Do We Understand the
Good News? (Mark 16:6-7; Matthew 28:8-10)
Easter Sunday, April
16, 2017
The end of 2016, and maybe the
entirety of 2016, was hard for a lot of people; maybe for you. Some felt roughed up, and at a loss because
of the political climate in America. The
election results were a tough blow for a lot of people. Others were happy with the election, but
distressed about things going on in the world.
And then a lot of people have their own problems, personal demons or
trials that are so intense, they couldn’t even focus on the national or international
scenes. Getting from one day to the next
was tough enough.
As I took in the state of the world
right around us here, I sensed a creeping, uncomfortable malaise. Pastors and preachers have a variety of
responsibilities including the duty to share good news. I felt that need quite strongly as we turned
the page from December to January. I
felt that on Sunday mornings, we had to turn our attention from distressing
current events to deeper truths and greater realities – things that could not
be affected by what happens in Washington or in the voting booth.
So, we began this year imagining
just how big God is. We turned all our
attention onto God. This was not a
retreat from the realities around us. We
prayed over the immigration issue. We
prayed for refugees and many in our church have volunteered to help
refugees. We pray over race relations in
our country. And our church is going to
spend the rest of this year examining how we can be a more diverse community. Our decision to earnestly seek to see as much
of God as we can was not a denial of the pain and frustration all around
us. The decision to look to God was a
declaration that God’s goodness is bigger than the evils of the present
day. God’s light shines brighter than
any darkness.
We want to be witnesses to that
light and to draw others into God’s light.
We can only testify to what we have seen. So, we tried, as a church family, see God.
As winter gave way to spring and
Lent began, we took up an unusual Lenten discipline. Rather than fasting, going without red meat
or desserts or things like that, we instead engaged in story-telling. This is our attempt to answer God’s call on
us to be witnesses. We set up a witness wall
where anyone could write down a testimony of seeing God at work, working for
good in the world. Each week we invited
the church to come to wall and share their stories of things they see God doing
in their own lives.
I wrote down some of the
responses. These are all stories from
people who worshiped in this room in the last 6 weeks. One testified to provision – God met
financial needs in a desperate time.
Another wrote of tangible experiences of God’s love, including gratitude
for a loving church family. One person
wrote thanks for the opportunity to play school soccer; another for the chance
to be in a school play; for opportunities for friendship; the opportunity to
become grandparents; and, the opportunity to share the Gospel. The wall is full of accounts of God helping
people.
That last one I mentioned is quite
important for today – Easter Sunday.
Someone was thankful for the opportunity to share the Gospel. That word ‘gospel’ comes from the Greek and
it means, literally, ‘good news.’ The
Greek word is eungelion,
the root
for the English ‘evangel’ or ‘evangelism.’
Technically, evangelism means ‘the telling of good news.’
Of course, if I just asked everyone to define
‘evangelical,’ I’d get a wide variety of responses. Some would not have anything to do with
sharing good news.
Similarly, if I asked everyone to write down
and turn in a definition of ‘gospel,’ there would be a plethora of
definitions. Some might define it by
terms of genre – ‘gospel music.’ Others
might define it by terms of purity – ‘that’s the gospel truth.’
In any Easter Sunday crowd, we gather together
as a mixture of people. Some are
experienced in church and in churches like ours, and are very knowledgeable
about the Bible. Others are not in
church as often and it all feels unfamiliar.
The question I have is for everyone because I think we might all, in
different ways, struggle with this. Do we understand the good news? We sing about Jesus’ resurrection with great
energy, but why is this good news for us?
N.T. Wright gives a helpful definition
of the ancient way the word ‘gospel’ was used.[i]
The term actually was in use by the
Romans before the New Testament was written.
It was used when there was a handover of power. The Emperor had died and thus the empire was
full of uncertainty. Will the empire
hold together? Are we going to sink into
chaos? Will pirates or invading
barbarians take over? Is war inevitable?
When the new Emperor was crowned, heralds were
dispatched to travel throughout the empire to announce this message. “We have a new Emperor. His name is Augustus. A new age of peace and justice begins.” That was the gospel, the announced “good
news.” Of course people in the empire knew that for them – the majority who
were poor peasants – it would be more of the same. It didn’t matter who was in power. For the majority in the roman empire, life
was poverty and struggle. The
peace-and-justice gospel was empty political rhetoric.
In that world, a world of Jewish frustration –
frustrated at being under Roman heel; a world of Greek cultural dominance; and
a world of Roman military and political power; in that world, New Testament
writers seized this term from the empire and used it to tell what God had done
in Jesus. The first verse of the Gospel
of Mark – “Arxh tou
euaggeliou Ihsou Xristou uiou qeou.” “The
beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
From the start, the New Testament did what we
have been trying to do. The New
Testament told a different story, a competing narrative. The New Testament challenged the dominant
narrative of empire with news of God at work in the world changing
everything. The New Testament writers
from Mark to Matthew to Luke to Paul responded to Rome. “You say the good news is that Augustus or
Nero or Domitian is now king? That’s
good news?”
“No,” New Testament authors defiantly
reply. “We, a small group among the
Jews, have the real good news. God has
come in the flesh, in a man in Israel, a peasant carpenter from backwater
Nazareth, Jesus. He is God and he is
man; he is Savior, and he is Lord. He
died on the cross for the sins of the world.
And on the third, on this day, he rose from death in resurrection.”
The story of the life, death, and resurrection
of Jesus includes salvation for the individual.
When you put your trust in Christ, receive forgiveness of sins, turn
your life over to Him, and acknowledge Him as Lord, you are saved. Jesus provides the story of your salvation,
and mine. But the Easter proclamation of
Good News – Gospel – is much, much more than simply saying, ‘here’s how we get
to Heaven.’ The resurrection is the
dawning of a new age, one in which God is King.
Easter is God’s response to every oppressive power that would seek to
rule the world.
History is full of declarations of
exceptionalism. The superiority of the
Aryan race; the sun never setting on the British Empire; America first; on and
on it goes. At Easter, Christians around
the world join together to declare “No,” there is no government, king, general,
or any other who has real power. It is
God’s. The world is God’s. All that is in it belongs to God. And God is good. God is love.
God is forgiveness. God is
light. God is life. We know God by way of the salvation we’ve
been given in Jesus Christ.
Of course whether or not news is considered
“good” depends one where you’re standing.
A couple of weeks ago, we got the news on a Monday night. “National Champions!” What could be better? Well, if you cheer Gonzaga or for Duke a lot
of things could be better.
But more importantly, how do we respond to the
news that in Jesus God has come and inaugurated a new age in which God is
king? The resurrection set this in
motion and when it happened, no one was ready for it, not even Jesus’ closest
followers.
All four New Testaments Gospels convey the
same detail the morning of the resurrection.
The male followers of Jesus were in hiding. The women stole to the tomb in the early
morning hours to anoint the dead body of Jesus as it had not been appropriately
prepared for burial. Those women went to
the tomb as an act of love for Jesus, but they were fully convinced he was
dead.
Mark reports that they found the stone sealing
the tomb already rolled to the side and so they entered and found a young man
that Luke and Matthew both describe as an angel. Mark’s young man then gives the 2-part good
news that is the beginning of Christian proclamation that we continue to this
day. Something has happened!
First, he says, “Fear not. You are looking for Jesus, but he has been
raised. He is going ahead of you to
Galilee.” This is unmistakable. He’s not describing a new awareness. He’s not talking about something that is
spiritual but not physical. Mark
describes women entering a tomb where they saw Jesus buried. Now the body is gone, and the young man they
meet there tells them that after Jesus died on Friday and sat in the grave on Saturday,
he is alive on Sunday. His body is
somewhere else, fully alive and on the move.
Second, he says to them, “Go and tell. Tell the disciples they will see him just as
he said.” For the women to do it, to
heed the word of the messenger, they have to believe it. You don’t say something as preposterous as
‘the dead man lives’ unless you believe it.
Matthew picks up the story here in chapter 28,
verse 8. “So they left the tomb quickly
with fear and great joy and ran to tell the disciples.” He is alive.
Do we understand?
The Gospels were written between 30 and 50
years after these events. The accounts
on which the Gospels were based circulated orally throughout Christian
communities in Jerusalem and Antioch and then in Corinth and Galatia and the rest
of cities where churches cropped up. In
the later 30’s and 40’s and 50’s, these stories were told. In the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John wrote them down.
They did this to get the story straight and
help the church remember its foundation.
The Gospels introduce us to our Savior.
They also declare the church’s resounding “no” to the powers of the
day. The Gospels live on to reject the
powers of every era including our own.
Do we understand?
The only way we can understand is if we believe. I have read numerous exhaustive historical
studies. The best conclusion to be drawn
from the hard historical data is Jesus in fact rose from the grave and appeared
to his followers. But evidence doesn’t
convince anyone – not in this case. To
fully grasp the news and to comprehend why it this news is good, we have to
believe.
We have to believe that we are sinners, that
God loves us and in Christ met us in our sin, died in our place taking our sins
on himself, and then rose from death on Easter morning. Once we believe that, then we’re right where
those women were in the tomb first hearing the news.
God has done something. We’re right to be afraid just as those women
were. The reality of God is terrifying;
wonderful, but terrifying too. But then,
as it did for them, that fear gives way to something else. Because the tomb is empty it means Death is
defeated. We have life. We have God with us and when we die, we will
be raised just as Jesus was raised. As
he was resurrected, we have resurrection ahead of us!
Finally, it hits us. News is only news when it is shared. So, to fully understand the Good news, we
need the stories. Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John help us there. We need the
honesty – we sin and we need help. We
need the realization that God has done something to help. We need to believe. Once we do that, then like those women on
Easter morning, we must go and tell.
There’s a lot of bad news out there. The world is full of anxiety and uncertainty
– a deadly combination. But, we have
another story to offer, one that is truer and one that lasts. Jesus is alive and all can have life, eternal
life, in his name. Got it? Good!
Now, we are witnesses called to share our testimony. Go and tell.
AMEN
