Part 1 here

JESUS.  The most mocked man in all of history.  If you mock someone who is homosexual you will have stones throne at you from every direction.  Last year a cartoonist in Denmark mocked Mohammad with a drawing in a local newspaper—the result: the death of a number of people in retaliation attacks.

Yet Jesus is mocked every day.  Society doesn’t care less.  Each week there would be a “funny” cartoon mocking a Christian or mocking Jesus in a paper somewhere around Australia.

Below is some graffiti from the 3rd Century.  The Greek words read: ‘Alexamenos worships god’. You can see Alexamenos on the left, worshiping his ‘god’, who is a man with a donkey’s head, hanging on a cross. The donkey-guy is Jesus, and someone is giving Alexamenos a hard time for worshiping someone who was crucified.

Not many people take the death of Jesus seriously.

In 2006 on Madonna’s Confessions tour she finished the show hanging on the cross in a mocking way toward Jesus.

Not many people take the death of Jesus seriously.

It’s almost Easter.

When I speak to students in local high schools—they’re not quite sure if Easter is Jesus birthday or what?  All they care about is getting some chocolate and holidays.

In one sense Easter isn’t any different from any other weekend throughout the year for Christians.  Every weekend as we meet at youth group and church we are reminded of the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus.  BUT Easter is a great time to spend even more time reflecting on it and a great opportunity to talk to others about why they should take Jesus’ death and resurrection seriously.

Last month we looked at Mark chapter 8.  Can you remember?  We said that the big question in the first 8 chapters of Mark was “Who is the man?”  People marveled at Jesus and what he was doing.

In chapter 8 the answer to the question was made clear.  Jesus is the CHRIST.  Not a last name—but a title that tells us something of who Jesus is.  Who is he?  He’s the King that God promised who would come and fix the world.

From this point forward Mark answers 2 questions: 1 What does it mean for Jesus to be the CHRIST? And 2 What will it mean to follow  Jesus?

In Mark 8:31 Jesus immediately answered the first question… what would it mean for him to be the King??  It would mean that he would die and rise again.

Jesus took his death very seriously.  In the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14) we see that Jesus is willingly to take upon himself that which we deserve.  We sin.  We reject God’s rule in our life.  Yet Jesus is willing to die and take our punishment upon himself.

Substitution.

This idea has been called substitution.  Like a substitute teacher steps in and takes over your class for the day… JESUS steps in and takes our punishment so that we won’t have to.

How seriously should we take Jesus death?
We shouldn’t mock him like our 3rd Century Graffiti Artist, or Madonna, or the person that sits next to you in Maths!

3 ways we should respond?

1) Trust him. Trust that when he died he died in your place.
2) Love him. Delight in Jesus the one who has saved you from judgment.
3) Be like him.

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

We don’t become Christians by WHAT we do.  It’s all about what Jesus HAS done.

But one of the ways to respond to the death of Jesus, is to be like him.

Deny yourself.

Take up your cross.

This is what Jesus did.  This is what ALL Christians are called to do.

If you want to follow Jesus.  That’s what Jesus did.  Follow him.

It’s not going to be easy—we’ll be tempted to be ashamed of the cross.  We’ll be tempted to laugh with our friends when The Simpsons makes another joke about Jesus.

What will it look like to deny yourself at school?  At home?  On the internet?  With your boyfriend? On the sporting field?  In your workplace?

J-WALK magazine is all about encouraging you to look at the way that Jesus walked… to trust him… to love him… and to live like him.

Take His death seriously:
Deny yourself.
Take up your cross.
Follow him.
Do the j-walk

We’d love to hear your comments… ccecyouth.com

Click here to download simple format (viewable on screen)

Click here to download fancy booklet (not for the faint hearted)

Click here to view and discuss articles online – more will be added over the next week

I don’t like Easter Eggs. I was the child at home who didn’t actually eat my Easter day loot but rather stored each egg like a trophy up on a shelf in my room, tempting every member of my household to eat until so many months had gone by that when opened, the chocolate had turned a stark white. This all isn’t really that surprising because I don’t really like chocolate. But I particularly don’t like Easter eggs, and I’ll tell you why.

Every year at the local supermarket there is always the same display at the end of the centre aisle which displays large amounts of what I like to call “The Super Egg”. The super egg is roughly 40cm high and 20cm in width. It is generally wrapped in a single colour alfoil to emphasise the impact of this size and then housed in an A4 cardboard frame, typically with a creepy smiling bunny printed on the side. Further down the aisle from these Super Eggs are their varied cousins: The smaller fist sized egg, the tiny solid version (packs of 25 to compensate its size), the Bunny shaped one which is hard to eat with all it’s curves and isn’t even an egg (really, are kids meant to believe the Easter bunny is so egocentric that it would drop off mini edible replica’s of itself??) and the humpty dumpty eggs filled with smarties (because the Easter message mix of Jesus and a bunny rabbit wasn’t confusing enough someone decided to throw a random nursery rhyme in for good measure)

The problem with all these eggs is that they are hollow with a thin outer casing. There is nothing inside except unsatisfying air and so the egg turns from being a promise of much yummy goodness to a deceitful lie. A deceitful lie which tastes like cardboard (everyone pretends like it doesn’t but c’mon, it does) If melted down, a normal sized egg would probably only have the same amount of chocolate as a single square of chocolate and yet somehow they cost at least double the price.

Another problem with Easter eggs is that they seem to represent so many different things that in effect, they mean nothing at all. I googled the history of Easter eggs and got so many different answers it wasn’t funny. Easter eggs apparently represent anything from the rebirth of the earth for ancient pagans, to a happy pregnancy for ancient Romans. Or if you’re referring to eggs that have coloured spots on them, some Roman Catholic legends suggests that the Virgin Mary cried tears on some normal eggs when with some soldiers and made lots of colourful spots on them (a feat which would have complimented Gandalf’s fireworks display nicely at Bilbo Baggins’ Birthday).

You might quite enjoy eating expensive cardboard flavoured chocolate. Good for you. As for me—I’m looking forward to another great opportunity to reflect upon our Lord and Saviour’s death and resurrection. Praise be to Jesus.

I had never been to a real overseas country. I’ve been to New Zealand but that doesn’t really count. What I mean is that I have never been somewhere where you can’t just take your own money and pass it off as local currency. In January of this year though, I went to India with my Father-in-law. He likes to think of himself as a middle-aged Indiana Jones, trekking the nations in search of new experiences and cultures. He wanted to show me a part of the world that I had never been to before so off we went to India. There are lots of benefits to travelling to another part of the world. One of them is the insight and perspective that it gives you into your own culture. Another is the way that it helps you to put a face to that place on the World around us and Getaway. A third benefit is the way that it gives you a greater sense of what it means to be human. It gives you a glimpse of global humanity in a way that you may not have had otherwise. India is a place filled with People, who live in overwhelming Poverty, who are obsessed with Religion.

So when I was asked to write a J-walk article about India, I thought I would look particularly at these three areas: People in India, Poverty in India; and Religion in India.

People

Before I went to India I thought that it would be all jungles, sweat and talking bears, like in the Jungle Book. Turns out I was wrong. The first thing that I was struck by when I landed in Delhi was PEOPLE. People were everywhere. There were taxi drivers climbing over each other to give us a ride to Delhi; All the way along the highway from the airport to the city in the middle of the night, people were walking; Even in Delhi the streets would be filled with people standing around right through the night. Presumably they can’t lie down to sleep because if everyone in India did that at once they would cover the country plus half of Pakistan. It is a place of people.

And the romantic notions of jungles, tigers and young man-cubs?

A myth.

Most of the scenery where I went resembled western NSW. It was like going on a trip to Dubbo with a billion Indians. Although let me say, if I were going to go on a trip to Dubbo with a billion members of a people group, you can be sure that I would choose Indians! India is a nation that has eight different races of people living in it. These people all speak different languages and follow a variety of religions. Yet, they all seem to get along like a house on fire. Everyone is generally polite and hospitable. Even the guys who try and rip you off do it in such a way that makes them seem lovable and kind. Everyone is keen to stop for a chat. I had a three hour conversation with a guy on a train about politics, family and Jesus. I met a bunch of guys from the Kashmir who were running a dodgy travel business and then sending all their earnings to terrorist cells back home. I met a taxi driver who goes home to see his wife one weekend a month. I went to a church that had about 40 people in it and they had no supper but people stayed around and chatted for an hour or so. Everyone loves to talk.

Everyone has a story as well. Most of them end with… ‘So, can I have some money?’ We ran into a boy who tried desperately to convince us that he was doing a school project where he needed to get some money from Australians. Another guy told us he would take us to an ‘incense competition’. We ended up at his sister’s place buying aromatherapy oils.

I miss the people of India. When I landed in Australia there was a woman who bumped into another woman in the airport with her bag. The lady who was bumped turned and snarled ‘Hey. Watch it.’ I was not proud of my country then. Indians respect one another in a way that Westerners do not. They value community while we love to isolate ourselves. They live in each others lives while we try to get out of each other’s way. In India ‘church’ truly means family. As I turned up at this small fellowship in Bangalore, I was welcomed as a brother. It shames me to think of how we would welcome an Indian into our church.

All of this is a generalisation and Indians hate the same way that we hate. There is a social system in India called the caste system that has bred hate and contentment for thousands of years and is only just now starting to be healed.  I’ll pick up much more of this next issue where I’ll tackle poverty and religion in India…