But once we take to heart the Father’s word, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (NRSV, Mark 9:7), the situation is quite different.  If Jesus is the Father’s beloved Son, then he must be our beloved Lord and Saviour.  And we know what he says because we have it all set out for us in the Gospels.

However, the reality is that very few accept his written words and apply them to themselves.  That need not surprise us, when we remember that throughout his ministry in Palestine he met with exactly the same response to his spoken words.  He described the popular attitude to him and his teaching by quoting the prophet Isaiah: “seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand” (NRSV, Matthew 13:13).

The real reason for that attitude was that the people generally rejected the moral content of his preaching, in spite of the fact that they found the preaching itself enthralling.  As St Luke says of Our Lord’s audiences in Jerusalem, “…all the people were spellbound by what they heard” (NRSV, Luke 19:48).  However, it is also Luke who records a challenging question which Jesus put to a huge crowd in Galilee: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’, and do not do what I tell you?” (NRSV, Luke 6:46).