The beginning of the
good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
--Mark 1:1
Where does good news begin?
In a world filled with bad news, I think this is an
important question to ask. I’m not
calling for more of the “feel good” stories they tack onto the end of some news
broadcasts. I’m not looking for a place
to stick my head in the sand and ignore, deny or avoid the bad news. I’m looking for something deeper. Something more enduring. Something that gives us a solid place to
stand in the midst of all the bad news.
Where does good news begin?
The four Gospel writers in the New Testament all answer this
question the same and quite differently.
All of them understand Jesus, and the story of his life, death and
resurrection, to be the Good News.
That’s the point of writing their Gospels in the first place. But each starts that story in a different
place. Matthew starts with a genealogy
because he wants us to understand that Jesus is the culmination of God’s whole
history of steadfast love and faithfulness to God’s people and the whole
world. Mark starts with John the
Baptist, and his pointing to the appearance of the “one more powerful than I”
who will “baptize God’s people with the Holy Spirit” and then dives right into
the story of Jesus’ healing, teaching and proclamation of the Reign of God
breaking into the world. Luke tells the
story of John’s and Jesus’ birth, “in the days of Ceasar Augustus” and presents
Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises of the God who, as Mary sings, “brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly.” John presents
Jesus as “the Word made flesh and lived among us… full of grace and truth.” For John, Jesus is the embodiment of God and
God’s plan for the whole human race from the dawn of time.
But, where does the
good news begin… for us?
Like the Gospel writers, we who follow in the Way of Jesus
continue to believe that good news begins with Jesus’ way of life and
living. As the writer of 1 John says,
“whoever says, ‘I abide in him,’ ought to walk just as he walked.” (1 John 2:6).
And for 1 John, that is always about walking in the way of love. Jesus teaches us that this way of love is
about loving God, loving one another and loving neighbor as self. What we discover as we strive to live in this
love is that this is not three different kinds of love… but one and the same thing. If we ground our lives there we will find a
life that truly is life even in the face of the copious bad news that has
always surrounded human life in this world.
How that love gets lived out in concrete ways will play itself out
differently for each one of us, just as it did in the four Gospels.
Loving in the way of Jesus is not always easy, or convenient,
or fun. Because we are broken human
beings living in a broken world, we can fail at it miserably. But, because God’s Reign of love and
faithfulness for us is steadfast, the promise of Jesus’ resurrection is good,
and we have the presence and power of the Holy Spirit to guide us, the Good
News will never fail us – not even in the face of death itself.
Trusting in that, is where good news begins.
Peace,
Bishop Mike
Thanks for reading!
Someone earlier this week suggested stopping at the end of each day to
think about where we saw God in our lives and the world around us during the
day. Not a bad idea if we’re looking for
Good News!
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