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Dear Minooka UMC Found Family,
What is the essence of Jesus’ message?
To be honest, most of my clergy friends and I would balk a bit at that question and respond with something like: Jesus’ message is meant to be more than a mere soundbite! The beautiful complexity of his birth, life, teachings, death, and resurrection—told in four very different ways in our canonized gospels—are all required in order to grasp who Jesus was (and is!), what Jesus did, and who and what Jesus calls us, his followers, to be and to do. To distill it down to a simple catchphrase is to negate all that necessary nuance!
To which I would expect most people to reply with something like:
Good grief, Dave, can’t you just be normal for a moment? We’ve got lives to live here, mouths to feed and places to be…what’s the elevator pitch version of Jesus’ message?
To your first question, uh, I mean, have you met me? No, normal is not really in the cards. But ok. ok, I’ll try. Jesus’ elevator pitch is: Love God with your whole self and love your neighbors as you love yourself. And everyone is your neighbor, including your enemies.
But, as a compromise between four entire gospels and two sentences, may I suggest we consider the section in the Gospel According to Matthew that we tend to call The Sermon on the Mount as the distilled essence of Jesus’ message?
Plotting Goodness,
Pastor Dave
