THE service at Crediton Methodist Church on Sunday, November 23 was led by Rev Glenys Bamford. Her theme was: “Who is Jesus, and why did He come?”.

In the last Gospel lesson for the year, we read the story of Jesus on the cross. Not the resurrection, but the crucifixion, and the two thieves who died with Jesus.

The two thieves had different attitudes as they suffered for being criminals with this man, who certainly one of the thieves believed to be innocent.

After one had derided Jesus, the other thief said, “We deserve it but this man is innocent”, and he had caught what Jesus was and so, with a word of genius, he said to Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your Kingdom”.

Then, Mary stood at the foot of the cross and watched the son for whom she had so many hopes and dreams dying.

She thought He might be the Messiah. She undoubtedly looked as He wandered around the roads of Galilee teaching and healing people. Then it all went wrong, as far as she could see, and Jesus was crucified.

In history, this was an insignificant event, and this Jesus, an insignificant person at the time, was the Messiah and lived and died and rose again as one whom we are here worshipping as the Son of God and our redeemer and saviour.

So for us, this is the most significant in the history of the world, for those before and for those after, for He is our redeemer.

The event that created Christianity was the crucifixion, only because it was the precursor to the resurrection.

The thing that was so miraculous and wonderful and extreme and we don’t fully understand is that our real cry of faith is that Christ died, Christ is risen and Christ will come again. Christ is risen!

We take that as a basic understanding that the crucifixion made sense and showed it was there to redeem us.

The centre of our faith is that Christ died, Christ has risen and Christ is alive and we worship him and we pray that His spirit is within us guiding and changing us.

When Jesus stood before the Sadducees and Pharisees, He was condemned to death, even though they all knew He was innocent.

He died because they were prepared to do it, because they thought He was a danger to their standing and the future of their nation.

They were afraid if Jesus caused too much trouble, the Romans would take away their independence, and so they crucified Christ.

We have done that over and over again in our lives when we have chosen the way we want to go rather than the way we know was right.

We have failed so often to live in that sense of the crucifixion and the resurrection. We have denied the cost of our redemption.

The truth is that we can turn again to God, we can repent and receive forgiveness and we can begin again.

Bronwyn Nott