Jimbo Wolfe

Jamboroo Jimbo Wolfe

Jamboroo means "spree." The author invites the reader to go on a spree with him pursuing a religion that is wild and free rather than dogmatic and restrictive. This collection of essays and sermons kicks off with an essay entitled "Making Peace Among Religions Within Myself," which summarizes seven religions concocted to form a personal religion. Next comes a review of a US Supreme Court decision upholding prayers before a town council meeting as proper pluralism. Responding to 9/11, four short essays compare competing types of Islam, tracking the ideology of al-Qaida and favoring the "historic" type of Islam, which tolerates Christians and Jews as worshiping the same God as Muslims. A sermon celebrates the faith of Rahab the Harlot, a lower-class Canaanite woman who aids the Israelites in overthrowing Canaanite oppressors. Jesus is presented in an essay as a convivial non-violent resister to the Roman Empire, who calls people to change their minds and believe the good news of God's liberating kingdom at hand, contrasting with John the Baptist, an ascetic prophet who rings down God's judgment. Preached in a week containing both Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday, "Hearts and Ashes" affirms the need to balance self-assertion and self-surrender in expressing many colors of love. Dubbed the "kiss of death" sermon since no church where the author preached it in 1991 invited him back to preach again, "Making Love Paramount" asserts that God is love and subordinates everything ese in the Bible to commandments to love God and neighbor, and it bears this out by citing a report to the Presbyterian Genera Assembly which says that the sin involved with homosexuality is not what gay people do in their bedrooms out of love but the loveless way the church has treated them. This is followed in the book by an essay entitled "It's Okay to Be Gay: A Biblical Perspective," which not only sets aside as inapplicable four original biblical passages (plus two duplicates) traditionally used to clobber gays but also uplifts three positive references to same-sex relationships (David and Jonathan, Naomi and Ruth, and Jesus healing a Roman centurion's gay lover). In contrast to the fundamentalists peddling cosmic life insurance in which the premium is accepting a certain set of beliefs and the payoff is assurance of salvation as a blissful afterlife, "Being Saved by Being Lost" takes Jesus as a model as he pours himself out selflessly in saving people from disease and oppression and saving them for a good abundant life. Most of the rest of the book deals with social issues. An essay on "White Racism" draws on experience being trained and hired for a year in the 1970s to help six white churches to understand and counteract their racism. A dialogue is constructed between President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. plus lionizing King as a "hero for men." There is a speech to pacifist commending Just War theory, a speech on Gaza lamenting its being bombed, and a vision for peace in the future. The book concludes with "An Ancient Heritage," bringing out primitive and archaic aspects of the Lord's Supper in terms of killing and eating, a mock interview on "Spectator Sports as a Religion," and affirmation of our finite lives as part of "Life Eternal."