Glad Tidings
Isaiah 40:1-9; Mark 1:1-8
The gospel of Mark begins like this: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Matthew’s “gospel” begins with, “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah ….” Luke’s “gospel” opens with an author’s note to Theophilus. John starts his “gospel,” famously, “In the beginning was the word.”
We call each of these writings “gospel,” and refer to them collectively as “the gospels.” But what is this “gospel”?
Turn on your google machine and you’d think, for starters, that “gospel” is music, which, of course, it is. But it was something else first. A second glance at the same google machine confirms what you’d expect: gospel is religious.
Indeed, it is all but impossible for us to hear the word “gospel” as anything other than religious, but, fascinatingly enough, the first readers of Mark’s “gospel” – the oldest of the gospels – would not have heard his opening sentence as religious at all.
“The beginning of the gospel, the good news, the glad tidings of Jesus Christ” would have struck the ears of first century Palestinian hearers of these tidings as a tweak in the face of Rome. “Gospel,” as a literary genre, consisted at that point almost entirely of propaganda from the empire.
It is as if you turned on the television to watch the State of the Union address and found a story about salvation instead. And, if you bothered to listen to the whole message, you would hear that this healing and wholeness for your life and your society were not coming through the work of a president or a congress or the powerful or the wealthy or the “job creators,” but, instead, through the lives of the poor, the sick, the outcast and the occupied. The convention is turned on its head, and the reason for doing so would quickly become clear.
Mark is up to something. His second sentence gives another big clue as he quotes Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"
The gospel, the glad tidings, the good news about Jesus is, before it is anything else, a message of hope to an occupied people. Before it is anything else – before it is “religious,” before it is about “eternal life,” way before it is about something called “church,” – the good news of the gospel comes as a response to the cry of those people asking – as oppressed people have always asked – is this the way it’s supposed to be?
Is this the way it’s supposed to be?
Your own answer to that question is an excellent way to gauge your own response to the gospel. If everything is just fine the way it is then you have no need of tidings – glad or otherwise – that begin with the declaration, “Turn everything around, for the kingdom of God is at hand!”
That’s as good a translation as you’ll get of Jesus’ earliest teaching. Metanoia – the Greek in the gospels – means to turn from the path one is on. The essence of Jesus’ message? Everything must change!
Is this the way it’s supposed to be?
If you’re fine with the way things are then Jesus really has very little to say to you – except, perhaps, for that basic Advent imperative: wake up!
Wake up! Wake up and look around you. Everything is not fine, and this is not the way it’s supposed to be.
Have you seen the 60 Minutes clip that is making the Facebook rounds lately? The one that focuses on homeless families in central Florida? The one that mentions a county there that has 1,100 homeless children in its school system? The one the features a 15-year-old girl and her younger brother who live in a van with their carpenter father because, well, because there is no room for them in the inn?
Is this the way it’s supposed to be?
Wake up! Wake up and look around you. Everything is not fine, and this is not the way it’s supposed to be.
Have you noticed that our U.S. tax dollars – yours and mine our friends’ and loved ones’ – pay for almost half of the entire world’s total spending on war and the preparation for war? And have you noticed that nobody even talks about that anymore? Swords, plowshares, prince of peace?
Is this the way it’s supposed to be?
Wake up! Wake up and look around you. Everything is not fine, and this is not the way it’s supposed to be.
Have you felt the broken places in your own life lately? Have you wondered why some simple things are so often just so damned difficult? Have you felt hope slip away like water down a drain pipe and wondered when justice might flow like a might water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream?
Everything is not the way it’s supposed to be. Repent. Turn around on the path you’re on and look toward a new horizon. There, like a bright morning star, stands the one whose glad tidings are for you: the good news of Jesus the Christ.
On this good news everything depends. On this good news begins the great turning of the world. On this good news rest the hopes and fears of all the years.
So, recalling that, in those days, a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered, and that the glad tidings of Jesus the Christ register first and foremost God’s discontent with the way things are, and also God’s invitation to register our own hopes for the way things could yet be, pause for a moment to consider your own “hopes and fears” this Advent season.
We all come from some place, and we meet here for a little while along the way. We bring to this place our brokenness, that we might experience something of God’s healing grace. We bring to this place our deepest longings, that we might find here bread for our journeys into hope.
We come to this place to register, then, our hopes and fears, and to join our voices in the glad tidings that say, “no, this is not the way things are supposed to be,” and thus to join our voices with the ancient prophets to declare good news:
"In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.” Let it be so, and may I participate in the transformation. That is to say, amen.
The gospel of Mark begins like this: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Matthew’s “gospel” begins with, “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah ….” Luke’s “gospel” opens with an author’s note to Theophilus. John starts his “gospel,” famously, “In the beginning was the word.”
We call each of these writings “gospel,” and refer to them collectively as “the gospels.” But what is this “gospel”?
Turn on your google machine and you’d think, for starters, that “gospel” is music, which, of course, it is. But it was something else first. A second glance at the same google machine confirms what you’d expect: gospel is religious.
Indeed, it is all but impossible for us to hear the word “gospel” as anything other than religious, but, fascinatingly enough, the first readers of Mark’s “gospel” – the oldest of the gospels – would not have heard his opening sentence as religious at all.
“The beginning of the gospel, the good news, the glad tidings of Jesus Christ” would have struck the ears of first century Palestinian hearers of these tidings as a tweak in the face of Rome. “Gospel,” as a literary genre, consisted at that point almost entirely of propaganda from the empire.
It is as if you turned on the television to watch the State of the Union address and found a story about salvation instead. And, if you bothered to listen to the whole message, you would hear that this healing and wholeness for your life and your society were not coming through the work of a president or a congress or the powerful or the wealthy or the “job creators,” but, instead, through the lives of the poor, the sick, the outcast and the occupied. The convention is turned on its head, and the reason for doing so would quickly become clear.
Mark is up to something. His second sentence gives another big clue as he quotes Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"
The gospel, the glad tidings, the good news about Jesus is, before it is anything else, a message of hope to an occupied people. Before it is anything else – before it is “religious,” before it is about “eternal life,” way before it is about something called “church,” – the good news of the gospel comes as a response to the cry of those people asking – as oppressed people have always asked – is this the way it’s supposed to be?
Is this the way it’s supposed to be?
Your own answer to that question is an excellent way to gauge your own response to the gospel. If everything is just fine the way it is then you have no need of tidings – glad or otherwise – that begin with the declaration, “Turn everything around, for the kingdom of God is at hand!”
That’s as good a translation as you’ll get of Jesus’ earliest teaching. Metanoia – the Greek in the gospels – means to turn from the path one is on. The essence of Jesus’ message? Everything must change!
Is this the way it’s supposed to be?
If you’re fine with the way things are then Jesus really has very little to say to you – except, perhaps, for that basic Advent imperative: wake up!
Wake up! Wake up and look around you. Everything is not fine, and this is not the way it’s supposed to be.
Have you seen the 60 Minutes clip that is making the Facebook rounds lately? The one that focuses on homeless families in central Florida? The one that mentions a county there that has 1,100 homeless children in its school system? The one the features a 15-year-old girl and her younger brother who live in a van with their carpenter father because, well, because there is no room for them in the inn?
Is this the way it’s supposed to be?
Wake up! Wake up and look around you. Everything is not fine, and this is not the way it’s supposed to be.
Have you noticed that our U.S. tax dollars – yours and mine our friends’ and loved ones’ – pay for almost half of the entire world’s total spending on war and the preparation for war? And have you noticed that nobody even talks about that anymore? Swords, plowshares, prince of peace?
Is this the way it’s supposed to be?
Wake up! Wake up and look around you. Everything is not fine, and this is not the way it’s supposed to be.
Have you felt the broken places in your own life lately? Have you wondered why some simple things are so often just so damned difficult? Have you felt hope slip away like water down a drain pipe and wondered when justice might flow like a might water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream?
Everything is not the way it’s supposed to be. Repent. Turn around on the path you’re on and look toward a new horizon. There, like a bright morning star, stands the one whose glad tidings are for you: the good news of Jesus the Christ.
On this good news everything depends. On this good news begins the great turning of the world. On this good news rest the hopes and fears of all the years.
So, recalling that, in those days, a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered, and that the glad tidings of Jesus the Christ register first and foremost God’s discontent with the way things are, and also God’s invitation to register our own hopes for the way things could yet be, pause for a moment to consider your own “hopes and fears” this Advent season.
We all come from some place, and we meet here for a little while along the way. We bring to this place our brokenness, that we might experience something of God’s healing grace. We bring to this place our deepest longings, that we might find here bread for our journeys into hope.
We come to this place to register, then, our hopes and fears, and to join our voices in the glad tidings that say, “no, this is not the way things are supposed to be,” and thus to join our voices with the ancient prophets to declare good news:
"In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.” Let it be so, and may I participate in the transformation. That is to say, amen.
posted by David Ensign at
6:58 AM
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