If you have been to a basketball game lately or a football game, or watched one on T.V., chances are you have seen a person holding up a sign with a message on it that comes right out of today s gospel reading.
More people today attend sporting events than attend church.
Yet given the omnipresence of the sign at sporting events, I suspect that it is the most recognized icon of Christianity in our day, even moreso than the cross, and even though most people have know idea what it refers to. It is the sign, the symbol, that represents Christianity to a non-Christian world. You have perhaps heard people talk about their elevator speech. The idea is that if you want to have any hope of being able to communicate the mission of your organization or cause to a stranger, you need to be able to do it in about the time of a short elevator ride. For God so loved the world.