Over the last four weeks those of us at Edge School have been stimulated and challenged to re-think who Jesus really is, stripped of flannel board cosiness and sterile religiosity

Last night we we took another good long look at the Image of the invisible God: Jesus. Even though we can’t see him in flesh and blood, we can see him in history, in the story, clothed in normalness; and, with our imagination infused with the Holy Spirit we can really, truly see God. Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said that it was better for him to go… maybe seeing him through the Spirit is even better than flesh and blood.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as
well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

The way isn’t a method; it’s a relationship. Truth isn’t a concept; it’s a Person. Life is knowing Jesus, not just a head-knowledge, but an all-of-life-experience-knowing. Jesus expresses EVERYTHING of who God is. He perfectly represents God. Jesus sums up God’s character in every way. Jesus is our reference point for understanding everything about God. God with us; God knowable; God who weeps; God who feasts; God the Storyteller; the Humble; the Gracious; our Defender. A God who has true feelings, who welcomes children, builds furniture, restores dignity, rides donkeys and suffers on our behalf.

Let’s keep dismantling and demolishing our plastic versions of Jesus!

Erin.

So I hope you are all praying that Jesus would help the All Whites win a game at the football world cup! And for the cynical among you, have faith…just remember how Jesus found you that car park when you asked him!

Okay, so maybe that Jesus is more the plastic Jesus we are trying to dismantle than the real one. Maybe Jesus has bigger things on his mind than whether the All Whites win a game. Besides which, there will be more Christians in the USA and England praying for their teams than we have people in NZ, so we won’t have a show of convincing Jesus to back our team!!

But seriously, at School we are having a great time “dismantling the plastic Jesus”. There are still two more sessions so it’s not too late to come along.

Last week Mark Donovan led us in a good discussion about why we believe Jesus was both God and man, and why it matters for our faith that it is true. In the process we looked at some of our faulty understandings about this that distort our true understanding of Jesus. You can find the notes and get involved in the discussion here.

This week we are going to look at Jesus’ time on earth. Can Jesus’ story simply be summed up by Christmas and Easter? Is there something more? What was his life really about? On the way, maybe we will dismantle a few more of our plastic ideas about Jesus.

So come and join us this Thursday, 7pm in the Edge Kingsland café for good times, good chats, good baking, and a good chance to dismantle the plastic Jesus together…we would love to see you there.

Andy D.

Last Thursday we had a great first session of School, where our topic for this series is “Dismantling the plastic Jesus”.

James Keyworth asked the question: “Was Jesus really just as meek and mild as they say?” and encouraged us to see that Jesus was often quite confrontational and challenged the various perspectives of the day, including those held by the Pharisees, Sadducees and Zealots. Ultimately, our aim is to get a balanced view of who Jesus really is – as our Prophet, Priest and King.

We had some great discussion too, mulling over where we too may have unwittingly crafted our own plastic Jesus. We’re encouraging the discussions to continue at our online discussion group (click here) – where you can also download the notes from the first session if you weren’t there.

Tomorrow night, we’ll be continuing our search for the real Jesus: Human, Divine or both? – Thursday, 7pm, in the Edge Cafe. See you there

You can’t deny that Jesus was significant. His birth alone has divided time – nevermind AC/DC, Jesus divided our AD from our BC.

But in striving to understand his significance, just about everyone has offered their opinion about him.  And with so many different perspectives, you can be forgiven for asking: “Will the real Jesus please stand up?”

As one scholar has put it: “An analysis of the changing ideas of Christ and portraits of Jesus in history shows that they correspond so much to the needs of their age, place of origin and intended purpose that one cannot avoid the suspicion that they are illusory and artificial.”

The last thing we want is an artificial, plastic Jesus.  That’s why we’re setting out to discover the real one.

Join us from tomorrow night, Thursday, 7pm in the Edge cafe, for the next series of School – “Dismantling the plastic Jesus“.

Jesus said that to be like a wise builder (as opposed to a foolish one) we must hear his words and put them into practice…but if you’re anything like me, sometimes interpreting how the Bible applies directly to our lives is harder to do than one might think!  How do we take something written so long ago in a different time and place and apply it now?

If you want help to navigate these sorts of questions, head along to School this Saturday morning (10-12) and hear from Nigel Dixon as he gives us some insight in interpreting and applying the Bible appropriately.

This Saturday our four week ‘School’ series on the Bible finishes up, with the final class to be taken by Nigel Dixon.
School will be in session from 10am-midday in the Edge cafe.

Nigel is a brilliant teacher, and one of the real treasures of the LinkNZ network.
He will be taking us on a journey into the Scriptures, to learn how we can uncover the meaning in what has been written, and how to apply that in our own lives. There will be plenty of time to ask him questions, and so it should be a lot of fun.

If you are interested in attending then please let the Edge offices know so that we can plan accordingly. Rumour has it that coffee and fresh baking will also be on offer…

Look forward to seeing you there!

Our next session of School is tonight starting at 7pm where we’ll cover:

• An overview of the New Testament – brought to you by Andy Dixon; and
• The authority and inspiration of the Bible – in what ways is the Bible God’s word and what does that mean for us? – presented by Greg and Strahan.

One topic we touched on briefly at School last week was why we have so many translations of the Bible.

I mean, why can’t there just be one standard-issue Bible that we can all read from and there be no contention?  That way, when someone reads their Bible from up the front on Sunday, you could be sure that you could follow along with the same words in your own Bible – instead of sometimes feeling like you’ve just got lost in translation… [cue reference to film title to show that even though I am a Christian, I am still culturally relevant - and witty at that]

Well the answer is quite simple.  The Bible is a collection of writings that were originally written in another language – either Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic. And when you try and translate those writings into English, you inevitably find that the translation does not quite marry up perfectly because of the differences in grammar or meaning.

For instance, the Greeks apparently had four different words for the one English word “love”.  How can we capture these different senses of these Greek words in English then?

And what happens when the English language itself changes over time, as it is known to do?

Well, it means that translators do the best they can, either emphasising a word for word approach (such as the King James Version translation) or a thought for thought approach (such as the NIV translation) or even restate the message entirely in a paraphrase (such as the Message translation).

As no English translation is going to be perfect, it is useful to be aware of the approach taken by the translation that you’re reading currently, and it may even provoke you to get a range of different translations so that you can get the benefit of these different approaches.

For more on this, see the notes from the first session which you can download at http://groups.google.co.nz/group/school-at-edge-kingsland.

See you tonight at 7pm.