his house

Lots of folk are gathered together, chatting, eating and enjoying themselves in down town St Helier. In the centre of the room is an elephant. Everyone is ignoring it.

Can you identify the elephant in the room? What is it that no one speaks about but everyone knows about for sure?

There’s one elephant in particular which deserves to be noticed because that elephant is very common. It’s the inconsistency between what people say and what they actually do.

Yesterday we heard about George Osborne’s Autumn Statement and stuff that he said would happen. This time next year how many of the promises will remain unfulfilled?

Also, judging by the report in last night’s JEP that all Jersey’s police are all to be fitted out with constantly-recording cameras, those seemingly unequivocal words, “I didn’t do it” are often false.

Read again at the words in bold above. They are the Words of Jesus Christ AD 30 as he concluded his Sermon on the Mount in Galilee in Israel. “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

This is about inconsistency between what we say that we hear – and what we then do. But what is this foolish-man’s house that falls down?

And the wise man who hears Jesus’ teaching and does it – the person who is consistent – what is his house?

Something is quietly happening in Jersey. I don’t know if many readers are aware of it, but all over the Island folk are beginning to take an interest in the original records about Jesus Christ. Folk are mainly doing this in small groups.

I’ve recently been part of a Luke’s Gospel Reading Group and greatly enjoyed the discussion. Quietly people are going back to read about the original Jesus Christ – back to the time before any churches had been built, in Jersey or elsewhere, back to basics.

A new Matthew’s Gospel Reading Group starts next Wednesday, 11 December 2013 at 10 a.m. This Reading Group will read and discuss Matthew’s First Century biography of Jesus at the Totem Club – that’s the lovely granite building opposite New Look in Halkett Place.

If you’d like to come and read – just come.

Do you know what those AD 30 people thought when they heard about the elephant in the room – the inconsistency between saying and doing, between hearing and doing?

Here’s what Matthew recorded. “When Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.”