Posts

Showing posts from May, 2013

Will the real Jesus please stand up?

Image
The following is an address prepared for a service at Chester recently which ended up being a discussion instead so was never delivered.   I remember a comedy car sticker from the eighties that was supposed to be funny but always worried me. It read, 'Jesus is coming back: Look busy.' We probably all know what this meant. It was a reference to this idea of an end of history, a judgment day, when according to some, Jesus was going to come back as a kind of warrior king, rewarding those who followed him and condemning the rest. It was an idea that I found, and still find, pretty unsavoury, and it seemed a long way removed from the Jesus of my earlier childhood, the man from Nazareth who talked about forgiveness and equality, the man so often referred to as the 'Prince of Peace.'   I decided to talk about Jesus today because I consider myself a Unitarian Christian. My spiritual journey has evolved over time but instinctively I have kept Jesus at the centre and