Jesus Course

Every 10 years in a Bavarian town in Germany a Passion Play is acted out. The tradition began when in 1635 the inhabitants of Oberammergau (then a village) made a vow to God that they would stage the play every decade after the town was spared from the plague.  Almost 2000 people are involved in the production (around half the population of the village) and it has gained worldwide recognition.

This year the play has been shaken by the Roman Catholics abuse scandal. Despite this the play will continue because it is not about the church but it is about Jesus Christ.

The church has, once again, shown itself to be a fallible human institution and despite not being Roman Catholic myself I still feel some of the shame of on organisation that is supposed to stand up for children and yet allowed such terrible things to go on. There is much that the church can be proud of in its service to those that others neglect but no amount of good works can nullify the pain that has been caused. I pray that God will forgive us all for this and we must ensure that this cannot happen again.

Anyway, the play goes on and the message of Jesus remains. The followers of Jesus make no pretense that they make a good job of following Christ (at least the honest ones don’t) but that won’t stop us trying.

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In a letter on the KansasCity.com web site Billy Graham, the international, and well respected, evangelist explains why he believes Jesus is unique.

You can read what he said here …

This is always something that is hard to get across to people without sounding like we are being arrogant and closed minded, but Christians are left little room to think anything but that Jesus is unique.

Claiming that Jesus is unique should never be a reason to put down other people’s ideas. This isn’t a rallying call it is a simple statement of something that we Christians believe. I think this uniqueness of Christ is a challenge to us all.  If Christians are right in saying that Jesus is unique then we have to take what Jesus says very seriously indeed. Jesus isn’t just another good teacher who you can take on board alongside everyone else but instead is someone with a unique message about himself that challenges us to think differently.

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