Peter Ceren, a professional film maker, is one of the twelve observant Christians who participated for three months in the focus group that worked with The Words of Jesus, first in manuscript and then in bound galley. Their assigned task in engaging Jesus’ words in this way was to discover as many of the reactions, problems, joys, and consequences of the Sayings format as they could and then to use their discoveries to help shape The Reader’s Guide to The Words of Jesus - A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord.

Last week, with the focus group’s initial work completed and the book released to the open market, Ceren wrote out his own particular re-actions, asking that they be posted here for all to see. We think you will agree that what he has to say is very helpful and more than worthy of posting not only here but many other places as well:

An Open Letter from Peter Ceren

I was fortunate to be one of a dozen readers who had an opportunity to spend a few months exploring this book in late 2007. We met in the church bookstore each Wednesday night to read and discuss the naked words of Jesus.

We came to this forewarned, but were still surprised, after all WE were not new to these words, we had all lived a lifetime comfortably swaddled in these familiar words. That was the problem. They had become predictable and well known. These words never were and never will be such.

One by one we all made the same discovery that these words were more than what we thought they were. And one by one we all surprised ourselves with feelings of discomfort, confusion, and anger. Yes, anger.

As we lost our illusions, and let the naked words work on our hearts we discovered the power of community. And those of us who were strangers or merely acquaintances found ourselves depending on each other to hear the cries from deep inside as we struggled to rise to the truth. It was good to not be alone.

It wasn’t easy. We started with cookies, but soon they were lost in the focus of the struggle. This was no Tupperware party. We read the words of Jesus and they didn’t fit.

They didn’t fit because we had a hard time making room for them in the lives we had already filled.

So. What did we do now that the comfortable words had turned on us? What we thought we knew had grown bigger than the space we had allowed. Thank God for the little community we had formed. It gave us support in our mutual struggle. All of us struggled, and none of us quit. But I’ll wager my most comfortable pair of shoes that everyone thought of it. I know I did.

So would I recommend this suffering to others? Only those who wish to grow. Only those who are willing to listen to Jesus anew as he speaks to you his words as if he is in the room with you here today. He is.

How has it changed me? I really don’t know yet. I’m still trying to make room for the new words whispered and yelled. What changes will I have to make as I keep reading? … I don’t know. I just know that to make room I will have to empty out some space. Things will have to be thrown away. My old collection of cute porcelain traditional images of Jesus, for one. You know, the collectables with the big eyes. These words do not belong to them. They belong to him.

There are some things that I do know about the immediate effect of allowing the words of Jesus to sit in my mind alone. The results have been like reading a post-it note on my refrigerator. This is important, this is real, and this is immediate. But it is short and it may be cryptic. Only by knowing the one who wrote the note can I know. Allowing the words to sit in the back of my mind as I go about my daily life I begin to understand what they mean to me … here … now. This is a step into prayer.

Reading in the context of the narrative stories in the Bible it is too easy to see the words as to them … there … then. That is good, too, but this allows a new way to bring the words into each of us in a way that wakes us from the sleep that comes with familiarity and distance.

I keep forgetting the words are to me.