The Beginning of the Good News

Sunday Morning Message from December 4, 2011

Mark 1:1-8

John W. McNeill

1)    A couple of relatively recent pieces of personal news that had a significant impact on me.

i)       The week before Thanksgiving I had a stress test.

ii)    In September I received news that my father died.

iii)  These pieces of news framed my activities for the next few days.

2)    We all get news: what we did not know before. Predicted, guessed, feared, hoped for, whatever. But we did not know it. News changes things for us. It puts us in a different place. Minor or major impact.

i)       Personal

(a)  Health news

(b) Financial news

(c)  Relationship/emotional news

ii)    Global

(a)  War and peace or terrorism

(b) Economic Crisis

(c)  Disasters

3)    Good news

i)       Births

ii)    Weddings

iii)  Expressions of generosity

iv)  Unexpected blessings

4)    Opening of the Gospel of Mark

i)       Not a complete sentence. Beginning, origin, elementary

ii)    Good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

5)    Good news in and of itself: J the B is the herald who proclaims God is coming so clean up your act. Prepare the way of the Lord! Be ready to welcome God’s entrance into history. Something extraordinary is about to happen and you don’t want to miss it. These are not ordinary times.

6)    Then there is more good news in and of itself: the message of Jesus Christ. God is entering into human history into the world to make things right out of compassion and care for those who suffer and are oppressed, those who are excluded and shunned. God has entered history to begin to set things right.

7)    So this is news in and of itself, but perhaps more important is that this entrance of God into human history becomes the “framing story” by which we understand all other news. Here’s what I mean by a “framing story:”

i)       A framing story shapes/ interprets/forms our understanding of what we hear.

(1) We fit a piece of news into our broader story about how things are and how things ought to be

(2) Into what story do we place the news we receive?

(3) A variety of stories – interesting project to identify some of them. Maybe we’ll do that another day.

ii)    The good news of Jesus that we proclaim is embedded in a larger story that we affirm:

(1) God is the creator – intentionality of love and goodness and justice and beauty

(2) God acts in history – the world is full of the blessedness of God blessing, love, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to feel and hands to cooperate with it.

(3) That God’s goodness in mercy and compassion and forgiveness who is drawing all things in not excluding all things out. In the end, love wins.

(4) The framing story of the world is a (classic sense) comedy: the end is reconciliation.

iii)  Any given piece of news may change our situation in a large or small way - put us in a different place, so to speak - but as we become the people of God, disciples of Jesus Christ, we fit that news into the larger story of God’s grace.

iv)  When our framing story is the good news of Jesus Christ we are able to listen for the way in which any piece of “news” offers the opportunity to be an instrument of the justice, compassion, and mercy of God. Offers us an opportunity to be or become the people of God.

(1) This is not to say that there is might not be sadness, fear, anger – those are real – but they are not the demoralizing powers that would hold us hostage to despair.

(2) News of an accomplishment becomes an awareness of a new position from which to contribute to the good of the community.

(3) News that someone has taken offense and is withdrawing from us becomes an awareness that we must launch an effort toward a deeper understanding of that person’s experience and  renewed effort toward reconciliation.

(4) News that family members are at odds with one another becomes a call to prayer, comfort, and encouragement of those who are experiencing real loss and real sadness.

(5) News of health set-backs can become times to once again open up to God’s healing power, the support of persons around us, and renew our confidence that we are in God’s hands.

(6) News of financial set-backs remind us that this life is not about the accumulation of stuff and our well-being is not secured on our own, but by our cooperation together in an environment of trust.

(7) News of violence and wars and terrorism remind us that Jesus calls on us as his disciples, his student followers, to pray for our enemies and tells us that the peacemakers are blessed and are the ones who will inherit the earth. It is a call to join the psalmist who proclaimed centuries ago: some trust in chariots and horses, but we trust in the Lord, our God.

(a)  We are invited to step out of the retaliatory spiral of threat and violence into the virtuous circle of negotiation and confidence-building.

(8) News of natural disasters makes us once again aware of our human limits and that even the earth and its systems are not ultimately the rock on which we stand.  We are small players in the enormity of the natural world in which we are opened to humility and awe at powers greater than ourselves.

(9) All these kinds of news become meaningful, take their significance from the framing story – the framing good news – that we have heard and believed in Jesus Christ.

(a)  Framed in other stories they could become cues for revenge, despair, panic, retaliation, dishonesty, shaming, or abandonment.

(b) Here’s the punchline: How we frame the news can be much more important than what the news is.

8)    This means thatr for those who are becoming the people of God, for those who are intentionally committed to living as followers of Jesus, news becomes more than simply news. It sets the stage for us as the The Church to be what we have been called to be:

a)     The Church, the people of God, are here to be the bearer and sign and reality of that good news:

i)       To celebrate God’s presence

ii)    To love and serve others

iii)  To seek justice and resist evil

iv)  Proclaim Jesus: crucified and risen, our judge and our hope.

b)    Because the Gospel story that Mark shares with us is not the end of the Good News. It is, as he says, the beginning of the good news. We are called to continue to live out that good news so that who we are and what we do continue to frame all the news in God’s world as openings for the good news of God in Jesus Christ to shine through.

9)    We enact that good news in the Eucharist. We enact the good news of the open table to which all are invited to be reconciled with God and one another and anticipate the feast of the Eternal Banquet of Almighty God!

Thanks be to God!