For a long time I have loved the scene in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where the Pevensie children are just starting to understand the world of Narnia which they have entered. They are learning from Mr and Mrs Beaver, who tell them about the great Lion, Aslan.

The children are (understandably!) worried about meeting Aslan, and they ask if he’s safe. Mr Beaver replies with these wonderful words:

“Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But He’s good.”

I love this for various reasons, but one of them is that – as Lewis intended – this is a great image of Jesus. In one sense, of course, Jesus is safe, the one person you can safely entrust yourself to, no matter how often you have been hurt or betrayed by others. But at another level, he isn’t ‘safe’, because we can never box him up or think we have him under our control – he is far too great for that. That reality is powerfully shown to us in the Gospel of Mark, which we will come back to from February at St Peter’s of the Rock.

Mark is considered by most scholars to be the earliest Gospel written, and is in some ways like an action movie – fast moving and full of excitement, jumping from one event in Jesus’ life to the next. One big theme in this Gospel is the fact that Jesus is not tame – he won’t be defined by anyone else. So as we come to this great Gospel, we need to be prepared to have our preconceptions challenged, however much we might think we know Jesus. He is always ready to challenge and confound us – and drive us back to his mercy once again!

In the past we have looked at the Gospel of Mark in our evening service, so we will be picking it up at chapter 7 (with one of those deeply and healthily challenging passages!) in both morning and evening from 1st February. Join us to keep engaging this not-safe-but-good One!

Service info: https://stpetersoftherock.church/on-a-sunday/