What is the good news?
15th Sunday after Trinity
St Mary’s, Barnes, 10 am
From time to time in your life you will have heard good news-when you passed an exam, when a child was born or a grandchild got into university. At such times we are delighted, thrilled. From the first the Christian faith was announced as good news. St Mark’s Gospel begins with the words ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.’ The Greek word for good news, Euangelion, which could also be translated as evangel or Gospel, occurs many other places in the New Testament. So let us reflect for a few minutes this morning on how and why the Christian faith is good news.
First, it means that there is a meaning and purpose to life. We can all go through periods when life seems futile and meaningless. As Shakespeare put it so memorably sometimes it feels nothing but
… a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
In contrast to that we affirm that at the heart of the universe there is a wise and loving purpose. We affirm that creation did not begin with the evolution of life on earth or the big bang some thirteen and a half billion years ago but in the mind of God. There, before time, we had our origin. The prophet Jeremiah heard the words
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
And before you were born I consecrated you.
The author of Psalm 139 cries out
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
So there is a meaning and purpose for existence and to know this is good news indeed. A meaning and purpose for our personal being.
Dag Hammarskjold was an outstanding UN secretary General working 20 hours a day at the heart of a series of international crises at the height of the cold war. When he died his spiritual notebook was found in which he had written the words ‘
at some moment I answered Yes to Someone — or Something — and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.
Our lives in self-surrender have a goal.
Secondly, this purpose, conceived before time, lodged in the mind, of God, is a purpose for us in and through Christ. The incarnation was not an emergency reaction to things on earth having gone wrong. It was God’s purpose to unite his divine life with humanity from the beginning and join our life with his. Our humanity is not just a result of evolution, though it is that, it is a humanity in Christ the second person of the Trinity. God is in solidarity with us from without beginning as Julian of Norwich liked to put it. As she wrote
For I saw that God never began to love mankind.. mankind has been known and loved in God’s foresight, from without beginning in his righteous intent. And by the endless assent of the whole Trinity in full accord, the Mid-Person would be the foundation and head of this human nature, he from whom we have all come, in whom we are all enclosed, into whom we shall all return; finding in him our full heaven in everlasting joy through the foreseeing purpose of the whole blessed Trinity from without beginning. (Chapter 53.p119)
Thirdly Christ came amongst us to search us out and draw us into himself and in so doing overcame all obstacles and blockages to our union with him. Suffering the consequences of a disordered and sinful world he lived a life of perfect union with the father, and now, risen, ascended, glorified and present with us through his Holy Spirit he unites our life with his. The good news is that nothing can separate us from that life. He holds onto us through thick and thin, through life and through death.
Then, fourthly, this life opens out to eternity. Christians seem to have become rather shy of mentioning what was once so central to Christian faith. But it is good news that God has something even better ahead; that in him there is a glorious future which we cannot now conceive. As Paul put it ‘For now we see dimly, as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been known fully. (1 Corinthians 13.12)
We are led to expect that the name of a new Archbishop of Canterbury will be announced soon. It is not easy to have confidence in the Church of England at the present time. The new Archbishop will take on the leadership of a church that has never been weaker in a society in which professed Christians are now in a minority, particularly amongst the young. But our confidence is not in the church as a human institution but in Christ and in the church as his mystical body against which, as Jesus told Peter, the gates of hell will not prevail. ((Matthew 16.18).
Nevertheless, we have to face the fact that for so many in our society now Christianity is a foreign language and what goes on in church is strange, if not alien. But let us face this. Christianity is strange as the great 17th century mathematician, scientist and philosopher Pascal said. Far from throwing us this should help us see its truth, for the fact is that life itself is strange. It is extraordinary that anything should exist at all. The mind boggles that we exist. Anything that was less strange than life itself could hardly be true. And Christianity is very strange indeed, for it says that God himself came amongst us, was killed and rose again in order to unite out lives with him for ever. You couldn’t make it up. It is just not the story you would set out to tell about a god. Its strange because it goes against the grain of so many of the things we think important. But this strangeness is good news to those who are sensitive to both the horror and the glory of life.
So the Church may be in a weak position and the times unpropitious but our confidence is not in ourselves but in God and his good purpose. We are blessed to believe the good news, to know that our lives have a purpose and meaning, that we are united to Christ and that the future opens out into God our endless day, the end which is no end. May the Holy Spirit so touch the hearts of all in Barnes that they too may come to hear and welcome the good news.