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Letters from the Land of Cancer by Walter Wangerin Zondervan, February 2010 208 pp., $12.99

Martin Luther was an earthy Christian, conscious of his sinfulness, profoundly grateful for God's radical grace in Jesus Christ. The Reformer was keenly aware that what holiness we attain grows not so much from our "religious" callings but as we fulfill our vocations as members of families and workers in the world.

In his dying, Walter Wangerin Jr.—Lutheran minister, award-winning author, radio broadcaster, professor, husband, and father—is living out that Lutheran vision.

Published this month, Wangerin's Letters from the Land of Cancer (Zondervan) was written in 2006 and 2007 as letters to praying friends. During much of that time, his cancer had slowed. But side effects, like a spreading pneumonitis that rendered his lungs incapable of exchanging oxygen, seriously slowed his pace. This gave him time, and a new perspective on time. The result is a rewarding reflection on living one's last years.

Lutherans are, at least in theory, more matter-of-fact about their sinfulness than other Christians. Throughou Letters, Wangerin confesses the way that the difficulties of his illness enable the Old Adam. Weary with his illness, he returns to his "pickier self, grumpier, fussier, graceless, ungrateful. Hypercritical. Deaf to human nuance, presuming insults no one meant, and, no longer patient in pain, consumed by my precious, superior, artistic labors." He abuses nurses and medical technicians. "When I am not tired, I can control outward, public manifestations. But these long exhaustions of my long disease disable me. I lose the strength for restraint."

"It isn't okay to be bitter," he writes. "No! Cancer does not give me freedoms others don't have. A snarking thought, even when kept internal, becomes a warm, pumping, venomous fluid that runs in one's vessels, whether bloody or lymphatic or made of the clay of the Creator—filling the vessel that one is."

But the real victims of the venom are "my friends and my family and my wife. And then it is these, oh, my most beloved, who suffer …. And then—recognizing the consequences of the Old Adam's liberation—I must, I must, I absolutely must believe in the mercy of God, which makes merciful the people whose mercy I do dearly need."

Far more than his compounded frustration over his sinful behavior, Wangerin's belief in Christ's mercy pervades this book. He knows that Christ met "the world that was even then dispatching him" with "serenity and forgiveness, grace and love." In Christ, he finds spiritual healing and grace. In Christ, he rejoices that his name is written in heaven. "My name. The Father who named me at my baptism will in a creating and re-creating voice call my name once more, and I shall arise, and I shall like Moses answer, 'Here I am.'"

And in Christ, Wangerin finds the tender Shepherd's care. In Letter 21, he traces through Scripture how God's word creates what it names. In John 10, he finds "the real source of [his] peace on the threshold of death." In that passage is the figure of the shepherd who calls his sheep by name. The one who, by naming them, makes them his sheep, and who gives to the sheep who follow him eternal life.

Wangerin begins this shepherd motif with a childhood experience: Thirteen-year-old Wally huddles in a wintry attic bedroom in Edmonton, Alberta. Pained with a stomachache, he tries to be an adult, tries not to cry. Finally, sobbing, he takes comfort as his mother sings: I am Jesus' little lamb, / Ever glad at heart I am. / For my Shepherd gently guides me, / Knows my need and well provides me.

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February 2010, Vol. 54, No. 2