The Beginning of the Good News

Ya’acov ben Shimon was perplexed. He frowned as he looked around his village in Galilee.1 He’d heard that the Romans had started besieging Jerusalem after some radical Jewish sect started a revolt. Some people were overjoyed and said that God was at last driving the Romans out of Israel. But others said that the only way to have peace and security was to tolerate the Romans. Ya’acov had also heard that the emperor Nero had died last year. Four candidates had been acclaimed as the next emperor and then assassinated in short order. Now Vespasian, who’d ordered the siege of Jerusalem, had been crowned. How would this effect the war? And would prices finally come down?

There was conflict right here in Ya’acov’s village too. The Jews and the Gentiles were fighting about the war. Formerly close neighbors and even family members were on different sides. However, there was a small group of people who refused to fight on either side. They were followers of a Galilean rabbi named Yehoshua, whom the Romans had crucified as a rebel about forty years ago. Everyone was disgusted with these folks. The rabbis thought they were dead wrong about this Yehoshua, and those who hated the Romans were sure that Yehoshua had done nothing to help drive the Romans out. But again Ya’acov wondered. How could it be that Yehoshua’s execution was a sign of God’s favor towards both Jews and Gentiles? One day one of Yehoshua’s followers handed him a scroll in Greek with a strange opening: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.” Beginning? What was beginning, and when? Messiah? Isn’t that what all the Jews were waiting for? Son of God? Isn’t that what they called the Roman emperor?

As he read the first part of the scroll, about John the Baptizer, Ya’acov wondered where the story of the Good News really began. The scroll writer – let’s call him Mark – started with a quotation from two Hebrew prophets, Isaiah and Malachi. Is that where the story really began, all those centuries ago, when God spoke through the prophets? Or did it begin when God brought the Jews back from exile in Babylon? Or did the story begin with John? Did the story begin with the hints in John’s proclamation? Clearly Mark and his community understood that John was a herald, and that, like the prophets, he was announcing God’s plan. But Mark also wanted his hearers to understand the meaning of John’s proclamation. So he looked back to the past and used the prophet Isaiah as an analogy for John. Isaiah had proclaimed that God would rescue the Jews from exile. Similarly, Mark and his community, in their current troubled world, understood that John had proclaimed the same kind of comfort and rescue that Isaiah had.

And then Ya’acov had another question. Where did the story end? Hadn’t the prophet Malachi, who had seen the newly completed second temple, said, “See I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple”? So Mark also must have used Malachi as an analogy for John. Malachi had looked forward, although with dread, to the new thing that God was doing, to the deliverance and judgment that God’s coming would bring. Similarly, for Mark, John proclaimed a new and powerful savior, someone who would judge everyone in the world and whose coming would radically change the world, someone who would initiate a new covenant with them through the Holy Spirit. So perhaps the witness of John the Baptizer, John the herald, was the beginning of the good news, but its fullness, the end of the story, was yet to be revealed.

Now we are reading the scroll that Ya’acov read. We call it the Gospel According to Mark. As we read and reread the entire story, perhaps we too wonder just where the Good News really begins – and ends. Perhaps the whole first half of Mark’s scroll, which recounts Jesus’ ministry in Galilee and all his teachings about God’s reign, is the true “beginning of the good news.” Or maybe the beginning of the Good News is Mark’s whole scroll and the story it tells. Perhaps the story begins when it comes alive for its hearers, when it encourages its hearers both to look back to God’s saving works in the past and to look forward in hope to the new thing that God is doing. Perhaps the story truly begins when people ponder how it could or should unfold in their own lives.

The truth is that the “beginning of the good news” always begins with God and God’s works, and that story has yet to end. At the same time, the story of the good news begins for us when we see ourselves in it, when we make it our own, and we only know the true end of it when our life on earth is over. As we live in our own middle time, we can follow Mark’s example and look both back to the past and forward to God’s future. We can understand ourselves both in terms of who and where we have come from and in terms of what God has yet to do with us.

In this Advent time, we can begin by looking back to our own predecessors in faith, to those who were God’s heralds for us. Take a few minutes to ponder who first introduced you to faith, who modeled devotion to God for you. Though faith is ultimately a gift of God, few of us come to faith all by ourselves. Even if we were baptized as adults, the chances are that someone was a guidepost for us on the way to the font. Was your herald a family member or close friend? What did that person do to introduce you to God? Did he read the Bible to you? Did she teach you the wonderful old hymns? Did their lives inspire you? Did they see Jesus in the “least of these” and generously offer themselves to others? Is there any way to honor those heralds of faith? Or perhaps your model of faith a saint from the past. In addition to John the Baptizer himself, many people still find Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, Evelyn Underhill, Thomas Merton, or Mother Teresa compelling examples of faith. You might ponder this too: for whom are you a herald of Jesus, a model of faith and devotion? Who would be inspired by your life? Are there areas of your life that you need to change in order to be a more compelling example of faith? Do we hesitate to even admit that we need to repent?

In this Advent time, we also continue to look ahead. Like John the Herald, like Mark, and Ya’acov, like all those who preceded us in faith, we’re also still in the middle of the story. We believe that “the Lord whom you seek” will suddenly return to his temple, to complete and restore the world. We too long for that day, even though along with Malachi we may wonder, “Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” As we continue to look forward in hope, and as we do our best to prepare for the Lord’s appearing, this Advent time is also a good time to reflect on another question. We might wonder what our place is in God’s plan. How does God expect us, both as individuals and as a parish, to partner in bringing in the reign God heralded in John and initiated in Jesus? What ministries has God prepared “for us to walk in?”

Thursday December 1st was World Aids Day. In addition to those affected by HIV/AIDS themselves, many have been widowed and orphaned by AIDS. Today, for example, there are more than 16 million children orphaned by the AIDS scourge, many of them in east Africa. While we were celebrating Thanksgiving Day, Christian and Muslim leaders in Kenya met in Nairobi to discuss how to improve their responses to a disease that is a social, economic, political, and medical issue. Katherine Jefferts Schorri, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, and Mark Hanson, ELCA Presiding Bishop, issued a joint statement committing both their churches on World AIDS Day to a renewed partnership in ministry to AIDS victims and their families. Meanwhile, Tennis star Roger Federer, entertainer Madonna, and Episcopal priest Bill Rankin, who recently retired as CEO of the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance (GAIA), all committed themselves to continue the fight against AIDS in Malawi. Is AIDS a problem in Gallia County? Are there AIDS victims or AIDS orphans among us? How would we know? Are there prophetic voices among us who could point us to answers to these questions? Where else might the Holy Spirit lead us?

Come, thou long expected Jesus. Your story began in ages past and continues into God’s future. Come and find us ready to proclaim our thanksgiving for your past gifts, our hope for the future, and our willingness always to seek and serve you in all whom we meet.

1. The following is based on the account in Christopher R. Hutson, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 44ff.