Who Is This Man - John Ortberg

Chapter 1: the Man Who Won't Go Away

Jesus did not start by saying 'here are my proofs for divinity; affirm them and I'll accept you.'

Normally when someone dies their impact on the world immediately begins to reced... But Jesus inverted this normal human trajectory.

If someone's legacy will outlast their life, it usually becomes apparent when they die. On the day Alexander the Great or Caesar Agustus or Napoleon or Socrates or Mohammed died, their reputations were immense. When Jesus died, his tiny failed movement appeared clearly at an end.

The USSR's leader of the 'League of the Militant Godless' once remarked:

Christianity is like a nail. the harder you strike it, the deeper it goes.

Today the names of Caesar and Nero are used, if at all, for pizza parlours, dogs and casinos (or cafes), whereas the names in Jesus' book live on and on.

The quickest and most basic mental health assessment checks to see if people are 'oriented times three': whether they know who they are, where are and what day it is. I was given the name of Jesus' friend John; I live in the Bay area named for Jesus' friend Francis; I was born 1957 years after Jesus. How could orientation depend so heavily on one life? 

Historian O. M. Bakke wrote a study called When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity in which he noted that in the ancient world, children usually didn't get named until the eighth day or so:

Up until then there was a chance that the infant would be killed or left to die of exposure - particularly if it was deformed or of the unpreferred gender. The custom changed because of a group of people who remembered that they were followers of a man who said, 'Let the little children come to me.'

His impact on customs around death:

The word cemetery comes from a Greek word meaning 'sleeping place'. It expressed the hope of resurrection. 

How does Jesus survive his followers? They have done and do awful things in his name. Andrew walls noted that most religions remain centred in their original homes. But with the Jesus movement things are different.

It began in Jerusalem, but was embraced by unwashed Gentiles with such zeal that it began to move across the ancient Mediterranean to North Africa and Alexandria and Rome. Then more barbarians took it to heart, and it began to expand to northern Europe and eventually to North America. In the past century, it has dramatically shifted again: the majority of Christians now live in the global South and the East. When asked why, Walls said that 'there is a certain vulnerability, a fragility, at the heart of Christianity. You might say it is the vulnerability of the cross.' Where the faith has too much money and too much power for too long it begins to spoil, and the centre moves on.

H. G. Wells marvelled:

a historian like myself, who doesn't even call himself a Christian, finds the picture centring irresistibly around the life and character of this most significant man... The historian's test of an individual's greatness is 'What did he leave to grow?' Did he start men to thinking along fresh lines with a vigour that persisted after him? By this test Jesus stands first.

Chapter 2: The Collapse of Dignity 

Herod:

He had ten or eleven wives. He suspected the ambitions of the only one he ever truly loves, so he had her executed. He also had his mother-in-law, and two of his own sons by his favourite wife executed. When his old barber tried to stick up for his sons, he had his barber executed. Caesar remarked that (given the Jewish refusal to eat pork) it was better to be Herod's pig than his son. 

There are gradations of talent, strength, intelligence and beauty. Martin Luther King Jr. said 'There are no gradations of the image of God.'

George MacDonald delighted in writing about princesses and princes. Someone asked him why he always wrote about princesses. "Because every girl is a princess,' he said. When the questioner was confused, MacDonald asked what a princess is. "The daughter of a king," the man answered. "Very well, then every little girl is a princess." Every human being is the child of a King.

In the ancient world this wasn't true for every person. The practise of exposure was commonplace. Plutarch once wrote that until eight days old:

the child was more like a plant than a human being.

The term 'god parents' was invented by the community of the church. In a society that didn't value children, Christians appointed 'god' parents to look after children in the event of their parents dying.

Since the birth of Jesus babies and kings and everybody else look different to us now. Jesus bestowed dignity, worth and honour on not only children but every human being whether healthy, sick, male or female. On the following people, Jesus gave dignity:

The autistic or Downs syndrome or otherwise disabled child... the derelict or wretched or broken man or woman who has wasted his or her life away; the homeless, the utterly impoverished, the diseased, the mentally ill, the physically disabled; exiles, refugees, fugitives; even criminals and reprobates. 

These were viewed by our ancient ancestors as burdens to be discarded. To see them instead as bearer of divine glory who can touch our conscience and still our selfishness - this is what Jewsus saw and Herod could not see.

Chapter 3: A revolution in humanity

The Pharisees generally took great pride in following perfectly in their homes the regulations that were supposed to govern the temple. They believed the temple had been corrupted by Rome, so they could honour God by treating their homes as miniature temples. All regulations that should be observed in the temple would be observed in their homes.

One of the most famous sermons in that century was by Gregory of Nyssa (brother of Basil who introduced the vision to create communities that cared for sick people). This is what he said:

Lepers have been made in the image of God. In the same way you and I have, and perhaps preserve that image better than we, let us take care of Christ while there is still time. Let us minister to Christ's needs. Let us give Christ nourishment. Let us clothe Christ. Let us gather Christ in. Let us show Christ honour.

That was the beginning of what would come to be known as hospitals. The Council of Nyssa (same council that produced the Nicene creed) decreed that wherever a cathedral existed, there must be a hospice, a place of caring for the sick and poor... They were the world's first charitable institutions.

Another follower of Jesus named Jean Henri Dunant couldn't stand the sound of soldiers crying out on a battlefield after they had been wounded, so this Swiss philanthropist said he would devote his life to helping them in Jesus' name. This started an organisation in the 1860s that became known as the Red Cross. Every time you see the Red Cross, you are seeing a thumbprint of Jesus.

In the ancient world a slave was a non habens personam literally 'not having a person' a non-person. In the early church a slave might wander in and have one of the masters - one of the rich and powerful - get down on his knees, take a basin and a towel, and wash his/her feet.

A WELCOMING church:

An early church document (the Didascalia Apostolorum) instructed bishops not to interrupt a service to greet a wealthy person of high rank who entered late. But if a poor man or woman entered the assembly, the bishop was to do whatever was needed to welcome them in, even if it meant the bishop were to end up sitting on the floor. The seating chart was changing.

In AD 379 Gregory of Nyssa criticised slavery and scolded Christians who owned slaves:

You condemn to slavery the human being, whose nature is free... upon the one who was created to be lord of the earth and appointed to rule the creation, upon this one you impose the yoke of slavery.

Christians began also to care for prisoners. John Ortberg describes life in marxist Ethiopia:

Years ago I was in Ethiopia when it was under a Marxist regime and the church was mostly underground. One or another of the leaders of the Christian group would frequently be arrested and put into prison, which was horribly over-crowded and unspeakably foul. Other prisoners used to long for a Christian to get put in prison, because if a Christian was jailed, his Christian friends would bring him food - actually, far more food than that one person could eat, and there would be leftovers for everybody. It became the 'prisoner's prayer'; 'God send a Christian to prison.'

 Slavery today. Slavery still exists and endures today but with one major difference, the complete collapse in price. Historically slaves were worth around $40, 000 in today's money. Today the average slave costs around $90. They have become disposable units.

Chapter 4: What Does a Woman Want?

John 4. The woman at the well. Brilliant piece of revelation and insight... women did not and could not divorce men. Therefore it follows that when Jesus says to this woman 'you have had five husbands and the man you're living with now is not your husband,' it was unlikely that this was because she was a serial adulterer (as is usually the thing pointed out by commentators). This woman was someone very familiar with rejection. She had been 'kicked to the curb' a lot in her life.

Equally:

Her current arrangement was probably not about casual sexuality. If a man wanted a woman of lower class, he could bring her into his pre-existing marriage as a concubine or second wife, this was very possibly her only means of survival.

This woman was not a social outcast or 'notorious' woman either. She went and told them about Jesus and 'many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony.'

In Christ there is no longer Jew (insider) nor Greek (outsider), slave (outsider), free (insider), nor is there male (insider), and female (outsider), for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
For inheritance sometimes a male would be adopted since a female was not able to inherit a family's estate but it would pass to another male relative instead. Not so in the church. All are part of the family of God now.

Motherhood. Women were blessed if they gave birth to a boy. In ancient Sparta a mother who gave birth to a son would receive twice the food rations as a mother who gave birth to a daughter. Check out this insight then:

One day Jesus was teaching. "As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, 'Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.'"
Someone was complimenting Jesus' mother. We could expect a polite reply: 'Thank you. My mum's the best ever. She was a virgin you know."
Instead, Jesus offered a sharp rebuttal: 'Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it."
Jesus deliberately gave an edgy response: "No; you're wrong." For Jesus, the highest calling of a woman was no longer to bear a child. Motherhood, like fatherhood, is a noble calling. But it's not the ultimate calling. If you don't have children, you have not missed out. 

FACT: manus is Latin for 'hand', therefore a manuscript is something handwritten.

Women's testimony wasn't trusted, and yet it was women who first found the empty tomb: Celsus, a Greek philosopher looking to discredit Christianity said about this event 'But who saw this? A hysterical female, as you say, and perhaps some one other of those who were deluded by this same sorcery.'

Chapter 5: An Undistinguished Visiting Scholar

Jesus had a quality - generally restricted to either a genius or a psychotic - of being so convinced that he was right that even intense opposition did not sway him.

Jesus was supremely humble in his relationships yet supremely confident in his convictions.

Early church fathers had a favourite saying that the Gospels are a river in which a gnat can swim and an elephant can drown.

The historical impact of Jesus' thinking is so pervasive that it is often taken for granted. The gospels have impacted the world so much that they have been translated into 2,527 languages. The second-most translated book, Don Quixote, has been translated into about 60 languages.

The Bible is the best selling book of all time, according to the Guiness Book of World Records. The second bestselling is the Guiness Book of World Records!

In the academic world, scholars keep score by how often an article they write is cited by other scholars. By this sheer secular score, Jesus' intellectual impact is unprecedented. Harvard Professor Harvey Cox:

The words of the Sermon on the Mount are the most luminous, most quoted, most analysed, most contested, most influential moral and religious discourse in all of human history. This may sound like an overstatement, but it is not.

Augustine: All truth is God's truth.

In 1647 Mass. the first law requiring mass universal education was passed by the puritans who called it 'The Old Deluder Satan Act'

Robert Raikes started the Sunday School movement in 1780. He was unwilling to accept the cycle of poverty and ignorance that was destroying children. He said 'The world marches forward on the feet of little children.' Children who were forced to work six days a week were given access to a FREE school on Sundays. He said 'I'm going to start a school for free to teach them to read and write and learn about God.'

Within 50 years there were 1.5m children being taught by 160k volunteers.

The alphabet of the Slavic peoples is called Cyrillic. It was named for St Cyril who was a missionary to the Slavs and discovered they had no written alphabet. Thus he created on for them so they would be able to read about Jesus in their own language.

Technological advancements in the middle ages grew out of an understanding of the rationality of God. People saw matter as good, God as rational and consistent and work not as an evil but as a gift from God.

• The first recorded use of a windmill was by Abbot Gregory of Tours in the sixth century, to free his monks to pray.
• Mechanical clocks were invented by  monks because they needed to know when to pray... for centuries it was the church from which villages learned the time.
• 1300. The invention of an eyeglass by monks needing to read.

Chapter 6: Jesus was not a great man

Status symbols and orders within society. The toga in Roman society was a status symbol, but an inconvenient one all the same:

A male citizen from the age of about fourteen was allowed to wear toga virilis, the garment of manhood. Ironically, the toga was 'a remarkably incommodious garment.' Drafty in winter, sticky hot in summer, keeping one hand covered and unusable, difficult to arrange (the rich employed slaves specially trained in toga-draping), it had only one value: the proclamation of status.

The rich were also treated differently than the poor in their death. Crucifixion was reserved particularly for slaves; it was informally known as the 'slave's punishment.'

So when the apostle Paul started a letter to people in Rome by describing himself not as a citizen of the Roman Empire (which he was), not as a wearer of the toga, but as a 'slave of Christ Jesus,' he was committing social suicide. No one talked that way. 

 Christians would have described themselves as being slaves to the slave Jesus Christ since Jesus died a slaves death. Therefore as leaders in the church we are slaves to the slaves of a slave.

Learning to blow your own trumpet in Roman society was expected. Celebrate your greatness, make others aware of it. Plutarch wrote a self-help book entitled: How to Praise Yourself Inoffensively. Caesar Augustus wrote a book: The Achievements of the Divine Augustus which he had inscribed in bronze and distributed throughout the empire. Some excerpts:

Three times I triumphed at oration. Twenty-one times I was named emperor. The Senate voted yet more triumphs for me which I declined because of victories won by me. The Senate voted thanks for me to the immortal gods. Fifty-five times in my triumphs, nine kings or children of kings were led before my chariot. I have been consul 13 times. I was highest-ranking senator for 40 years. I held the office of Pontific Maximums. All citizens with one accord unceasingly prayed in every holy place for my well-being.

 Compare that list with Paul's own 'trumpet blowing' list in Philippians 3 and then in 2 Corinthians 6(?).

Humility was not an admired quality.

But things were changing. A poor rabbi who never wrote 'The Deeds of the Divine Carpenter,' said to his friends 'You know that the rulers of this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them... not so with you. Instead whoever wants to become great must be your slave...'

Jesus washes Judas' feet. The so-called divine Augustus never washed anyone's feet. A culture built on honour is beginning to implode, but almost no one back then realises that.

How are doing at prizing humility above greatness?

The gravitational pull of the ego is relentless. I sometimes wonder whether those of us in the church are just as preoccupied with honour and status as anyone else, just cover it up with a thin veneer of spiritual language.

Has the church lost it?

There is an old story that Thomas Aquinas was being shown the glories of the Vaitcan by Pope Innocent IV. The pope said, referring to the story of a lame beggar in the book of Acts, 'The church no longer has to say, 'Silver and gold have I none.'" And Aquinas replied, 'Yes, but no longer is the church able to say, 'In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, Rise up and walk.'" 

Jim Collins: Level 5 leaders have a tenacious will and humility.

Chapter 7: Help your friends, punish your enemies

German political theorist Hannah Arendt said that forgiveness and love of enemies is a distinctively Christian contribution to the human race:

the discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth.

Decapolis. Stated simply as going to 'the other side' by Jesus was a place Jews were very wary of. Many felt it was the place Satan lived. It was dark, oppressive and demonic. There were pagan temples and it housed a legion of 6 000 Roman soldiers. The symbol of a Roman legion was a boar's head. No respectable rabbi went there, but Jesus did. Not content with the crowds in his home territory he set out for 'the other side'.

The pigs and the demoniac. Jesus granted the spirits wishes to go into the pigs and the pigs ran into the sea. But why?

Any Israelite would think of the story recorded in 1 Maccabees, how Jewish patriots were forced by Tome to eat the flesh of pigs, and when they resisted they were slaughtered. So the pig is also the symbol of Roman power of the legion. And the tormented man was delivered from the legion.

The locals were scared of Jesus and sent him away. The locals saw that he had power but his power was from the 'other side', the wrong side, not their side. The healed demoniac asked to follow Jesus but instead Jesus told him to go and tell his story. A while later Jesus returned to Decapolis and this was his reception:

They ran throughout that whole region and carried sick on mats to wherever they heard he was...

Wow! The 'other side' was the place that the seven nations of Canaanites that weren't driven out were supposed to reside. Check this out:

In Mark 6 Jesus feeds a crowd on Israel's side of the lake. There were 12 baskets left over, the twelve tribes.
n Mark 8 Jesus fed a crowd on 'the other side' and seven baskets of food were left over, why seven?

This is just a guess but it's almost as if Jesus was saying: 'Good news is coming for the twelve tribes. But good news is coming for the seven nations of Canaan too. Twelve tribes, seven nations - it really doesn't matter to me. I love them all. It's good news for our side and good news for the other side.

Luther on enemy love:

The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the kingdom of Christ; he wanted to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared.

Pacifism began with the early church.

Amish:

The world was moved when in Oct 2006 five children were shot to death in a schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Penns. and the Amish community forgave the gunman donating money to the gunman's widow and children

Chapter 9: The Good Life Vs the Good Person

Two questions posed about life: who has the good life, who is a good person? The first gets addressed in advertising, the second at funerals.

Our advertisements are filled with promises to give you the very thing you wouldn't want listed in your obituary: great looks, great money, great sex, great food, great widescreen TV.

Jesus' movement produced many hypocrites. Given that there are more than 2b Christians in the world, maybe Christianity produced more hypocrites than any other movement in history!

Mark Twain once listened to a greedy, unscrupulous businessman piously drone on about his plan to travel to the Middle East and read the 10 Commandments from the top of Mt. Sinai. "I have a better idea," Twain is supposed to have said, 'Why don't you stay home in Boston and keep them?"

Hypocrisy as a word:

It is clear from the literary records that it was Jesus alone who brought this term hypocrisy and the corresponding character into the moral record of the Western world.

If you ever wanted to post a scathing blog about religious hypocrites you'll have to get in line behind Jesus. Jesus began, "Woe to you..." "Woe" didn't just mean trouble was coming; it meant trouble was coming in the form of divine judgement. God, Jesus said, will not tolerate hypocrisy.

Jesus used the strongest warnings of judgment and hell not as warnings to those outside his community of faith, but at the people inside it!

Because of Jesus' emphasis on the human heart, goodness does not begin with right behaviour. It begins with openness to the truth about the mess in my inner being.

Imagine taking your car in for a check-up and being told it was fine only later to nearly crash and discover your brakes were out of fluid. The mechanics protestations about wanting to 'make you happy' and feel 'at home' and 'accepted' aren't going to please you, not when your life is at stake. It's the same with a Dr. You don't want lies of flattery and assurances of good health when you're desperately sick. You want the truth. We want the truth. Jesus brought that truth-telling into the world of religion too. No longer (as in the pagan world) could you simply pay off a priest, offer a sacrifice and go on your way only to never change. For Jesus, the heart was in his crosshairs and before he could help us and heal us, he needed to expose us.

Chapter 10: Why it's a small world after all

God chooses Israel for the world, not instead of it.

The idea of a community that included everyone and treated every single human being as being of equal worth and value was an idea that had never been had before.

Tertullian: It is our care of the helpless, our practise of loving-kindness that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. 'Only look' they say, 'look how they love one another.'

When the church became 'official' in the early fourth C, a movement sprung up of desert dwelling Christians who sought a more pure form of faith.

The desire to be a spiritual athlete is never far from self-righteousness.

One of these desert dwellers, Simeon Stylites is said to have lived thirty years bound by a rope to a column thirty feet high. His flesh putrified around the rope and teemed with worms. When the worms fell out, he would put them back and say, 'Eat what God has given you.'

The monks who renounced the world, ended up reshaping it.

Dan Shaw went as a missionary and anthropologist to Pap New Guinea. He faced a difficulty however. They believed in the supernatural and saw spirits and gods in many places, but they had no word for a Big God who was ruler and creator over all.

Dan got to know them and found over the years that in extended families there was a figure called hi-yo, a father figure who would arbitrate disputes and make sure everyone was cared for and decide what was fair. Dan began his translation of Genesis: 'Back before the time of the ancestors, hi-yo created the heavens and the earth.'

People said, 'Wow. We had no idea. He is hi-yo over everything.'
Dan asked, 'What if he's hi-yo for everyone? Not just for you. Also for your enemies. For the cannibals across the river.'
'Oh no. We'd have to make peace with them.'
And peace happened.

At the end of their time together, they had not caused much of a stir. If you could have been there on the day after he died, if you could have seen the Roman Empire with its Pax Romana and its 250,00 miles of roads and its extension from Asi to Africa to Europe and its history of dominance and its social status that was envied throughout the Mediterranean... and then if you could have seen a few dozen failed, frightened, demoralised, defeated, confused former followers of an executed carpenter... 

If someone had asked you to place a bet on which group would still be around in two thousand years, all the smart money would have been placed on the Roman Empire. Which is as extinct as the dodo bird. Who was this man?

Chapter 11: The Truly-Old Fashioned Marriage

More marriages have been performed, more weddings vows taken in his name than any other.

The person who changed marriage in the Western world more than anyone else, was himself never married.

In our day people speak of keeping sex within marriage as 'old fashioned' when actually the reality is precisely the opposite.

Sexual activity ranging far outside a marriage covenant is a much older social arrangement.

Outside of Israel sex wasn't restricted to marriage for moral reasons. A Roman writer from the first-century:

We have mistresses for our enjoyment, concubines to serve our needs, and wives to bear legitimate children. 

Greek Drs would diagnose women with 'hysteria' a word that comes from their word for 'uterus' and was said to be cured by having intercourse.  Another Dr prescribed sex for adolescents as a way of curing melancholia, epilepsy and headaches.

The promise in marriage according to Jesus:

is not just to avoid adultery or divorce. It is to pursue oneness on every level: physical, intellectual, and spiritual - a oneness that does not diminish the individuality of the other but makes it flourish.

G.K. Chesterton on marriage:

I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible. 

Naomi Wolf, an author with no religious ax to grind:

published an essay several years ago musing on the hurts that the soul absorbs through casual sex with multiple partners and the loss of a sense of faithful love that can endure through life. 

Tim Keller referring to the promiscuity of the ancients in the sexual practises:

The ancients were stingy with their money, but generous with their bodies; the Christians were stingy with their bodies but generous with their money. 

The church has also had a lot of wrongness and weirdness when it comes to sexuality. In order to avoid lust, some monks would proudly keep a record of how many years it had been since they had seen a woman. Jesus wouldn't have done this!

Origen mistook Jesus' ironic words about physical mutilation as a means to spiritual goodness and castrated himself. Jesus' whole point was that mutilating the body is not the way to goodness.

Chapter 12: Friday

The Chief Priests threaten the stability of the region with the comment that Jesus is setting himself up to rival Caesar.

Caesar wants grain. Grain was to the Middle East in that day what oil is to the Middle East today.

Why did Jesus die? In a real sense, he died for corn. 

There were lots of messiahs around the time of Jesus and Jesus could have announced his messianic intentions at any point and gained an instant following:

He would never claim the title.

They brought false witnesses before Jesus but Jesus didn't need the false witnesses to incriminate him, he did it himself: and you will see the Son of man coming on the clouds. Meaning: 'you now see God present and working in a unique way, in me.' he did what no amount of false witnesses could have done!

sin = human darkness.

Chapter 13: Saturday

Easter Saturday was the only day in the last two thousands years when no one on earth believed that Jesus was alive.

That there are three days is significant and yet no one really gives much thought to Saturday. Saturday is the day the dream died.

Paul: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

Abraham and Isaac: The sacrifice was provided on the third day. 

Joseph's brothers: After being put in prison are released on the third day.

Rahab: Tells the Israelite spies to hide and that they'd be safe on the third day. 

Esther: When she hears that her people are going to be slaughtered she goes away to fast and pray. On the third day, the king receives her favourably.

It's such a recurring pattern that the prophet Hosea says,

'Come let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces... after two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.'

All three day stories share a structure. On the first day there is trouble, and on the third day there is deliverance. On the second day, there is nothing - just the continuations of trouble.

The problem with third-day stories is, you don't know it's a third day story until the third day. When it's Friday, when it's Saturday, as far as you know, deliverance is never going to come. It may just be a one-day story, and that one day of trouble may last the rest of your life.

Augustine once said that time was one of those realities he thought he understood until someone asked him to explain what it is.

We live 'between the trees' between the tree in Genesis and before the tree in Revelation.

Humble Jesus claimed to be the hinge of history: 'the time has come' he announced. Jesus changed how we think about history:

The year was given a new starting point. In Israel a baby was brought to the temple and given a name on the eighth day of life. January 1 is eight days past December 25. January 1 marks the beginning of the NY, because that's the day when the name of Jesus came into the world.  

600 years after Jesus a monk from Scythia (Iran) proposed a new dating system for reckoning history, centred not on the pagan myth of the founding of Rome but on the birth of Jesus.

Caesar Nero died in the year of our Lord 68. Napoleon (the emperor of the world) died in the year of our Lord 1821. Joseph stalin in the year of our Lord 1953. Maybe Jesus was not Lord of Lords and King of Kings but how strange that now every ruler who ever reigned must be dates in reference to the life of Jesus.

Yale Professor Carlos Eire wrote a book called A Very Brief History of Eternity. He observes that human life is either incredibly significant from a cosmic perspective or incredibly insignificant given its brevity next to the history of the cosmos, let alone eternity.

If you represent the entire history of our planet as one twenty-four-hour time period that ran from midnight one day to midnight the next, Homo Sapiens would make their arrival at 11:59 minutes, 59.3 seconds.

That is the span of humanity. Recorded history is far shorter - less than the pop of a flashbulb. Your life is too brief to be measured.

Chapter 15: Sunday

Jesus first word when he appeared alive was: 'Greetings.' Which is as close as he could have got to 'Hey. How you doing?'

A pastor named Skip Viau tried to tell this story in a children's sermon one time. He posed the question, 'What were Jesus' first words to the disciples after he was raised from the dead?' Before he could give Matthew's answer, a little girl waved her hand, and Skip deferred to her. 'I know,' she said. 'Ta da!' It's as good a translation as any.

Jesus effectively says: 'Tell the all that the cross failed, Caesar failed, Pilate failed, the chief priests failed.'

Christians thought about death differently as a result of Jesus' resurrection. In Rome the dead were regarded with dread and were buried outside the city in a place of their own necropolis 'the city of the dead.'

Christians were buried in the church yard and some under the floor of the church buildings so that in a literal way the living and the dead were gathered together for worship.

Garret Fiddler, a guest columnist in the Yale Daily News noted the irony of the cross as a piece of jewellery: 'Really, the cross does not belong on the Christian; the Christian belongs on the cross.'

Nietzsche said that Zeus gave hope to men to torture them: 'In truth, [hope] is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment.'

Epitaphs that express the difference between Christian and non-Christian hope:

Mel Blanc (voice of Looney Toons) : 'That's all folks.'
Philip Yancey's friend's grandmother : 'Waiting.'

Epilogue

In the Middle Ages, maps were not intended to be used for travel - people would hire live guides for that. Instead, maps were attempts to reflect on the meaning of the world, rather than just its terrain.

 Map of life according to the Bible. Two circles, 'heaven' and 'earth' with an interlocking one in between 'temple', the place where heaven and earth intersect. Then with Jesus that word 'temple' became 'Jesus'. Now it is... us.