I AM THE MESSAGE

At the end of Matthew’s Gospel we read of Jesus’ last instructions to his followers before he leaves them for good. After his resurrection he spent some time with them going over one last time the message he wanted them to give to the rest of the world. He wanted to make sure they both understood that message and understood just how they were to convey that message all over the world. Then he left.

The picture Luke paints in his account of this event in the Acts of the Apostles is of this group of followers looking up to the heaves as Jesus ascends from them, mouths wide open, eyes fixed, just standing there. Two men in white robes ask them why they are standing there looking up instead of getting on with the task at hand, namely spreading Jesus’ message. And they did.

Sometimes what we easily miss when we read the Gospels and especially when we read the part where Jesus commands his followers to spread his message far and wide, is that Jesus was speaking not just to those people gathered around him that one last time, but he was and is speaking to us as well. We have the same responsibility, and to no less a degree, to spread that message as did those first followers.

And we are to spread it in the same way they did: by our very lives. Yes, Peter and James and John and all the rest, Paul and Barnabas – all of them – preached the message. They taught what Jesus taught. But the only reason their words did not fall on deaf ears, the only reason they were able to make disciples of those to whom the taught the message in word is that they also lived the message in their daily lives.

The people who heard the message with their ears saw it lived out in the lives of those who were preaching the message. These first disciples remembered how Jesus was constantly taking to task the leaders and teachers of the Jewish people because they did not live out in their own lives what they were teaching the people. His disciples were not to make that same mistake, the mistake of believing that they did not have to practice what they preached. They had to and they did and that is why the made so many converts. There was no other way to teach the message of Jesus.

There never was and there still is not. Those first disciples, in essence, in fact, were the message. They were a living, breathing message. And so we are today, or at least that is what we are supposed to be. I am the message. Each one of us is the message. How well that message is received will depend on how well you and I live that message in our daily lives. That is simply the truth.

Yes, it is true that the truth of the message does not depend on whether or not the messenger is a living example of the message. The Gospel message stands on its own. That does not excuse us from not making every effort we can to be a living message to everyone we meet of who Jesus is and what Jesus still teaches. We will fail every day to live that message fully, but we must never forget that the command to teach the message Jesus gave back then he gives to us today. We are indeed, in word and deed, the message.