A new trajectory

Let’s go back 47 years to January 1979. The Labour government was under pressure - it was ‘the Winter of Discontent’. Meanwhile, leaders of France, Germany, Britain and the USA held a summit. The Shah of Persia (Iran) was deposed and Ayatollah Khomeini took over, complicating Middle East tensions that are still felt today. It all sounds rather familiar.

January 1979 is firmly fixed in my own mind for a personal reason. That’s the month I became a Christian. Hearing and responding to the Good News of the Christian message is a once-in-a-lifetime event that sets you off on an entirely new trajectory.

The Christian message is a call for each of us to turn away from what we know to be bad and to believe - believing meaning to put into action our trust and faith. ‘Repent and believe’ is the Bible’s terminology.

How is this good news? When we make an about turn and expose our hearts to God, daring to trust that he has love for us with our best interests in his mind, we are then able to receive from him. Turning and trusting places us in a position to receive from God his forgiveness and the gift of his own Spirit to live within us.

Some people hesitate to take these initial steps of faith, fearing that they are not good enough or that they will not be able to stay the course. The good news is that how good or bad we may think we are is actually irrelevant. God knows that none of us is good enough to meet his standards and this is precisely why Jesus came as a saviour for people that are not good enough. Ultimately, he secured forgiveness for men and women when he was crucified and then resurrected: That’s the Easter story.

Thinking ‘I haven’t the strength to stay the course’ is a good thing, because we will more readily welcome God’s gift of his Spirit, which is given to those who will trust in Jesus. God’s Spirit is also referred to as the ‘Comforter’, meaning one who strengthens and encourages in just the same way as Jesus did with his first disciples.

We are always living in uncertain times. There is, however, nothing uncertain about the God we can meet in Jesus.

Who is Jesus?

The season of Advent has begun during which Christians remember afresh the coming of Jesus the Messiah over 2000 years ago. The Jewish Holy Scriptures had foretold this event hundreds of years previously.

Two thousand years ago, many Jews keenly anticipated the coming of the Messiah. They understood that he would be from the line of King David, who was considered the best of the numerous Kings the Jewish nation had known. They believed that this Messiah would be a King par excellence and would prosper his people and defeat their enemies. At that time, the Jewish community sensed the Messiah would come soon to deliver them from their Roman occupiers.

As the nativity plays remind us, Jesus was born of Mary in Bethlehem, the town of King David. Indeed his bloodline went back to King David, then back to Judah, Jacob, Isaac and Abraham. His human lineage was impeccable, agreeing as it did, with the messianic prophecies.

What most Jews didn’t see was that their Messiah would be in some inexpressible manner intimately linked to God himself in a way that no one else has ever been. As the life of Jesus, his teachings and miracles got underway, his uniqueness became increasingly apparent.

Jesus speaks of himself as having been with God prior to his conception; as having come down from God; as being on a specific mission and once that mission was finished he would return to where he had been before.

Was the Messiah simply to administer justice for the Jews and deliver them from their Roman occupiers? No. The mission that brought Jesus to live as a man amongst us is our salvation and deliverance. We all need to be delivered from the consequences of God’s perfect justice. God sees our lives as wrongly lived, his justice requiring each of us to be condemned. God, however, has intervened on our behalf.

A verse from John’s Gospel explains: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’

Jesus came to save us not to condemn us. He did this by dying in our place on a cruel Roman cross. I believe that to receive God’s gift of deliverance in this way should top our own Christmas list.

Religion - releasing all burdensome?

Sometimes people ask me if I’m religious. That’s a word I have something of an aversion to.

The word ‘Religion’ is to do with the purpose and direction of the universe in relation to a higher being (a god or gods), involving a set of beliefs, practices, worship, devotion, and morals. So why am I uncomfortable with being named a religious person?

For me it is a term too vague: it simply divides the atheist from the rest. I’m a follower of Jesus (albeit an imperfect one) and, as such, have no desire to be grouped in with what is sometimes called the ‘world religions’.

I wish to urge that we should sidestep ideas of religion per se and each of us consider coming first to a person - the man Jesus. A Christian is one who trusts his/her life, now and forever, into the hands of Jesus. Such trust or devotion are high stakes indeed unless of course Jesus is divine. If he is, then it seems to me that it logically follows that all God-honouring worship and devotion belong exclusively to Jesus. Many will disagree but actually that is orthodox, biblical, Christian teaching.

God recognises our ignorance in matters of religion. Whether we are religious or not, he lovingly offers us the opportunity to turn from the darkness that blinds us and then to embrace the light that gives sight i.e. Jesus, who says ‘I am the light of the world’.

Jesus was critical of the religious leaders of his day because they laid heavy burdens upon their people in the name of religious practice and tradition. That is why he said, ‘Come to me all of you who are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest for your souls’.

Is your experience of religion releasing or burdensome? Maybe there are other pressures from which you wish to be free. Whatever, Jesus says he is the answer to our deepest need.