Christian Unity Week reminds us of the differences between churches
But it's amazing how much all churches have in common.
Don't we all have Jesus in common?
The Alpha Course affirms positively
how much people from different churches have in common
when we have Jesus in common
If at the end of courses people are clearer about who Jesus is
and hopefully have encountered him in personal faith
then we should rejoice even if they don't end up in our church.
Why should Alpha courses have such impact across the world?
3 elements
1: sharing food together,
2: hearing a presentation of the good news
3: having opportunity to discuss in small groups
Somebody remarked to me on Wed night at the UCC Alpha
that was how it was in the early church
they ate together and they heard the good news
and they shared in small groups.
For most of the Sundays coming up to Easter
apart from some when we are to have visiting preachers
I want to place before you the main themes of the Alpha course
We won't have the meal together and we won't have the small groups in church
but I trust that you will be helped to hear the basic main themes of Christian faith
to make you more sure of what you already believe
or, for some, to help you come to faith,
to bring the light of Christ where it all seems shadowy or completely black.
And if anyone, whether in mid teens or older is thinking of
wanting to be a full communicant member of the congregation
this series would be a good basis
and we could arrange to meet in a small group after Easter
to take further the implications of church membership.
WHO IS JESUS?
Some people might want to ask first 'Who is God?' or 'Is there a God?
but God is such a vague word. What do people mean by God? Which God?
I like the little girl's statement
Jesus is everything that God wanted people to know about himself
To find out about God we need to focus on Jesus
because Christians claim that if you meet him you meet God his Father.
Jesus has had great significance in HUMAN CULTURE
'All the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that were ever built
and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned,
put together, have not affected the life of man upon earth
as powerfully as has the life of this one man Jesus Christ ' Phillips Brooks
'He never wrote a book,
yet more books have been written about him than any other person.
The nearest thing we have to a biography has now been translated
in whole or in part into well over 2000 languages
and in a recent 5 year period
more books about him were published than in the previous 50 years.
He never painted a picture, composed any poetry or wrote any music,
yet nobody's life and teaching have inspired a greater number of songs, plays,
poetry, films, video and other art forms.
He never raised an army or led an armed rebellion,
yet millions of people have laid down their lives in his cause,
and thousands still do so every year.
Except for one brief period during his childhood,
his travels were limited to an area the size about the size of Wales,
but his influence today is world wide
and his followers constitute the largest religious grouping
the world has ever known.
He had no formal education,
but thousands of universities seminaries and colleges
have been founded in his name.
His public life lasted just three years,
and was restricted to a few parts of one small country,
yet his teaching is no beamed around the world by modern media.
During his lifetime, he was virtually unknown outside his own nation,
yet in the current issue of Encyclopaedia Britannica
the entry under his name runs to 30,000 words. '
( Blanchard Why Y2K? p 21-22)
and the dating system of the world is based on his birth
JESUS IS SIGNIFICANT BECAUSE HE IS A REAL HISTORCIAL PERSON
Writers outside the New Testament mention him:
Tacitus & Suetonius, Roman historians- Josephus, Jewish historian (b AD 37)
Now there was about this time, Jesus,
a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man,
for he was a doer of wonderful works
a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure.
He drew over to him many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles.
He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate,
at the suggestion of the principal men among us,
had condemned him to the cross,
those that loved him at first did not forsake him,
for he appeared to them alive again at the third day,
as the divine prophets had foretold these
and the thousand other wonderful things concerning him;
and the tribe of Christians so named, are not extinct to this day
And then there is the Evidence inside the New Testament
4 Gospels, several letters and the visionary book of Revelation
all written by people convinced that Jesus is the centre of their lives
How do we know that what they wrote down
has not been changed over the years?
It is an interesting point that we can trace back
the way the New Testament was written
much more clearly than other writings of a comparable period
The Roman writer Tacitus wrote about 100 AD. There are about 20 early manuscripts of his writings
but they have only existed since 1100. There is 1,000 year gap
Similarly with Julius Caesar, writing 50 years BC
but the earliest 10 manuscripts surviving date from AD 900, a gap of 950 years
The same goes for the Roman historian Livy
New Testament was written by the latest by the end of the first Century
The earliest fragment can be dated to 130 AD only a 30 year gap
and by AD 350 there are thousands of manuscripts
a tribute to the vitality of the early Christian church
where people just wanted to learn about Jesus
and every community got its copy of the scriptures.
It is simply not true that Jesus is a mythical figure
or that the New Testament was cooked up long after the events it describes
FJ Hort: 'In the variety and fullness of the evidence on which it rests,
the text of the New Testament stands
absolutely and unapproachably alone among ancient prose writings.'
More evidence from the texts for the existence of Jesus Christ
than of Julius Caesar.
He did exist but what was he like and why should we believe in him?
He was fully human and yet there was more to him than that.
Human body tired (John 4:6) hungry (Matthew 4:2) Human emotions anger (Mark 11:15-17) love (Mark 10:21) sadness (John 11:32-36)
Human experiences of temptation (Mark 1:13) learning (Luke 2:46-52)
work (Mark 6:3) obedience (Luke 2:51)
Was he not more than just a man?
Was he not more than a "great human religious teacher"?
Matthew 16:13-17 shows Jesus asking his friends who do people say that he is
Is he John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets.
But Peter who knows him well says more than that
'You are the Christ, the son of the living God'
Jesus is God's anointed king to rescue Israel
And people call him the 'son of David'
but he is more than the great David we have been looking at recently
he makes claims about himself that David never made
"I am the bread of life" (John 6:35)
"I am the light of the world" (John 8: l 2
"I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25, 26)
"I am the way and the truth and the life' (John 14:6)
"My kingdom" (Luke 22:30)
"Come to me" (Matthew 11:28, 29)
Follow me" (Mark 1:17)
Receive me - Receive God (Matthew 10:40)
Welcome me - Welcome God (Mark 9:37)
To have seen me is to have seen God (John 14:9)
Claims our supreme love (Matthew 10:37) (Luke 14:26)
What would you think of a religious leader today who made such claims?
Of someone who claimed to forgive sins
someone who said he would one day judge the world
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said
wouldn't be a great moral teacher,
he'd either be a lunatic - on a level with a man who sails he's a poached egg
or else he'd be the devil of hell. You must make your choice.
Either this man was and is the Son God,
or else a madman or something worse...
You must make your choice.
You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon;
or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God
But don't let us come up with any patronising nonsense
about his being a great human teacher.
He hasn't left that open to us. He didn't intend to.'' C.S. Lewis
Bad man, mad man or Godman?
Think about the sort of things that Jesus taught:
to love your enemies, not to worry about tomorrow, to put God before money,
to lead a life that is pure in thought as well as deed
aren't these ideas that come from more than human source?
Think about what Jesus did, his miracles
water into wine, calming the storm, feeding 5000, healing the sick,
bringing Lazarus back to life
Don't they suggest that there is something extraordinary about him
Think about the character of the man we meet in the gospels:
How does Jesus come over to you as you read about him?
Strong yet humble, intolerant of hypocrisy yet compassionate
Able to answer a clever argument but welcoming of children
Unselfish but without self pity
Attractive where the church is a turn off.
There was meekness without weakness, tenderness without feebleness,
firmness without coarseness, love without sentimentality,
holiness without sanctimoniousness, lowliness without lowness,
truth without error, enthusiasm without fanaticism, passion without prejudice,
heavenly mindedness without forgetfulness,
carefreeness without carelessness, service without servility,
self exaltation without egotism, judgement without harshness,
seriousness without sombreness, mercy without softness.
(Robert Clarke. Blanchard Why Y2K? p 66)
Can we not see how Jesus has always attracted people?
The churches may have failed to be like him and have turned people off
but every time a church and Christians are bit like him
in welcoming others and showing his peace and living in his freedom
people are attracted to him.
They are attracted to someone who is a figure of history
arguably the most important figure of history
but who is more than that, he's not a dead historical figure
he did die but he is alive today
Last week we celebrated the Lord's Supper
which of course is the great reminder the memorial of the death of Jesus
but it's more than that
if we only ate and drank in memory of a dead religious figure
it would be intolerably dreary
but the Lord's Supper is more than that because there those who believe
meet with a dying and risen Saviour/
Christians are called to be 'Easter People'
people of the resurrection, loving a living Lord
not just thinking wistfully about a dead spiritual genius.
A preacher at Hyde Park Corner in London declared 'Jesus is alive'
How do you know that shouted the heckler:
'Because I was speaking to him for half an hour this morning'
I don't have time to go through the evidence for the resurrection today
we will come back to that at Easter time
but will you trust me that the arguments in favour of the resurrection stand up
as reasonable and challenging to a response.
Because if he is alive then really he should not be on the outside of your life
as seems to have been the case with Josephus
(who interestingly enough has no problem with the idea that he rose again)
I have not always believed in Jesus Christ
I grew up in a church going home as did most of my contemporaries
but Jesus was on the outside not inside
As a teenager I went to a first communicants' class
sadly there was no Alpha in those days
and I responded to something my minister said about following Jesus
making him my leader.
I didn't feel anything immediately
but in a matter of weeks I became aware of a difference in my life, a peace,
a settling in particular of nervous indigestion.
I became aware of Jesus and ever since then have been coming to see
how much more I am loved by him and God the father.
Now don't go away and say That's true for you,
I am not pushing my experience by itself .
Yes, to be a Christian is to be personally committed to Jesus Christ
to have encountered him in personal experience,
but Jesus is more than a nice spiritual sensation
but he is a real Jesus, believed in by millions,
reliably described to us in the gospels,
of such attractive character with such big claims.
You remember when the killer whales visited Cork Harbour last June?
Late one night, they came up the Lee as far as George's Quay.
A girl came out of a pub after a night's celebration
and stared at all the people lining the quay peering into the water.
'What are they all staring at?' she asked
and was told it was the killer whales.
But whether because of the drink taken or because she was tired
she thought people were winding her up, she wouldn't believe them
and got into a cab and went home.
You don't expect to see killer whales in the river Lee at 3 a.m.
You may find it strange to be told what I tell you about Jesus
But that girl missed a wonderful beautiful sight
because she would not believe what she was told
and if you don't believe what you are told in the Bible about Jesus
you miss out on something that is wonderful and beautiful
and much more, it is all important and essential
for having meaning in this life and certainty for the next life
Meekness and majesty
manhood and deity
in perfect harmony
the man who is God:
Lord of eternity
dwells in humanity and washes our feet.
God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness'
make his light to shine in our hearts
to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Christ
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