The Dysfunctions of Being Anointed

Where is the light for those who have known the tree?

At a literary festival in East London, a question stopped Bishop Mpendulo Zondi in his tracks. What does "the anointing" say to someone who does not go to church? To someone carrying the inherited pain of a history that has not been kind? How does it reconcile a wounded people to the tree, and where in any of it is the light?

The Luminance of the Cross is his answer. The first volume of The Dysfunctions of Being Anointed spoke to the wound a person hides. This second volume turns to the wound a people carries. Zondi strips the gold from the cross to show it as it was: a public gallows, built to shame. He asks whether the gospel requires the wounded to forget, and warns of memory that becomes a prison. He points to a God who does not explain suffering from a distance but enters it, and who rose from the grave with His wounds still visible.

At the heart of the book is luminance: the light that does not fall onto our darkness from somewhere safe, but shines out of the very places built to break us. From there Zondi widens salvation beyond escape, faces the African question directly, and follows the journey from the tree to the table.

Whether or not you have ever set foot in a church, if you carry a wound, private or inherited, this book is for you.