Posted on 08 June 2011, 12:49

I’ve been enjoying nature recently. Even in the city, it’s remarkable what grows in the cracks between the concrete. And remembering some dialogue from my Conversations with Jesus of Nazareth, I seem to be in good company here.

So another in these occasional extracts from the book, Conversations with Jesus of Nazareth. As ever, the words of Jesus are entirely his, and you find us talking about ‘that incident’.

S: You recently lost your temper.

J: Don’t judge and you won’t be judged.

S: It wasn’t meant to be a judgement, but then again perhaps it was.

J: With whatever judgement you judge, you will be judged, and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you.

S: I understand. But what interests me most is the cause of your rage. You went into the Temple here in Jerusalem, saw people buying and selling things and proceeded to assault them with both word and whip. Violent.

J: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ I said, ‘but you have made it a den of robbers.’

S: So you flung over the moneylenders’ tables and kicked over the chairs of the dove –sellers. And how very similar your words were to those of the prophet Jeremiah! Centuries before, he too had stood in the temple, and said ‘Do you think that my temple is a hiding place for robbers? I will drive you out of my sight as I drove out your relatives!’

J: As I say, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer.’

S: The temple had lost its identity as a place of prayer, and prayer matters to you, teacher. But then unlike most people, you have a profound trust in your heavenly father.

J: See the birds of the sky who neither sow, reap nor store food in barns. Yet your heavenly father feeds them. Aren’t you of much more value than these birds?

S: With such limitless trust prayer must be both easy and delightful.

J: Or consider the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t toil, they don’t spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these.

S: Your eyes are never far from creation, teacher. Indeed, I sometimes think it’s your scripture even more than the scriptures themselves. 

Conversations with Jesus of Nazareth by Jesus of Nazareth with Simon Parke is published by White Crow Books

Conversations with Jesus of Nazareth