re: "talking the basics"
The guy at the football games that holds up that sign, <a href=http://www.bible.com/bible/Bjohn_3.html">"John 3:16," is talking the basics.
[I added a link for the text of the passage]
Hmmm... compare Genesis 22:7-12
And Isaac said to his father Abraham, "My father!" And he said, "Here am I, my son." He said, "Behold, the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham said, "God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So they went both of them together. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here am I." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."
[Revised Standard Version (verse numbers omitted for clarity)]
The sacrificial death of the first-born male is often repeated in the Bible - for instance: the Pharaonic decree which puts Moses in the basket; the final plague - the reason for Passover and the trigger event for The Exodus; the Herodic decree from which Joseph the Carpenter and his family flee, significantly, into Egypt. There's a pattern there... it's even more interesting, considering [a] other contemporary gods in the same part of the world (Baal, Moloch) were demanding the sacrifice of first-born male children on their altars; [b] what we know of that was told by the Hebrews.
But that's not the main reason for this post. There's been an awful lot of talk about the potential power the movie Passion has to convert non-believers, completely beyond its claimed ability to bring lip-service Christians closer to their faith. As a non-Christian who is nonetheless aware of the story, it would seem to me much more important, and more powerful, to concentrate on the ministry of Jesus. That is, "talking the basics": what he taught about how people should live, not how horribly he died.