The strangeness of Christianity
Writing this month, Bishop Martin of Chichester reflects on how the apparent weirdness of Christianity in fact reveals the truth on its deepest level, a truth which liberates you and all people, a truth which brings hope even in the midst of the world's darkness.
I definitely heard Tom Holland (the historian) say that
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Christianity is weird.
I was there, in the room, when he said it. He was serious. He wasn’t rubbishing Christianity. He was saying that its weirdness was what made it serious.
Lots of things during Christmas have a vague connection to Christianity. Giving presents is one of them. That comes from a story about astronomers who read the night
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sky, pick up gossip on their first century network (news has always travelled) and go to explore, taking presents.
We often take a present when we visit someone special. They are carefully chosen for a tiny baby – cuddly, safe – and a bit more obvious for adults: flowers, chocolates, wine, etc. The presents for the baby Jesus were certainly a weird choice: gold was good,
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but frankincense and myrrh were neither cuddly nor safe. They represented God, death and resurrection.
But how weird? A Christian, Muslim or Jewish baby born in the Middle East today enters a theatre of war where the issues of God, death and resurrection (a right to life after the killing stops) is precisely what that child’s parents will be struggling with.
Sunday, February 4, 6.30pm, at St Peter’s Brighton – Service led by Bishop Will, Bishop of Lewes, and the Revd Dan Millest.
Sunday, February 11, 10am, at St Mary’s Broadwater – Service led by Bishop Ruth, Bishop of Horsham, and the Revd Gaz Daly.
Sunday February 11, 6pm, at Worth Parish, Crawley – Service led by the Revd Sarah Upchurch. Preacher: The Revd Dr Godfrey Kesari.
nThe bloodshed there, and the deepening war in Ukraine, drive many people to pray to God. God seems to be silent, invisible and absent.
But the weird claim of Christianity is that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, suffered arrest, brutalisation and slow painful death. That experience is known to God better than it is known to you or me.
And judgement, the final
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For more information email info@chichestercathedral.org. uk or visit www.chichestercathedral.org.uk reckoning, is yet to come, after death. Every act of savagery, deceit or unnecessary unkindness will then confront its perpetrator. That level of truth-telling is scary.
Christians are also certain that God the judge is forensic, just, and compassionate. A scale and power of love beyond imagining is how God rights the wrongs we do. How weird is that?