“Just the facts, ma’am.”

Many of us may remember that famous line Joe Friday always said in
Dragnet when gathering evidence. He didn’t want all the expanded details,
emotions, side stories or elaborate descriptions. He was on a mission to find
the truth … and nothing but the truth. All the fluff above and beyond the facts
impeded his quickest path to that goal.

The Gospel writers may have felt the same way. They were on a
mission to spread the ultimate truth, to get to the heart of the matter as holy
correspondents for Christ. They were compelled to “get the facts out”—the who,
what, where and how of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. The Synoptic
Gospels, those by Matthew, Mark and Luke, truly focus on the hard-core intelligence
of this amazing life, summarily explaining what Jesus did, what he said, what
others said … and then moving on. John, who scripted the last of the Gospels,
may very well have read these other accounts, and having walked with Jesus
himself, chose instead to focus on other stories and events, allowing more
reflection in his prose, knowing that many of the “details” had already been
covered.

But for the most part, the Gospels simply provide us with the concise chronicles
and key teachings of Jesus—portraying everything He was, and is, in
clear, succinct, journalistic record … but with little to no elaboration. For
instance:

When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him.
– Luke 23:33

As a correspondent for Christ, Luke tells us what happened, but he
doesn’t dive into what that probably looked, sounded or felt like—the crowd,
the soldiers, the agony—the true horror of what “there they crucified Him” really
meant. The creativity is up to us!  It is our
task to contemplate all that Jesus went through based on these accounts … to
close our eyes and ask, What was that
like, Lord? What kind of love could have sustained you through that for me?