David Heim's Christmas list

To give

I’m a huge fan of Call the Midwife, the British series based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, a young nurse in the 1950s who served in a midwife program that operated out of an Anglican convent in the East End of London. Each episode follows a crisis pregnancy and reveals social and family issues along the way. In a deft, understated way, using very little Christian language, the show pulls the viewer into a world in which the moral heart of a neighborhood is a dedicated Christian community and the heart of that community is service, rooted in prayer. This series shows that goodness is plausible, earthy, and appealing.

Jesus’ parables are profoundly elusive. Even the most straight­forward of the stories contains a disturbing surplus of meaning. Richard Lischer’s Reading the Parables displays the wisdom and imagination of an honest preacher. He neatly summarizes the major scholarly ap­proaches but is always alert to what escapes analysis or typology. Parables, he reminds us, were first of all verbal performances, and their meaning “arises from the performance.” Jesus’ fondness for them “suggests a method of ap­proaching or experiencing the truth.”