A Month of Sundays

I just finished A Month of Sundays, John Updike's at once haunting and hilarious novel composed of journal entries by the wayward Rev. Tom Marshfield. This married Episcopal priest carries on a months-long affair with his organist and soon moves on to sleep with women of all ages in his congregation. The organist is upset he is cheating on her and spills all. Tom's bishop sends him to a rehab program in which he must write a journal entry every day. By the end he has reflected upon the whole story with some soberness, but plenty of snark, and in the final entry he examines his tryst with his therapist at the rehab program!
I'm embarrassed to say I devoured the book. I couldn't stop reading late into Saturday night, knowing I would be tired for church in the morning but Updike had sucked me in! The book is definitely R-rated, but pornography this is not. Instead, it's a fascinating work of art that traces the psychological and spiritual path of a dramatic fall from grace. What does this book mean? More than I can figure out. But I have some ideas.
Tom has some fantastic lines, words I want to wrench from the context of this lurid book and misattribute and use in sermons or something else because they're just so wise. Like this one: "Compassion is not simple. That is where you so heretically condescend. You give your simple compassion to those whom you imagine to be simple." What a great insight into so much flat, paternalistic, "Christian" "charity." Or, "Irony is the style of our cowardice." Or, "Our body looks up at us as from a cloudy pool, but it is us, our reflection." So good! 
And I suppose that's partly Updike's point. People can say wise things without being wise themselves. Smooth words are not necessarily indicative of an unstained soul. Jesus says that at the end people will say "Lord, Lord!" and Jesus will reply, "Go away; I never knew you." As soon as we're lying to God we're in huge trouble. That kind of empty, insincere piety can't fool Jesus, but it sure can fool people, like Tom's congregation.
And Tom himself. He seems unaware of the consequences of his own actions. He insists he doesn't want to separate from his wife, yet continues to blatantly sleep with more and more women. In a bizarre scene, while in bed with a deacon's wife Tom practically coerces this stunned woman to recant her belief in God and howls that Christianity is just a fairy tale. Yet he stubbornly clings to his profession and is surprised to face disciplinary action even though his harem has swelled to alarming ranks. Tom is out of touch with reality; he sees himself as untouchable. That blind, relentless pride is a major factor in his moral decay. If normal rules no longer apply to me, I am free in the most dangerous way possible, free to destroy myself and everyone around me. 
And I say I because I could do it too. Bed a third of the congregation? No, fornication isn't my style. But I think massive pride, though, and an ego of soul-crushing proportion is an omnipresent danger for most people, myself included. A lot of clergy and leaders in general seem susceptible to that sort of egoism. And it can lead to a whole host of sins, of which Tom's sensational serial adultery is but one. 
Another thought: Tom was no longer accountable to anybody. Having ceased believing in God, he was certainly not holding himself to the Spirit's refining fire of examination. And he disengages with his wife, disdains his associate pastor, and never makes mention of colleagues in ministry or any sense of participation in community. His mistress the organist makes some apparently salutary suggestions about improving his preaching and cutting back on music-- all during their trysts! And the final journal entry's description of his sleeping with the therapist highlights that he isn't being challenged by her, either. Without anyone to lovingly question us, inquire how much sleep we're getting, take us out to dinner and refuse to budge until we divulge what's really on our minds... we lose the Spirit's movement in the community. Everybody, especially pastors, is in doubly big trouble when they've isolated themselves. Tom has become an expert in adroitly cutting off this kind of sacred intimacy, barters it away for cheap sex, which resembles but ultimately avoids the kind of intimacy Tom desperately needs. I think Updike wants us to ask ourselves if we're guilty of the same sin, perhaps committed in smaller, less grandiose ways. 
I can't quite explicitly recommend this book since it is so explicit in parts-- body parts. Detailed body parts. But it's such a fine literary work and a thought provoking study in the anatomy of sin for anybody over eighteen, I'd say. Updike's choice to make A Month of Sundays a series of journal entries makes us feel awfully close to Rev. Tom. Which is a good thing, because most of us aren't that far from becoming, in one way or another, like him.