Easter Passion at Trafalgar Square
January 21st, 2010
Plans are under way to stage a Passion play of the easter story in London’s Trafalgar square.
Archive
Posts Tagged ‘Jesus’
Jesus on a naan
January 18th, 2010
Jesus has now appeared on a naan bread
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6960952/Jesus-spotted-on-naan-bread.html
Jesus found in an Indian restaurant
November 12th, 2009
The latest place for Jesus to appear is on a naan bread at an Indian Restaurant in Southampton.
The Beatitudes of Jesus
November 3rd, 2009
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.
Jesus spotted on a toilet door in Ikea
October 22nd, 2009
Jesus has now been spotted on the toilet door of an Ikea store in Scotland.
See the story here:
What kind of Jesus do you believe in?
October 2nd, 2009
It might seem a silly question but it is an important one. One of the strange things that happened when the church tried to explore who the historical Jesus actually is was that those who did the research seemed to end up with a Jesus that was just like them. Instead of digging through all the layers supposedly imposed on Jesus what we found was that the layers that got removed were the layers that made Jesus seem uncomfortable for the one removing the layers. There are still some scholars who do this today and claim they have found the ‘real’ Jesus when the truth is that this ‘real’ Jesus is actually a Jesus just like them.
It’s taken the church a long time to understand that in fact the gospels paint a very accurate picture of who Jesus actually was/is. Our problem is learning to appreciate who Jesus actually was/is even when that makes us feel uncomfortable. This means we have to revise what we think of Jesus and not try and avoid what Jesus is like by claiming the bits we don’t like belong to some later editor of the gospels.
If you want to know what Jesus was actually like then read the gospels and you’ll get a pretty good idea.
Google trends reports Jesus is much bigger than the beatles
September 24th, 2009
After reading a recent slow news day report about how the beatles are more popular than Jesus I thought I’d do my own research on the subject. The results were not very surprising with Jesus being much bigger than the beatles.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=jesus%2C+beatles&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2009-9&sort=0
Blue line is Jesus and red Beatles by the way
One interesting thing I did notice is that although Jesus is far more popular on searches this is not reflected in the way newspapers report things. Do the newspapers having something against Jesus?
Why should I bother about Jesus? Part 2
September 15th, 2009
Table of contents for Why should I bother about Jesus?
- Why should I bother about Jesus?
- Why should I bother about Jesus? Part 2
- Why should I bother about Jesus? Part 3
- Why should I bother about Jesus? Part 4
There are some questions about life that are difficult to answer. Is there a life after death? Does God exist? If God does exist how do we get into heaven? Etc. These are all questions that philosophers as well as ordinary people have been trying to answer since ancient times. If we knew the answers to these questions it might make a big difference to the way we live and the way the world is.
Many religions have tried to answer these questions but they tend to talk in terms that are hard to understand. But what if Christians are right about Jesus?
Christians claim that Jesus has the answers to these difficult questions. This isn’t a matter of arguing over the difference of words or whether one myth or another makes more sense because Christians claim that 2000 years ago there was a man who had the answers. A man that, if you had lived at that time, you could have touched, spent time with and even questioned about the answers he gave.
In fact Christians go further and say that this man was in fact God himself.
This is a startling claim and is made all the more amazing because Christians say that this actually happened. It isn’t just in some old story or some old myth but that Jesus was a real person with answers.
Now this goes beyond whether Christians have done the right thing or not. We have documents that can be traced right back to those who were eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ. If these documents are to be believed then nothing said by anyone else in the world is as significant as this one carpenter from Nazareth.
Why bother with Jesus? Because Jesus might just be the one who can actually answer the questions that we all want answers to.
Praying
August 28th, 2009
Jesus was really into praying, he just couldn’t get enough of it. The gospels are full of comments about how Jesus was going somewhere to pray or trying to get some quiet time for prayer, etc.
It surprises me, then, to learn that some Christians don’t pray other than when they are in church. Here is some research on prayer (a few years old now though). It doesn’t include the U.S.A. but here is one just for them. Even if we take a good view of the results (and we must always be wary of surveys) at least 20% of Christians don’t pray. What I found even more interesting is that in the first survey mentioned 86% said they had received an answer to prayer but only 64% pray every day. Even worse only 48% saw prayer as vital to faith.
Surely with Jesus being so hot on the subject we Christians should be doing it more. I also think we should be paying more attention to our use of time because some Christians complain that there just isn’t enough time to pray. I often wonder how many of these watch a soap on the T.V. or read a newspaper, or twitter, or facebook, etc. Anyway it’s not about the time you spend it’s about the quality of the time you spend.
Now I’m really not trying to make anyone feel guilty because what I want is to see more people praying.
So how do you pray? Well that’s one of the easiest things in the world to do. You open a conversation with God. It means having to open yourself up to God and I can’t give you a formula for that but if you have ever had a relationship with another person you will know what this means.
A lot of people get stuck on what to say. Not a problem – the disciples had a similar issue and so Jesus gave them a prayer to say. There are bookshelves collapsing in Christian book shops with prayers that you can use and before you get all uppity about not praying using someone else’s words Jesus never told us not to (in fact the Lord’s prayer and the psalms and nearly every hymn and worship song ever written is a prayer written by someone else).
Like all this stuff though I’m sure Jesus would want to point out that it isn’t about the words or about how many times you say them it’s about what is inside that counts. Whatever words you use make them real and meaningful to you and pour out your heart to God.
Sometimes people think prayer is going to be boring – in fact this is a lie the devil has been pushing on me ever since I became a Christian. Every time I’m going to do some praying a little voice in my head says “this is going to be boring you know”. Experience however tells me different. Not every day is wonderful but some days you just won’t want to stop.
A very important thing I learned about prayer is that the more you do it the better it gets. If you struggle with boring prayer times then you need to persevere and if you do it will improve.
Anyway – let’s pray.
Made for a purpose
August 19th, 2009
People have often pondered over the question of their purpose. One of the problems faced by those who do not believe in God is that if you exist by chance, a random set of circumstances, then you have no real purpose, you have no reason to exist, there is no right or wrong.
I believe this view is wrong. God created you for a purpose and you have an important reason to exist and there is such a thing as right or wrong. If you think about it for a moment you will understand that somewhere deep within you is the knowledge that some things are right and some are wrong. This isn’t just conditioning and everyone has it. This is something that God has put there.
Let’s not get caught up in thinking about how creation worked (e.g. evolution or spontaneous creation or intelligent design or whatever) because the how is not the most important bit (I know many good Christians who are convinced evolutionists for instance) the important bit is that God caused it.
God created you for a reason, a purpose. We can discover, through reading the bible, that God has a plan for the world. It is incredibly complex and God has to allow for giving people the right to make choices about how they fit into that plan but still the plan exists. It’s end goal (as Jesus pointed out) is to create heaven on earth (God’s kingdom come) and to overcome the power of death.
The wonderful thing is that God wants us to share in the plan and our purpose is part of that plan. We have a part to play in the world that will really make a difference.
I don’t mean we are all going to be world heads of government but that we all can help to make God’s plan come true. We have a purpose that God built into us. God knows us even before we are made in our mother’s womb. It was part of God’s plan to have you born.
You truly are made for a purpose.