A kid’s slot for All Age Church aimed at infant children at CCB

William Wilberforce was a Christian Superhero who lived in the 18th Century. That’s over 200 years ago. A Christian superhero is just an ordinary person who does something extraordinary for God. I’ve got a picture of him here.

There are three things we can learn about this man.

1. He followed Jesus

God made William Wilberforce a follower of Jesus. He grew up in a family where no one read Bible stories to him and no one prayed with him. He first heard about Jesus when he was a teenager from a man called John Newton. But he started following Jesus when he was grown up. He went on holiday with one of his old teachers and they talked about God, Jesus and the Bible on the journey. It took him a while to understand things and even longer to accept them. But eventually he became a Christian. He did it even though his best friend who was about to become the Prime Minister of Great Britain tried to persuade him not to. He thought it was more important to become a follower of Jesus even if his friends didn’t want him to.

Every single one of us can decide to follow Jesus. Often our friends will try and tell us that’s a silly thing to do. Usually that’s because they haven’t understood how wonderful it is. We can help them just like John Newton and Isaac Milner helped Wilberforce by telling them all about Jesus. One of the ways we could do that is by asking our friends to come to the Easter party of Tuesday.

2. He loved people

God made William Wilberforce into a very compassionate man. A compassionate person loves people and looks after them to make sure that they’re alright.

Can you think of someone you know who’s compassionate?

Wilberforce was very rich and he had lots of friends. He could have completely ignored the poor people around him in this country. And he could have ignored people from Africa who were being used as slaves to make Britain rich.

Does anyone know what slavery is?

• Show what it’s like to be under the complete control of someone else by telling them what to do so that they do it and not letting them do what they want to do.

But he didn’t ignore the people who needed his help because he loved people. He saw the state that people were in and decided that he couldn’t let it go. They had no one else to help them and he wanted to.

Every follower of Jesus should be like that. Jesus once told a young man that God wanted him to do two things. The first was to love God and the second was to love other people. So God wants us to love people. There’ll be people at school or people who need friends and need help.

3. He changed things

God made William Wilberforce into a man who changed things. He became a Politician when he was young and that was the job he did as he grew up.

What job does your Mummy or Daddy do?

A Politician is someone who works for the Government. The Government make rules for the country so that people know what’s right and what’s wrong. His best friend was the Prime Minister and so he was very powerful. But he had to persuade people by talking to them that they ought to love the other people in this country and in this world.

Most of us won’t be as powerful as William Wilberforce but every single one of us can try and change things that are wrong. Sometimes that’ll mean we talk to people and try and get them to stop. Sometimes it’ll mean that we write a letter to the Government and get them to change what they’re doing. We won’t always persuade them but we need to try. Do you know that it took 46 years for Wilberforce to change the law about slavery. That’s older than all of you put together. It’s older than the oldest person here!

Conclusion

William Wilberforce was a very wonderful man that God used to change this country. Let’s ask God that he might make us like William Wilberforce so that we might follow Jesus, love people and change things. 

Talking about ‘closing the gate after the horse has bolted’! Here I am writing what to all intents and purposes looks like a review of a film released in 2004. Let it never be said that CCB hasn’t got it’s finger on the cultural pulse!

This isn’t really a review. You can get those elsewhere http://www.pluggedinonline.com/movies/movies/a0001657.cfm. This is an apologetic.

We’re planning to show the film on Good Friday at 8pm, in the Bedford in Balham. The hope is that friends, not normally open to considering the issues thrown up by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ might feel willing to do so at this time of year. But whenever this film is discussed, in particular amongst evangelicals though not exclusively, three questions commonly arise. First, what about the violence? Secondly, what about the Catholic additions? And thirdly, what about the anti-Semitism? This short article attempts to deal with those potential objections to showing the film.

First, some introductory comments.

• You may not have realised that all the dialogue is in Aramaic! Wonderfully someone took Mel aside and persuaded him to add subtitles. They’re in Koine Greek. No, they’re not - honest. They’re in English.

• I’m told, because my powers of discernment are best employed critiquing films belonging to the action adventure and romantic comedy genres, that it’s a wonderful film. Elisa Beynon, writing in Evangelicals Now, said that it’s, ‘Beautifully shot, sensitively acted and incorporating an array of impressive technical effects, it’s impossible to watch The Passion without being emotionally drawn in’.

• No one should feel compelled to watch the film. We don’t have to see it to appreciate the work of Jesus Christ in his sacrificial substitution for sinners. We can read all about it in one of the four historical accounts that God has left us with. No one should feel under any obligation to come. However, because it’s a cinematographic work of some notoriety many who wouldn’t want to darken the doors of a church building might feel more at home in a pub, more at ease with a pint and more open to discussion than usual.

But let me deal with the objections with three observations

1. The violence is brutal but so was crucifixion

There’s no getting away from it. This is a violent film. It has an 18 Certificate, and rightly so. Gibson doesn’t draw back from depicting the horrors of Jesus’ mistreatment at the hands of the Roman soldiers. Dr James Dobson from the USA’s evangelical organisation Focus on the Family writes,

‘Although accurate to the biblical account, you need to know that the Passion of the Christ is excrutiatingly violent in its depiction of our saviour’s scourging and crucifixion. As such it is wholly inapporpriate for young children’. February 2004 Newsletter

The down side is that the film does not portray what it cannot portray, namely the spiritual suffering of Jesus. The film opens with the words from Isaiah 53 but inevitably those are forgotten as the narrative unfolds. Therefore the film obscures what the New Testament doesn’t; the enormity of Jesus’ substitutionary sin bearing sacrifice for sinners. The Bible teaches that the spiritual suffering of Jesus, when he endured his Father’s wrath against sin, is of far greater significance than even his horrific mistreatment at the hands of his captors.

2. The depiction is accurate but there are Catholic additions

Gibson has been influenced not only by the historical content of the four Gospels but by a work of Catholic piety called ‘The Dolorous Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ’ written by Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich. Al Mohler in his article, Passionate Controversy writes,

‘Gibson has combined elements from all four Gospels and has followed a story line that is fully recognisable from the biblical text. At the same time, he has undeniably added elements that are not found in the text and his use of cinematographic devices such as flashbacks, which may be necessary for the telling of the story, also compete with the overall accuracy of the presentation’. http://www.almohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2004-03-29

The Roman Catholic emphasis comes across in the following ways

• a disproportionate amount of attention is given to Jesus’ physical suffering to the neglect of his spiritual suffering
• to no one’s surprise Mary is given a significance in the film that the Gospels withhold from her
• the Stations of the Cross are incoporated within the narrative so the film drags as Jesus travels from his trial to his crucifixion

3. The Jews are implicated but so are the Gentiles

It’s perhaps easy to see why the Jewish community might be offended by the film. The American Abraham Foxman asked in a public letter to Mel Gibson ‘to be assured that it will not give rise to the old canard of charging Jews with deicide and to anti-Semitism’. On hearing that, I’m reminded of a sketch by an Irish comedian who reminds us that it wasn’t the Poles who killed Jesus! He’s got a point. But perhaps something more substantial is required. Elisa Beynon quotes a comment by a Spanish Evangelical Alliance writer, ‘To say this is anti-Semitic would be like saying that a World War II film critical of Nazism is anti-German’. It’s less funny but it makes the same point. But as Al Mohler points out all this discussion about supposed anti-Semitism obscures the real issue. He writes,

‘The question, ‘who killed Jesus?’ should direct us to the historical reality, clearly presented in teh gospels, that complicity between the Jewish leaders and Roman authorities led to Christ’s crucifixion. But the larger point - and the essential theological point - is that Christ died for our sins. This the correct answer to the question, ‘Who killed Jesus?’ is we did. Christ died for sinners. That is the central theme of the New Testament gospel and it is the essential answer Christians must give, not only in the face of this controversy, but as the essence of our Christian witness’. Al Mohler, Newsweek Takes on the New Testament

Conclusion

If you feel able to come and friends are willing to join you why not familiarise yourself with the gospel accounts, arm yourself with fresh resolve to fill in the gaps and make use of the Good Book Company tracts that we’ll have available. Find a copy here http://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/productfiles/tpojcp-lo-res%20flyer.pdf.

It’s worth thinking how you’d advance a conversation after this film. Each of these imperfections provides an opportunity to address a significant issue.

• The flawed depiction of the spiritual suffering endured by Christ is an opportunity to speak about God’s righteous and justified wrath against human rebellion.
• The flawed depiction of the historical verifiable events provides an opportunity to talk about the reliability of the witness God has preserved in the Gospels.
• And the flawed depiction of those ultimately responsible for Jesus’ death provide an opportunity to speak the way we’re all implicated in what happened. 

The first time I watched the fil I say it in a room with over 200 church leaders. At the end no one prayed publicly. That was a mistake. Overwhelmed by what I saw I came away with one thought in my head. He did that for me. We should have prayed.

If you’d like more information follow up some of thse links.

A review by Elisa Beynon in Evangelicals Now http://www.e-n.org.uk/2967-The-Passion-in-fashion.htm

Al Mohler has commented at various points and his thoughts can be found here http://www.almohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2004-03-29, here http://www.almohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2004-02-10 and here http://www.almohler.com/commentary_read.php?cdate=2003-10-01.