. We share it with a similar Michigan/Minnesota family, the Frakeses. It is wilderness, and we are completely off the grid, cut off from roads, electricity, and running water. The newest cabin is one we built ourselves, with my dad and his friend Jack Frakes giving directions to a dozen members of both families. The time there is spent fishing, picking blueberries, swimming, and herding a combined tribe of children away from danger.

To get to the island, you need to know the way. The drive is the easy part: you head north on U.S. Highway 61, the same road Bob Dylan revisited and (far to the south, in Clarksdale, Mississippi) where Robert Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the devil. Then you turn left at the little town of Grand Marais, which lies nestled on the cold shore of Lake Superior, and travel sixty-four miles up the Gunflint Trail until it ends. From there, you get in small boats and pick your way through bays and inlets over cold blue water. It is useless to give directions; you have to see it.

The summer of 2012, I coordinated with my brother and sister so that we would all be there at the same time, allowing the young cousins of the next generation to see one another and run amok. It was a magical time. The youngest of the cousins, Will’s son Stephen, led a remarkable musical performance on the dock. He was born for the stage and sang with all his heart as the sun faded behind the tall pines beyond the big water. The others followed his lead; it was hard not to as you watched the seven-year-old Sinatra lean into a song. It was a talent he practiced at home singing on the back step to an audience of one, my mother.

When I got back to school in mid-August, it was time to get my head back into the trial. My dean had asked that we perform it for the incoming students during orientation, and I had agreed.

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