Encounters with Jesus

Remember the time Jesus stepped into an image shaped across fourteen centuries of Scripture, showing how a familiar symbol can suddenly reveal its true weight?

Remember the time Jesus used a Davidic psalm to reveal the Messiah’s identity and the relational heart of Yahweh?

Remember the time Jesus self-identified—not with spectacle or dominance, but in a way that brought rest to those crushed by religion?

Remember the time Jesus asked for help, restoring a broken and shunned woman who then brought transformation to the very city that broke and shunned her?

Remember the time Jesus made it all about Himself: how He fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, inaugurating a New Covenant?

Remember the time Jesus stepped between a guilty woman and a murderous mob with rocks in their hands, refusing to let her be turned into a prop for their theological stunt?

Remember the time Jesus called out self-serving religion and inaugurated a new way of living based on a new love-defined morality?

Remember the time Jesus faced the oldest temptation in Scripture and broke a pattern that had replicated since the garden?

Remember the time Jesus dodged the culture wars? How He ingeniously served the marginalised without becoming co-opted by any one faction?

Remember the time Jesus used the word “sinner” to describe recipients of grace rather than labels of condemnation?

Remember the time Jesus used the language of obligation, showing how should, ought and must can express the resolve of a heart shaped by the Father’s love?

Remember the time Jesus spoke about the birds and the tree? When Jesus planted the seed of the inclusive nature of the Kingdom of God?

Remember the time Jesus saw the blind man? Yes, the time we got an inside peep into the prevailing religious mindset of the day.

Remember the time Jesus spoke in a synagogue, and poked the belly of the beast that often lurks under polite niceties and religious smiles?

Remember the time Jesus hung out with that dirty rotten scoundrel and flipped the world upside down?

Remember the time Jesus offended a man with a glowing CV and a sterling track record for good behaviour?

Remember the time Jesus confronted religion? “Which time?” you ask. And you’re right. There were so many times.

Remember the time Jesus didn’t talk about heaven? He didn’t talk much about the subject directly, but I’m referring to the time we all assume He did.