One life. What's it all about?

 1. 

IT'S JUST GOOD NEWS 

First of all, I have a confession to make. 

There is another book that has been around a lot longer than this one, and it has exactly the same aim: to make you familiar with who Jesus Christ was and why he is of absolute importance to everyone who has ever lived and ever will live. 

The person behind this other book is infinitely more gifted than I am, and the book's scope is admittedly superior to the one you're currently holding. Copies are readily available not only on the internet, in book stores and in libraries, but also in hotel rooms the world over, and it s so popular that parts of it have been translated into over 2,500 languages. 

Actually, I'd better make that two confessions. The second is that I didn't have a particularly religious upbringing myself. In fact, my experience of Christianity was limited to a few dull sermons, slightly spooky people in strange garments hanging about in dank halls and religious education lessons during which I attempted to find references to rugby in the Bible. 

Christianity was worse than boring: it was a fiction. Jesus walking on water, the three wise men, the feeding of the five thousand, Father Christmas and Winnie the Pooh were all mixed up in my mind together. They were all make-believe, best left in the nursery. 

So I was shocked when I discovered that my older brother George had become a Christian. I remember telling him in no un-certain terms exactly what I thought about God and everything connected with God. To his credit, George didn't respond in kind. Instead, he pointed me to a single sentence in the Bible, the very first sentence of Mark chapter 1: 

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ..

He explained that the word "gospel" simply means "good news". "Rico," he said, "you don't understand Christianity. You think it's all about church, men in dresses, obeying rules and beautiful old buildings, but it's not. It's just good news. Good news about Jesus Christ." 

Even my time in church, however, had brought me no closer to knowing what this "good news about Jesus Christ" actually was. In fact, if I could hand the book you're now holding to the person I was thirty-odd years ago, that person would have dismissed it straight away. 

He wouldn't even have given it the benefit of the doubt, which is strange because - as I've since discovered - Jesus Christ is able to provide satisfying answers to questions that were endlessly troubling to me. How can I be content? Is there any meaning to life? Is there life after death? Does God really exist or did we just make him up ourselves? If God exists, why is the world so full of injustice? 

I suppose most of us already have an opinion about God. Some people look at the world, with all its suffering, and reject God out of hand. But other people have an inkling that yes, God probably does exist. They're not sure what He/She/It is like, but having seen the incredible scale and diversity of our universe, not to mention the beautiful form and function of our own minds and bodies, together with our inbuilt (and sometimes very inconvenient) sense of right and wrong, it seems like a reasonable proposition. 

The British astronomer Sir James Jeans certainly reached that conclusion. He wrote, "The universe appears to have been designed by a pure mathematician." For him, the breathtaking order of our universe - from the tiniest blood cell to the most distant galaxies - points to the existence of a master planner. 

Tom Stoppard, one of the most celebrated and intellectually rigorous playwrights of our time, wrote a play called Jumpers. When asked to talk about the play's theme, Stoppard said: 

A straight line of evolution from amino acid all the way through to Shakespeare's sonnets - that strikes me as possible, but a very long shot. Why back such an outsider? However preposterous the idea of God is, it seems to have an edge of plausibility. 

"Atheism is a crutch for those who can't accept the reality of God", one of his characters says. 

One other factor that has led some people to feel that God might exist is the human sense of loneliness, emptiness and restlessness, not to mention our sense of the infinite. That's why the background story of The Matrix is so ingenious: it feels like it might be true. In the film, Morpheus tells Neo: 

Let me tell you why you are here. It's because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. There is something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. 

And it often seems as if nothing we do stops us feeling that way. A great job isn't enough. The car we've always wanted isn't enough. Friends aren't enough. Marriage and money aren't enough. Thom Yorke of the band Radiohead, in an interview with the New Musical Express, was asked about his ambitions: 

Ambitious for what? What for? I thought when I got to where I wanted to be everything would be different. I'd be somewhere else. I thought it'd be all white fluffy clouds. And then I got there. And I'm still here. 

The interviewer asked him why he carried on making music, even though he'd already achieved the critical and commercial success he hoped for. "It's filling the hole. That's all anyone does." To the question, "What happens to the hole?", Yorke paused a long time before answering: "It's still there." 

What Morpheus and Thom Yorke describe is nothing new. Au-gustine, writing in the fifth century, suggested a reason for this sense of "wrongness" in our lives:"O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you." Could he be right? 

Having a vague sense that God might exist is one thing. Accord-ing to recent polls, between 70 and 80 per cent of people in the UK have just that vague sense. But to believe that God actually cares intimately for those he has created probably seems a bit far-fetched to many. However, that is the claim the Bible makes. Furthermore, the Bible says, we can know God personally. 

Imagine that you wanted to get to know the Queen personally. You could try writing a letter, or perhaps ringing Buckingham Palace, or you could try standing outside the palace gates with a very big sign. I don't recommend flying a light aircraft into her garden, because the last person who tried that - funnily enough, an author trying to get some free publicity for his book - got arrested. 

The fact is, you wouldn't get very far with any of these approaches. Your only chance would be if she decided she wanted to meet you, and introduced herself personally. And that is exactly what the Bible says God has done in Jesus Christ. That's the beginning of the good news Mark has for us. It tells us that God wants to meet us, in person, and the life and death of Jesus Christ is the way he's chosen to do it. 

Our choice 

Now, if the Bible's claim is true - that our creator wants to meet us through Jesus Christ - then that would affect all of us, whether we like it or not. Of course, we could choose to avoid investigating this claim. Alternatively, we could choose to examine the claim to see if it is true. But I am duty-bound to say that each of these choices will have serious implications for us. 

A few years ago, a London newspaper conducted a revealing experiment. They had a person stand outside Oxford Circus under-ground station and offer people leaflets. On each was written a simple instruction: Bring this piece of paper back to the person who gave it to you and they will give you £5. People swarmed by, and lots actually took the leaflet, but in three hours only eleven came back. Apparently, most of us automatically assume that these bits of paper will be of no real interest, that they won't do us any good. So we either don't bother to read them, or we refuse to believe them.

My only plea is that you don't make that assumption. Don't assume that you've heard it all before, and that reading the Bible will be of no use to you. Instead, I ask you simply to give it the benefit of the doubt as we focus on one book of the Bible, a book named after its author, Mark. It's an accurate account of one life, Jesus' life, written with the insight of a man who spent years by Jesus' side. (For more on why we can trust the Bible, see the chapter in If you could ask God one question by Paul Williams and Barry Cooper.) 

By making time to read Mark, you may begin to see - as I did - that Jesus Christ is the most conclusive proof anyone could have, not only that God exists, but also that he made you and that he cares passionately for you. In fact, Jesus answers all the difficult questions we posed a few paragraphs ago. 

And if those kinds of answers frighten you, then, as they say before the football scores on the news, "look away now..."

One life. What's it all about?

2. 

A QUESTION OF IDENTITY 

Not so long ago I was invited out to lunch, and as I'd arrived a bit early, I waited on the stairs just off the main dining room. Standing opposite me on the stairs was another diner. I vaguely recognised him, but thought nothing of it, so - as English people do - we gave each other a sheepish nod, and then stood there awkwardly in total silence for 5 whole minutes. This lasted from 12.55 until 1 o'clock. 

At 1 o'clock, a man emerged from around the corner, looked up at the man beside me and exclaimed, "Ah, William, there you are, we're in the private dining room." 

Turns out it was Prince William. 

I'd been standing with him all that time, he had nothing better to do than talk to me, and I hadn't said a single word. Sadly, all I saw was a handsome, well-dressed 25 year-old with thinning blond hair. What I didn't see was my future King. Because I didn't get his identity right, I related to him in completely the wrong way. 

Now in this case, it didn't really matter. Yes, I missed out on a once-in-a-lifetime conversation (and arguably so did he), but that's about it. 

Sometimes, though, it really does matter. Because if we don't get Jesus' identity right, we'll relate to him in totally the wrong way, and we may end up ignoring him completely. And missing this King's identity would be disastrous .

That's why Mark gives us the historical evidence we need so that we can recognise Jesus for who he is. Was he a great moral teacher? A compassionate miracle-worker? A misunderstood revolutionary? Mark's verdict goes far beyond any of these, as you can see from the very first sentence in his book: 

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ..

The playwright Noel Coward was once asked, "What do you think about God?", to which he replied, "We've never been properly introduced." Well, that's exactly what Mark wants to do for us here. "Christ" isn't Jesus' second name. It's a title, like President or Prime Minister. And it means "God's only chosen King", a unique person with divine authority. God's Anointed One. God in human form. 

Now, to say such a thing seems outrageous to many modern ears, butit was no small matter to the people of Mark's day either. In fact, it got you thrown to the lions, because the only person you were supposed to treat with that kind of reverence was the Roman Emperor. 

Virgil, the Roman poet, described the emperors as a "new breed of Man, come down from Heaven". But here, right at the start of his book, Mark boldly tells us that no, there is a higher authority than the Emperor, and his name is Jesus. Mark then tries to justify this outrageous claim by providing evidence from Jesus' life. 

Jesus has power and authority to teach 

One piece of evidence Mark gives concerning Jesus' identity is in chapter 1 verses 21 and 22:

They [Jesus and some followers] went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, be-cause he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. 

One of the things that set Jesus apart from the religious leaders of the day (the "teachers of the law") was the way he taught. The teachers of the law didn't come up with their own material. As with most of my sermons, the best stuff was borrowed from other people. There was nothing original in their teaching. They never taught without quoting the great teachers of the past, and they never claimed any authority of their own. 

But Jesus did not teach like that. He didn't hide behind anybody else's authority - he claimed authority of his own. Rather than use the great teachers of the past to back up his arguments, he talks about himself. He says, "I'm telling you this on my own authority - you can take it from me." It's like someone in court who, rather than swearing on the Bible, simply says, "I give you my word; there is no higher guarantee of truth." 

Jesus not only claims that his words have as much authority as God's words: when he speaks, it's as if somebody has suddenly switched on the lights in a dark room. His hearers are not merely impressed by his teaching, they are "amazed". What people in the synagogue heard from the lips of Jesus explained their lives to them. His teaching provided clear answers to the most difficult, obscure questions. And all this from a man who had no education to speak of. 

We would, however, have every right to be even more wary of someone who claimed his teaching had the same authority as God's, if his own life didn't match up to that teaching. At the age of 16, I started keeping a diary because I felt I owed it to the world to enshrine for posterity quite how great a bloke I was. What I found as I wrote in the diary was the contradiction between what I said about myself and what I actually did. I was surprisingly selfish, despite some good intentions, and I often ignored my words and ideals when it came to getting what I wanted. 

But Jesus was no hypocrite. His life was totally consistent with his teaching. He teaches, for example: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." Later on, as he is suffering the most cruel and painful death imaginable, he prays, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Now that is practising what you preach. 

So that's Mark's first point: Jesus has power and authority to teach.

Jesus has power and authority over sickness 

But Jesus was no mere teacher. Another piece of evidence Mark provides about Jesus' identity concerns his power and authority over sickness. One example of this is found in chapter 1 verses 29 to 31: 

As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told Jesus about her.So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. 

This is not an isolated incident. Three verses later, in verse 34, we read that Jesus cures whole crowds of sick people. A few days later, his touch cures a man who was suffering with a disease so serious that most people would have avoided any contact with the victim at all. But Jesus does reach out to touch him, and his simple touch is enough to cure his leprosy completely and immediately. 

In fact, Jesus' power over sickness is such that even a word from his lips is enough to cure the most hopeless of cases. In the second chapter of Mark, for example, we read about a paralytic man who had to be lowered through a roof to meet Jesus - such was the density of the crowd that pressed to see him. 

He says to the paralytic, "Get up, take your mat and go home" and, in full view of everyone, the man gets up and walks out, taking his mat with him. Not surprisingly, later in the chapter, everyone is saying, "We have never seen anything like this!" The deaf hear, the blind see and the lame walk. 

Mark records 12 such examples of Jesus healing, and all of them show that Jesus' authority over sickness is far, far greater than that of modern doctors - despite 2000 years' worth of advances in science and medicine. 

Neither did these striking events go unnoticed by non-Christians of the time. For example, Josephus, a Jewish historian writing in Section 18 of his book Antiquities, called Jesus "a doer of wonderful deeds". It's hard to disagree with that diagnosis. 

Jesus has power and authority over nature 

Mark shows that Jesus is an extraordinary teacher and healer, but in chapter 4  he goes even further. 

Jesus and his followers (usually called "disciples" in the Bible) are in a boat on the Lake of Galilee when a"furious squall" comes up. Indeed, the original Greek word translated "furious squall" is actually closer to our word "whirlwind". It is a whirlwind so in-tense that waves break over their boat, which practically sinks.

One life. What's it all about? ...