Category: Jesus
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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: Jesus stood deeply within a religious tradition but stood back from it, and challenged it, …
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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…
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98. The Raising of Lazarus: Part 2
June 2021 Mulling on the stories of Jesus Resurrection appearances in all four Gospels a number of themes emerged: [1] Those who go looking for the dead body of Jesus don’t find Him. [2] They mostly find its absence frightening. [3] The Risen Jesus appears unexpectedly to others who were not looking for Him, although often they don’t…
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97. The Raising of Lazarus: Part 1
June2021 I marked Easter this year by mulling on the Resurrection stories in the Gospels, and found myself led from those in John’s Gospel to John’s account of the raising of Lazarus, where I was struck by both the similarities and the differences between the stories of Jesus’ Resurrection and that of Lazarus. We see a…
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70. The Lords Prayer
July 2019 The Gospels have two versions of the Lords Prayer, one in Luke and the other in Matthew. It is interesting to see them together, when it becomes clear that Luke’s version is shorter than Matthew’s. Luke 11:2-4 Father Hallowed be your name Your kingdom come Give us each day our daily bread And…
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69. Following Jesus
June 2019 I’ve been thinking about the Beatitudes recently. Luke’s version sounds simpler and thus more original. ‘Blessed are the poor, the hungry and those who weep’. After his baptism we are told that Jesus was led into the wilderness for a time. He must have been poor: there’s no indication in the Gospels that he ever…
