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Last Word - The Christian Church
The Christian church in general tends to follow a pattern in their worship which broadly follows events in the whole life of Jesus Christ. Very roughly, the Gospels I their early chapters record the ministry of Christ and, at different rates, through a period which sees Jesus' preaching become more and more radical till it reaches a point which scandalised the priests and the various section of the Jewish faith.
The church year at this time of the calendar year relates that part of all the years of Christ's life up to the major events at that time we call Easter. If you read a biography of a major figure in our times it is likely to be several hundred pages long. Would you bother to buy one which is under forty pages long? Yet what is comprised in St. Matthew's gospel up to the crucifixion in the copy of the Bible I am consulting while I write – and part of that is taken up by illustrations of various parts of Palestine.
I wonder how many books and of what lengths have been written about each one of the gospel narratives? I hope no-one asks me to count them!
The point I think I am trying to pursue is that we should, when we read any of the gospels, appreciate the power which is packed into these brief books. It is small wonder that Christ attracted such crowds; no small wonder that many people were afraid of that power. It was – and is - a fear which can lead to persecution.
In the play ‘Macbeth' there is a part in which Macbeth, besieged by his enemies, shouts, “Out, out brief candle”. The ministry of Christ is no candle, brief or long. It is a light, as is said, to lighten our darkness. The trouble is that the metaphor is so familiar to us, it tends to be taken for granted; it is, or so it seems to me, affected by the ease by which in our era, at the touch of a switch, or even sometimes if we walk near enough to the source, we can turn on a light simply by being there.
Could it be that what we seek is not a switch but to walk closely to he who is the Light of the World and to keep that Light close to us as we try to walk the sometimes dark paths which we find on our way through a troubled world.
Bob Mclean
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