From the minister... 

Dear friends

If you had just thirty seconds or a minute to summarise what matters most about Jesus, what would you say? Communicating such crucial or memorable information within a narrow window of opportunity is often referred to as ‘the elevator pitch’. Imagine yourself in a lift that travels from the ground to tenth floor of the offices where you work (or the ground to first floor of the Baptist church where you worship!) and think what you would say to the captive audience alongside you.

I thought of this principle recently when I read what could be described as the most famous summary of Jesus in history, the words used to describe his identity and mission in The Apostles’ Creed. It goes as follows:

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

For 1,600 years, most of the church’s history, these words have been the church’s commonly accepted account of what Jesus has done for us, a gathering point of agreement for believers of all denominations and traditions. But as I’ve reflected on them recently, I’ve been struck more by what was left out than what was kept in.

We can’t deny the importance of the events of Christmas and Easter: the miraculous conception of Jesus and his birth and what takes place in Holy Week, the events that are commemorated in the most significant festivals in the church year. But what’s striking about the creed is how it emphasises these beginning and end points, to the almost total exclusion of everything that happened in between. No mention is made of how Jesus spent his life as a child or adult. We read nothing of how he grew up in Galilee, nor how he welcomed strangers, ate with his friends, taught crowds or performed miracles. We read of Jesus our Saviour, but not Jesus the human being, an emphasis that can obscure our vision of all that he has to offer us.

When the Apostle Paul reflected on the significance of the life of Jesus, some twenty years after his ascension, he spoke of him as being like a second Adam. Where the first created human had fallen in sin, failing to be one who represented the image of his creator to others, Jesus remained obedient to his Father. In Romans, Paul writes of how ‘death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses (5:14), before explaining that ‘if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!’ (5:15).

The significance of all this is explained with eloquence by the American writer and pastor Kurt Willems:

‘Jesus is presented in the Bible as the fully human one who perfectly models being an image bearer. He is the human that the story of Eve and Adam hoped for. He is the human who enacts what all of us are designed and destined to live. The human who shows us what God would do when faced with the mingled love and pain of life in the real world.

When we look at Jesus, we see what God always wanted for all of us: a life in tune with our Creator, one another, the earth, and our unique selves.’ ¹

This is the Jesus who we will be studying in the coming months, beginning on Sunday 7 April when our new sermon series on Matthew commences. As we think together about our call to be his disciples, can I invite you to think afresh about what it might mean to see Jesus not only as Lord and Saviour, but also as the one who offers us the ultimate example of what it means for us to be fully human? Consider afresh not just his commands and his teaching, but look at how he lives his whole life: the people he loves and makes time for; the wit and the playfulness with which he speaks to others, including those who oppose him; his willingness to be interrupted; his strength which meant that he would not be swayed by others from fulfilling God’s call on his life; his resolve that ensured he regularly spent time alone with God; all the qualities that made him so attractive, a person people wanted to spend time with.

As we journey with the Jesus recorded for us in Matthew’s Gospel, I pray that our reflections on the full life of the one who fully models life will be a means by which we discover afresh what it means to be fully alive ourselves. 

Wishing you God’s grace and peace
Trevor

¹ Kurt Willems, Echoing Hope: How the Humanity of Jesus Redeems our Pain, 2021, Waterbrook, p xxi to xxii.