Monday 2 April 2012

The difficulty of speaking about Jesus

Rowan Williams' Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles our Judgement is my pre-Easter reading this year. It is challenging and evocative.

He commences with an account of Mark's retelling of the trial of Jesus framed by a question about the difficulty of speaking truthfully about who Jesus is.

Williams reminds us that ... the world Mark depicts is not a reasonable one; it is full of demons and suffering and abused power. How in such a world could there be a language in which it could truly be said who Jesus is? Whatever is said will take on the colouring of the world's insanity; it will be another bid for the world's power, another identification with the unaccountable tyrannies that decide how things shall be.  Jesus, described in the words of this world, would be a competitor for space within it, part of its untruth. (p.6)

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