Thought for the week: John Wattis talks Jesus
‘Should we talk more about Jesus and our Christian roots?’
‘Attentive to God, attentive to people.’ These were the opening words of a heading for a Lent midweek meeting in our local Churches Together group. The final part was called ‘Talking Jesus’.
Reflecting on this in Meeting for Worship the following week, two things came to mind. First, as a Quaker, I was not comfortable with ‘Talking Jesus’: it did not seem to fit well with the Quaker way of Meeting, largely in attentive silence. Secondly, it missed the point that Jesus himself made: that it was not calling him ‘Lord, Lord’, with words, that mattered, but how we behaved towards our fellow human beings
Certainly, our Quaker Meetings do have their roots in attentiveness to God (though I understand the concept of God may be disputed by some). We certainly try to be attentive listeners to what is said. It is not in our tradition to react to what other people say, but to listen respectfully in silence, and to speak ourselves only in response to the inner promptings of the light. ‘Talking Jesus’ is not something we major on – at least not in the Meetings for Worship I have attended.
Or is it? I write from my personal experience of having attended various Quaker Meetings, most weeks, for over twenty years. Much of what I have heard in ministry might not have been talking about Jesus, but was based on his teachings. Then we have our Quaker emphasis on ‘testimonies’ to peace, equality, simplicity and truth. Jesus himself was described as the ‘Prince of Peace’, and we testify to peacefulness and conflict resolution as part of our way life. Equality was also promoted by Jesus, who called his disciples his friends and, according to Paul in his letter to the Philippians (2:6) ‘Did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant.’ Simplicity of life was also part of Jesus’ testimony. He referred to himself as the ‘Son of man [who] has no place to lay his head’ in Matthew’s gospel (8:20). Truth is found in one of Jesus’ ‘I am’ statements, when he described himself as ‘The way, the truth and the life’ (John 14.6).
In our personal and corporate life, we seek to live these testimonies to peace, equality, simplicity and truth (and sustainability, which flows from the others). All of us fall short of Jesus in these things, even though our testimonies are more about our ‘walk’ than our ‘talk’. But should we talk more about Jesus and our Christian roots, in order for people to understand better the origin of our testimonies?
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