My first thought in preparing today’s message was to emphasize all the different groups—religious and political—of Jesus’ day and explain how each would have been relatively unhappy about the vision Jesus had for the Kingdom of God. I was going to rely on this extended quotation from author, Brian McClaren’s book, The Secret Message of Jesus. I decided to go in another direction, but you students of the Bible might find the following helpful both in setting up the backdrop of Jesus’ ministry as well beginning to understand why there was so much resistance to Jesus by so many people. 

     I enjoyed Pastor Jessica’s sermon Sunday in which she looks at the Sermon on the Mount, and specifically the Beatitudes of Matthew 5 as “a map of where we can find Jesus.”  Listening to her exploration of where and how we might best discover Jesus, Jessica did point out his unique identification with the poor and hurting of our world.  It reminded me of the following from a Catholic theologian and churchwoman.

The Beatitudes of Advertising
The average American watches TV for nearly 30 hours per week. That's 65 days of nonstop TV watching every year. By the time they graduate from high school, students will have viewed 360,000 commercials. The average 65-year-old will have watched two million commercials.

      It is common for me to come across a wonderful sermon illustration, but run out of time to use it. In talking about the genealogy of Jesus in the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel I would have loved to work the following in. Unfortunately, I’d already said enough and I wasn’t quite sure where and how to work it in. Nevertheless, it’s worth taking a look at and reflecting on.