Dr. John Gladstone, a pastor of a large Baptist church in Toronto, was a speaker at the Billy Graham School of Evangelism at Lake Louise.
He remarked that it happens occasionally that ministers get invited to luncheons by various groups and also get asked to say grace. He received such an invitation, then was phoned by the host of the luncheon and given some direction regarding his participation.
Gladstone would have two minutes for the prayer and was told not to be “political.” He asked if that meant whether he was not to mention politicians.
He was told no, that was not what was meant. Rather, he was to refrain from the mention of Jesus Christ at the close of the prayer.
Gladstone replied he was invited to eat a lunch he didn’t want; to listen to a speaker he didn’t want to hear and to forget his Christian faith.
He told the caller to get someone else. Apparently it would be acceptable to refer to God but not to Jesus Christ.
Gladstone told the audience that day, “The only God I know is the God I approach through Jesus Christ our Lord!” This conforms with the Scripture in First John chapter two, verse 23: “No one who denies the Son has the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.”
Why would the host of the luncheon not want Jesus Christ to be included at the end of the prayer? Could it be that Jesus is found to be offensive?
People of our day are not the first to find Jesus offensive. Some of the people living at the time of Jesus did not find Him acceptable and were offended by Him.
Jesus had a ministry to the poor, the despised and sinners and what seemed to be the dregs of society.
This bias in favour of the common people was misunderstood by the religious establishment of the day. They expected a lot more from their Messiah. Surely he would mingle with the elite of society and with those who held positions of power.
Jesus didn’t do that, so He made a lot of people unhappy with Him.
Some years after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, there were those in the church who were offended that Jesus could have been truly human, so they taught that He was a divine person only.
Some wrote legends of miracles He was supposed to have done as a young boy. Others taught that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross, but only appeared to do so. They were protecting His divinity and denying His humanity.
In our time things have almost reversed themselves. Most people are happy to think of Jesus as a great human being but reject that He was the divine Son of God.
That kind of Jesus causes offence. The eyewitnesses who wrote about His divinity in the New Testament are portrayed as yokels who would believe anything. Jesus’ astonishing claims of oneness with the Father and of being the only way of salvation for sinners are toned down or flatly contradicted.
Each age finds its own reasons to be offended by Jesus.
If you could ask God if He finds Jesus to be offensive, His answer would be found in the New Testament book of Philippians, chapter two, verses 9 to 11: “God has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Lorne Moorhead is a retired pastor who lives in Flin Flon.
