Depeche Mode originally sung this song, but I’ve posted the Johnny Cash version instead, it’s a personal favourite for a song about a personal Jesus…

Lyrics:

Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there 
Feeling unknown
And you’re all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I’ll make you a believer 
Take second best
Put me to the test
Things on your chest
You need to confessI will deliver
You know I’m a forgiver 
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith 
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there Feeling unknown
And you’re all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I’ll make you a believer 

Ponder:
What do you think about the lyrics?
Do you find them confronting or comforting?

Add this song you your Lenten playlist this week, perhaps you might be able to find a space to listen to the song a few times, what do you notice over multiple listens? What pops out that you’ve missed before?

Our second reflection by a member of GUC on who is Jesus is offered by Margaret Reeson.

It was winter. The house was quiet. My landlady and her family had all gone out for Sunday afternoon, leaving me free to take my homework and sit by the glowing coal fire instead of in my arctic bedroom. I was a young teacher working in a small two-teacher school in a village west of the Blue Mountains. 

My homework on that and other weekends was to study for an examination for potential lay preachers. One of the subjects was ‘The person and work of Christ’. This asked the question: ‘Who do you say Jesus is? What did he do?’ And, importantly, does that matter?

The more I thought about this, and the more I read on those quiet weekends, the more I realised that this was not just an academic question. It would be simple enough to write an acceptable ‘correct’ answer in an exam about Jesus. But who did I really think he was?

That year teaching in the country had taken me away from everything familiar. Until that year I had always lived at home with a loving and supportive Christian family. I had been part of a strong home congregation in Sydney. Most of my close friends, through teaching, sporting teams and social life, were also Christians. It was just the way things were. That was what we all believed and understood.

But now, in this different place, all of this was challenged. Few local people in that rural community bothered with church attendance. Attitudes, behaviour, even their choice of language – none of it was familiar or comfortable for me. Christian faith was dismissed as pointless and a bit silly for a grownup. I had to ask myself, ‘Do you believe in Jesus just because your parents do? Do you really believe that he is the Son of God, Saviour of the world? Is your Christian faith just based on habit, culture and being part of a community of believers?’  

I had to decide, because it was going to make a difference to how I would live the rest of my life. Was Jesus Christ a well-meaning good man who was mistaken about his special relationship with God? Was he crazy, imagining himself as god-like? Was he a deceitful conman, tricking his followers into dangerous situations? Or was he indeed the One sent by God to rescue, and forgive, and transform, and guide, and give us hope?

The more I read of Jesus in my Bible, the stronger was my sense that this was no trick, no deluded false prophet. This was the One, who befriended the outsider, talked about deep things with women, embraced children, spoke against injustice. He turned the lives of troubled people the right way up and offered forgiveness to those in despair. He confronted the self-righteous and complacent. This was ‘God-with-us’. This was the One I chose to follow.

That was then, many years ago. Over and over again in the years since then I have seen the living Jesus at work, transforming individuals and communities. I still follow him.

Author, Trainer, Educator Brene Brown answers the question of who Jesus is for her. “Jesus is what love looks like made flesh”

Ponder
What about Jesus makes sense to you?

“They were looking for a builder to construct the home they thought they wanted, but he was the architect, coming with a new plan that would give them everything they needed, but within quite a new framework. They were looking for a singer to sing the song they had been humming for a long time, but he was the composer, bringing them a new song to which the old songs they knew would form, at best, the background music. He was the king, all right, but he had come to redefine kingship itself around his own work, his own mission, his own fate.” 

? N.T. Wright, Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters

Ponder:
Who were/are you looking for, and how has Jesus surprised you?