Why do the genealogies between David and Jesus differ so much?
Why are there only 12 (or 13 if you count Jesus) generations after the exile in Matthew’s account, when the writer claims there are 14 in each era?
How can the claim that one genealogy reflects Mary’s ancestry be supported?
Are we told anywhere in the Bible that Mary is descended from David?
Does this discrepancy cast doubt on the Bible as ‘the infallible Word of God’?

There are some preliminary points to make about the use of genealogies by the gospel writers. Firstly, they were a common way of starting a ‘biography’ in the culture of the time. Secondly, within Jewish circles genealogies were important as they proved whether you were a genuine member of the chosen people or not. At this point it’s also worth noting that the tradition of the ‘virgin birth’ would not effect Jesus’ genealogy, as there was a concept of ‘legal parentage’ in the Levitical tradition that saw the child’s mother’s first husband to be regarded as the father.

Against this background the gospel writers wanted to establish Jesus’ credentials and make statements about him. However, the existence of two differing genealogies that contradict each other does seem to be problematic.

Construction problems
Some of the problems can be linked to source material. It has been noted that Luke’s account partly follows the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was in common use among Greek-speaking Jews from about the first century BCE, while the names in Matthew seem to parallel the names in the Masoretic Hebrew text 1. Names change in translation, so this may account for some of the discrepancies.

There is also an interpolation in Luke’s account, where he calls “Joanan” “the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel” (chapter 3 verse 27). In fact, Rhesa is the Aramaic word for ‘prince’. ‘Joanan’ is a Greek variant of Hananiah and in 1 Chronicles chapter 3, verse 19, Zerubbabel’s son is called Hananiah. Zerubbabel was considered a ‘prince’ among the Jews who returned from exile, so it would appear this title was mistakenly included in the genealogy that the gospel writer constructed.

Attempts at reconciliation
There have been other attempts to reconcile these differences. One way is to note that ‘son of’ can also mean ‘descendent of’. It was common for contemporary Jews to identify themselves as ‘children of Abraham’, that is descendants of Abraham. Also, it has been suggested that Matthew listed the heirs to the throne of David rather than the actual people involved, as an attempt to underline Jesus’ royal descent. This would explain why the two genealogies diverge at this point, with Matthew listing Solomon after David, while Luke lists Nathan.

Another attempt at reconciling the two is to suggest that one of the genealogies is actually Mary’s; the first known version of this ‘solution’ was by Annius of Viterbo in about AD 1490. There is a long-standing tradition that Luke gathered his unique material for his gospel in ‘interviews’ with Mary after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Also Luke’s account focuses more on Mary while Matthew’s focuses on Joseph. If this unverified tradition were true, then that would add weight to the idea that his different genealogy could have been Mary’s rather than Joseph’s.

Unfortunately for this theory, both genealogies claim to represent Joseph’s family tree. Neither gospel refers to Mary as having Davidic descent. In Luke Joseph has to go to the ‘town of David’ and takes Mary with him because she is betrothed to him. In Matthew, Joseph is called ‘Son of David’ when visited by an angel (Matthew chapter 1, verse 20). The account of Mary’s angelic visitation also includes a reference to Joseph’s ancestry (Luke chapter 1, verse 27).

A different purpose?
It would appear then, that at least one of these accounts cannot be accurate. However, it could be asked whether they were ever meant to be considered as accurate records. The genealogies in both gospels serve a particular theological purpose.

In Matthew the gospel writer breaks the genealogy down into three sections of fourteen names, each marking a section of time. The three sections are from the covenant with Abraham until the crowning of King David, from David until the exile in Babylon, and then from the return from exile until the birth of Jesus. Matthew appears to count the exile as a ‘generation’, as only 13 names are listed after it (although this might be a textual flaw).

Fourteen was a significant number in first century Jewish thought. The Hebrew letters that spell ‘David’ add up to 14 if used as numbers. In addition, what Matthew is outlining are six ‘weeks’. The arrival of Jesus is highly symbolic then, as it marks the beginning of a seventh ‘week’ in God’s plan. Matthew may be implying that Jesus’ arrival marks the culmination of God’s salvation work and the beginning of a ‘Messianic Sabbath’.

Including women
In addition, Matthew takes the highly unusual, and even potentially scandalous, step of including women in his genealogy. These aren’t just any women – he lists Tamar who was made pregnant by her father-in-law, Judah; Rahab the Canaanite prostitute who aided the spies in Jericho; Ruth who was a Moabite; and Bathsheba the adulteress and mother of Solomon.

Matthew’s purpose in including all four ‘fallen women’ could be a deliberate attempt to counter accusations related to Jesus’ own conception. Although Matthew claims that a ‘virgin birth’ took place, doubts were cast about who Jesus’ father was during his ministry 2. Matthew includes these four women to make the point that many of the great Jewish heroes had dubious parentage.

There are also similarities between the genealogies. Both are set up to show Jesus’ descent from King David. As Rob Bell notes ‘Son of David’ was a “volatile term… Just to say the name was to drag up all of the pain of exile and oppression and failure, and at the same time all of the hope and longing and suspended promises that hung in the first-century air.” 3

Pagan terms made acceptable
Similarly both emphasise Jesus’ humanity. This is particularly the case in Luke, where the genealogy follows the proclamation that Jesus is the ‘Son of God’ in chapter 3, verse 24. In the wider pagan culture that title could have been interpreted as Jesus being a ‘demigod’ like some of the Greek heroes. It was also a title applied to Roman Emperors whose divinity was to be worshipped throughout the Empire. Evidence of Emperor worship in first century Palestine has been found, so like ‘Son of David’, ‘Son of God’ was also a loaded term.

Luke’s insistence on the humanness of Jesus allows him to apply a ‘pagan’ title to Jesus without offending Jewish sensibilities. Luke also traces Jesus’ lineage back to Adam, the first ‘son of God’, to demonstrate this is an ‘acceptable’ term for Jewish believers to use.

Conclusion
These differences underline the twin aims of the gospel writers in constructing these genealogies. They wanted to reinforce their claims about Jesus Christ and to make specific religious claims about him. Perhaps the genealogies are best read like that, with the claims they make about Jesus being the Messiah, seen as the main point for their inclusion in the gospels.

Notes
1 G.B. Caird, Saint Luke (Pelican New Testament Commentary 1963), p.19
2 In a confrontation with the Pharisees in John chapter 8, they effectively call Jesus an illegitimate child (verse 41). This probably represents a genuine criticism of Jesus by the religious elite during his ministry.
3 Rob Bell, Jesus Wants to Save Christians (Zondervan, 2008) p.79

I have read that Jesus only spoke in parables. I would like to know your thoughts on the subject of “The rich man and Lazarus”. I would just like to know if it is a true story or just a story to make a point.

‘The Rich Man and Lazarus’ is a parable of Jesus which is only found in Luke’s gospel (Luke chapter 16, verses 19 – 31). The basic thread of the story is that a rich man and a beggar, Lazarus, both die. The rich man goes to hell and sees Lazarus in “Abraham’s bosom” (a phrase equating to paradise or heaven) and begs Lazarus to come and bring him water. Lazarus can’t help him because he cannot cross the gulf between heaven and hell.

This parable has sometimes been cited as evidence that Jesus taught a ‘literal’ doctrine of hell – a place of eternal torment for the wicked – which, the theory goes, Jesus, as the pre-existent son of God would be able to describe from a position of knowledge. However, despite the popularity of this story as ‘evidence’ for hell, the fact remains it is a parable and no definite conclusions to its literal truth can be drawn.

Generally speaking, it is assumed that parables are stories told to convey a ‘deeper truth’. In this case the message of the parable is such that the parable is classed as an ‘example parable’, designed to make the listener/reader examine their own lives and actions.

The reason the rich man ends up in a place of torment is his own selfishness in life, refusing to share the riches that God has blessed him with. He ignores Lazarus, the beggar at his gate and is judged for it. The upshot of the story is found at the end when the rich man begs Lazarus be sent back from the dead to warn his brothers of the dreadful fate in store for them if they act in a similarly selfish way.

Jesus concludes his story with the rich man being told that if his brothers didn’t believe the Law and the Prophets, then they wouldn’t believe a man coming back from the dead (verse 31). This is Jesus’ commentary on the Law and Prophetic teaching of the Judaism of his time – that it can be distilled as showing compassion, or love, for the poor and dispossessed. Equally, in including the reference to a man coming back from the dead, the gospel writer is also making a wry reference to those who will not accept the teaching of Jesus, especially after he is resurrected.

Jesus then probably told the parable to make his audience think about their priorities in life. Whether he was basing it on a true series of events isn’t really relevant to the point of the parable, and certainly cannot be proven one way or the other.

According to Romans chapter 1, verse 20 what specifically has God “Made” that leaves us without excuse?

This verse in Romans is referring to an argument for the existence of God, deduced from the existence of the world around us. Sometimes this is referred to as ‘natural theology’, or in philosophical terms as the ‘cosmological argument’ (from the Greek word ‘kosmos’ meaning ‘world’). What the writer, usually thought to be the apostle Paul, is saying, is that the existence of the world is evidence of God’s existence and because this is so obvious, anyone who does not worship God has no excuse for their impiety.

In the Epistle to the Romans Paul advances several ‘apologetic’ arguments, that is, he states reasons why he thinks people should accept Jesus Christ as their saviour (see chapter 1, verse 16). Paul begins his argument by explaining why every human needs a saviour. Pointing to the universality of human sinfulness, he cites the rejection of God, despite the ‘evidence’ of God’s existence, as proof that humans are sinful.

Although Paul uses the existence of the world as evidence for God, he also denies that any human being can achieve perfect knowledge of God from just looking at the world. This is quite important given the cultural prevalence of gnosticism at the time. Some gnostic sects taught that God could be understood through study and contemplation, which may explain why Paul dismisses those who claim to be wise as “fools” in verse 22.

In recent years natural theology has declined in favour. Evangelicals point to the ‘fallen nature’ of the world, which limits any understanding of God from nature. The growth in empirical scientific understanding of the world has also undermined the cosmological argument for the existence of God, with many other hypotheses put forward. However, the longstanding belief in God as the creator means many Christians would probably claim the existence of the world/universe was evidence, even if only limited evidence, for the existence of God.

Question 123, from ‘Sandra’

I was told there were six pagan quotes in the New Testament. Can you list them?

The New Testament was written in Greek, with many of the letters written in a multi-cultural society, so the fact that popular quotations from ‘pagan’ authors appear in the New Testament is unsurprising. What is more surprising for many people is to learn that phrases and words ascribed to Jesus himself often have ‘pagan’ roots and imply that Jesus was aware of contemporary pagan culture.

Examples of this include the word ‘hypocrite’, which was usually used in the context of Greek theatre to mean ‘actor’. It is certainly a Greek (Hellenistic) word that owes nothing to the Jewish culture or faith. In The Cosmopolitan World of Jesus, author Carsten Peter Theide puts forward a thesis that Jesus may have been a theatre-goer, or was exposed to pagan culture in Sepphoris, an almost-exclusively Roman city next to Nazareth (op cit, chapter 2). Similarly studies have been made of gnostic or other religious words (e.g. ‘logos’) which appear in to have been appropriated by the authors of the New Testament.

In Paul’s letters and recorded speeches, there are considerable allusions and references to pagan culture. When Paul recounts his conversion experience in Acts chapter 26, verse 13, he actually quotes a line from a play by Aeschylus [Agamemnon 1624]. It may be Paul was trying to impress the procurator Festus, which is why he uses the phrase “It is hard for you to kick against the goads” in addition to the words recorded in Acts chapter 9, verse 4 (“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”).

Paul used two pagan quotes in the hope of sparking a discussion at the Areopagus, recorded in Acts chapter 17, verse 28. The phrase “in him we live and move and have our being” is found in the poem Cretica, written by Epimenides in the 6th century BC, although in the poem the description is applied to Zeus.

Paul then builds on this quote, adding “your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring’.” This is a direct quote from the Stoic thinker Aratus [Phainomena 5], although Aratus ascribes the origin of humanity to Zeus. What Paul is trying to do is confront idol-worship, be arguing if humans are ‘god’s offspring’, then god must be alive, not a statue. He uses the quote from Aratus to discredit idol-worship, before introducing his own view of who God is.

The epistles attributed to Paul also contain some pagan quotes. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 33, he quotes a line from Euripedes’ play Aiolos (“Bad company ruins good morals”), and the line also appears in a play called Thais by Menander, who probably initially coined it as a maxim.

In Titus chapter 1, verse 12, Paul warns Titus about the moral failings of the people Titus is living among on Crete, again quoting the poet Epimenides who says “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” However, it’s worth pointing out the lie Epimenides referred to was the claim that Zeus was mortal, which was apparently believed on Crete.

In summary, there are at least six references which can be attributed to pagan authors:

Acts chapter 17, verse 8 – Epimenides
Acts chapter 17, verse 8 – Aratus
Acts chapter 26, verse 13 – Aeschylus
1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 33 – taken from Euripedes, and probably Menander
Titus chapter 1, verse 12 – Epimenides

There is also a reference in Jude, verses 14-15, which is a direct quote from the book of Enoch, although this should be regarded as a quote from an extra-Biblical (or apocryphal) work, rather than a ‘pagan’ author like those listed above. For a previous freelance theology article on the Book of Enoch, please click here.

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I have read and reread Matthew chapter 24 and from what I see, Jesus was talking directly to the apostles about what would happen to them specifically. As far as the “generation” He spoke of, how could He mean something thousands of years away? I am beginning to see why Jews have nothing to do with Christ.

I smell a cover up and seriously wonder if the Christian community will ever come clean on this issue.

This question highlights a major difficulty with eschatology (the study of the ‘end times’). Certainly, a number of studies of the Christian belief about the end of the world ignore sections of the Bible, such as Matthew chapter 24, which suggest the second coming/judgement day is just about to happen, although this shouldn’t perhaps be viewed as a deliberate “cover up”.

In Matthew chapter 24, Jesus is recorded as warning his disciples about the imminent destruction of the Temple (verse 2), and how they could tell when the destruction is going to happen. It is generally accepted that the reference to “the abomination that causes desolation” – a phrase used in the book of Daniel – was probably a coded reference to the standards of the Roman legions, which were considered to be idols. According to the ‘prophecy’, When the Roman standards were placed in the Temple, the city would be destroyed.

While there are a number of different theories as to when the gospel we call Matthew was written, the majority of scholars would say it was written after the destruction of Jerusalem. The debate then hinges on whether this is a genuine prophecy from Jesus regarding the destruction of the Temple, or whether it’s been written ‘after the fact’ to explain why the Temple has been destroyed.

If there was a Jewish-Christian faction who saw Christianity as a renewal movement in Judaism rather than a new religion in its own right, the destruction of the Temple would have cast significant doubt on the veracity of Christ’s teaching. Matthew, long recognised to be the most ‘Jewish’ gospel, may have included this whole passage precisely to counteract the argument that the destruction of the Temple disproved Jesus’ claims to be the Jewish messiah.

The destruction of Jerusalem is closely linked with Jesus’ description of the end times. In fact, Jesus is recorded as telling his disciples that the “days will shortened” (verse 22) between the destruction of Jerusalem and when the ‘Son of Man’ comes in glory (verse 30). After telling his disciples to be mindful of the ‘signs of the times’, he then says that all this will happen before “this generation” passes away.

The New Testament is definitely written anticipating the future return of Christ within a lifetime. In the fourth gospel, there is a story included to disavow the rumour that Jesus would return within the lifetime of the ‘beloved disciple’ (John chapter 21, verses 22-23). But the common thread to all references to the second coming/end of the world is that nobody knows when it will be. In Matthew chapter 24, verse 36, Jesus is recorded as saying even he doesn’t know when the end would come. Previously in Matthew, Jesus refers to the time ‘being short’ (chapter 10, verse 23) and explicitly states that “some standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (chapter 16, verse 28).

The fact that the New Testament anticipates Jesus’ return “soon” (Revelation chapter 22, verse 20), without defining how long that ‘soon’ will be, has led to a number of different possibilities being put forward.

The simplest solution to the conundrum is that Jesus was prophesying and got it half right – the destruction of Jerusalem, but not the follow on end of the world. Obviously, Christians who hold that Jesus was the incarnate Son of God would be very unhappy at this interpretation. However, it has been a long-standing tradition within Christian theology that as a human being, Jesus felt hunger, thirst and grief, but as the incarnate Son, he exhibited divine characteristics such as prophecy and miraculous acts. It would be possible to claim that in his human person, Jesus made a mistake, stemming from the human limits to his knowledge (chapter 24, verse 36). This mistake would have no bearing on his deity, or his divine nature.

Another explanation is that the gospel writer got it wrong. It is simply impossible to know that the words recorded as coming from Jesus were actually spoken by him. If the writer(s) of Matthew was of the Jewish-Christian tradition, maybe for him the destruction of the Temple felt very much like a prelude to the end of the world. Jesus’ words may have been recast to reflect the writer’s state of mind.

Tying in to this is the alternative translation of the word ‘genea’, which can mean ‘generation’ or ‘race’ (it is the root of our English word genealogy). If Jesus meant ‘race’, then he was saying there would still be ethnic Jews present to witness the second coming, which, given the situation under the Roman occupiers may have looked uncertain at the time the gospel was written. However, ‘genea’ is ambiguous, and certainly it would seem, from context, that the word ‘generation’ was meant.

In terms of understanding how apocalyptic predictions are not necessarily future predictions, it helps to think of ‘apocalyptic’ literature being rooted in its contemporary culture. Certainly Revelation reflects the first century experience of the church in a hostile society. Matthew’s gospel also reflects a particular expression of early Christian culture, in this case the believing Jews who still practised elements of the Jewish faith, including Temple worship.

There is, of course, a large subculture within the Christian faith dedicated to studying the ‘end times’ and predicting the future return of Christ. For them explaining why Jesus promises an imminent end of the world, which is still yet to happen, becomes a challenge.

One method of explaining confusions in Scripture is to use Scripture to interpret itself. So, those who would hold that Jesus didn’t make mistakes when prophesying, and that the Bible is accurate, would probably appeal to the ‘Great Commission’ that appears in Matthew chapter 28, verse 16-20. In this Jesus tells his followers to “go and make disciples of all nations” (verse 19). Not only has this phrase inspired centuries of dedicated missionary work, it has become a key element in ‘predicting’ the end of the world. According to this theory, until this condition is met, and there is a believer in every nation (or ‘people group’), Christ will not return.

In terms of understanding Matthew chapter 24, it’s interesting that this phrase appears only a short while later, admittedly after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Given that it’s a later statement, it can be regarded as superceding Jesus’ previous prophecy. There is, of course a religious historical precedent for prophecies of destruction not coming true referred to in Matthew – the case of Jonah’s prophecy about Ninevah. The gospel writer(s) describe the resurrection as ‘the sign of Jonah’ in chapters 12, verses 38-41 and 16, verse 4. It is interesting if Jesus’ ‘prophecy’ followed the same pattern as Jonah’s.

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Dear freelance theology: I see the use of the term(s) “signs and wonders” numerous times in the New Testament, particularly in the Gospels signifying Jesus’ ministry. In my reading of Christian books, I cannot seem to find a description or definition of exactly what “signs and wonders” are. I see where “wonders” could mean the miracles themselves that Jesus performed, but what is a “sign” that Jesus would have used and what is its significance? Can you help me out, please.

There are several Greek words used for miracles in the New Testament. Words like dunameis (powerful act) or teraton (literally ‘wonders’) are frequently used, as well as the word semeia meaning ‘signs’.

Generally the attitude of the gospel writers is that miracles testify to the truth of Christianity. In Romans chapter 15, verse 19, Paul links his performance of miracles with the conversion of gentile believers. When Jesus is asked by John the Baptist’s followers whether he is the messiah, he instructs them to: “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised…” (Luke chapter 7, verse 22). The miracles are the ‘proof’ as it were of Jesus’ messiah-ship.

As such, the miracles were also ‘signs’ to those who had the ability to see deeper. This is drawn out explicitly in the fourth gospel, where the author doesn’t include the huge number of miracles attested to in the Synoptic gospels, but those miracles that are included are referred to as a ‘signs’.

There is a large amount of symbolism at work, so for example the healing of a man born blind in John chapter 9 is contrasted with the ‘spiritual blindness’ of the Pharisees. The miraculous provision of wine at the wedding in Cana (John chapter 2) contains a huge amount of theological symbolism, not least in the use of water that was intended for Jewish purification rites being transformed.

The ‘sign’ then is the deeper meaning of a reported miracle, either in attesting to who Jesus really is, or making some kind of theological point.

Thanks for your question, LJ.

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I’ve been living in Sweden for two months now and have come across a puzzling difference between the translations of the Bible that we commonly use in the UK and their Swedish equivalent…

And again in the Swedish bibles it reads almost word for word, but with the word women taken out and replaced with “them”. Is there some kind of conspiracy going on?

This is particularly of interest to some of my friends who are female, Swedish and have leadership gifts, but have been taught by the Swedish state church that women are not allowed to lead.

The problem here lies in the particular texts used by the translators. A variant reading of Colossians chapter 4, verse 15 does read ‘his house’, rather than ‘her house’. It was this reading that was used in the English King James Version, drawing on the ‘Received text’ that was prepared by the scholar Erasmus during the Reformation and was also used by Martin Luther in his German translation of the New Testament. As the Scandinavian state churches are Lutheran, it is highly likely their traditional translations are also based on the ‘Received text’.

It’s worth noting that the ‘Received text’ is so called because it was the complete Greek text that Luther and others received from Erasmus. Despite the subsequent claims of supporters of the King James Version, the title ‘Received text’ does not imply any greater authority. In fact it was an edited Greek text drawing on the best-preserved manuscripts of the time, prepared in virtually the same way as modern textual scholars collate Greek texts to produce the most accurate version possible.

In the past 500 years or so, a number of earlier, and therefore arguably more reliable, texts have been discovered. In these earlier manuscripts ‘Nymphas and the church in her house’ (oikon autes: literally ‘house, belonging to her’) is the more common reading. In more recent collated Greek textual versions of the New Testament (e.g. Nestle-Aland fourth revised edition, published by the United Bible Societies in 1993), this textual form is given, with a footnote recording the textual variant oikon autou (‘house, of him’). It is therefore at the discretion of the translator whether Nymphas is considered to be a man or a woman.

The strong likelihood is that Nymphas is a woman’s name and the earliest texts bear this out. It could be presumed that with the growth of an exclusively male priesthood, it was naturally assumed that Nymphas would be a man, because of the implication that Nymphas led the church that met in his/her house.

In Philippians chapter 4, verse 2-3, the correct translation is actually the Swedish one. The passage reads ‘help them’ (sulambanou autais) and the word ‘women’ does not appear. But this translation, while accurate, is slightly disingenuous because there is no other way for us to tell in translation that Euodia and Synteche are women, as their names suggest. Paul refers to them as ‘fellow contenders for the truth’ and as ‘co-workers’, indicating some level of equality in service. Translating ‘autais’ as merely ‘them’ does not indicate the gender of the two women (who were undoubtedly women), leaving the modern reader uncertain as to their gender, and perhaps assuming that such named and important individuals would be male.

So, in short, there is probably something of a conspiracy, but it has its roots way back in the early history of Christianity as women were marginalised from positions of leadership. Most contemporary scholars and translators would seek to redress the balance by highlighting the gender of these leaders who worked alongside the apostle Paul (e.g. by inserting the word ‘women’ into the translation for clarity). The fact that the institutional church in Sweden has not incorporated these findings into current practice or translation probably indicates a continuing bias against women in leadership roles that has more to do with historical prejudice than accurate Biblical scholarship.

Thanks for your question, JM.

Can the Easter accounts in the gospels ever truly be reconciled to each other?

The many differences between the respective Easter accounts, particularly regarding the resurrection, in the four gospels, and to a lesser extent, the writings of Paul, cast considerable doubt on the historical veracity of the gospels. The gospel writers appear to contradict each other and, given the widespread critical assumption that Matthew and Luke relied on the earlier gospel of Mark, these differences are hard to explain. Added to that, the enigmatic fourth gospel, and Paul’s occasional references to historical events (which may be earlier than any of the gospels), both seem to add further contradictions.

However, John Wenham, in his book Easter Enigma [2nd Edition, Paternoster Press, 1992 or 1996], does attempt to reconcile the differing traditions to each other. Noting that the contradictions in the resurrection accounts actually undermine the source critical assumptions made by many New Testament scholars, Wenham argues that the three Synoptic gospels are independent versions which each enshrine facets of the earliest teaching in the Jerusalem-based church.

Wenham outlines his argument thus: “It is by no means easy to see how these things can be fitted together while remaining strictly faithful to what the writers say…[but] It now seems to me that these resurrection stories exhibit in a remarkable way the well-known characteristics of accurate and independent reporting, for superficially they show great disharmony, but on close examination the details gradually fall into place.” [Op cit p.11]

Recent New testament study has seen a departure from the old source critical positions, which saw the Synoptic writers as highly dependent on each other. Whether Wenham’s hypothesis of ‘independent reporting’ is true is, naturally, a matter for debate, but it does ring true. Even today, reports of a major news story would appear differently in a tabloid, or a broadsheet newspaper, or, to use a contemporary analogy, on CNBC or Al-jazeera.

An aspect of this independent reporting is that the confusion between the writers over who did what and when, can be reconciled. An example Wenham cites is the women listed as standing at the foot of the cross. Matthew and Mark mention three women, while John mentions Mary, the mother of Jesus alongside three other women. All these women appear to have different names in the three accounts, but Wenham suggests, quite sensibly, that it is possible for a woman to be referred to by three names. He posits that Matthews “the mother of the sons of Zebedee” could be the same person as Mark’s “Salome” and John’s “Jesus’ mothers’ sister” (i.e. his aunt). This does raise the intriguing question of whether Jesus was the cousin of James and John, the sons of Zebedee. [See Wenham, op cit pp34-36]

One criticism that could be made of Wenham is that he does not engage with the gospel accounts at anything other then face value. But the question he has set out to prove is that the four accounts can be reconciled. Whether they are reliable and can be believed is, of course, a matter of personal faith on the part of the reader.

Thanks for asking your question, PW.

If you stopped anyone on the street and asked them what the Bible was they’d probably end up telling you it was a religious book. So, it always amazes me how anti-religious the Bible can sometimes be. It seems ironic that the real villains of this section of Scripture are in fact the people who should be ‘in the know’. They are the holiest men from among God’s chosen people and yet the ruling religious elite seems to get things awfully wrong.

Looking at this passage of scripture we see that the set-up, as is so common in the gospel accounts, is a question: “Who sinned? Was it this man or his parents?” (verse 2). Usually when a question is asked it’s prefaced by a comment like ‘some of the teachers of the law were trying to trick Jesus so they asked him a tough question’, but here this isn’t a ‘test case’; it isn’t a semi-philosophical conundrum designed to catch Jesus out. It’s a genuine question from his disciples.

The common theory of the time was that usually sickness was a result of sin. In many ways the ‘health and wealth’ prosperity teaching that we have inflicted upon us by fundamentalist Bible preachers and satellite television is nothing new. The claim that ‘real believers don’t get sick’ – and it’s flipside: that if you do get sick, then you’re not a real believer – were as prevalent in Jesus’ day as they are now. And yet like many discerning believers today, such blanket claims and such patently false teaching was often questioned by those who had experienced life and knew that good people got sick and died while bad people seemed to prosper. This question from the disciples is a genuine one. They want to know what Jesus really thinks about this situation, because it seems ridiculously unfair.

What could a person have done – what sin was so great? – that they would be struck blind from birth? What did their parents do and, more importantly, what does it say about God’s justice that this man may be suffering as a result of someone else’s sin? It’s actually a hugely open-ended question and one that must have puzzled the disciples. They were used to hearing the religious types castigating the beggars and lepers as sinners (conveniently meaning you didn’t have to feel compassion or pity for them – they must deserve whatever sickness they are suffering from).

And in this religious worldview, the disciples presented Jesus with the two options they had heard – it was either this man or his parents who had sinned. Jesus could have picked one and gone on to do something else. All the other rabbis were giving a simplistic answer to the conundrum that besets the believer when faced by seemingly random evil. He didn’t take the easy option and get judgmental. But he did make a judgment call.

The disciples question masks the real question: what is God doing in the world when things like this happen? Why is this man blind? And Jesus’ response is to say ‘this is what God’s doing. If you need some sort of proof that God really does care, here it is.’ And then he spits on the ground, rubs the mud on the man’s eyes and sends him away to wash the mud off.

I don’t really know what was going through the guy’s head when he heard the conversation about sin and stuff. He was probably used to it, thinking ‘oh, here we go, another “holy man” going to tell me I’m a sinner’. He was probably used to people spitting on him too, so hearing Jesus getting some spit together (getting ready to huck a loogie as our transatlantic brethren would call it) wouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. He was probably quite glad that when Jesus spat he missed his target. He wasn’t to know that Jesus was aiming at the floor.

When Jesus healed lepers he broke one of society’s taboos and touched people, and reaching out and touching a beggar was also unusual – they were obviously ‘sinners after all! And I think it’s interesting that this blind man heard Jesus’ command to go and wash and followed it through. The author of John’s gospel, traditionally the apostle John, notes that the pool the blind man is sent to is called ‘sent’. There is a direct correlation between the man’s healing and his obedience when he hears the command of Jesus. As with the ministry of the apostles whom Jesus sends out to do the work of the Kingdom, the effects of the Kingdom of God, in this case – healing, dynamically break through into ordinary life when the man is sent. [And note he is actually sent away from Jesus. He had to leave the place he was in, the begging station he probably knew so well and go to a different part of the city; perhaps somewhere he didn’t know well. I don’t know if there’s any significance in that, but it’s also interesting.]

And of course he’s healed. His friends and neighbours were mystified. Not even sure if he was the same guy. Was this some kind of trick? But note the reaction of the religious leaders as the news started to spread. The man had been taken to the Pharisees. We aren’t told why. Perhaps it was to have the miracle authenticated. We don’t know. But we do know that the Pharisees weren’t best pleased. I think there is something crucial here that I’d like to explore over three points.

Firstly: this healing has occurred, but there is scepticism at work, rooted in the fact that it’s happened on the Sabbath. This is an objection to Jesus’ actions that came up again and again – how could you do the things of God if it meant working on the Sabbath? We might think it’s a bit daft, but given that the Sabbath had been divinely instituted – it features in the core of God’s law as revealed in the early part of the Old Testament, when Yahweh God give his Ten Commandments to Moses – it throws up a quandary. If Jesus is healing through the power of Yahweh God, then why is he doing this ‘work’ on the Sabbath, as Yahweh God told people to preserve the Sabbath as a holy day of rest?

Well, perhaps it’s down to a misunderstanding as to what the Sabbath is really about and people not realising who Jesus really is. Elsewhere in the gospels Jesus tells the religious leaders that the Sabbath was made for man, not the other way around (see Mark chapter 2, verse 27). In other words the Sabbath is important because human beings need to rest and take time out to consider God’s priorities. The problem was that ‘observing the Sabbath’ had taken priority – the thing that was there to meet the needs of the people had become this thing that placed extra demands on the people.

Societal structures often have a habit of doing that. The welfare state is a fantastic, and I believe God-honouring idea, but too often those who depend most heavily on it have to spend far too much time filling in forms and going to interviews and examinations. What has happened is that something that was designed to serve vulnerable people has started making demands on those people and they have to jump through the various hoops imposed on them. The principle of government is another example. We vote for people who become servants of the people in their constituency, but our relationship with the ‘Government’ is one of oppression and being made to conform to certain rules. The institution that was created to protect and benefit society now demands we serve it.

But compared to religious structures, other societal institutions that exercise wrongful authority pale into insignificance. What has happened here? The religious leaders have substituted cast-iron rules and regulations instead of a personal love for the ways of God. It is the bane of religion that it is so much easier to create a checklist of do’s and don’ts that will dictate whether you are holy or not. It is so easy to substitute ‘morality’ (usually based on God’s ideals, but still only a way of living, when it comes down to it) for a genuine relationship with God.

And that’s what has happened in this situation. The religious leaders know that the Sabbath rules have been broken so they quiz the man. When they don’t get any satisfactory answers from him, they question his parents. I feel for his parents. They have suffered years of shame from having a son who was born blind – the whispers, the word ‘sinners’ muttered behind their back – and then when this incredible event happens, the religious people who had condemned them as sinful don’t even give these parents the opportunity to rejoice in their son’s healing before dragging them into the synagogue and giving them the third degree. The parents deflect the questions back to their son out of fear. (It’s sad, isn’t it, how religion intimidates people?)

So then the Pharisees ask the man the questions again and at this point he starts getting annoyed and eventually gets facetious, as all sensible people tend to when faced by hardcore religious dogmatists, asking if they’re interested because they want to be his disciples too (verse 27). And he gets sarcastic: “That’s really strange that you don’t know [whether he’s from God or not]. Well, God doesn’t listen to sinners, but he does listen to people who do his will” (verses 30-31). That’s a direct challenge to the Pharisees – ‘you say you know God, but you couldn’t heal me!’

Then they chuck him out, reaffirming that he’s a sinner. (“You were born in sin!” -verse 34.) Despite the miracle and despite the fact that the ‘evidence’ for calling him a sinner (his blindness) is no longer there, the things he says do not mesh with their worldview. And they aren’t willing to question their own doctrinal certainties. What a travesty. There is the comparison a few verses on when the insight of the ex-blind man is contrasted directly with the closed-mindedness of those who could physically see. The author of John’s gospel is a master of irony and he pulls this point out at the end of the chapter that we read earlier. Those who should have seen God’s hand in the day’s events, refused to recognise it, but a sinner and outcast truly saw what was going on.

It’s a salutary warning to those of us who engage in church. To give it a more contemporary feel, although this is old news for many of us, the divisions and arguments caused by the spiritual awakening in the early 1990s that was dubbed the “Toronto Blessing”, is an apt example. Those of us who were in churches at the time will remember the debate about whether it was really from God and, interestingly, the debate never really moved beyond the scenario in John chapter 9. Those who opposed it did so on the basis of their theological disposition towards charismatic phenomena. They had their ‘certain truth’ and they were positive that God wouldn’t move in a way that seemed to go against His own Word, as they interpreted it.

Now I’m not going to stand here and say that they were completely wrong because there were serious issues in the way some churches were affected by the hype and decided they wanted to ‘do Toronto’ too. Egos did get involved and the whole thing fizzled out rather quickly when they did. Some of the wilder claims concerning revival still haven’t come true and we would be wise to hold certain Christian leaders to account for that and bear it in mind if we’re asked to weigh future pronouncements. So, yeah, there were issues. But nobody has the right to tell God that he can’t act in any way he sees fit, just because we think we know everything there is to know about the way God does things. It’s a sad fact that the majority of opposition we will face when ‘doing the stuff’ will probably come from other Christians.

I’m not a name-dropper. But recently I was at a media conference and ended up in a small-group conversation with Joel Edwards, the head of the Evangelical Alliance. He was saying how the world needed to see more empirical evidence of the good news, either through acts of kindness like ‘Soul in the City’, or supernatural acts of kindness like miraculous healing, to pique people’s curiosity. But, he said, the cynicism of the media and our current culture would soon dismiss whatever ‘proof’ we had.

I challenged him on that, because I think if someone went out on the streets of Cardiff and healed 50 lepers (not that we have a huge amount of lepers in Cardiff, but you know what I mean), the general public would be amazed and the media would definitely want to know more. In fact, I said to him, I think the biggest cynics would probably be among that non-Charismatic element within his own organisation, the Evangelical Alliance, who so sneeringly dismiss stories of healings, spiritual gifts and other aspects of the Kingdom life. “When,” I asked him, “are you going to convince some Christians that God can work supernaturally?” Joel Edwards, to his credit, is a very gracious man and he didn’t slap me for being so cheeky, but it is a real issue. Let’s not kid ourselves. If we go out on the streets to ‘do the stuff’, some religious people are going to take issue with us.

The second point to draw out of this chapter is that the religious people completely lost sight of the human being at the centre of it. They were asking questions, they wanted to get to the bottom of it, but they didn’t realise the real miracle.

As we mentioned the blind man was sent… and he went. The response was unnatural. If someone had rubbed spit-mud in your eyes would you then do what he told you to do? I don’t know if I would. And when he gets shirty with the Pharisees, he asks them if they want to be Jesus’ disciples too. Think about that – ‘do you want to be his disciples too?’ There’s an identification going on there. This man now thinks of himself as a follower of Jesus. Hardly surprising, considering that Jesus has transformed his life, doing what no other rabbi or holy teacher had been able to do.

But, just like they cannot see God’s involvement in this situation, the Pharisees have also lost sight of the human being at the centre. That’s something that we can do too. We should never substitute seeing God at work for a quest for doctrinal correctness. What that means is, we should never demand that people sign a statement of faith before we grudgingly admit that God has worked in their lives. We have to realise that everybody starts somewhere and – I’m a theologian, perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this – you don’t need to know the Bible backwards to hear God’s voice; you don’t need to spend three years at Bible school to pray effectively; you don’t need to understand the Nicene Creed, or even know what it is, to know that you need God in your life. I’m happy to talk you through the tough bits of the Bible, I’m happy to explain the development of Christian doctrine and even what the Nicene Creed is, but those of us who are learned should never allow our learning to become a source of pride and a barrier to God’s intentions. Otherwise what we will end up with is an arid intellectual faith that is technically correct on all it’s points, but is fundamentally hollow.

All the learning in the world is no use to anyone if you don’t love people, value them, cherish them, spend time with them, encourage them, build them up and appreciate the things God is doing in their lives. The soulless hole we see in so much religion comes from insisting on a tick-box attitude to faith – replacing a love for God that often comes from a flawed and broken life, with adherence to precise and correct points of belief.

The mistake we make is assuming that if we attain doctrinal purity, then behavioural purity will follow. We say ‘believe the right things and you’ll act the right way’ and when we do that we put our own theological systems in the place of God. Meet God and you’ll act the right way! Do what he tells you and you’ll be doing the right thing! It’s true that we all need pointers into hearing God’s voice, and we need good friends who will ask us if we’re doing the right thing, and hold us accountable in our actions, but our priority has to be to do God’s will, not understand the finer points of theology to the very last detail. (And that applies for those of us who love theology and can’t get enough of it!)

Another mistake we make is forgetting that the people we are called to love; those who don’t know God as their father yet, are precious to God. I hate the term ‘friendship evangelism’. I think it is easily the most pervasive heretical statement of the post-Modern era. I know it doesn’t mean this, but it sounds like we only want to be friends with people because we have an ulterior motive. Let me say something provocative (just for a change): the people you meet every day, who you work with, who you live with – they need friends, not ‘evangelists’ who want to be their friends and try and convert them all the time. They need to be valued as human beings, respected as creatures made in the image of God, in whom that image still flickers faintly. We should never become friends with anyone for any other reason than that they are worth it and that God thinks they are worth it. Otherwise we lose sight of the precious human being that Christ died for and we become hypocrites.

My third point is a short one. The question was raised and the disciples gave Jesus two options – is it this reason, or that reason? And Jesus wasn’t happy with either. Instead he took the discussion off into a whole new dimension that ended with a huge miracle, a huge controversy and a huge number of seriously pissed off religious people. Hallelujah!

When we ask questions of God, we should only ever expect an answer that will confound our limited expectations. God doesn’t tend to answer our questions directly. Often he just asks questions back (“whose image is on this coin?” Matthew 22.20) or sets tough challenges of his own (“Let anyone without sin cast the first stone” John 8.7). But even though he doesn’t answer the questions we set, he still has an answer. He presents his solution to the problem – in this case he heals a man born blind, something that had never been done before.

As we think about this chapter more and get into it, we see these applications:
Firstly, to not allow what we think God can do to get in the way of accepting what he actually does and to not elevate our human knowledge above its station. Secondly, to not lose sight of the human beings in whatever situation we find ourselves in. Thirdly, to anticipate the answer we don’t expect from the God who does things that have never been done before.

I’m always surprised – and a bit embarrassed – at how often I viewed famous Bible stories in black and white when I was growing up. I think partly that has to do with the way Bible stories are presented. They’re almost rushed over – it’s as if we can’t wait to make some sort of point about them and so we rush through in a ‘highlights’ kind of way and we’re asked to make snap judgements: Judas = bad because he betrayed Jesus, Thomas = bad because he doubted that Jesus rose from the dead, Peter = bad because he denied Jesus in the high priest’s courtyard and so on.

As I’ve gotten a little older, I’ve started seeing people far more sympathetically, especially these characters in the Bible. That’s partly because in my own life, perhaps, I’ve done the things that they’ve done and so I’m more forgiving of their very human failings and also because I’ve learned that human beings are very complex creatures and there’s no way we can know how we will act in any given situation until we are in that situation. In the church youth group I grew up in, we were once asked ‘If someone held a gun to your head and said they were going to shoot you unless you said you weren’t a Christian, what would you do?’ Of course, being good, eager (and young) Christians we all said that we wouldn’t deny our faith and if that meant we got shot then we’d go straight to heaven and stuff like that.

If I was honest now, though, I’d say ‘I don’t know.’ I don’t know what I’d do in that situation. I hope I never have to find out and if I ever was in a place where I had to find out, I’d hope I’d find myself courageous and willing to die for the things I believe in.

You see, that’s the thing. We want to be followers of Jesus and be like Jesus. But in reality, when we are following Jesus, we are more like… the followers of Jesus! We doubt, we fail, we promise great heroic things and then bottle it; sometimes we even betray him.

There are some New Testament scholars who think Judas was part of a political movement known as the zealots. ‘Iscariot’ could possibly be related to the word ‘siccarri’, meaning dagger, as carried by these rebels. It was a thin-bladed weapon that could be pushed between the plates of armour on a Roman soldier if you stabbed him in the back. Judas Iscariot may literally mean Judas ‘the dagger-man’.

There has been some attempt to unravel Judas’ motives and even to rehabilitate him somewhat. Did Judas misunderstand Jesus’ role as a messiah and anticipate a glorious revolt against the Romans, similar to the Maccabean revolt that ended Greek occupation two centuries before? When he ‘betrayed’ Jesus, was he trying to force Jesus into a confrontation with the authorities and thus precipitate a revolution? In the gospels it says that ‘Satan entered into’ Judas and we interpret this to mean he was overtaken by evil. But it might merely imply he was misguided – Satan is, after all, the ‘father of lies’, the ‘deceiver’. Did Judas get it horribly wrong? Well we don’t know, and there’s no way we could know.

Thomas the doubter – we probably all know the story. Jesus has been killed, buried and now some of the disciples have seen him resurrected. Thomas doesn’t believe them – ‘unless I see the holes in his hands and in his side, I’m not going to believe you!’ I always get the sense that Thomas thinks the others have gone mad. He reminds them of the wounds that Jesus suffered. He knows Jesus is dead – killed by the Romans who don’t mess around when it comes to killing people. And very often we judge Thomas for that – we say ‘ooh, you know, Thomas, he didn’t believe, tut, tut.’ As if we would have believed!

Before Easter, the disciples try to dissuade Jesus from going to Jerusalem, but Jesus insists that he’s going. One disciple turns to the others and says ‘Let’s go with him so that we can die with him there.’ That slightly pessimistic disciple was Thomas. He knew the risks. When Jesus was taken off and killed, he must have thought ‘we knew this was going to happen’. The combination of grief, anger and self-recrimination is a huge mix of emotions. We’re told that Thomas wasn’t with the other disciples when Jesus first appeared, but we’re not told why. I think he couldn’t face them. It took him a while to rejoin them and then when he did they were obviously bonkers because they were saying Jesus was alive.

Was Thomas bad for doubting the resurrection? I don’t think so. He was a realist, a pessimist and got annoyed with the other disciples. But when Jesus appeared and said ‘here’s my hands, here’s my side’, Thomas’ reaction is one of someone who desperately wanted to believe it was true. He falls to his knees and says ‘My Lord and my God’.

And that brings us to Peter. He is probably the follower of Jesus we are all most like. Throughout the gospel stories he says the wrong things, he makes mistakes, he fails to grasp the point. And here, at what would later be called the Last Supper, he is passionately keen to say the right thing: “I’m ready to die for you!” But the thing is, while Peter has seen a lot on the road with Jesus – faced human enemies, driven out spiritual enemies, suffered hardship – he hasn’t been put in that position yet. It’s a ‘gun-to-your-head’ moment. Jesus says ‘Pete, you don’t know, before the night is out you’ll deny me three times.’

I can imagine that would have cut Peter to the quick. Luke’s extra comment – that Satan has asked to sift Peter like wheat – is surely an indication of how Peter would feel after saying ‘I don’t know him’ and hearing the rooster crow. Jesus tries to protect him from what’s going to happen – ‘I’m praying for you; that your faith might not fail’. That’s an interesting promise. How often do we find our faith in God rocked because WE have failed? Can Jesus still love me? Can God still use me? I’m such a bad Christian, such a failure, who’d listen to a loser like me? If you feel like that, you’re getting sifted.

I lived a double life for most of my teenage years. I knew that the whole church-God-Jesus thing was true and I enjoyed going to church. I knew I was a Christian. But in reality, while I knew that, I don’t think anyone in school would have been able to tell you. In school I was pretty much indistinguishable from the pagan majority. I saw what happened to people who were ‘religious’ and keen. So, I kept my head down. I went to the Christian Union and very occasionally told people I went to church – it was like confessing to a disease – but generally I was the same as everyone else, swearing, naughty, telling jokes that were a bit rude.

That double life has always held me back, because the same pattern has occurred in places where I work. So I’d feel like a fraud ‘sharing my faith’ with someone who knows I laugh when they tell me rude jokes. Like most Christians, I feel like I’m caught in that ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation. If I don’t laugh, then I’m a boring, strait-laced Christian who ought to ‘loosen up’ and have more fun, for goodness sake! If I do laugh then I get hit with ‘huh, call yourself a Christian!’ You can’t win, can you? So, I often feel in this place where Peter finds himself – the ‘high priest’s courtyard experience’, which is one I guess most Christians can identify with.

The interesting thing is that when the women go to the tomb on resurrection day they are told specifically to go back and tell Peter. He’s the only one who is named. Why so? Because the last time Jesus saw Peter before he was crucified, Peter left the courtyard crying bitterly when he knew he’d failed. And also because Peter still had an important part to play in Jesus’ plans. Now their talk on the beach is referred to ‘Peter’s restoration’ or ‘reinstatement’. They’re walking along the beach, something they must have done a thousand times before, they’re talking and Jesus asks Peter three times whether he loves him. Peter feels hurt – what’s hurting? The guilt; the sense of shame; the feeling that he’s been in that situation before and said all the right things and then screwed up when the gun was put to his head.

What does Jesus say? He tells Peter a couple of things. ‘You still have something vital to do for me. I need you to feed my sheep. You won’t fail again – next time you’re put on the spot you will die for me. We can start over, if only you will follow me.’

We may feel that Peter is the person we are most like, but it is our calling to follow Jesus and do the things that he did. So, it’s worth considering that this is an example of what we are often called to do. In the book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis, one of the characters called Lucy Pevensie experiences betrayal. Lucy is in the magical world of Narnia, on an island ruled by a magician. She goes into the magician’s house in search of a spell and she finds another one, which allows her to see what her friend in the real world is doing. She sees her friend on a railway carriage with two older girls from school and with a shock she realise that they are talking about her. One of the girls asks Lucy’s friend if she’ll be “hanging around with that annoying Pevensie kid this term” and Lucy’s friend says “No.” Lucy is distraught and really angry. She can’t wait to get back to the real world and accuse her friend of betraying her. It takes the divine lion Aslan to point out to Lucy that she was spying on her friend, which is also wrong, and that her friend only said those things because she felt intimidated by the two older girls. Lucy has to learn not only forgiveness, but a willingness to accept her friend despite everything that was said.

It would be easy for us to draw the conclusion that Jesus forgave Peter and everything was all right again and that’s how we should act towards people who let us down. But we have to go further. It’s not enough just to ‘forgive’; we also have to restore. That is difficult and frankly impossible if the other person shows no remorse. But where there is repentance, a genuine ‘sorry’, then if we are trying to emulate Jesus we have to allow that person back into our circle of trust. Sometimes we may feel that trusting someone who has let us down is a huge risk. By way of encouragement, risk-takers tend to lead more exciting lives, so don’t be put off by risk.

The flipside is that when we let someone down, we have to allow them to forgive us. Often we do this with God. We let God down and then feel that there is no way back, that we can never amount to anything, that we’re frauds leading double lives and that no one will listen to us talking about God because we’re such rubbish Christians. But if we are given the chance, and I think we are all given the chance, then we should always take another shot at it. There’s an old saying that if you learn from defeat, then you don’t really lose.

Friedrich Nietzsche, who isn’t perhaps the ideal person to look to for guidance in matters of faith, nevertheless came up with one very true statement: ‘whatever doesn’t kill you can make you stronger’. In the short term it might make you weaker, whether that’s a physical ailment like arthritis or cancer, or a spiritual problem like guilt or shame, or an emotional problem like addiction or depression. But in the long term, those debilitating problems, once treated, or forgiven, or healed, can ground you in life and give you the strength to keep on fighting.

We are all given opportunities to speak up or deny. I believe purchasing the fairly traded alternative is a prophetic statement about how the world should be. I personally think as Christians we need to be committed to that. We recently asked everybody in this community to sign letters to send to Tony Blair urging him to drop the debts owed by third world nations. Why did we do that? Because we are called to speak up and speak out on the issues on God’s agenda. If you don’t believe that God is on the side of the poor and totally concerned about their well being, may I respectfully ask you to stop using your Bible as a doorstop or whatever else you’re using it for, and start reading it!

I had a recent adrenalin rush in a big supermarket because I felt I had to ’speak up’ about something. When I go to a shop with a big magazine section, I have a look at the soccer magazines. Now at this supermarket, they’re having a big redevelopment and the magazines have been moved. I was looking for the soccer section and found myself in the kids’ comic section. I turned around and there, at about eye-height for a child, in the same aisle, were the magazines loosely termed ‘men’s interest’. Just for a moment I felt a tiny spark of outrage. Opposite the kids’ comics were huge front cover pictures of just-about-naked women and sexual language and the sheer inappropriateness of this hit home.

Our society is over-sexualised. There is an advert where a woman uses a certain plant-based shampoo and has a totally ‘organic’ experience, where she goes ‘ooh, yeah’ at such a high volume the couple next door think she’s in the throes of sexual passion. Not only is it untrue – I reckon you could be drinking the shampoo and it wouldn’t give you an orgasm – but it’s gratuitous use of sex to sell something. There is a car advert where you see more bottoms than car, to the song ‘I see you baby, shaking that ass’. Do you see the link between that and a nine-year old girl in a deprived estate in our home city having a baby within the past month? Do you think we should occasionally speak up about the sexualisation of everything and about how far from God’s intention the obsession with self-gratification is?

So, heart pounding, I went up to the supermarket’s customer service desk, thinking, ‘Oh man, they’re going to think I’m some sort of crank.’ But it was weird. I said that I thought it was inappropriate to have kids’ comics opposite magazines like that. The woman I was talking to looked like she had attended the school of hard knocks. In fact, she could have tutored there. She looked pretty formidable. But as I spoke, she suddenly, and unexpectedly smiled. Not only did she agree with what I was saying, but she asked me to write it all down on one of the little comment cards (‘here, use my good pen’) and then she went off and personally handed it to the duty manager.

A couple of days later I went into that supermarket and the kids’ comics had been swapped with the TV listings magazines.

Before you think – ‘Jon, you’re a great moral campaigner and an inspiration to us all’ (I know you’re thinking it), let me just say this: What it brought home to me was all the times I haven’t spoken up.

That’s the choice we have every day. We can deny it or risk it. The thing is if we risk it, we may find ourselves taking the lead. We may find that people want to hear what we have to say. We may find that people respond by saying “I’m glad you mentioned it and you’re right!” Too often we find ourselves worried about how people will react. If it’s not our own feelings of worthlessness we have to get over, it’s the fear factor, the fear of being rejected and so we deny the God-promptings, we fail to stand up for what we know is right, we decide not to talk about Jesus, not to pray with someone. We say, like Peter, ‘Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Easter is a day about risk. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemene prayed for another way out. It was a risk. In his human-ness he didn’t know the ending. We often think that Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen and the eventual glorious outcome and so went along with it passively. But his anguish in Gethsemene shows he couldn’t be sure – if he had been sure it wouldn’t have been a sacrifice. He didn’t know what would happen to his disciples after he’d gone, so he prayed for their protection. He told Peter he’d pray for him, that his faith would not fail.

Peter’s bold words failed. He failed to live up to his own promises, his own expectations of himself, but his faith didn’t fail. After Jesus is raised from the dead, Peter leaps out of the boat to get to shore ahead of the others. He says ‘Lord you know all things’. He hears Jesus repeat those words that started this whole adventure and he follows him even though Jesus tells him the ending in advance. He has been in that high priest’s courtyard and now he knows how he will act in that position if he’s put in that position again.

Those of us who feel that we have failed and that we have let Jesus down, despite all our bold words beforehand, need to hear Jesus’ call again. We have to believe that all the screw-ups have been taken away by Jesus’ death; that we’ve been forgiven and that he wants to entrust us with his Kingdom message again. As we celebrate the glory of resurrection day, we have a choice, because despite all the times we haven’t lived up to our promises, Jesus says:

“You still have something vital to do for me. Don’t worry about failing again. We can start over. Follow me.”