Life on Mars: 5. To Save Us
The end of the week already! The work in Church is progressing well, but the scaffolding is still up, and will be up for harvest festival. I am bracing myself for all the complaints!
Today I post the last in my series 'Life on Mars'. I promise to shut up about the TV series - for a while, at least. It is very good, though.
Have a great weekend!
Life on Mars: 5. To Save Us
So why? If God went to so much trouble in sending Jesus and choosing precisely the time and place to do so, why did he do it? What was it all about? I have talked a bit about the BBC television drama, Life on Mars, and Sam Tyler, a detective from the present who, after an accident, wakes up in 1973. Sam thinks coming from the future that he knows best. After a while, he begins to realize that he does not have all the answers and that the he can learn from the past no matter how different it may be to the present.
It isn’t just in the world and in society in general that changes have occurred over the past two thousand years. The Church seeking to keep up with and adapt to the changes in the world has perhaps forgotten why Jesus came and why it was so important that he did.
St Paul says: ‘The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’. Christ came at a specific time for a specific purpose. It was not to be a moral example, not to leave behind a body of teaching or doctrine, not to create a community of people for us to belong to, but to save sinners. Sin, human sin, your sin and mine, brought him here. This idea pervades the pages of the New Testament.
It is there whether you turn to St Paul: ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’. Or St John: ‘if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us’. Or in the words of Jesus himself: ‘the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost’. But all this means that there are the lost to be found and saved. All of the New Testament takes it as read that we, you and I, are lost sinners who have incurred God’s displeasure and that unless something is done about it, we too, as Jesus puts it, are going to perish.
This is a perspective in the Church that we are in danger of losing. We prefer to celebrate human goodness, not discuss human wrongdoing. We proclaim the love and acceptance of God, not his judgement. We offer the welcome Christ gives to all, not his demand that they repent. The Church following the lead of the world sees the concept of sin as primitive and outdated. Something that belongs to another world. Yes, we do go wrong as human beings, we are weak and make mistakes, but’s that because we are human, not because we are lost sinners.
We argue that we need to emphasize the positive, not the negative. We need to see the role that a person’s environment and upbringing play in what they become and do. Focussing on blame and responsibility are not what it’s about. We want a loving God who understands us and accepts us: just as we are.
We have to make our minds up whether Jesus and his followers got it right or not. Whether the way they looked at it was a revelation of God or just the product of a less enlightened age. Like our fictional detective, Sam Tyler, we have to overcome our sense of superiority, our pride, and our arrogance and listen to what these people have to say. Jesus could not help the Pharisees because they did not think they were sinners: on the contrary, they were the righteous. But a doctor cannot help someone who won’t accept they are ill. If we insist we are not sinners or that sin does not matter, that it’s not really sin, then he cannot help us either.
The message of the New Testament is that Jesus welcomes sinners. Welcomes, that is, those who realize their sin, admit to their sin, and knowing they are lost because of their sin, are prepared to swallow their pride and arrogance and throw themselves on the mercy of God.
This mercy is to be found in Jesus of Nazareth who lived and died 2,000 years ago, but who, Christians believe, rose from the dead and is alive today. By understanding what he did for us in the past, we can know him in the present. And knowing him brings the peace, purpose, and forgiveness that our world cannot give.
In other words, it saves us.
Showing posts with label Life on Mars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life on Mars. Show all posts
Friday, October 05, 2007
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Life on Mars: 4. At the Right Time
A good National day here and a quiet birthday as befits one of my advancing years.
We are currently getting ready for our Church Harvest Festival at the moment, so you can imagine my surprise to find contractors erecting scaffolding inside the Church this afternoon.
I spotted a couple of weeks ago that paint was peeling on part of the interior wall of the Church. As we have recently repainted the interior of the Church - against my advice, let it be noted - I was not best pleased. To give them their due the firm concerned offered to put it right and asked if they could start today. I made arrangements for them to be let in and called to see how they were getting on. I expected a ladder and a bucket of a paint. Imagine my surprise to find a team of scaffolders erecting scaffold above the altar and to be told it will take a week!
To their credit, they are taking it seriously; on the down side, I was told it was a minor job that would take three days. Now I have to explain why we have scaffolding all round the altar at Harvest Festival.
These things take up so much time and energy!
Life on Mars: 4. At the Right Time
Christianity claims that in the person of Jesus and in the events surrounding his life and death, God revealed himself to us. I have been arguing, in the past few weeks, that this places an obligation on Christians to attempt something very difficult, that is, to travel back in time, in a historical sense, to see what these events were and whom they concerned.
Sometimes, we try to avoid doing this by reducing the Christian faith to a set of timeless truths or to a body of doctrine or to a code of ethics. Others make it about our relationships with each other here in the present. Others about using the idea of someone dying under an imperial power as incentive for changing the world around us. Sadly, often all these sincere approaches do is to avoid the problem.
St Paul sums up the preaching of the early Christian leaders in these words:
‘For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:21-22)
Elsewhere he writes:
‘But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.’ (Galatians 4:4-5)
When the ‘fullness of time had come’, in other words, ‘when the time was just right’, God sent his Son. We have been talking, in this short series, about the problems that Jesus being born 2,000 years ago cause us living as we do in a very different age. And it does cause problems. As we have observed the world was so different then. How can a message about a person who lived then have any relevance for us now. And again, we must stress that Christianity is first and foremost about a person who truly and really lived in a specific place at a particular time and not a creed, code of ethics, or community. These may follow, but they are secondary and subsidiary.
The early Christians acknowledged that this brought problems, but made the amazing claim that what must inevitably seem like foolishness and cause problems for humans was God’s deliberate choice and decision. The time that Jesus was born was neither coincidental nor accidental in any way: it happened in exactly the right place and at precisely the right time: the time, that is, God had decided it would happen.
This means that Jesus’ birth was not an accident of history or something that God decided to do when he thought the circumstances created a good opportunity. It means that Jesus could not have been born as an American in 2007, a Briton in 1807, an Indian in 1507, a Chinese in 1107, or as anyone else in any other place at any other time. This was the place, time, and person. And everything before it led up to it and prepared for it and everything since has proceeded from it. God decided in advance that this was the moment.
It didn’t just happen that Christ was ‘born of a woman’, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and was ‘crucified under Pontius Pilate’.
Carl Sagan said: ‘In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.’
St Paul said the same thing about what God was up to in Christ, albeit in different words: ‘With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.’ (Ephesians 1:8)
The Biblical writers claim that what God had in mind when he set about creating the universe was the coming of Christ at precisely the date and time he came.
We like to think it is our age that is wise, our age that is superior to all the rest, that we know more and can do more and, obviously, on one level this is true. I am glad that because of vaccinations I won’t catch diseases that people in the past routinely caught. But we need to have the humility to see that God decided that it was to be in this age, 2,000 years ago, that the decisive moment in history occurred.
After all, that is why our calendars work as they do.
A good National day here and a quiet birthday as befits one of my advancing years.
We are currently getting ready for our Church Harvest Festival at the moment, so you can imagine my surprise to find contractors erecting scaffolding inside the Church this afternoon.
I spotted a couple of weeks ago that paint was peeling on part of the interior wall of the Church. As we have recently repainted the interior of the Church - against my advice, let it be noted - I was not best pleased. To give them their due the firm concerned offered to put it right and asked if they could start today. I made arrangements for them to be let in and called to see how they were getting on. I expected a ladder and a bucket of a paint. Imagine my surprise to find a team of scaffolders erecting scaffold above the altar and to be told it will take a week!
To their credit, they are taking it seriously; on the down side, I was told it was a minor job that would take three days. Now I have to explain why we have scaffolding all round the altar at Harvest Festival.
These things take up so much time and energy!
Life on Mars: 4. At the Right Time
Christianity claims that in the person of Jesus and in the events surrounding his life and death, God revealed himself to us. I have been arguing, in the past few weeks, that this places an obligation on Christians to attempt something very difficult, that is, to travel back in time, in a historical sense, to see what these events were and whom they concerned.
Sometimes, we try to avoid doing this by reducing the Christian faith to a set of timeless truths or to a body of doctrine or to a code of ethics. Others make it about our relationships with each other here in the present. Others about using the idea of someone dying under an imperial power as incentive for changing the world around us. Sadly, often all these sincere approaches do is to avoid the problem.
St Paul sums up the preaching of the early Christian leaders in these words:
‘For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:21-22)
Elsewhere he writes:
‘But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.’ (Galatians 4:4-5)
When the ‘fullness of time had come’, in other words, ‘when the time was just right’, God sent his Son. We have been talking, in this short series, about the problems that Jesus being born 2,000 years ago cause us living as we do in a very different age. And it does cause problems. As we have observed the world was so different then. How can a message about a person who lived then have any relevance for us now. And again, we must stress that Christianity is first and foremost about a person who truly and really lived in a specific place at a particular time and not a creed, code of ethics, or community. These may follow, but they are secondary and subsidiary.
The early Christians acknowledged that this brought problems, but made the amazing claim that what must inevitably seem like foolishness and cause problems for humans was God’s deliberate choice and decision. The time that Jesus was born was neither coincidental nor accidental in any way: it happened in exactly the right place and at precisely the right time: the time, that is, God had decided it would happen.
This means that Jesus’ birth was not an accident of history or something that God decided to do when he thought the circumstances created a good opportunity. It means that Jesus could not have been born as an American in 2007, a Briton in 1807, an Indian in 1507, a Chinese in 1107, or as anyone else in any other place at any other time. This was the place, time, and person. And everything before it led up to it and prepared for it and everything since has proceeded from it. God decided in advance that this was the moment.
It didn’t just happen that Christ was ‘born of a woman’, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and was ‘crucified under Pontius Pilate’.
Carl Sagan said: ‘In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.’
St Paul said the same thing about what God was up to in Christ, albeit in different words: ‘With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.’ (Ephesians 1:8)
The Biblical writers claim that what God had in mind when he set about creating the universe was the coming of Christ at precisely the date and time he came.
We like to think it is our age that is wise, our age that is superior to all the rest, that we know more and can do more and, obviously, on one level this is true. I am glad that because of vaccinations I won’t catch diseases that people in the past routinely caught. But we need to have the humility to see that God decided that it was to be in this age, 2,000 years ago, that the decisive moment in history occurred.
After all, that is why our calendars work as they do.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Life On Mars: 3. And was made man
Today is National Day here in China so we get a day off! As it is my birthday tomorrow I get to celebrate today. I am also taking the opportunity to catch up on work in my study.
Here is the third in the Life on Mars series.
Life on Mars: 3: And was made man
In the same Creed in which we say that Jesus was ‘crucified under Pontius Pilate’, we also as Christians say:
‘For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven;
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.’
These words are part of the Nicene Creed, a Creed from the fourth century, accepted by all the Churches as expressing the central tenets of the Christian faith. This is as near the heart of the Christian faith as it is possible to get. Christianity with this statement has taken an incredible gamble. It has staked all on a person who lived at a precise moment in history. Let’s be clear about the claim. It is that the God who made everything there is, and who is above everything he made, and upon whom we all depend for our existence has chosen to reveal himself to us in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ, who entered our world and lived as one of us at a particular point in history.
This means we see the face of God in the face of a first century Palestinian Jew. This is a breathtaking claim and while a source of wonder and worship for Christians, it does also create problems for those who believe it. First of all, Christians are gambling everything on the person of Jesus. Now you may say: ‘of course, what’s so strange about that?’ Well, it means the significance for the Christian of Jesus is not what he taught, not what he did, nor even how he lived, but who he was. It means, as a consequence, that being a Christian is not about what you believe, how you live, or where you go on Sunday, but about your relationship with this man, ‘born of the Virgin Mary’. It is the person of Jesus that counts more than anything else.
St Paul says to people who had stopped believing in the resurrection that if the resurrection is not true then Christians are of all people most to be pitied. In other words, that for Christianity to be true then Christ must be alive now. But it also means that he must have lived and that he was who his followers claimed he was. That is, that Jesus of Nazareth, who walked the streets of Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate, was the incarnate Son of God sent by God to reveal himself to us and to save us.
It also means that if either Jesus did not exist or was not who his followers said he was, but simply another mortal religious teacher, then Christianity is a fraud. Christians were first called Christians as a nickname in Antioch because they made so much of Christ. Everything stands or falls on what they claimed for him being true. Take away the existence of Jesus or make him just another teacher, then he has nothing to say to us. Yes, he might have said some nice things about how we should live and, doubtless, he said them in a very charismatic way, but what he says about himself and what his followers say about him is what matters.
St Luke records Jesus saying these words: ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.’ (St Luke 14:26)
John records him saying these words: ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ (St John 14:6)
These are incredible demands and claims. The Biblical writers from a distance of two thousand years are asking us to stake our own lives on what happened at a particular moment of history: under Pontius Pilate. Christianity isn’t asking us to believe in abstract ideas, but in a historical person.
As I have been arguing in this series, if Luke and John are right in what they say of Jesus, it means that Christians are bound to history: bound to making the effort of going back in time no matter how hard and challenging it is, and it is hard and challenging, for in the past something happened that can change our lives in the present and give us hope for the future.
Today is National Day here in China so we get a day off! As it is my birthday tomorrow I get to celebrate today. I am also taking the opportunity to catch up on work in my study.
Here is the third in the Life on Mars series.
Life on Mars: 3: And was made man
In the same Creed in which we say that Jesus was ‘crucified under Pontius Pilate’, we also as Christians say:
‘For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven;
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.’
These words are part of the Nicene Creed, a Creed from the fourth century, accepted by all the Churches as expressing the central tenets of the Christian faith. This is as near the heart of the Christian faith as it is possible to get. Christianity with this statement has taken an incredible gamble. It has staked all on a person who lived at a precise moment in history. Let’s be clear about the claim. It is that the God who made everything there is, and who is above everything he made, and upon whom we all depend for our existence has chosen to reveal himself to us in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ, who entered our world and lived as one of us at a particular point in history.
This means we see the face of God in the face of a first century Palestinian Jew. This is a breathtaking claim and while a source of wonder and worship for Christians, it does also create problems for those who believe it. First of all, Christians are gambling everything on the person of Jesus. Now you may say: ‘of course, what’s so strange about that?’ Well, it means the significance for the Christian of Jesus is not what he taught, not what he did, nor even how he lived, but who he was. It means, as a consequence, that being a Christian is not about what you believe, how you live, or where you go on Sunday, but about your relationship with this man, ‘born of the Virgin Mary’. It is the person of Jesus that counts more than anything else.
St Paul says to people who had stopped believing in the resurrection that if the resurrection is not true then Christians are of all people most to be pitied. In other words, that for Christianity to be true then Christ must be alive now. But it also means that he must have lived and that he was who his followers claimed he was. That is, that Jesus of Nazareth, who walked the streets of Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate, was the incarnate Son of God sent by God to reveal himself to us and to save us.
It also means that if either Jesus did not exist or was not who his followers said he was, but simply another mortal religious teacher, then Christianity is a fraud. Christians were first called Christians as a nickname in Antioch because they made so much of Christ. Everything stands or falls on what they claimed for him being true. Take away the existence of Jesus or make him just another teacher, then he has nothing to say to us. Yes, he might have said some nice things about how we should live and, doubtless, he said them in a very charismatic way, but what he says about himself and what his followers say about him is what matters.
St Luke records Jesus saying these words: ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.’ (St Luke 14:26)
John records him saying these words: ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ (St John 14:6)
These are incredible demands and claims. The Biblical writers from a distance of two thousand years are asking us to stake our own lives on what happened at a particular moment of history: under Pontius Pilate. Christianity isn’t asking us to believe in abstract ideas, but in a historical person.
As I have been arguing in this series, if Luke and John are right in what they say of Jesus, it means that Christians are bound to history: bound to making the effort of going back in time no matter how hard and challenging it is, and it is hard and challenging, for in the past something happened that can change our lives in the present and give us hope for the future.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Life on Mars: 2. Crucified Under Pontius Pilate
Well, the installation went very well with a full Cathedral. The Cathedral in Hong Kong is not air-conditioned. Sitting, fully-robed in the Cathedral at midday is an interesting experience! I believe the Cathedral people are thinking about air-con - the sooner, the better!
Looking at my diary for the next couple of days, I see I have a School Council meeting tonight, three School assemblies tomorrow morning and then a PTA AGM followed by a PTA Annual dinner tomorrow evening. I think I had better get on with my sermon for Sunday this afternoon if only to remind myself that I am a Vicar!
Here is the next in my Life on Mars series!
Life on Mars: 2. Crucified Under Pontius Pilate
Last time, I wrote about Life on Mars, the BBC police drama series, in which a detective from the present wakes up in 1973 and what a shock life in 1973 is to him. Everything is very different to what he is used to. I know the feeling, I am just about to have a birthday and thinking back to 1973, when I was an older teenager, I am constantly amazed at just how much has changed. Obviously, technology has advanced – assuming you think kids being stuck on playstations for hours or chatting endlessly on Facebook is advancement. In addition to such changes, attitudes and outlooks have changed radically, too.
If this is true in my short lifetime, how much more true is it in the time since the events related in the Bible? How can what people wrote and wrote about 2,000 and more years ago have anything to say to us living in the 21st century. This really is an important issue and Christians are at fault for sometimes acting as if it isn’t. Let me put it another way:
Suppose we were to do a Life on Mars in reverse and transport a Christian leader from the New Testament era to the present and make him a leader of a Church now, how long would it be before he had a nervous breakdown? That’s assuming that the first passing motor car didn’t knock him down. A motor-car being something he would never have seen before and now may never see again! How we do Church, what we believe, how we live, how we relate, everything would be so very, very different. What this leader said to us in his preaching, assuming we gave him the ability to speak Chinese or English, would also sound very different to what we are used to. And this from someone who is a Christian like us. His world was different then, they were different then. If a Christian from the past would have trouble living with us now, why should what Christians wrote in the past be of any relevance to us now? They are not of our world and we are not of theirs.
As L. P. Hartley said: ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’ All this applies to any religion that looks to a founder who lived in the past. But it applies even more to Christianity. For central to Christianity is the belief that God himself in the person of Jesus entered our space-time existence at a specific point in our history. Every week in my Church, we recite the Nicene Creed in which we say of Jesus that ‘he was crucified under Pontius Pilate’.
I think we forget the significance of this. Pontius Pilate was a minor Roman official in a relatively minor part of the Empire, and yet he is remembered every week at the most holy service of the Church’s worship. This is because our faith is centred on something that happened at a particular moment in history. For many Christians, this is rather embarrassing and inconvenient. We want a God who speaks now, not a God who spoke then. History isn’t everyone’s favourite subject and to make history, that is, what happened, 2000 years ago, so central and important seems to create more problems than it solves.
This is, perhaps, one of the reasons why Christians emphasize the resurrection and why the Charismatic movement has been so popular. By emphasizing that Jesus is alive today, there is the possibility that we don’t have to worry quite so much about yesterday. For if he is alive today and can speak to us in the way that many Christians believe he can and does, then we don’t have to worry so much about understanding what went on all those years ago. Jesus can speak directly to us. We don’t need to go through Christians in the past with all their difference and strangeness.
Unfortunately, by claiming that the Jesus we worship today, who we believe speaks to us today, is the same as the man who was ‘crucified under Pontius Pilate’ – as we do – week by week, we are committing ourselves to the importance of history and what happened in the past. We can only know the Jesus who is alive today if we can discover something of the man Pilate crucified. We need to know what it was he said and did then, otherwise what we hear when he speaks to us now, may turn out to be no more than our imagination and wistful thinking.
Time travel may not be a possibility, but historical study, for the Christian at least, is a necessity.
Well, the installation went very well with a full Cathedral. The Cathedral in Hong Kong is not air-conditioned. Sitting, fully-robed in the Cathedral at midday is an interesting experience! I believe the Cathedral people are thinking about air-con - the sooner, the better!
Looking at my diary for the next couple of days, I see I have a School Council meeting tonight, three School assemblies tomorrow morning and then a PTA AGM followed by a PTA Annual dinner tomorrow evening. I think I had better get on with my sermon for Sunday this afternoon if only to remind myself that I am a Vicar!
Here is the next in my Life on Mars series!
Life on Mars: 2. Crucified Under Pontius Pilate
Last time, I wrote about Life on Mars, the BBC police drama series, in which a detective from the present wakes up in 1973 and what a shock life in 1973 is to him. Everything is very different to what he is used to. I know the feeling, I am just about to have a birthday and thinking back to 1973, when I was an older teenager, I am constantly amazed at just how much has changed. Obviously, technology has advanced – assuming you think kids being stuck on playstations for hours or chatting endlessly on Facebook is advancement. In addition to such changes, attitudes and outlooks have changed radically, too.
If this is true in my short lifetime, how much more true is it in the time since the events related in the Bible? How can what people wrote and wrote about 2,000 and more years ago have anything to say to us living in the 21st century. This really is an important issue and Christians are at fault for sometimes acting as if it isn’t. Let me put it another way:
Suppose we were to do a Life on Mars in reverse and transport a Christian leader from the New Testament era to the present and make him a leader of a Church now, how long would it be before he had a nervous breakdown? That’s assuming that the first passing motor car didn’t knock him down. A motor-car being something he would never have seen before and now may never see again! How we do Church, what we believe, how we live, how we relate, everything would be so very, very different. What this leader said to us in his preaching, assuming we gave him the ability to speak Chinese or English, would also sound very different to what we are used to. And this from someone who is a Christian like us. His world was different then, they were different then. If a Christian from the past would have trouble living with us now, why should what Christians wrote in the past be of any relevance to us now? They are not of our world and we are not of theirs.
As L. P. Hartley said: ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’ All this applies to any religion that looks to a founder who lived in the past. But it applies even more to Christianity. For central to Christianity is the belief that God himself in the person of Jesus entered our space-time existence at a specific point in our history. Every week in my Church, we recite the Nicene Creed in which we say of Jesus that ‘he was crucified under Pontius Pilate’.
I think we forget the significance of this. Pontius Pilate was a minor Roman official in a relatively minor part of the Empire, and yet he is remembered every week at the most holy service of the Church’s worship. This is because our faith is centred on something that happened at a particular moment in history. For many Christians, this is rather embarrassing and inconvenient. We want a God who speaks now, not a God who spoke then. History isn’t everyone’s favourite subject and to make history, that is, what happened, 2000 years ago, so central and important seems to create more problems than it solves.
This is, perhaps, one of the reasons why Christians emphasize the resurrection and why the Charismatic movement has been so popular. By emphasizing that Jesus is alive today, there is the possibility that we don’t have to worry quite so much about yesterday. For if he is alive today and can speak to us in the way that many Christians believe he can and does, then we don’t have to worry so much about understanding what went on all those years ago. Jesus can speak directly to us. We don’t need to go through Christians in the past with all their difference and strangeness.
Unfortunately, by claiming that the Jesus we worship today, who we believe speaks to us today, is the same as the man who was ‘crucified under Pontius Pilate’ – as we do – week by week, we are committing ourselves to the importance of history and what happened in the past. We can only know the Jesus who is alive today if we can discover something of the man Pilate crucified. We need to know what it was he said and did then, otherwise what we hear when he speaks to us now, may turn out to be no more than our imagination and wistful thinking.
Time travel may not be a possibility, but historical study, for the Christian at least, is a necessity.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Life on Mars
As promised (see I can keep them promises about posting - well sometimes at least!) here is the first in a series. As I mentioned in the last post, the series was inspired by Life on Mars, the BBC police drama series, which I watched on DVD over the summer. It made me think seriously about how life has changed. We talk about this all the time in Church circles: about how we can apply the Bible to our own day. In other words, the problem of hermeneutics. Where the series really succeeded for me was in getting under the skin of the problem and illustrating how great the problem really is. Anyway, have a read and let me know what you think!
It is a dull, rainy day here, but it is still very hot! Whatever the weather where you are, I hope you have a good week!
Life on Mars
A British television police drama was recently released on DVD, and I have just finished watching it. It won many awards. I don’t know if you have seen it at all. It is called Life on Mars. The story centres around Sam Tyler who is a detective in Manchester, England. He has an accident and wakes up in 1973. At the start of each episode he asks the question: ‘am I mad, in a coma, or back in time? Whatever’s happened, he says, it’s like I have landed on a different planet’.
Sam wakes up to discover that he is now a detective in 1973 Manchester who has just been transferred to a new department. The reason it is like a different planet is because everything is so different to what he is used to. There are the obvious things like the fashions and the clothes that people wear and the fact that there are no mobile phones or computers. But there are many other differences, not least the difference in attitudes and what is considered acceptable and what not. For example, attitudes to women and their role are very different. There are no women in the CID, which is considered a male domain. Jokes which would be considered racist, sexist and offensive today are seen as perfectly normal.
Much of the drama centres on the relationship between Sam and his new boss, Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt. Gene is an unreconstructed whisky swilling male who believes in gut instinct and is suspicious of forensics and the like. Sam says to him: ‘You’re an overweight, over the hill, nicotine-stained, borderline alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding.’ To which Gene replies: ‘You make it sound like a bad thing!’ At first Sam takes a superior attitude to and is very critical of his new colleagues. Gradually, however, he begins to realize that he has some thing to learn from them, and he starts to enjoy his new life.
I was a teenager in the 1970s and what is more came from a police family in the north of England. For me, and those like me, who remember the 1970s, it is a real nostalgia trip. Great attention has been given by the programme makers to getting the historical details right. But it is great drama too with some brilliant writing and acting. Where the programme really succeeds is in getting across how society has changed. It really does look and sound like a different world.
But this is only 35 years ago. A mere generation. If the world has changed so much in so short a time, how much more has it changed since the events of the Bible? Sam finds it hard to understand life 35 years ago. What hope, then, for us to understand the world of the Bible? It is very easy for us to forget just how great the change has been. The things that matter to us and dominate our lives just were not issues.
There was no electricity. There were no cars, trains, or plains. The population was much less and towns and cities much smaller. And, of course, there were no televisions, radios, computers, telephones, and other means of mass communication. Medical science was very primitive and some of the discoveries that have changed our world were still a long way off: vaccinations, for example. I could go on, but I hope you get the point. If Manchester, England in 1973 is a different world for the fictional Sam looking at it from the perspective of the 21st century, how much more the world of the Bible?
This raises the question of what possible relevance the Bible and the events it relates can have to us? What can the Biblical writers possibly have to say that is of any use to us?
It is an issue. Bultmann, in a famous statement, said this:
‘It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.’
Christians believe that while indeed the world may change and change radically almost beyond recognition that God himself does not change. We believe that Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever and that he can speak to our generation as he has spoken to successive generations in the past.
But what of the past and the relevance of the events we read of in the Bible?
More about that next.
As promised (see I can keep them promises about posting - well sometimes at least!) here is the first in a series. As I mentioned in the last post, the series was inspired by Life on Mars, the BBC police drama series, which I watched on DVD over the summer. It made me think seriously about how life has changed. We talk about this all the time in Church circles: about how we can apply the Bible to our own day. In other words, the problem of hermeneutics. Where the series really succeeded for me was in getting under the skin of the problem and illustrating how great the problem really is. Anyway, have a read and let me know what you think!
It is a dull, rainy day here, but it is still very hot! Whatever the weather where you are, I hope you have a good week!
Life on Mars
A British television police drama was recently released on DVD, and I have just finished watching it. It won many awards. I don’t know if you have seen it at all. It is called Life on Mars. The story centres around Sam Tyler who is a detective in Manchester, England. He has an accident and wakes up in 1973. At the start of each episode he asks the question: ‘am I mad, in a coma, or back in time? Whatever’s happened, he says, it’s like I have landed on a different planet’.
Sam wakes up to discover that he is now a detective in 1973 Manchester who has just been transferred to a new department. The reason it is like a different planet is because everything is so different to what he is used to. There are the obvious things like the fashions and the clothes that people wear and the fact that there are no mobile phones or computers. But there are many other differences, not least the difference in attitudes and what is considered acceptable and what not. For example, attitudes to women and their role are very different. There are no women in the CID, which is considered a male domain. Jokes which would be considered racist, sexist and offensive today are seen as perfectly normal.
Much of the drama centres on the relationship between Sam and his new boss, Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt. Gene is an unreconstructed whisky swilling male who believes in gut instinct and is suspicious of forensics and the like. Sam says to him: ‘You’re an overweight, over the hill, nicotine-stained, borderline alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding.’ To which Gene replies: ‘You make it sound like a bad thing!’ At first Sam takes a superior attitude to and is very critical of his new colleagues. Gradually, however, he begins to realize that he has some thing to learn from them, and he starts to enjoy his new life.
I was a teenager in the 1970s and what is more came from a police family in the north of England. For me, and those like me, who remember the 1970s, it is a real nostalgia trip. Great attention has been given by the programme makers to getting the historical details right. But it is great drama too with some brilliant writing and acting. Where the programme really succeeds is in getting across how society has changed. It really does look and sound like a different world.
But this is only 35 years ago. A mere generation. If the world has changed so much in so short a time, how much more has it changed since the events of the Bible? Sam finds it hard to understand life 35 years ago. What hope, then, for us to understand the world of the Bible? It is very easy for us to forget just how great the change has been. The things that matter to us and dominate our lives just were not issues.
There was no electricity. There were no cars, trains, or plains. The population was much less and towns and cities much smaller. And, of course, there were no televisions, radios, computers, telephones, and other means of mass communication. Medical science was very primitive and some of the discoveries that have changed our world were still a long way off: vaccinations, for example. I could go on, but I hope you get the point. If Manchester, England in 1973 is a different world for the fictional Sam looking at it from the perspective of the 21st century, how much more the world of the Bible?
This raises the question of what possible relevance the Bible and the events it relates can have to us? What can the Biblical writers possibly have to say that is of any use to us?
It is an issue. Bultmann, in a famous statement, said this:
‘It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.’
Christians believe that while indeed the world may change and change radically almost beyond recognition that God himself does not change. We believe that Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever and that he can speak to our generation as he has spoken to successive generations in the past.
But what of the past and the relevance of the events we read of in the Bible?
More about that next.
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