I am writing this on Sunday afternoon, after a wonderful morning of worship. After 6 weeks of sermons based on the Sermon on the Mount, today we HEARD the words of Jesus coming to us from that very same sermon. His words are both good and hard, challenging and comforting – words we need to place in our hearts and carry with us every day.
Many of you came out of worship saying, “I liked your words today,” to which I responded, “Those weren’t my words, but the words of Jesus.” Many of you also raised the question about the translation that was used. Let me tell you a little about it.
The Message is a translation of the biblical texts by Eugene Peterson, written out of his lifetime of being a pastor. He recognized that his calling as a pastor gave him a responsibility to get the word of God into the lives of the people with which he worked. It was out of this urgency that The Message was born.
Hear his words, “I lived in two language worlds, the world of the Bible and the world of today. Out of necessity, I became a ‘translator,’ daily standing on the border between two worlds, getting the language of the Bible that God uses to create and save us, heal and bless us....into the language of today...” On Sunday, you heard Jesus’ words in the “language of today.”
My prayer is that each day, we will read and hear God’s word, and that it will speak to our living as Christ followers.
-Pastor Jane