Did Jesus accomplish his mission during the next three years of his life? Of course not. But did Jesus ever plan to do all of this alone, and in his own lifetime? Or did Jesus' vision include a multitude of followers, who over the centuries and in every nation in the world would share that vision and work towards its realization in His Name? If Christ's followers would pay close attention to what Jesus explicitly identified as the most important parts of his own teaching, they would recognize that Jesus expects them to share in his mission to preach Good News to the poor; . . . to heal the brokenhearted and to announce that the blind shall see, that captives shall be released and the downtrodden shall be liberated from their oppressors."
There is no need to wonder about what is most important in Christ's teaching, because he was asked about that very matter, and answered as follows ( reiterated in Mark 12, 28--31, Luke 10, 25--28 (below), and John 13, 34--35 ) :
CRUCIAL QUESTION # 2 :
Which is the most important command in the laws of Moses?
{ Matthew 22:36-40 } 
"Sir, which is the most important command in the laws of Moses?" Jesus replied,
"This is the first and greatest commandment: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.'
The second most important is similar: 'Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.'
All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets stem from these two laws and are fulfilled if you obey them. Keep only these and you will find that you are obeying all the others."
How much simpler could Jesus have made his teaching: just
two commandments? Yet, Jesus understood that not
everybody would be able to figure out by themselves
whom they must love and
precisely what that love should move them to do.
And so, to illustrate whom we must love,
i.e. whom we should consider our neighbors,
he gave us the deceptively simple "parable of the
good Samaritan" :
CRUCIAL QUESTION # 3 :
What must one do to live forever in heaven?
Christ's first Answer to Crucial Question # 3 :
In Luke's Gospel, Jesus may be
answering the same question posed to him above, but the wording
is a little different here, and the so-called "Parable of the Good
Samaritan" becomes Jesus' way of spelling out whom
he wants us to consider our neighbors, i.e. not those who live
closest to us or who are most closely related to us,
but those who are most in need of our help.
{ Luke 10:25-37 }
One day an expert on Moses' laws came to test Jesus'
orthodoxy by asking him this question:
"Teacher, what does a man need to do
to live forever in heaven?" Jesus replied,
"What does Moses' law say about it?"
"It says," he replied, " that you
must love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your strength,
and with all your mind. And you must
love your neighbor just as much as you love yourself.
" "Right!", Jesus told him.
"Do this and you shall live!"
But, wanting to justify himself, the man asked,
"Which neighbors must I love?"
And Jesus replied with an illustration:
"A Jew going on a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho was
attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his
clothes and money, and beat him up and left him lying
half dead beside the road. By chance a priest
came along; and when he saw the man lying
there, he crossed to the other side of the road and
passed him by. A temple--assistant walked
over and looked at him lying there, but then went on.
But a despised Samaritan (a non-believer) came along,
and when he saw him, he felt deep pity. Kneeling
beside him the Samaritan soothed his wounds with
medicine and bandaged them. Then he put the man
on his donkey and walked along beside him till they came
to an inn, where he nursed him through the night.
The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins
and told him to take care of the man. "If his bill
runs higher than that," he said, "
I'll pay the difference the next time I am here."
"Now which of these three," Jesus asked, "
would you say was a neighbor to the bandit's victim?"
The man replied, "The one who showed him
some pity." Then Jesus said, "Yes, now go
and do the same."
There is no doubt that Christ's "Parable of the Good
Samaritan" is one of his all time favorite sermons.
But how many clergymen who use it in their preaching
point out that, instead of following the example of the
clergy and other "churchy" people, Jesus went out of his way
to direct his followers to"Go and do like" the infidel, because HE was
the one and only one who cared that a fellow man was
in pain, and in need of help ?
For centuries, while millions -- if not billions --
of people have been systematically
victimized, not by bandits, but by highly
respected companies and "entrepreneurs",
whole churches have been virtually oblivious to
those crimes and still are. And they have not just crossed
over to the other side of the street, but have often
moved their church buildings to other communities,
so as not to even see the troubles of troubled
communities. Are crimes against innocent
victims any less tragic because they are happening
all day, every day, on a massive scale, and if they
are only seen through the eyes of reporters and/or
television cameras?
Many "churchmen" tell poor victims of such
oppression -- if they talk to them at all --
that the "Good News" which Jesus was sent
by the Spirit of the Lord to deliver to them was
some spiritual "pie in the sky when you die".
Their version of Christ's teaching is that the poor
should bear their cross in this life and
look forward to deliverance "in the next life."
That would have been a great line for the
priest in Jesus' parable to deliver to the victim of
the bandits, before he crossed to the other side of
the road. But that is hardly what Jesus had in mind
when he said he had been sent
"to heal the brokenhearted and to announce that the
blind shall see, that captives shall be released, and the
downtrodden shall be freed from their oppressors".
How far from that vision of liberating love and activism have the clergy moved!
How many of them now have become more and more like the upper
class people to whom they like to minister, living more and more like
them, and moving further and further away from those whom Jesus
came to liberate. Indeed, instead of fighting with the poor
against their oppressors, they have often turned religion into an
"opiate of the people", i.e. something to keep the disadvantaged
from feeling their pain badly enough to rebel
against their oppressors. Christians can easily dismiss Karl
Marx's indictment as the rantings of an enemy. But no
atheistic critic has had harsher things to say about the failures of
religious leaders than has Jesus himself:
{Matthew 7: 15-29 }
"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing
but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by
their fruits (i.e. by their actions) . . . "Not everyone who says
to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the
one who does the will of my Father in heaven."
"On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not preach
in your name, and cast out demons in your name,
and do many deeds of power in your name?"
Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; go away
from me, you evildoers.' "Everyone then who hears these
words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who
built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall,
because it had been founded on rock. And everyone
who hears these words of mine and does not act on them
will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and
beat against that house, and it fell--and great was its fall !"
Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the
crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught
them as one having authority, and not as their scribes did". . .
These days many clergy are still
"preaching and casting out demons
", still claiming, without justification, to speak and to act in
Christ's name. But this web site invokes the authority of
Christ's own words to demand that those who want to use the
name of Christ and/or the Bible, earn that right by being true to
what jesus and the bible actually taught. And simply
sprinkling one's own pet theories with quotes from the
Scriptures is not enough to make one a genuine spokesman for
Jesus or the Bible. As Shakespeare said so well, "
Even the Devil can quote the Scripture for his own purposes."
Neither is it enough to be enamored of certain parts of Jesus'
teaching, while ignoring other indispensable parts of that
teaching, and therefore failing to enlighten one's followers
about that essential teaching.
Christ's Second Answer to Crucial Question # 3 :
While many people today think
they are perfectly good Christians, if they love the kinds
of people who love them, Jesus shocked his listeners
when he unveiled a very different portrait of what constitutes
good Christians :
{ Luke 6: 31-35 }
Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High.
And in {Matthew 10:34-37 }
Jesus said: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
Jesus even made the point that his teaching applied to his own immediate family, in { Matthew 12:47-49 }
Someone told him, "Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you." But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" And pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
CRUCIAL QUESTION # 4 :
What does God expect of us every day?
To spell out what loving those neighbors entails,
Jesus explained what God expects in OUR day, by
having his listeners fast forward themselves to
judgement day (when God will make us face the
consequences of what we do today):
{Matthew 25:31-46 }
"When I, the Messiah, shall come in glory, and all
the angels with me, then I shall sit upon my throne of
glory. And all the nations shall be gathered
before me. And I will separate the people as a
shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and
place the sheep at my right hand, and the goats at
my left.
Then I, the King, shall say to those at my right, "Come,
blessed of my Father, into the Kingdom prepared for you
from the founding of the world. For I was hungry
and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me water;
I was a stranger and you invited me into your homes;
naked and you clothed me; sick and in prison, and you
visited me."
Then these righteous ones will reply,
"S h vspace=16 ir, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you?
Or thirsty and give you anything to drink?
Or a stranger, and help you? Or naked, and clothe
you? When did we ever see you sick or in prison,
and visit you?" And I, the King, will tell them,
"When you did it to these my brothers you were doing it
to me!"
Then I will turn to those on my left and say, "Away with you,
you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil
and his demons. For I was hungry and you wouldn't
feed me; thirsty, and you wouldn't give me anything to drink;
a stranger, and you refused me hospitality; naked and you
wouldn't clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn't visit me."
Then they will reply, "Lord, when did we ever see you
hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in
prison, and not help you?" And I will answer,
"When you refused to help the least of these my
brothers, you were refusing to help me." And they
shall go away into eternal punishment; but the righteous
into everlasting life."
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{Luke 4:18}
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