My wife and I hope that later this year, and after three years study, our son will graduate with a degree in Ancient History – not the sort of degree to get anyone a job with a merchant bank, an internet provider or any of the other more “sexy” 21st century professions. That said, it’s a degree which has significant things to say to the 21st century because it’s enabled him to understand something about the world in which Christianity had its birth and in which it remains firmly rooted.
He and I have recently been talking about some of the letters exchanged between Roman emperors and those who were responsible for governing some of the provinces of the Roman empire. In particular they show how Christians, especially those who would not deny their faith, were to be dealt with. In terms of their punishment and persecution there are some striking parallels in our time in, for example, parts of Africa and the Middle East.
What resonates through some of the writings of the periods which our son is studying is the reality of the faith of those early Christians. Here are people utterly convinced about and completely immovable on the subject of the reality of Jesus, his life, his death and his resurrection. It would have been much safer for them to the former ways of worshipping the ‘local’ gods of their ancestry. But nothing would convince them to do so, even threats to both their well-being and their lives. Despite these, they understood the ways of Jesus as offering life in all its fullness.
These ordinary people were experiencing the mystery and liberation of what we might call their own resurrection in their own lives: an experience which coloured the way in which they lived day to day. No longer would they simply seek what was best for themselves alone. They would recognise that the loving and just ways of Jesus would always be undefeated, revealing the heart of life in all its fullness. Jesus’s ways make the difference to self and to those around us.
The church does not always make the best job of revealing the heart of the Gospel, and is caricatured as perpetuating a fairy-tale with a happy ending. This denies the reality of the faith and courage of her founders which points to the church existing to both uncover and commend life in all its fullness – life lived fully in the interests of others as well as self. It is the church’s calling to encourage the world to seek that life and to live it.
I pray and hope that you will seek and find life in all its fullness and that it may bring a true sense of fulfilment to you and to others around you. May you be risen with Christ.
Bishop John Davies
