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CREATING COMMUNITIES OF WHOLENESS WITH CHRIST AT THE CENTRE
Jesus the Son of God - Discussion Notes of 20.06.2007
Luke 22.14-20 - Luke 24.1-12
How much do you know about Jesus?
Brain-storm the words and images that you associate with Jesus?
Read [individually or as a group]
* Luke 1. 26-33
* Luke 4. 16-21
* John 15. 1-7
And reflect on what each of them says about Jesus.
Jesus is a historical figure – he did exist and no historian, or anyone else really, disputes that. The Gospels tell the story of the life of Jesus.
After he had been with his disciples a while Jesus asked them a question. ‘Who do you think that I am?’ Their response, eventually in some cases, was ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!’
But each and every one of us has to answer that question of Jesus. ‘Who do you say I am?’ for ourselves.
C.S. Lewis, author of Narnia and much more wrote in ‘Mere Christianity’:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse."
Luke 22.14-20
After endless the endless turmoil of the lead up to the Passover, the uncertainty, doubt, fear and everything else that the disciples had experienced, the Passover was a welcome relief. Remember, the disciples weren’t just stressed about Jesus’ bizarre behaviour [it was almost as if he had a death wish!] they were also in the middle of a city that was very close to riot and rebellion and their leader was right at the centre of that. So the Passover was indeed a welcome relief – this was something that they knew, something safe and no one would dare to change it, not even Jesus.
DISCUSS
What are the things that you couldn’t bare to see changed?
Where is your safety?
But then it all starts to go wrong and Jesus turns the whole thing on its head – he had a habit of doing that!
He takes very ordinary things and gives them significance far beyond their intrinsic worth.
There would always have been unleavened bread at the Passover, but he takes it, breaks it, and says, ‘This is my body, broken for you.’
The wine [another staple of the Passover] is his blood and a symbol of the whole of the new covenant, new deal, between God and us. It’s a new deal that offers us, though the cross, forgiveness and new life.
And he shares the bread and wine with everyone at the table – they can’t ignore what’s happening.
Jesus knows how human, how fallible we all are, how short our memories are, amidst all of the rest of our lives. So he gives ordinary things and makes them special and holy and asks us to eat broken bread and drink poured out wine ‘to remember’ him.
DISCUSS
Your experience of Communion…
What does it mean that the bread and wine are symbols [lets avoid the transubstantiation debate!] of a tortured body and bleeding veins?
What does it mean that in communion, though the cross, we’re offered forgiveness of all of our sin and a new chance of life?
As he had predicted Jesus went from the upper room, was betrayed by his friends, arrested, tortured, tried, convicted and crucified, and so what happened though symbols at the last supper became reality. But that was not the end.
Luke 24.1-12
As early as they could the women went to the tomb to take spices – signs of their mourning and their love. Note that it is the women who go – it’s often the men who are in the spotlight, but some of the most faithful of Jesus’ disciples were women.
They arrive and find the angels who ask them, almost as if bemused at their lack of understanding of the obvious, ‘Why are you looking for the living amongst the dead? He is not here; he is risen. Remember how he said to you, … that he must be crucified, and that on the third day he would rise again.’
DISCUSS
Would you have believed or understood Jesus’ teaching about his death and resurrection if you had heard it with the disciples, before it all happened?
Would you have believed the angels, if you had been there at the tomb?
Would you have dared to go and tell anyone, knowing that they would probably think you mad?
Would you have believed the women?
The women run and tell the men, who think that they are out of their minds and babbling insanely. Only Peter, fresh from the humiliation of his denial, thinks that it’s worth going to look. Everyone in this small community would have known about his denial by now, but even so he is willing to stake what little is left of his credibility attempting to verify this wild tale. He finds out that the tomb is indeed empty, and he ‘wonders’ at what has happened.
NOTE
All of the Resurrection accounts are slightly different, but all of them have crucial common factors – an empty tomb, disciples who move from dismay to wonder to joy, to the sight of the risen Lord. In the face of such unity between the accounts on the important points, whether there was one angel or two at the tomb doesn’t seem to matter very much!
The angels ask ‘Why are you looking for the living amongst the dead?’
This is a crucial question and we still look for Jesus among the dead.
1. There are those who see Jesus as the greatest teacher who ever lived [perhaps in tandem with Buddha and Ghandi], one who lived an amazing life and who then died. But Jesus is not just a hero of the past, he is a living reality for the present.
2. There are those who want to study the teaching of Jesus, and to pick and choose from them as an academic exercise. But Jesus is not someone to be studied, he is someone to be met and lived with every day.
‘Who do you say I am?’ Jesus asks us.
Think again of your brainstorm of words and images. Add any new ones that you’ve thought of to the list.
And discuss you response to Jesus’ question.
WHO DO YOU THINK THAT JESUS IS?