In a This much I know piece at guardian.co.uk the British philosopher A.C. Grayling writes: ‘I would imagine Jesus was a kind of Jewish reformer. If you were looking for an equivalent to the figure you dimly perceive through the gospels it would probably be a Richard Dawkins.’

ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church, by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, is a call to a renewal of spirituality and discipleship centred on Jesus; it describes what that renewed spirituality and discipleship might look like; it tells some powerful stories about spirituality and discipleship. It’s a wonderful book. Quintessential Frost and Hirsch.

But it is not really a book about Jesus. The authors expressly excuse themselves on this point. They are not endeavouring to outline the contours of Jesus’ teaching because ‘so many books have done a better job of that than we can possibly accomplish’; rather they are trying to find the ‘spiritual centers’ of the ‘lifestyle and faith that Jesus taught and exemplified’ - ‘to touch the wild and primal energy that radiates out of Jesus’ (41).

(This was originally a comment attached to the ‘Why the historical Jesus matters‘ post.)

The question of whether by historically contextualizing the Gospel story we make Jesus largely irrelevant to the church and the world today has been a recurrent one - indeed, for me something of a thorn in the flesh. It was recently posed rather articulately and forcefully by samlcarr and shiert on the ‘New creation and the kingdom of God’ thread. I realize that I appear to belabour the point far too much, and the impression is easily given that I think that Jesus is of no more than antiquarian interest to us today. That is not the case, and I will try again to explain, too briefly, what I’m getting at and why, because I think we have a lot more to gain than lose by learning to trust the narrative shape of our theology.

Tonight was the last instalment of four of BBC’s The Passion, showing on television over holy week. It was an unusual departure for the normally resolutely secular BBC, and much talked up by faith communities. I had decided to give it a miss, having been disappointed by previous efforts to represent Jesus on screen or in drama. But I got drawn in – mainly because I wanted to know what people would be talking about.