May 2008
May's Verse
The calendar we gave out this year deals with the all
important theme “Who is Jesus?”. Many voices down
through the centuries have made all sorts of claims
and promises. Many voices in the present make their
claims and promises too. They clamour for our
attention, call us to follow, believe and commit. How
are we to know which voice to listen to?
Each month we look at one of Jesus’ claims about himself. This month it is from John 8:58
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”
At first glance these words seem simple and innocuous – perhaps even verging on the unintelligible. Surely Jesus should have finished the sentence with “before Abraham was born, I was” – meaning I have existed from before Abraham.
Was he just bad at grammar? Or is it the fault of the translators?
To the Jews of Jesus day this was not evidence of a poor education, but of a startling and boldfaced claim. You see, the phrase “I am” used in this way harks back to the way God introduced himself to Moses at the famous burning bush – “Tell them, ‘I am has sent you’”. God was saying to Moses that the always-existing one was sending him. What Jesus is doing is claiming to be that always existing one. He wasn’t simply in existence before Abraham like some angelic figure; rather he has always existed. Even the Jewish listeners understood this to be a claim to be God, for we are told in the next verse, “At this they picked up stones to stone him” – the penalty for blasphemy.
But what difference does it make to us?
There’s something immensely comforting to go back to a place and find it hasn’t changed, or to meet an old friend and find they ‘haven’t changed a bit’. That’s part of the comfort that lies behind the unchanging nature of Jesus.
Perhaps we wonder, “Would he forgive me?” We should listen to his words of forgiveness to Peter who denied him. He hasn’t changed. There is forgiveness for all who come to him in repentance like Peter did.
Perhaps we despair at circumstances. We should stand with the disciples in the storm tossed boat and look at the One who has just told the waves to be still. He hasn’t changed. He still calms storms. There is hope for all who come to him.
Perhaps we find it hard to trust Jesus. We should cry out to Jesus, “I believe, help me overcome my unbelief” (Mark 9:23-24) and see Jesus do just that. He hasn’t changed. There is rescue for all who trust in him.
Perhaps we think it doesn’t really matter what we believe. We should listen to Jesus, “I am the way the truth and the life, no-one comes to the father except through me” (John 14:6). He is the unchanging one.
Each month we look at one of Jesus’ claims about himself. This month it is from John 8:58
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”
At first glance these words seem simple and innocuous – perhaps even verging on the unintelligible. Surely Jesus should have finished the sentence with “before Abraham was born, I was” – meaning I have existed from before Abraham.
Was he just bad at grammar? Or is it the fault of the translators?
To the Jews of Jesus day this was not evidence of a poor education, but of a startling and boldfaced claim. You see, the phrase “I am” used in this way harks back to the way God introduced himself to Moses at the famous burning bush – “Tell them, ‘I am has sent you’”. God was saying to Moses that the always-existing one was sending him. What Jesus is doing is claiming to be that always existing one. He wasn’t simply in existence before Abraham like some angelic figure; rather he has always existed. Even the Jewish listeners understood this to be a claim to be God, for we are told in the next verse, “At this they picked up stones to stone him” – the penalty for blasphemy.
But what difference does it make to us?
There’s something immensely comforting to go back to a place and find it hasn’t changed, or to meet an old friend and find they ‘haven’t changed a bit’. That’s part of the comfort that lies behind the unchanging nature of Jesus.
Perhaps we wonder, “Would he forgive me?” We should listen to his words of forgiveness to Peter who denied him. He hasn’t changed. There is forgiveness for all who come to him in repentance like Peter did.
Perhaps we despair at circumstances. We should stand with the disciples in the storm tossed boat and look at the One who has just told the waves to be still. He hasn’t changed. He still calms storms. There is hope for all who come to him.
Perhaps we find it hard to trust Jesus. We should cry out to Jesus, “I believe, help me overcome my unbelief” (Mark 9:23-24) and see Jesus do just that. He hasn’t changed. There is rescue for all who trust in him.
Perhaps we think it doesn’t really matter what we believe. We should listen to Jesus, “I am the way the truth and the life, no-one comes to the father except through me” (John 14:6). He is the unchanging one.
The Cellar
01/05/08 16:37 |
Current Events
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There is something morbidly compelling about the news
from Austria of Josef Fritzl who hid his own daughter
in a secret cellar and fathered seven children with
her. We watch in stunned disbelief, and find
ourselves wondering how on earth something like that
could go undetected for so long. We wonder how on
earth the children are going to adjust to the
realisation that there is another world outside their
bunker-like existence.
To be born into a situation and to know nothing else. To realise that there is another world beyond what you have ever known, to realise everything you ever thought of as normal was far from normal, to find out that you have actually been a prisoner when you thought you were free – it’s simply staggering.
And yet, perhaps, it’s not so unusual.
What if we were all born like that – except not in a literal cellar, but prisoner to a warped and distorted set of values that placed us at the centre of the universe and made the universe revolve around us? What if the way we naturally looked at life was wrong? What if the values we took for granted weren’t valuable? What if our view of life and the world was our cellar?
How often do we hear the phrase “Everyone’s doing it” as an attempt to define normality? But if we all live in the cellar what is normal for us isn’t actually normal.
It’s not enough to measure life by what we have experienced – where would that have left these poor children? They had never seen sky or daylight but that didn’t deny the reality of sky or daylight. They needed outside information. We need it too. We need something to tell us what is truly valuable, what the right values are to live by, where we have gone wrong, and how it can be put to right.
For we are all born captives to a human-centred worldview, a view that revolves everything around us. That’s our cellar. Into this cellar comes the outside communication that the universe is actually made by God and made for God – it is radically God-centred.
So we have a choice: we can either continue to live in the cellar, spinning in our own little personal orbits, or come up out into the light and live the way God intended us to live. It isn’t easy to make that transition from cellar to daylight, and that’s why God himself came down into the cellar to live for a while and to take us slowly and gently up into the “freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). That’s why we need to go to Jesus and seek his help in this radical realisation that we have been living with too small a purpose, in too self-centred a world. It’s just like being born all over again.
To be born into a situation and to know nothing else. To realise that there is another world beyond what you have ever known, to realise everything you ever thought of as normal was far from normal, to find out that you have actually been a prisoner when you thought you were free – it’s simply staggering.
And yet, perhaps, it’s not so unusual.
What if we were all born like that – except not in a literal cellar, but prisoner to a warped and distorted set of values that placed us at the centre of the universe and made the universe revolve around us? What if the way we naturally looked at life was wrong? What if the values we took for granted weren’t valuable? What if our view of life and the world was our cellar?
How often do we hear the phrase “Everyone’s doing it” as an attempt to define normality? But if we all live in the cellar what is normal for us isn’t actually normal.
It’s not enough to measure life by what we have experienced – where would that have left these poor children? They had never seen sky or daylight but that didn’t deny the reality of sky or daylight. They needed outside information. We need it too. We need something to tell us what is truly valuable, what the right values are to live by, where we have gone wrong, and how it can be put to right.
For we are all born captives to a human-centred worldview, a view that revolves everything around us. That’s our cellar. Into this cellar comes the outside communication that the universe is actually made by God and made for God – it is radically God-centred.
So we have a choice: we can either continue to live in the cellar, spinning in our own little personal orbits, or come up out into the light and live the way God intended us to live. It isn’t easy to make that transition from cellar to daylight, and that’s why God himself came down into the cellar to live for a while and to take us slowly and gently up into the “freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). That’s why we need to go to Jesus and seek his help in this radical realisation that we have been living with too small a purpose, in too self-centred a world. It’s just like being born all over again.