Book Review—Pearly Gates: Parables From The Final Threshold
Book Review
Pearly Gates: Parables from The Final Threshold by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson
Thornbush Press, 2020. https://www.thornbushpress.com
Review by Matthew O. Staneck
Readers of Lutheran Forum may pick this book up because of their familiarity with the author, but will not necessarily find a familiar mode of writing. Pearly Gates is authored by former editor Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, and the reader can expect writing that tackles tough theological questions with wit and charm. But this book is not a series of LF essays. These are short stories—very short stories—that incisively communicate the meaning of life.
Each of us has a vision of the pearly gates in our mind. When we think of heaven, the pristine images begin to fall in place. But as much as we imagine the streets of gold, we probably don’t think a whole lot about the stories of the people who arrive at the precipice.
The characters we meet in Parables are people we know: elderly church ladies, people who love the things they carry more than their Lord, the heterodox, the syncretist, the person who kept count of every good work they performed, and many more. There is a deeply moving story about miscarriage and lost pregnancies that perhaps gives away the author’s intention, for Pearly Gates is a book about an extravagantly gracious Lord. He promises not to let people go, and he offers reunions that exceed our wildest imaginations.
Taken as a whole, the parables reveal that the threshold we must cross before entering the golden city is laying down our life. Wilson does not advocate for a synergistic theology where we cooperate with grace for the sake of our own salvation. But she does insist that we must lay aside all the stuff that inevitably gets in our way. We know what this means, for each one of us can teach a master class in what it means to get in our own way. Wilson emphasizes that, at the end of the day, our ticket to enter through the pearly gates is about Christ getting in our way. Jesus laid down his life for us so that we can lay down the things that inhibit communion with him and his people.
Laying down our life does not mean the negation of our person. Our Lord’s extravagant grace displays that we do indeed cross the threshold, not because we have earned the most church-service awards or can give the best articulation of our version of the orthodox faith, but because Christ takes our selves and our stories into himself. And that really is the rub of this collection of stories. My story and my life must become subservient to Christ. There is room for just about anything inside the pearly gates, but not for loving our selves or our stuff more than our Lord.
Each parable is just a few pages long, and readers can reasonably finish the collection in two or three sittings. Different people will connect with different stories and will find reason to return to them again. Preachers can find plenty of fodder for sermon preparation since many of the stories allude to lectionary texts. Pearly Gates could even serve as a fun small group book discussion. The contents are accessible to readers from all stages of life. And longtime readers of Lutheran Forum can enjoy settling in with a familiar friend. This is a good first offering from Wilson from her newly founded independent publishing venture, Thornbush Press. Congratulations to our old friend on her new endeavor, and thanks for giving us something to consider during the pandemic.
