Jesus came to my house

Another imaginative worshipful challenge from Iain. Many of us at wgnc have written about Jesus coming to our house. Here's my offering.

Jesus came to my house today. I really wish he hadn’t. Don’t misunderstand me I desperately wanted to meet him. Its just I’d rather have gone along to an evening at someone else’s house, a kind of fireside chat, some selected friends and, wow, Jesus would be our guest!

But he wanted to come to my house and said so publicly. Why did I climb the bus shelter to get a good view of Him? All the way from Byres Road we traipsed to my house, everyone and Jesus, every hanger-on.

I must admit the days have passed so pleasantly and peacefully even with everyone around, so many visitors! So many people I don’t know and yet I have become host and slightly hostage. I’m captive and captivated.

I don’t know how He does it. Everybody’s name He knows, and the conversations! It should be startling and set us on edge but you know the way he knows all about you? He says exactly the right thing to everyone every time. Even through the window to people outside in the rain.

I’m not stressing, but get this, every time my wife Shirley and I go to the fridge for supplies as yet more guest arrive, it remains provisioned. It hasn’t expanded Tardis-like. It just has an undiminished abundance. We have wine, of course, pouring out of vases, bottles and plastic cups.

Sometimes He just looks you in the eye. Smiles gently and sweetly. I can’t articulate the energy and rush of feeling this gives. Not goose bumps, more like an inner earthquake. So much said without words. He laughs a lot too! With us never at us.

I opened my bedroom curtains the next morning and there were three tents in my front garden. I waited 20 minutes for a homeless family to finish using the bathroom. I hadn’t seen my own children yet. When I did there was my son is sitting on His knee. The stories He can tell! Everyone was spellbound.

He did some dishes with me and then helped Shirley hang out some washing and without warning said He needed to go.

I gushed out a declaration that I would give half of all I had to the poor and repay all my rotten debts to everybody I’d wronged. I didn’t meant to, it just was drawn out of me like a long withheld breath. Yet I feel it rung true and I can do it.

He smiled beatifically and said “salvation comes to this house today.” I really, really think it has. I wondered, momentarily about following, dropping everything, but it didn’t feel that was what He wanted. I left it unsaid. I was still looking out the living room window hours after He and all the followers had gone. I remember Him looking back, straight back at me, smiling, crying, praying all at once it seemed.

The phone rang, my anxious boss wondering why I wasn’t at work. “I’m sorry,” I said, “ Jesus was here, is here, He came, he really came, and.…I’m alright now.”
“Right so you’re coming back today then?”
“ No I’m all right, all right, everything! Totally everything, its just …”
“What!”
“Its not like a funny turn or anything, its just, well I’m not coming back!”

Multi or mono-faith?

An interesting thought bolted unexpectedly out of Sunday’s sermon. There is apparently a serious prospect, or at least a debate, of the Church of Scotland proposing offering some of their churches for multi-faith worship.

This provoked a somewhat unnecessarily staunch defence of remaining a Christian worship community. There has been no desire in our own community of believers to unite with others for multi faith worship. The notion is not even on our radar.

However I do believe we would do well to think it through. The prospect of Scotland’s main denomination opening out to embrace all faith worship seems strange and unnecessary. Yet as a counterpoint and also increasingly disturbing is the creeping secular intolerance of faith groups (although secularists target mainstream Christianity and don’t dare take on other faiths)

It seems unnecessary for the Kirk to consider this, as I can’t imagine any reciprocity in the arrangement. Will Christians be welcome to inter faith worship at the Mosque, gentiles to Synagogue?

As usual our 20-30 centuries old scriptures don’t give direct guidance. Like climate change, genetic engineering, nuclear arms, the topic of multi-faith worship is a modern encumbrance.

The OT gives the story of Ezekiel on Mt Carmel. This is seriously confrontational multi-faith worship. Taunting the followers of Baal to invoke a miracle of fire, which the Lord finally brings burning up any credibility in following a false faith.

Yet Jesus took a much more gentle approach with the woman at the well. He willingly debated the place of worship; Samaria or Mount Zion. He unveiled the inner place of worship in Spirit and in Truth. But qualified this worship as the kind that the Father seeks.

Would not the Father hear and seek the genuine worship of one true god in the heart of the Muslim Jew and Christian? With our monotheistic and Abrahamic brothers and sisters can we not bond over our common heritage and shared scriptures?