Shusaku Endo and 'Marie Antoinette'
My CD of 'Marie Antoinette' came. I love it!
The musical is based on the novel by Shusaku Endo (unfortunately it doesn't appear to be available in English). I was very surprised that Kunze and Levay would tackle such overtly religious material!
I'll review the CD later but for now I want to talk about Endo.
Endo made his life's work to explain Christianity to the Japanese through his novels. He was even on the short list for winning the Nobel Price for literature at one point.
Philip Yancey, one of my absolutely favorite writers, picked Endo as one of the 13 writers who help him keep his faith in God. In his book, 'Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church,' Yancey writes of Endo, that through Endo's portrait of Jesus as the suffering servant Yancey discovered a Jesus who was someone whose life was defined by rejection. Yancy writers,
"How ironic, I thought, that a Japanese man rejected by the Christian West was introducing me to this Jesus. I began to read Shusaku Endo in search of the Suffering Servant, who understood rejection as well as anyone who has ever lived. ... Now in Jesus, I met someone whose message centered on the rejects."
Endo wrote about a God who suffers "who suffers with us and allows for our weakness." In the musical the song "Gott sieht uns zu" (God sees us too) (YouTube) expresses this viewpoint.
Endo emphasized the mother love of God in his novels. In 'Marie Antoinette' this comes through in Margrid's relationship with Agnés. Some Christians were critical of Endo because he emphasized some part of theology at the expense of others. To his critics Endo replied,
"My way of depicting Jesus in rooted in my being a Japanese novelist. I wrote this book for the benefit of Japanese readers who have no Christian tradition of their own and who know almost nothing about Jesus."
The characters in Endo novels very often were those who, like Marie Antoinette, had fallen from grace. His most famous novel 'Silence' concerns those who denied Christ during the persecution of Japanese Christians in the 17th century by the shoguns.
Yancey writes, quoting Endo,
"'In 'maternal religion' Christ comes to prostitutes, worthless people, misshapen people and forgives them,' says Endo. ... A mother's love will not desert even a child who commits a crime; it forgives any weakness. To Endo, what really impressed the disciples was their realization that Christ still loved them even after they had betrayed him. To be proven wrong was nothing new; to be proved wrong and still loved -- that was new."
links:
Article from The Guardian
Wikipedia
The musical is based on the novel by Shusaku Endo (unfortunately it doesn't appear to be available in English). I was very surprised that Kunze and Levay would tackle such overtly religious material!
I'll review the CD later but for now I want to talk about Endo.
Endo made his life's work to explain Christianity to the Japanese through his novels. He was even on the short list for winning the Nobel Price for literature at one point.
Philip Yancey, one of my absolutely favorite writers, picked Endo as one of the 13 writers who help him keep his faith in God. In his book, 'Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church,' Yancey writes of Endo, that through Endo's portrait of Jesus as the suffering servant Yancey discovered a Jesus who was someone whose life was defined by rejection. Yancy writers,
"How ironic, I thought, that a Japanese man rejected by the Christian West was introducing me to this Jesus. I began to read Shusaku Endo in search of the Suffering Servant, who understood rejection as well as anyone who has ever lived. ... Now in Jesus, I met someone whose message centered on the rejects."
Endo wrote about a God who suffers "who suffers with us and allows for our weakness." In the musical the song "Gott sieht uns zu" (God sees us too) (YouTube) expresses this viewpoint.
Endo emphasized the mother love of God in his novels. In 'Marie Antoinette' this comes through in Margrid's relationship with Agnés. Some Christians were critical of Endo because he emphasized some part of theology at the expense of others. To his critics Endo replied,
"My way of depicting Jesus in rooted in my being a Japanese novelist. I wrote this book for the benefit of Japanese readers who have no Christian tradition of their own and who know almost nothing about Jesus."
The characters in Endo novels very often were those who, like Marie Antoinette, had fallen from grace. His most famous novel 'Silence' concerns those who denied Christ during the persecution of Japanese Christians in the 17th century by the shoguns.
Yancey writes, quoting Endo,
"'In 'maternal religion' Christ comes to prostitutes, worthless people, misshapen people and forgives them,' says Endo. ... A mother's love will not desert even a child who commits a crime; it forgives any weakness. To Endo, what really impressed the disciples was their realization that Christ still loved them even after they had betrayed him. To be proven wrong was nothing new; to be proved wrong and still loved -- that was new."
links:
Article from The Guardian
Wikipedia