Christmas through female lenses (2)

This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham… there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah. Matthew 1:1-17

Last time we focussed on the genealogy of Jesus as recorded in Matthew 1. I pointed out that this list of names includes four women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and “Uriah’s wife”, who of course we know as Bathsheba. Each had a particular role in the story of the coming of Israel’s Messiah, and so they are part of the introduction to the Christmas narrative. I pointed out some lessons this suggests to us, but didn’t have time for other, broader things that we can glean. I want to highlight these now…

First, it is striking that these women’s names are there at all.

Luke has a similar list in Luke 3. It contains some twenty more names than Matthew’s – yet not one is female. This makes it clear that Matthew didn’t have to include the four; it was an unusual thing to do – an unusual leading of the Holy Spirit.

The options open to women in biblical times were, of course, extremely limited; for most, not much more than marriage and motherhood. Three of Matthew’s four – Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba – do indeed fit that pattern. But Matthew obviously recognises that women can have other significance as well, and he wants to draw attention to this.

At a time when we have learned the horrible, barbaric news from Afghanistan that women and girls have been banned from education, it makes you stop and think.

Do some of us need to face up to the fact that even in our modern churches we have failed to value and make use of women as we should? True, even in Jesus’ time women’s roles were very limited, but they do also figure in various significant ways – not least, in being the first witnesses of the resurrection, before any of the all-male twelve. (It’s quite instructive, too, to take a look at Paul’s list of names in Romans 16 – people who clearly played an important part in church life - and count up the number of female names; it comes to over a third.)

Second, it is striking that at least two of the four women, possibly all four, were gentiles, not Israelites.

Jesus, of course, was the “King of the Jews”. He came to minister “first to the Jew, than to the Gentile” (Romans 1:16). In his own words, he “was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24).

The turn of the gentiles would come, of course, but that would be after Pentecost. Yet here in these references back to the Old Testament there is a clear fore-shadowing of the welcome of the gentiles: how much more welcome could anyone be made than by being included in Jesus’ very family tree!

The Book of Acts makes it clear that for many of the first followers of Jesus (all of them Jews) the coming of gentiles into the kingdom of God was a bit of a shock, and not an entirely welcome one. (You can follow the controversy through in Acts 10-11 and 15, plus Galatians 2.) This reminds us that even today, when we feel comfortable and secure in what we think of as “our” church, we can be blinkered and prejudiced when newcomers who seem “different” in various ways come to join us.

A healthy church will encompass people of various races, colours and backgrounds. Thank God that the days of the white, western (and predominantly middle-class) church are passing; but is there still a way for some of us to go?

Third, it is striking that the four women came from varying parts of the social spectrum.

They certainly weren’t queens or princesses! True, Bathsheba may have “married well”, by becoming the wife of a leading soldier in David’s army. But Tamar? We have no way of knowing. Rahab? Well, whether she was a prostitute or, as some people would prefer to think, simply an inn-keeper, she certainly didn’t belong to high society. And as for Ruth, she was a widow and a migrant, a “foreigner”, travelling by faith to an unknown country, and in effect reduced to begging when she got there.

Jesus, the King of Kings, came from pretty humble stock!

And this is only confirmed by the one woman in Matthew’s list I haven’t mentioned: “Mary… the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah”.

In social terms Mary was pretty much a nobody. Once Gabriel had delivered to her – probably still a teenage girl – the staggering news that she was to give birth to a child, all she can say is the beautiful, humble statement of faith: “I am the Lord’s servant… May your word to me be fulfilled” (Luke 1:38).

As Paul puts it, addressing the Christians of Corinth: “Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of the world and the despised things…” (1 Corinthians 1:26-28).

Our sheer ordinariness is something to glory in! And isn’t this truth right there in the genealogy of Matthew 1? Thanks be to God!

Thank you, Father, for the distinction between male and female, Jew and gentile, weak and strong. Thank you still more that such distinctions are broken down in Christ, and that each person has a vital role to play in the outworking of your purposes. May this rich variety be reflected in the life of the church to which I belong. Amen.

 

Credit where it’s due… these last two blogs were triggered by a book called Jesus through middle eastern eyes by a scholar called Kenneth E Bailey. An ordained minister, Bailey spent some 40 years living and teaching in the middle east. He was proficient in the original languages of the Bible - Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek – as well as Arabic. The book sets Jesus fairly and squarely in the context of his natural human habitat, and is both enlightening and challenging. It starts with the birth stories of Matthew and Luke, and does a fascinating job of stripping the modern, sentimental narrative of Christmas of all the bits that have been added on over the centuries. (Be prepared for a rude awakening over parts which it has never occurred to you to question but which have nothing to do with the Bible!) If you’re particularly adventurous you might also be interested in a companion book called Paul through Mediterranean eyes.

Christmas through female lenses

This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham… there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah. Matthew 1:1-17

Most Christians very understandably skip over the genealogies, or family-trees, of the Bible. Both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels contain such a genealogy, attached to the Christmas story (Matthew 1 and Luke 3). They differ from one another, and are obviously selective, and they consist simply of lists of Hebrew names, forty-four in Matthew and seventy-six in Luke, names that most of us don’t really know how to pronounce. So why bother too much with them?

Well, Matthew presents us with something that, once we have noticed it, is quite striking. Such ancient lists tend to be entirely male, with women only mentioned, if at all, as wives or mothers. (Luke’s list, for example, includes no women at all.) But Matthew, intriguingly, includes four women, wives or mothers indeed, but women who play a prominent part in the history books of the Old Testament.

This raises the question: Why did the Holy Spirit prompt Matthew to include them? We can only speculate, of course. But there are real gospel lessons to be drawn from them. You could even say that their inclusion takes us right to the heart of Christmas.

Who were these four women?

The first is Tamar, who we meet in Genesis 38. This chapter tells one of the nastiest, most unsavoury stories in the whole Bible, a story of gross sexual misconduct on the part of Judah son of Jacob (or Israel, as he came to be known).

The story is too complicated to sum up briefly, but suffice to say that Tamar is deceived by Judah and treated by him as a prostitute – an act in which she colludes in order to show him up and expose his hypocrisy. How much we should blame her and how much sympathise with her – well, perhaps that’s for each of us to think about (remembering of course Jesus’ words about not judging others).

But… Tamar appears in the family-tree of Jesus the Messiah! Is there anything we can learn from that…? The New Testament tells us that Jesus was perfect, but there’s no doubt that his family tree was well tainted. So perhaps that can encourage us if we happen to have any skeletons in our family’s cupboard - or indeed in our own past?

The second woman is Rahab, who appears in Joshua 2 and 6. A citizen of Jericho, she gives refuge to two Israelite men sent by Joshua to spy out the land before he attacks it.

Most Bible translations describe her as a prostitute, and people have been known to snigger over what the Israelite men were doing in such a woman’s house. But the writer makes no comment about that, and Rahab is portrayed in a heroic light and eventually declares her allegiance to the God of Israel.

And… Matthew includes her in his family-tree of Jesus! She is the mother of the good man Boaz, thus the great-grandmother of none less than King David himself.

Is there anything we can learn from that…? Well, as the whole Bible repeatedly teaches us, God uses some amazing human raw material; we never know what surprising people he has up his sleeve!

The third woman is Ruth, who of course has a whole Bible book to herself. She is a Moabitess, a “pagan”, a member of a nation whose people were historical enemies of Israel. She marries into Israel, and is depicted as a model of honesty, loyalty and devotion to God. But guess what…? Her second marriage is to Boaz, and she thus becomes the grandmother of… King David!

Is there anything we can learn from that…? Well, we know from the New Testament that the good news of Jesus is for gentiles as well as Jews, and we now take that for granted – but it’s quite something to find one in the family tree of the Jewish Messiah! If that doesn’t warn us against prejudice of any kind, I really don’t know what will.

The fourth woman is given no name, but we all know who she is. She is described as “Uriah’s wife”, the woman King David took into his harem and who gave birth to King Solomon. She is Bathsheba. (One book I read suggests that Matthew doesn’t name her because he finds her too distasteful. Well, who knows?)

David, of course, is the chief offender of the two – as is powerfully portrayed in Psalm 51 (though one might be justified in wondering what Bathsheba was doing by bathing on the roof of her house in full view of the royal palace). Whatever, the result was a grubby affair which resulted in the death of an innocent man (2 Samuel 11). Yet, “Uriah’s wife” is included in the family-tree of Jesus!

Is there anything we can learn from that…? Well, it’s a lesson that comes across to us from all manner of Bible characters, great and small, not just David and Bathsheba: God loves and uses sinners. Isn’t that a truth to reflect on when we ourselves feel the weight of our own sins?

By allowing a dull New Testament passage to take us back into the Old Testament there is much we can be blessed and challenged by. I think too there is still more – but I’ll have to leave it for next time. Please join me after Christmas!

Thank you, Father, that human beings are never “just names”, but real, live, flesh and blood men and women, like the four women Matthew sees fit to include in his genealogy, people loved by you. Help me to remember that with every person I ever meet. Amen.

May God bless us all this Christmas time!

Thinking about anxiety

Jesus said, Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear… Matthew 6:25

Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches… 2 Corinthians 11:28

I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Psalm 34:4

Last time I wrote about anxiety, and I am grateful to one or two readers who responded with comments.

The discussion boiled down to what might seem a contradiction: on the one hand Jesus tells us “not to worry” about the practicalities of life (Matthew 6:25); but on the other hand Paul, using that same word, speaks about “the pressure of my concern (= worry) for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11: 28).

What seems a contradiction arises, of course, from the fact that the English language offers us a variety of words – worry, anxiety, care, concern – whereas in the New Testament the same Greek word stands duty for them all. So it’s no great mystery. It just highlights the fact that there is a right kind as well as a wrong kind of anxiety. The right kind is what we might call sensible, responsible caring; the wrong kind is a failure to trust in God, a giving in to either crippling worry or happy-go-lucky optimism.

Putting it another way: the fact that Jesus tells us not to be anxious doesn’t mean that anxiety is sinful. To many people that will just seem common-sense; but I think there are sensitive souls who get very troubled when anxiety begins to nag at them, and even feel that they are guilty of sin: “I am disobeying a clear command of Jesus!”

How should we answer a person in such a frame of mind? What comfort can we give?

The simple answer is that certain things that look like commands are not really commands at all. A loving parent trying to comfort a frightened child will say “Don’t be afraid!”, and those three words look like a command if you take them from their context. But of course they aren’t. They’re a short-hand way of saying “There’s no need to be afraid! Nothing bad is going to happen!” and no doubt they’re backed up by a cuddle and a soothing tone of voice. The parent is not saying “Stop it! I forbid you to be afraid!” The very thought is grotesque.

It’s the way we’re made. There are certain moods and feelings that come to us whether we like it or not. If somebody tells us a good joke we don’t think to ourselves, “Right, now I’ll laugh”. We just laugh; it’s a natural impulse. By the same token if a danger suddenly threatens we don’t think, “Ah, it’s time to be afraid”. It just happens.

And it’s the same with anxiety; it’s a natural impulse, not something we choose to feel. Whereas a sin is a decision, something we consciously opt for.

But there is more that can be said; more, indeed, that needs to be said. Putting it in a nutshell: Even when anxiety jumps on us from out of the blue, we do have a responsibility, with God’s help, to bring it under control. That, surely, is what Jesus means when he says “do not worry” – by trusting in God we can put our worries in their place, we can subdue them as we would a yapping dog.

I personally find it helpful to take a leaf out of the psalmist’s book and give myself a bit of a talking to. “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” he asks himself; and immediately answers his own question: “Hope in God!” (Psalm 42).

In the same way, when worries seem to be building up on me I can have a little question-and-answer session…

Do I believe in God? Answer: Yes, I do… Is my faith a living reality or just a formal, nominal thing? Answer: Well, I certainly mean it to be a living reality, even though sometimes I’m afraid it wobbles a bit… Do I believe that God loves me? Answer: Yes, though that faith also can sometimes wobble… Do I believe that Jesus is my Lord, Saviour and Friend? Answer: Yes, I do… Over the years you have trusted him, has he ever let you down? Answer: No, though some of what he has done or allowed still puzzle me, I have to admit.

All right then: so from experience you have learned that God loves you and is with you? Answer: Er, yes, I suppose so… Well then, do you really have any reason to be anxious? Well, now you put it like that…

I’ve made it sound very simple; which, of course, isn’t always the case. It’s a process, if that’s the right word, which needs to be repeated every day, if not every hour. And it’s a process in which we may need the support and help of believing friends. But given that support, we can be confident that God our Father will indeed “deliver us from all our fears”.

The two key words are prayer and faith. Muster your faith in the way I have suggested; and then turn it into simple, humble, honest, childlike prayer to God. Your anxieties may not melt away immediately; but they will be brought to heel.

Loving Father, please help me to win the victory over worry – not to surrender to crippling anxiety, and not to be guilty of shallow irresponsibility, but to trust you with a quiet, determined faith. Amen.

I'm anxious, Lord!

Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches… 2 Corinthians 11:28

Do you pray for your minister? If so, how regularly? Every day? Or just when you happen to think about him or her?

If ever you needed an incentive to do so, the whole passage from 2 Corinthians 11:16-33 provides it (perhaps take a moment right now to read it through).

Paul is aware that in the church in Corinth (a church, bear in mind, that he founded) there are people who have their doubts about him and who question his authority. So he decides, though very much against his better judgment, that the time has come to let his hair down and assert his credentials as an apostle.

He realises - with, I think, a kind of grim humour - that this is a crazy thing to do: “I am speaking as a fool!” (verse 21); “I am out of my mind to talk like this!” (verse 23). But he feels he has to find some way of making them sit up and take notice.

And so we get a long catalogue of the things he has suffered in the service of Christ. To get the full flavour I recommend that you read these verses out loud, standing in front of a mirror, and putting real passion into it – the note of heavy sarcasm (19-21), the rhetorical questions (22-23), the repetition of the word “danger” (26), and then the detailed list of his hardships – culminating in the indignity of having to run away from Damascus by dropping through a window in a basket (23-33).

This is a good passage to read next time we feel a bit self-pitying about our hardships in the Christian life! Most of us know precisely nothing!

But tucked away near the end of this outburst is a little remark which is quite low-key by comparison, but which seems to weigh as heavily with Paul as all the rest put together: “Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches” (verse 28).

All right, your minister, and the leadership as a whole, may not be quite in the Apostle Paul league, but be in no doubt that that “pressure” is something they are familiar with. You probably don’t see it. On Sundays, up front, they are strong, positive, smiling; but you don’t know what’s playing on their mind: that little quarrel between two key people; those who haven’t returned to regular worship since covid; the slightly worrying state of the church’s finances; the increasingly urgent need for children’s or young people’s workers. Etc, etc…

Leading a church is not an easy task. There are a dozen balls to juggle at the same time, and they can lead at best to sleepless nights, at worst to serious mental health problems.

You might say, “But surely spiritual leaders are supposed to be people of faith! If they get ground down by the anxieties of the work, what hope is there for any of us!”

Quite right, of course. But that observation just makes your minister feel even worse – it adds a heavy dollop of guilt to the already existing pressure. Your minister may be a truly spiritual person, but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily immune to the anxieties that go with the calling.

One of the things I really respect in Paul is his openness about his own spiritual fragility. This second letter to the church in Corinth especially reflects this. It’s right here in chapter 11, and he gets something very similar off his chest in chapter 6, where he speaks about “endurance… troubles, hardships and distresses” (verse 4).

And as for chapter 1, especially verses 8-11 – well, if ever you slipped into the error of regarding Paul as some kind of spiritual Superman, it’s time to think again! He frankly states, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself”. Is that really the great apostle speaking!

You might also say, “But surely Jesus tells us not to worry” (Matthew 6:25). Again, quite right. But there are different kinds of worry! In fact (being technical for a moment), it’s interesting that the word Jesus uses for “worry” there in the Sermon on the Mount is the same word as Paul uses in 2 Corinthians 11:28 to describe his own frame of mind, and which the NIV translates “concern” while the ESV goes bluntly for “anxiety”. In other words, you could say that Paul explicitly admits to something Jesus tells us not to do. (I invite you to sort that out – and perhaps let me know what you come up with!)

I’m not suggesting we should treat our leaders with kid-gloves: just reminding us that they need our support, our encouragement – and our prayers. After all, if we aren’t praying for them, who will be? It’s no accident that several times in his letters Paul asks for the prayers of his readers. A wise man, Paul!

Oh, and one last thing. Just possibly you might yourself be a spiritual leader, and that there are times you feel ground down and anxious because of the weight of responsibility. Well, take heart! It seems you are in good company!

Father, whatever my role in life, please help me to learn the discipline of gathering up my anxieties and laying them firmly at your feet. Amen.

Unworthy servants

Jesus said: “Suppose one of you has a servant ploughing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’” Luke 17:7-10

If you are a Christian I would be pretty sure that you know the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10); it’s beautiful and very challenging. But, beneath its surface simplicity there is a whole deeper meaning.

I wonder if you know this?...

The man journeying from Jerusalem to Jericho stands for Adam. Jerusalem is the city of peace, from which Adam has fallen. Jericho is the moon, signifying Adam’s mortality. The robbers are the devil and his angels and when they stripped him they robbed him of his immortality. They beat him by causing him to sin. As he lay half-dead, he was still alive physically, but dead spiritually. The priest and the Levite stand for the Old Testament religious law. The Samaritan is Christ. The wine and oil are the means of healing.. The inn is the church. The day of the Samaritan’s return is the resurrection. The two denarii are the promise of this life and of the life to come.. The innkeeper is Paul.

You didn’t know that?

That was the interpretation offered by Bishop Augustine of Hippo (354-430), generally regarded as one of the greatest theologians in the history of the church. And it’s an interpretation which, today, is greeted with a disbelieving smile and a shake of the head: how utterly absurd!

But let’s be careful. That’s just a grotesque example of a tendency to go to the Bible determined to squeeze all sorts of unlikely truths out of a plain text – a tendency which hasn’t completely disappeared. Augustine’s technique is known as “allegory”, where details of the story are made to correspond with spiritual realities. But it can come in a variety of forms, especially when we are dealing with parables of Jesus.

(There are, in fact, preachers and teachers who insist on finding Jesus in literally every Bible verse, Old Testament as well as New, even including the Song of Songs or the long lists of names in 1 Chronicles 1 or Ezra 7. There’s no doubt that the Old Testament as a whole points towards Jesus; but to shoe-horn him somehow into literally every verse makes no sense at all.)

What’s all this got to do with Luke 17:7-10, the “parable of the unworthy servant”, the passage at the top?

Jesus speaks about the way a rich man at that time and in that place would naturally treat his servants. And it really isn’t particularly pleasant: in effect… “You’ve finished off in the fields? Right, I’m ready for my supper now, so you’d better get cleaned up and start cooking. When you’ve finished that you can sit down and grab something yourself. Oh, and by the way, don’t expect any thanks from me – you’re only my servant, remember, only doing your job…”

In the context of the passage the harsh master obviously stands for God. But is that really the way God treats those who seek to serve him? Didn’t Jesus explicitly tell his disciples, “I no longer call you servants… instead I have called you friends” (John 15:15)? Didn’t he himself kneel down at the apostles’ feet to wash them (John 13:1-17)? Didn’t he tell them that “my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30)?

And isn’t this one of the greatest things he ever said: “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve…” (Matthew 20: 28)? And doesn’t that seem to directly contradict the parable?

(You might even find it slightly shocking that Jesus seems to treat slavery, now recognised as a great evil, in such an uncaring and casual way: him of all people; surely not!)

So, what does the parable of the unworthy servant in fact mean?

The key to understanding any parable is to look for one basic point, not to go rummaging around searching for deep truths. One writer compares parables to jokes, where what matters is the punch-line; as soon as you hear it you get the point and laugh. With the parables you get the point and nod your head in appreciation: “Ah, of course, I see what he’s getting at!”

And the point of this parable, using the regular practice of slavery as an illustration, is to remind Jesus’ followers that they have no claims on God.

We can’t put God in our debt. Suppose (going back a few verses) we have shown enough faith to uproot some mulberry trees and plant them in the sea – well, that’s great, but let’s not get above ourselves, let’s not develop a sense of “entitlement”: “I’ve shown really powerful faith! I really am a bit special!”. Strictly speaking, our status is that of a servant; it is only by the mercy and kindness of God that we have become his children.

That’s the essence of the story, and we would go badly astray if we decided to press all the details – especially the hardship of the servant and the coldness of the master – instead of just digesting that key lesson.

In fact, I can’t help seeing a little irony here. The master is completely indifferent to the servant’s need of a meal. But isn’t a meal exactly what our Master promises us?

It’s called “the marriage-supper of the Lamb”. Thanks be to God!

Father, when I come to passages in your word which are a little tricky or puzzling, give me the patience to pray and think them through until the light of the Spirit dawns to give me understanding. Amen.

Does it matter to be a Christian?

Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people.

The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. Acts 11:25-26

A recent report tells us that for the first time ever the number of people in Britain who identify themselves as “Christians” has dropped below 50%. They (we?) are still far and away the largest religious grouping, but I suppose this is a landmark that it’s difficult not to notice. Is it time to panic? time to throw up our hands in despair and lament that our country has “ceased to be a Christian country”?

Of course not. (Indeed, is there ever a time when panic and despair are called for? No!)

Those of us who regard ourselves as Christians in the sense of believing in certain truths concerning the historic person of Jesus Christ, and who genuinely try, however weakly, to place him as heart and centre of our lives – we have known for decades that we are in a very small minority. So these latest figures really come as no surprise to us.

Nor, of course, do they tell anything like the whole story. What, after all, does “identifying as a Christian” in fact mean?

This label, which is so familiar in our modern world, occurs just three times in the whole New Testament: once on the lips of a sceptical unbeliever (Acts 26:28); once as a term of confident self-identification by a Christian leader (1 Peter 4:16); and once, above, as an explanation of how the word was coined. But today, the word “Christian” has come to mean a thousand and one things to a thousand and one people; if you’ll pardon the illustration, it’s like a rich, nourishing tomato soup that has been diluted so often that you just can’t taste the tomato any more.

In the early days, to “identify as a Christian” could get you imprisoned or burned alive; but today many who are happy to regard themselves as agnostics or even atheists are also happy to call themselves “cultural Christians”.

And so we have got used to qualifying the word Christian with one or more others: we claim to be “true” Christians, or “practicing” Christians, or “born again” Christians, or “committed” Christians, or “church-going” Christians, or “Bible-believing” Christians. But I’m afraid that any of those can make us sound self-righteous and sanctimonious.

Is there any way out of this confusion?

A missionary society I follow seems, judging by what I have read of their recent publications, to have taken an extreme step to solve the problem: they have simply ditched the word Christian altogether. They call themselves “Jesus-followers”.

It seems rather odd: but I must admit that I have a lot of sympathy with them. There are times when a word has become, frankly, more trouble than it’s worth, and deserves to die – and perhaps that may even apply to a word we find in scripture which was the church’s first name.

Going back to Acts 11:19-26 the question arises: Who in fact were these people in Antioch who were nick-named “Christians”, “Christ’s people”? (Quite likely the name was intended mockingly, just as Methodists were originally mocked as fanatical Christians with their methodical ways.)

The story of the Antioch church is one of the most exciting in the New Testament, because it marked a moment when the first followers of Jesus embarked on a radical, history-changing new departure.

To understand it we need to grasp a vital fact: at the start Christianity was a thoroughly Jewish affair. Jesus was the Jewish Messiah or King, and all his first followers were Jews. In spite of the promises of the Old Testament - that the Messiah would come to be “a light to lighten the gentiles” as well as the Jews - not until the remarkable events in Antioch did this reality take shape.

Antioch, in Syria, was a major city, the third in the Roman empire after Rome and Alexandria, a bustling meeting-point and melting-pot, a centre for all sorts of religious viewpoints. The key verse is Acts 11:20…

Most of the church members in Jerusalem had fled after the killing of Stephen (Acts 8:2), and some ended up in Antioch. Luke tells us that these people “spread the word only among Jews” (notice that!). But Luke carries on: “Some of them, however,… began to speak to Greeks (gentiles) also… and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord”.

This, it seems, was totally unexpected. Wouldn’t we love it if Luke had told us how it happened and who “these men from Cyprus and Cyrene” were (truly unsung heroes)! But he doesn’t. All we know is that what we might call a “Jesus-revival” broke out in Antioch, and it gave birth to a church where Jews and Gentiles rubbed shoulders together (unheard of! outrageous!).

These were the first “Christians”: people of different races whose lives had been transformed by the message of the gospel.

And isn’t that just what we “Christians” are - or should be - today? What we are called is really neither here nor there. All that ultimately matters is that we are Jesus-followers!

Can we say an enthusiastic Yes to that question?

Lord, I don’t claim or pretend to be the “Christian” I should be. But I do seek to be a true, serious, obedient and joyful follower of Jesus. Please help me! Amen.