The one about the young Jewish girl who was visited by an...
... angel? Yeah. Heard it.
Yeah? Whatever. Anyway, heard it. Every Christmas since the year dot. It's how Jesus got born.
Yeah. I was an angel in the school nativity play.
Really? Wings and everything?
Yeah. Mum made them. Coat hangers and pillow cases.
No feathers?
Nah.
Well at least you had wings.
Yeah. Is this going somewhere?
She was the same age you are now, you know.
Who, the girl with the angel? Yeah? Cool. Hey, wait a minute... fourteen and having a baby?
Yup.
Uncool. In a stable?
Well, probably but no-one can say for sure any more. Long time ago. Not in a nice hospital, that's for sure. Somewhere poky and cold, with animals snuffling around.
Not cool, then, heheh - cold.
I would think so, yes. Poor baby. Born shivering. Not a good start.
Jesus. Mary was his mother. Dressed in blue.
Yes. Mary. Not sure about the blue, though. Blue was expensive in those days.
Whatever. So he was born in a dump and freezing from the off.
Yes.
Rough start in life.
It got rougher. A lot rougher.
Yeah. Crucified, right?
Yes. Do you know that that means?
Well, kind of.
Tortured to death. Even before they got him he knew what was coming his way and he was so terrified that he actually sweated blood. It's very rare, but it happens. Your whole skin is agony if anyone so much as touches it, from the top of your head to the soles of your feet.
Then they they came for him. All his friends took off and he was on his own. He was beaten by sadists who used whips with sharp bits of metal in them. 'Scourging,' it's called. He lost a lot more blood, of course. Then they rammed big thorns into his scalp like a kind of sick-joke crown. Most amusing. They called him Your Majesty and bowed and laughed and hit him round the head. Because they could. Then they marched him through the streets carrying a heavy wooden beam, only he couldn't do it because he was so weak from loss of blood. He kept collapsing. The crowd were encouraged to kick him as he went by. Local Tradition. Nice. They had to keep hauling him to his feet and finally they had to make a bloke in the crowd help him carry the wood.
When they finally got him to the execution place they stripped his clothes off him. Of course that meant he lost a lot more blood as all his wounds were ripped open. He was half-dead now. Then they nailed his hands to the beam he'd hauled, and got it up on to the top of a big upright pole that was already standing there. They nailed his feet to that. So now he was hanging there on the cross, pinned to it by the nails, his weight dragging on the nails. You can't last long like that, especially not after what he'd already gone through. Then, they just left him there to die. It took three hours. That's crucifixion.
I've seen pictures.
Mm. You get kind of used to those pictures, don't you? Easy to forget that you're looking at a man in unbelievable agony.
Yeah.
A man who was known everywhere for doing good. Healing sick people. Comforting sad and scared people. Telling them how we're meant to help each other get through life, without hate and viciousness, crime, all that sort of thing. He told them we're all created by God out of pure, eternal love, so that we can be loved. How this is and has always been the whole point of everything. Existence, life, everything.
Huge crowds followed him everywhere to hear him talk like that and to get cured of their diseases. They loved him. They tried to make him king a couple of times but he wouldn't have it. He kept running off into the hills, or to another town. He visited a lot of places, walked miles to heal people and tell them to make peace with those around them.'
Yeah. So, he did good and he tried to get everyone else to do like him. He didn't harm anyone. But look what happened to him. Bastards. But why?
Funny thing is, a lot of them thought that on balance they were doing a good thing, getting rid of a trouble-maker, a disturber of the peace. He knew what they were thinking and he forgave them. Even when he was dying in incredible pain at their hands, with his poor mother right beside him, and he could see the suffering in her face. Forgave them, prayed for them. Remarkable. Don't you think?
'Yeah. Don't know how he could forgive them. I wouldn't.
Silence.
That day, the day he died - they call it Good Friday.
Uhuh. Not really what you'd call a good day, though, was it?
For him, no. For us, yes.
What? Why?
There was a soldier who was told to stand there, by the cross, to make sure he was dead. He heard Jesus forgiving his torturers as he died and he realised that he was seeing a one-off, something more than human, right there. He saw it in the forgiving face of this man he watched die, without complaints and no screaming for 'Justice!' A man who just took all they could do to him and defended those who did it it - his killers. 'Love your enemies,' he'd always said. And he did just that, right to the end. Even a terrible, terrible end like that.
Silence.
Born in a freezing dump and tortured to death. What a life. How old was he?
When he died?
Yeah.
Thirty-three.
My mum's thirty three. I think. Or maybe she's forty-three. What happened to Jesus's mum?
She collapsed, but she got over it.
But how could his mum get over all that... that... horror story?
Well, because the next thing that happened was very weird.
What was that?
After Jesus died, his friends buried him in a grave in the rocks. Three days later, his mother met him. Alive. Walking, talking, smiling. Absolutely fine. Covered in scars, I would think - no-one mentioned them, but, well after all that? - but as well as can be. Yet somehow... different.
You're KIDDING! Even if a bloke survived all that, it'd take him months to recover. If he ever did. In intensive care too! Three days?
Yep. And he had foretold that, too, although pretty much nobody knew what he was talking about at the time.
Wait. Seriously? Actually dead. Really dead. And three days later, alive?
Yes. I told you it was weird. But thousands saw him. The whole city had been talking about his death, the failure of their hero, or so it seemed, so you can imagine the impact of his coming back to them.
Wow. A ghost!
Um, well, not a ghost, no.
Course he was a ghost.
Well, how many ghosts do you hear about who cook their mates a barbecue on the beach? He did. Or with holes bored in them by a torture squad and they show you those holes all healed up three days later and tell you to put your finger in the holes?
Blimey.
So, dead, and then alive again. The complicated word for it it is 'resurrection'. It means raised up again, from being dead to being alive again.
Yeah - I've heard of that... oh, yeah, wait - Easter!
Yup. Easter. When we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God.
Chocolate. But - what? Son of God? How do you make that out?
That's what Jesus said he was. He said it before he died, and he said it again when he came back to life. I don't know about you, but if anyone can come back to life after being dead for three days, just as they predicted, well, I sort of feel I have to believe whatever he tells me. So, not a liar or delusional. He predicted it, and it happened. Back from the dead in three days. A normal man AND the son of the God who made you, me, the world, the galaxy, the universe, everything. Son of that God. The God. Dead, buried and back to life. Because he was God.
So...
Remember that archangel? He told the young girl, Mary, that her son would be the son of God.
Oh.
The people who were around then and saw Jesus after he came back from being dead, well, suddenly they understood what he had been saying all the time. They were utterly transformed. They had been a band on the run, sad, scared, confused people, friends of an executed 'criminal', hiding from the law, but after they met Jesus again - ALIVE! - they were fired-up and they thought, "Right, the whole world has to hear about this, and nothing's going to stop us telling them!" So they braced up, got out and started telling people.
And two thousand years later, the people they told and the people they told... and so on down the centuries... are still telling the story. Best story ever. And it's all as true and amazing today as it was then.
You mean...?
Yes. He's still alive. He'll never die again. He's around for ever, now, just like he'd promised. And I'm one of those people going round telling people about it. So what do you think? How about you? Care to join in? Oh - and how would you like to meet him?
Silence
Er... I've got football in a bit. Later, OK?
OK. Good luck. Hope you win. See you later. We'll both be waiting for you. Whenever you're ready.
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