Introduction

Introduction

 This book is about people, as you will have gleaned from the title.  Which people?  First, Jesus.  Jesus is at the centre of one of the world’s great religions.  He has possibly caused more words to be spoken, read, written, crossed out, re-written, lost, found, and read all over again, than anyone else in history.  Jesus was and is a lot of things.  First century Jewish man.  A rabbi (religious teacher)?  A revolutionary?  A mystic?  A reformer?

 In my view, he’s a bit of all of these.  But more importantly, he’s both the greatest human being who has ever lived – humanity at its peak – and God.  I won’t go into how he can be both here.  But much of what many of us know or believe about Jesus comes from the four accounts of him in the gospels of the New Testament.  In this book, I will rely heavily on the first 3 of these, called Matthew, Mark, and Luke, after their traditional authors.  These three together are known as the Synoptic Gospels, because they have a similar overview.  The fourth gospel, John, has quite a different outlook in many respects.

 Jesus shapes, both forms and informs, the thinking, the life, of the Christian Church.  Therefore, Jesus is central to this book.  He is the main character, in a sense.  Yet at the same time, and in keeping with the sacrificial love and servant nature of Jesus, he also has juxtaposed himself with the other protagonists in this narrative: the Little People.

 (Just to clarify: this book is really a collection of sermons and essays, not a story.)

The Little People: Who?

 These Little People, as will become clear, are not necessarily short in stature (although some will be).  They are people often deemed of little account.  Those on “the underside of history”, the ‘least’ in society.  The excluded or outcast or marginalised or downtrodden.  The oppressed.  The “non-persons”.  The poor.  Many expressions have been variously used to capture this group, if it is legitimate to use the word ‘group’ about such a nebulous, populous and varied… group.

 In this book I have neither attempted nor achieved an exhaustive treatment of the Little People.  I simply offer some observations of Jesus’ reported interactions with the Little People in the pages of the Gospels.

The Little People: Why?

 The big question is, why?  Why write (or read) a book about Jesus and the Little People?

 Firstly, why indeed.  After all, my own reading of the Bible as a whole and the Gospels in particular, suggests that we already have a perfectly good book about Jesus and the Little People…

 Well, the present volume serves the same purpose as a sermon might: to remind and offer some interpretation of the Bible.

 This interpretation is not new.  It follows a long tradition, a tradition which gave birth to my own faith tradition, The Salvation Army.  It is a reminder of the importance Jesus placed on the Little People.  And, as indicated above, this should inform the attitudes and actions of Christians, both individually and collectively.

 In effect, this book should serve as a call to conversion: conversion to the other, the neighbour, however we may define them.  It is an invitation to turn our hearts and minds toward the other – especially toward the Little People.