The scandal of the new faith
A problem for those of
us who have been taught about the Christian faith for many years and who have
always been able to refer to a New Testament, is that we can fail to understand
the tremendous shoe which the preaching of Peter, Paul and the other first
Christians, gave to their contemporaries. Paul himself says (I Corinthians I: 23) that the claims about
what God has done through Jesus sound like 'nonsense to some and are offensive
to others.
Jesus from Nazareth was
startling enough. By itself, this claim was not beyond the belief of many who
heard it because the Jews did not question the power of God. What was much more
shocking was Peter's claim that the man who had died the shameful and terrible
death of a condemned criminal was God's Messiah, to whom the Jewish Scriptures
witnessed and for whom the Jewish people waited.