A call for Christians to remain true to the original

Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church

After almost 2000 years, it’s easy to lose sight of the real Jesus. Some idealise Him. Some see Him as a revolutionary. Some see Him as an emancipator. We all tend to want to reshape Him into our own mould.

For instance, it seemed to take several decades for Hollywood filmmakers of the 20th century to realise Jesus was not blonde haired and blue eyed. I’ve seen several paintings of Jesus’ Second Coming where Jesus is shown having the ethnicity of the artist.

Of course, the artists and filmmakers may defend their work by saying they’re trying to make Jesus relevant and more meaningful to their viewers. Or it could be an attempt to picture a universal Jesus.

In what seems laughable now, Adolf Hitler used the same method when he made a speech in 1922 and claimed Jesus as Germany’s “greatest Aryan hero.” I’m guessing a Jewish Jesus wouldn’t work for him.

Michael Frost (one of the keynote speakers at Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Salt Conference July 14-17) says he suspects his life’s work has been “to paint over the unreal, highly symbolic images of Jesus that many people carry and to seek to render something richer, more real, more inspiring than the porcelain icons that occupy the imaginations of many people today” (Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture).

Being Christian is not about reshaping Jesus into a form we may think is more respectable, more meaningful or more relevant. It’s about being true to the original.

It isn’t the role of followers of Jesus to reshape Jesus but to be reshaped by Him.

Dr Bruce Manners on what really matters at a royal wedding

Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church

What a wedding!

In case you’ve been visiting another planet, Prince William and Catherine Middleton married this past Friday. Estimates are that while one million people gathered in London, about two billion elsewhere watched the wedding. That’s almost 30 per cent of the world’s population.

How to describe the wedding: like a fairytale—the prince marries a commoner, a beautiful commoner becomes a princess, the pomp, the ceremony, the horsedrawn carriage; the only thing missing: a glass slipper.

The fascination with the insignificant: high. Who made the dress? The kiss, too short? The second, better? And did you know Catherine is Britain’s oldest royal bride.

The ceremony was openly Christian. The hymns, the Scripture readings, the sermon and the prayers gave that away. And for some reason the prayers were in Elizabethan or King James English, which added an olde world feel.

The depth of the invitation for God to be a part of the marriage was noticeable.

This was a memorable wedding, but in another sense it was no different to many other weddings. At its core were two people standing before God and family, and committing themselves to each other.

No matter how impressive the ceremony, how royal the blood, how popular the telecast, it comes back to the bride and the groom and their commitment to each other.

Nothing else matters—not really.

The depth of the commitment will be tested. Any marriage does that. For William and Catherine, the degree of difficulty is increased because they live their lives in public and often in the glare of the media.

Let’s hope and pray William and Catherine can keep their minds on what really matters.