Muzzled

Shut up (1:25) 

'Shtom ta pei' bellowed my pugnacious friend just outside our door, 'Shekket'. The Israeli teenagers who had been disturbing our sleep were suddenly silent. 'What did you say?' I asked him. 'Shut your gob' he replied, 'very useful'. I didn't doubt it, though I did doubt that he'd learned it on a Hebrew for Beginners course. 

Jesus is hardly less expressive with the unclean spirit. 'Be muzzled' he declares, 'Get out', dealing with the spirit in a few well-chosen words. Too often Jesus is portrayed as rather softly spoken and meek but here he seems more like my tough, northern friend. He fronts up to the opposition and puts it down.

Are we guilty of holding a false image of Jesus, one that fits our own prejudices? If so, then we need to find a way of seeing him as he really is, of following him out of our place of comfort and allowing him to disturb us into new ways of living and seeing the world.



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