Jesus Course

Wisdom has always been highly prised. We even find a lot of talk about wisdom and being wise in the bible. Then in the stories just after Jesus is born we read about some Wise men who came to see Jesus. We don’t know how long the gap was between his birth and them turning up but we are encouraged to think about at this time of year (also known as Epiphany in the church calender).

Who do you think would be considered a wise person in todays world?

I think we tend to think of wise people as those people who know lots of stuff. We might consider University Professors or Scientists for instance to be the wise ones. Or then again we might think that wise people are those who gain the most in a material way – business leaders, entrepreneurs, etc.  Or what about those who can make a clever argument – philosophers or politicians, etc.

However, if you consider the wise to be those we take advice about life from then we might have to consider people like popular singers and film stars as being the wise in our world today (gulp). Or what about journalists – they are forever telling us what’s what?

I find that the list of people we tend to consider wise a bit disturbing and doesn’t fit with the bible’s idea of what a wise person is.

So what are the features of a wise person?

Here are some of the things that the book of proverbs tells us about wise people:

• they help others with good advice
• they cautious and like to think things through from all angles
• they seek knowledge and more wisdom
• value wisdom above money
• respond positively to correction
• control their anger
• keep peace
• avoid doing bad things
• welcome good advice

You see it’s not so much what they know but the way they apply it.

Elsewhere in the bible we are also told that the first step in being wise is to seek a good relationship with God.

So if you are looking for a wise person to help you with your life then I suggest you look elsewhere than the celebrity lists (not that it’s impossible for a celebrity to be wise).

Thoughts epiphany, new year, wisdom, wise men

I’m sure it will come as now surprise if I say that Jesus was probably not actually born on 25th December. There are various options for the actual date but one thing we are sure of is that it wasn’t 25th December. So why is this the day that we celebrate Jesus’ birth?

It could be that it is simply the date 9 months after the day Jesus was believed to have been conceived (March 25th). Or it was picked because it was 6 months from the date of Jesus’ death (which was believed to be significant for a prophet). It may just have been picked because it seemed to be a good day to celebrate. The earliest physical reference to the Christian celebration is dated to a 354AD (read about it in Wikipedia) where both Sol Invictus and Christian Christmas get their first mention. Of course both festivals would have been celebrated on that date before this but which one came first can never be proved.

Well in the U.K. this makes a lot of sense to us because our monarch (Queen Elizabeth II) has an official birthday and an actual birthday. The official birthday is the day when the country celebrates her birthday (we have a thing called Trooping the Colour) and then the Queen celebrates her real birthday with her family and friends.

When I was talking about this with my youngest son he pointed out that we all do the same. We have a real birthday and then an official birthday when we have a party. Sometimes the party is on the same day but more often it isn’t.

So 25th December is Jesus’ official birthday and the day we all join in celebrating it.

Now, some party poopers like to make something out of some of the ancient festivals that used to happen on the 25th December. Whilst it is true that 25th December was the Romans official date for the winter solstice (shortest day) it was only later (quite possibly after the time of Jesus) that it ever became the date for a festival (the celebration of the Sun god – Sol Invictus).  Later the followers of Mithras claimed the day for their own celebrations (Mithraism is notorious for jumping on popular ideas to gain a greater following – it died out of course) but the evidence really points to this happening after Christians were celebrating on that day. It’s true that nearly every western culture had a festival in mid-winter (Yule for instance) but this doesn’t mean that the Christian tradition of celebrating the official birthday of Jesus Christ has any less of a claim on the date.

The other old chestnut that is often roasted around this time of year surrounds the headlines of “Puritans ban Christmas” which isn’t – needless to say – the whole story. Then this tends to get twisted to the idea that Christians don’t really like Christmas anyway (Puritans = all Christians in the modern journalists mind). Christmas was seen as a Roman Catholic idea and so the Puritans (being fervent opponents of Roman Catholicism) wanted to call it Christ-tide (getting rid of the mass bit). They also banned various things that people used for the celebrations (including mince pies, etc). The celebration of Christmas was surrounded by 12 days of partying and drunkenness and they wanted to reform this. This was hugely unpopular – as you can imagine. So the Puritans didn’t ban Christmas at all they simply wanted to reform it – in some ways an admirable thing to try and do, and we do the same (encouraging people not to drink and drive for instance) but it seems to me the modern approach of encouraging people to act in a more responsible way rather than forcing them to do it is a better approach. Oh, and by the way I like mince pies.

So Christians haven’t stolen someone else’s idea for a celebration and we haven’t tried to ban Christmas in the past. This is just the day for our official celebrations of the birth of Christ.

A very merry Christmas to you all.

Thoughts

Just heard on the T.V. that in a survey of favourite carols for a couple of UK radio stations “O holy night” came out top. This was a bit of a surprise but my own guess is that people were voting on the tune rather than anything else.

I love a good Christmas carol myself and think they are an ideal way to celebrate the Christmas season. Carols are: uplifting, fun and they tell you something about the real Christmas story.

Personally, I’m not sure that “O holy night” qualifies as a carol (more of a Christmas song I would have thought).

Just in case you are interested, here is the top 5

1. O holy night

2. Silent Night

3. In the bleak mid-winter (to Darke’s tune).

4. Hark the herald!

5. In the bleak mid-winter (to Holst’s tune).

What is your favourite?

Thoughts Christmas

The latest place for Jesus to appear is on a naan bread at an Indian Restaurant in Southampton.

Here is the story about the Naan Jesus …

Jesus in funny places Jesus

My youngest son just loves his torch. He has a quite a fancy torch that changes into something different with each click. The first click shows a red laser kind of light, the second click has an ultra-violet light, and the third is more like an ordinary church. About every 18 months or so I have to buy him a new one because he manages to break a wire or something. Of course the problem with a child and a torch with three different clicks – fourth turns it off – is that he is always leaving it switched on. So we have to ration the batteries.

Now the point of me telling you all this is that in the sermon on the mount, that we have been looking at lately, Jesus says that we should be light to the world.

If you let your batteries go flat then your light won’t shine.

I’m sure Jesus wasn’t thinking about batteries when he was talking about letting your light shine for others to see, but I think there is an important point to made here about following Jesus. Our light only shines because we follow Jesus. It has nothing to do with how clever we are or which church we go to or how important we may feel we are.  So a relationship with Jesus is what makes a light shine. Jesus is the battery that makes our torch work – if you’ll forgive the analogy. So to keep shining we need to work on building our relationship with Jesus.

A single light only shines bright when its really dark

If you turn on a light in a bright city then nobody will notice it. If you’ve been in a big city during the night you will have noticed that one thing you don’t lack is light – of course there are dark places but mostly there are lights. To get any idea of what Jesus was talking about when he described us as being lights we have to imagine ourselves away from cities or towns or villages and out into the dark countryside. If you have even been out in the hills when its dark and there is not even a moon to see by you will know what darkness is really like. Then if in that darkness you light one single, even weak, light you will see it. In fact you can see one small light for miles and miles if its really dark.

When its really dark even a small light burns brightly.

A city on a hill cannot be hidden

So Jesus says, and he is right. I like to walk in wilderness areas on in England there is one place that I really love, called Dartmoor. I’ve been on a few night walks on the moors and they can be pretty dark but when you get in view of a village or even a farm with its lights on it looks amazing. You can’t miss it because it is so bright.

Jesus compares Christians to such a light.

Light is supposed to help us see things by

Jesus wants Christians to be such a light to the world. Christians are supposed to make life easier to navigate. Of course this isn’t always the way things work and you might get the impression that some Christians are determined to make the world a very dark place. Light brings illumination. The light that Jesus brings is supposed to lead us out of ignorance and into truth and understanding, it’s supposed to lead us from the dark ages to light ages. Light is supposed to help us navigate through life.

Jesus offers such light and those who follow Jesus are supposed to bring that light with them.

So do you bring light to the world or darkness?

Thoughts light

The latest place for the image of Jesus to appear is on a car window. It’s a pretty good likeness too – at least in a hollywood kind of way.

Take a look here

Jesus in funny places

Few people can escape from the problem of stress. We have always suffered with it but recently it seems to have been reaching pandemic proportions. Of course this may be just down to people being more willing to report it but I suspect we are at least discovering the real problem that it is.

To earn a crust I am a stress management consultant. I don’t force my faith on those battling with stress because I don’t think that is the thing to do. However I do mention faith in my talks as being an important part of stress therapy.

Research shows that people who go to church are far less likely to be stressed and far more likely to cope with stress than those who don’t.

I think there are lots of reasons for why this is so:

• Belief in a loving and supportive God
• Good relationships with others
• Positive attitude
• Times of meditation
• Singing

But for me the biggest reason for me is that Christians have Jesus. Being a follower of Jesus not only gives you a good view of life but it also gives you a good relationship with the creator. God can help even in the worst of circumstances – not always taking the problem away but sometimes just offering the strength to carry on.

Yes, Jesus does help reduce stress.

Thoughts stress

In this day and age of high blood pressure and stress the medical advice is for us all to eat less salt. This is good advice although sometimes I miss my food being as tasty as it once was – I’ve almost given up on crisps these days  – probably a good thing for my health anyway.

So when Jesus talks about how we are to be the salt of the earth has he gone mad? Does Jesus mean that we should be putting the pressure on so everyone dies of a heart attack? Does Jesus mean that we should make sure we are doing our bit to make everyone in the world as unhealthy as we can? Of course not.

We need first of all to understand what salt meant back when Jesus said we should be like salt.

Salt in the ancient world was most certainly considered to be a very good thing. It was used for all kinds of things – not least as a flavouring for food. It was also used to preserve meat, for money, to aid healing, as an offering to God, and in customs performed for newborn babies (Ezekiel tells us that newborn babies were rubbed in salt – Ezek. 16:4). Sounds a little crazy to me but I guess it was probably something to do with it’s antiseptic qualities. Salt was a pretty important commodity. In fact in a society where food was not always plentiful and labour tended to be hot and hard salt was an essential of every day life.

Let me just make a small point here about how we use the bible. It seems to me that it is pretty obvious that when Jesus says we should be like salt he wasn’t saying we should turn ourselves into little heaps of white powder. It hardly needs saying that Jesus is using a metaphor here and he didn’t intend us to believe that we are quite literally salt and should pop ourselves into the cooking pot. This may seem obvious but it is an important point to remember. Christians sometimes gets confused by biblical metaphors and those antagonistic to Christians will sometimes quote things from the bible that are obviously metaphors but they try to make us sound weird for having such metaphors in the bible.

Anyway back to my point.

Salt is important because it improves things. This is pretty much what Jesus was saying. Christians should improve things, make the world seem a better place. Sadly this isn’t always true of Christians but it should be. So we Christians need to be asking ourselves: are we making the world a better place or a worse place.

Jesus had an answer for those who made the world a worse place – he described them as those who have lost their taste. They are no use and will be thrown out and trampled on. Again this is a metaphor.  He doesn’t mean that anyone who loses their saltiness should be thrown out in the street and used as a pavement (side walk, etc). He simply means that if we lose our saltiness we will find ourselves outside of God’s kingdom.

So are you going to be someone who makes the world a better place, or someone who makes it worse?

Christian living salt of the earth

Have you ever wondered what life would be like if people really lived liked Jesus said we should live? We see some of the effects when Christians live as they should – sadly this doesn’t always happen – we might know some of the names of well known Christians who we can admire, names like Mother Theresa and Desmond Tutu come to mind. If everyone followed the teachings of Jesus then people like these people would be common place. You may be surprised to hear that I have met many such people in churches I have been to but they don’t get noticed by the public as they live out their Christian lives.

Today we are going to think a little about the beatitudes.  The beatitudes come at the beginning of the sermon on the mount in Matthew’s gospel (Matthew chapter 5).

The beatitudes tell us about some things that will happen in God’s kingdom. These statements tell us nothing about the kind of people that Christian’s should be – save that the qualities listed have a place in God’s kingdom. Sadly some Christians have mistaken the beatitudes for a list of Christian attitudes and have tried to copy the attitudes that the beatitudes talk about.

Of course qualities like meekness and desiring righteousness are good qualities for some but God did not intend us to try and live up to the beatitudes.

What Jesus is saying is that in God’s kingdom:

• the poor in spirit will find job in the kingdom of heaven – and not when they die but now!
• those who mourn will be comforted
• the meek will inherit the earth.
• those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied
• etc

Jesus is telling us what the kingdom of God will be like. This is reassurance that although you might feel that being merciful doesn’t count for anything – God notices and is happy that people are following him. It is comfort to know that people who mourn will be comforted by God in his kingdom. I could go on.

The beatitudes then are not rules for us to try and follow but statements about how wonderful God’s kingdom is.  I’m sure Jesus could have gone on for a very long time explaining other injustices that will be put right in God’s kingdom. And whilst God’s kingdom might need some time before it is complete we can get some of this reward in the hear and now.

Christian living beatitudes, Jesus

The sermon on the mount is a set of teachings from Jesus that have been grouped together in a section of Matthews gospel (chapters 5-7). The teachings are also in the other gospels (in various forms). Scholars like to get all hot under to collar debating whether Jesus sat down or stood up to preach and how many actually listened. The gospel writers all arrange their material to make points so it becomes impossible to say whether this sermon was written down as presented or whether Matthew gathered together several sermons into one place.

There is historical interest to finding answers to these questions but realistically we aren’t going to answer them in a way that makes everyone happy unless someone invents a time machine to go back and find out.

Sadly too many Christians gets caught up in this kind of detail and then fail to get the point of what Jesus was trying to teach us anyway. What methods Jesus used for preaching are not the point of the sermon.

The sermon offers guidance for the follower of Jesus to understand what life in the kingdom of God is supposed to be like.

Jesus makes it very clear that he is not intending to offer a new set of rules that simply replace the ones found in the ten commandments but that through the following of his guidance we can learn to love, forgive and enjoy life.

One of the complications with Christianity is that we believe that the way to get a good relationship with God is to rely on the loving and forgiving nature of God and not worry about trying to prove ourselves through the following of certain rules (what we might call being saved by grace).

However once we have gained that good relationship with God through our faith in God we then need to commit ourselves to living life with God in charge. We commit ourselves to letting God be our monarch and living a life in God’s kingdom.

We could take the line of saying that all we have to do is to love God and forget about the rest (as St. Augustine once did) but this doesn’t answer all of our questions. We are people who have to live in a practical world and so we need some practical guidance.

Because Jesus understood this he gave us guidance about what kingdom living is all about – guidance which we find in the sermon on the mount.

So if you ever wonder what a Christian should live like then you should turn to the sermon on the mount. Like all things you read in the bible you should also understand it bearing everything else you have read in the bible in mind but it does give a pretty full account of how we are supposed to live.

Does this teaching apply to people who are not Christians? The easy answer is yes because this is how God intends us all to live but the less easy answer is that each person must choose whether to live like a member of God’s kingdom or not. Christians cannot force people to live this way they can only hope that others will want to live this way when they see the difference it can make in the Christians life.

Christian living christian teaching, sermon on the mount