Inside out: the challenge....

Well, we're now in Mark's gospel in our Bible reading programme. And there's nothing like a good healthy dose of Jesus' teaching to set us right in our views of human beings and how they work....and of ourselves and how we work. In fact in yesterday's readings in Mark 6:34, Jesus teaches us this stuff as an outworking of his compassion for us. However uncomfortable some of it is, we need to hear it.

And some of it is uncomfortable. Today's passage in Mark 7:1-23, while at first sight seeming to be simply about ancient Jewish regulations, in fact strikes at the heart of our favourite contemporary excuses for ourselves. How we act, Jesus says, is very simply a product of who we are inside...there's no use blaming external circustances, what has happened to us, social influences etc. No doubt these all shape us in a variety of ways. But when all is said and done, it's not what goes into us that makes us 'unclean' but what comes out from us. Ouch!

Roots

Fascinating evening at church yesterday, led by a bilingual Israeli tour guide, who usually leads study tours for Christians around Israel. She focussed on the person of Jesus as a real human being in a real historical context. It was certainly eye-opening, and made you re-think preconceived ideas - e.g., it would appear that it's highly unlikely historically speaking that Jesus was more than 5ft2" in height. Hardly crucial to salvation admittedly, but it highlighted for me at least some of the stereoptypical images of Jesus that linger in our subconscious. And if that's true for his appearance, how much more true is it likely to be for our understanding of his teachng and mission. Again, there were plenty of examples where, historically, the way our English New Testament has been translated has effectively "de-Judaised" it (not sure if that's a word but you know what I mean). She was careful not to suggest that was all deliberate and anti-Semitic, though some may have been; more worrying is the effect of all this. You end up with a vague, spiritualised Jesus rather than a real man who lived a real life in a real context. And chances are then you end up with a vague, spiritualised faith as well.