Category: Jesus
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137 The Last Supper
Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting “The Last Supper” is for many Christians the clearest image they have of The Last Supper. He painted it on one wall of a monastic refectory where the brothers would have sat along the other three walls for their meals. For them Christ and His disciples would have been present…
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134. Jesus Calling: a shorter version
John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus went to John to be baptised so he must have had something to repent of. After his baptism, Jesus had a powerful spiritual experience in which God spoke to him. The baptism & the spiritual experience were separate events. The latter…
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133. The Calling of Jesus
This piece has been some time in its gestation, it’s something that I sense has been revealed to me over a period of time, and that it’s now time to share it. I sense that there is truth in it. I might of course be wrong, or there might simply be bits of truth in it.…
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132 The Flight into Egypt
The Flight into Egypt by Henry Ossawa Tanner [1859-1937] The journey of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to the land of Egypt takes place under the cover of darkness. The fact that it happens ‘by night’ (Matthew 2:14) underscores the urgent note of danger and the threat of death. As the angel announces to Joseph, Herod is…
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129. Supper with Jesus
We see a painting which will be described in detail, below. This painting is entitled ‘Supper at Emmaus’ and Caravaggio painted it in 1602. He was a hugely gifted and theologically perceptive painter with a bit of a reputation for violent behaviour: he often had to leave town in a hurry. Before we look at…
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126. Was Jesus feral?
Autumn 2022 I think that you can make a good case for Jesus being feral. If feral means that something/somebody has returned to a natural state from one of captivity or domestication, then I reckon that Jesus fits. Consider this: I think that you could make a similar case for Paul, Francis, and other significant…
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121. Rehabilitating Judas
May 2023 One of the benefits of being feral is that I feel freer than before to think creatively about my faith. I’ve done that with my thinking about Jesus’ death, and through Holy Week and Easter this year I’ve found myself wondering about Judas, whom I fancy may has had a raw deal from…
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110. Jesus died for God
September 2022 I have never found the idea of Jesus’s death being a sacrifice a meaningful one. Quite the contrary. What sort of God needs to sacrifice his child in order to be at peace with what He has created? That sounds barbaric to me. I can understand why the first Jewish Christians understood Jesus death in those terms.…
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105. Our temptations
January 2022 We are each called to incarnate some aspect[s] of God in our life, that is our calling, our vocation. It will be what brings us fully alive as a son or daughter of God. Moreover whatever we incarnate of God, being ‘of God’, will be eternal. It will be at least part of…
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99. The Raising of Lazarus: Part 3
June 2021 There is another question that John’s story of Lazarus raised for me. Jesus is described as loving Martha, Mary & their brother Lazarus. When He arrived at Lazarus tomb John tells us that Jesus wept, such that the onlookers said “how dearly He must have loved him”. John makes it clear that Jesus loved Lazarus…