Happy New Year

As part of my January R & R I have spent a good deal of time doing very little in the company of several books. In the early period I focused on books of a nice relaxing nature and as the days have ticked by I have slowly begun to pick through my back log of Christian reading. It is my version of pre-season training if you like.

I am something of a Biblical literalist. I know many people can explain away the idea of a humanly resurrected Jesus. Some Christian leaders see the resurrection as a ‘spiritual’ thing rather than an actual RESURRECTION!! Now, I am not an overly dogmatic person and so from time to time I give people a little leeway and I go back to the Scriptures and check out their theory. The thing is I still find no basis in the Biblical accounts for this theory. I know that it stretches credibility that Jesus appeared to disciples through locked doors and one morning served them breakfast down at the beach; but Paul tells us that he also appeared before some 500 people over a period of time. None of the accounts said he looked a little spooky and anyway I didn’t know ghosts ate breakfast!?

Too often we are impressed by the fact that Professor this or that, or even a bishop or someone else with an impressive title has come up with a ‘new’ viewpoint on the Christian story. I always have to remind myself that there are a lot of educated fools in the world today – I happen to be one of the uneducated variety.

My feeling is that people tend to come up with a version of Jesus that suits their particular level of disbelief. ‘I believe this much about Jesus; but I don’t believe that and so here is my version of the gospel.’

Much better I think that we take the line of a loving dad in the gospel stories who, desperate for his son to be healed and standing before the source of healing, admitted that he didn’t have it all sorted out but what he didn’t know he risked in the being of Christ:

‘Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief.”’ Mark 9:24

I call myself a Biblical literalist with a little bit of tongue in cheek. I do not mean that I accept blindly all that the Scriptures contain. We need to read the Bible aware of its cultural context, the times in which it was written and recognise that there are many anomalies; but with the resurrection I am a believer, no reservations or foot notes required. There are many things I don’t get but I choose to trust them to the resurrected Christ.

In my reading I came across this quote from William Willimon: ‘In Christ, God’s Word became a person before God’s words became a book.’ That person is still God’s Word today, now!

So here is the thing. As those first Christ followers of Jesus were one in Christ following the resurrection appearances Romans 12.5), so are we today. From my reading and experience nothing has changed except the date on the calendar and I don’t think that God is too bothered with human time constraints. We still hang out with Jesus! When we meet together for worship there is Jesus in the midst of us. This is not some religious theory but – according to the promises of Jesus – it is truth. If we wear the tag Christian it is not a nodding of our head to some great moment of past history. It is hanging out with Jesus now, because now is all we get.

I look forward to the year ahead and particularly the journey that lays us before as a local church community. I still believe that the local church is the hope of the world and want to invite you to renew the journey so that we can all continue to make a real difference across this region.