Once a pastor told his congregation: “I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that there is enough money in this congregation to give me a raise; the bad news is that money is in your wallets.”
Today's sermon- why good news people live bad news lives- is actually the title of one of my books. I am not preaching about it to sell books. Even if everyone here buys ten copies each, it is still not going to make me rich.
The reason I chose to preach about it is that, this question has always nagged me. Why do so many Christians, who claim to have received the good news of Jesus, behave so badly?
This question did not bother me much when I lived in India, because India is predominantly a Hindu nation. Christians are only a mere 2 percent. There are no mega churches; there are no TV evangelists. Vast areas of the country has no churches. There are no bibles in hotels. There are no hotels except in big cities.
It is very different here. Nearly 90 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. There are churches every where. There are 18 churches in a 5 mile radius of my house. Christians believe that they are the people of the Good News. Some people are even proud that they have it, with a slight touch of holy arrogance, I might add.
The other day a very religious person told me that those who don't believe in Jesus as their personal savior are going to hell for eternity. He had no doubt about that, because he had the good news and people belonging to other religions did not.
How do we live bad news lives? If you are living your life—angry, upset, impatient, short tempered, sad and depressed, and not so pleasant to be around, you are living a bad news life. People who have received the good news of Jesus should not feel or behave like that on a daily basis. Imagine you have won ten million dollars in a lottery. You think you will be sad, upset, gloomy and depressed? Good news is supposed to make us excited.
If you get up every morning with no energy and enthusiasm, and look at the world with negative lens, you are living a bad news life. If you are anxious and stressed out about everything, and experience a lot of anxiety and fear, you are living a bad news life. If your life is devoid of abiding joy, you are living a bad news life. The good news of Jesus has not penetrated your life.
When we are bad news to ourselves it is so hard to be good news to others. Hitler was bad news to 6 million Jews. George Zimmerman was bad news to Travon Martin, and by extension, to a whole lot of people. Each of us is capable of being bad news on a smaller scale, to the people around us, the people we live with work with and interact with.
About 3 billion occupants of this planet are supposedly “good news people” and of course that includes us. America is often described as a Christian nation. So, why is our country and the world largely a bad news place? Why there is such abject poverty, war, hatred, killings, divisions, disunity, homophobia, and partisanship? Why is such income inequality in this country? Why would those who claim to be followers of the “Prince of Peace” amass guns and assault weapons whose only purpose is to hurt and kill? What are they afraid of if they claim to understand the message of the risen Jesus who said: “Be not afraid?
My theory is that many Christians don't even know what the good news is, let alone understand what it really means!
What is the good news of Jesus? Think for a moment. If someone were to ask you to explain it, what would you say?
I posed that question on my Face Book page. I have 291 friends on Face Book. Only 9 of them offered an answer.
The gist of the answers was that “Jesus died for our sins; and after we die, we go to heaven and spend eternity with him.”
In a bible study group, a lady said: “Jesus died for our sins thereby giving us eternal life in heaven after we die; our salvation is guaranteed in Jesus.”
I shared these answers with my wife Judy. Her response was: “How is somebody's “death” “good news.”? It sounds like “bad news.” Besides, Jesus died 2000 years ago; what did I do? How can his death “then,” benefit my life “now”?
If Judy who is a baby-boomer thinks like that, can you imagine what the millennials are thinking? I don't think they are thinking much about anything, let alone serious theology. They are just repeating the phrase: “Jesus died for our sins” without understanding it. If you don't understand what you are repeating, it is unlikely to change your life.
Do you really know what that phrase means? Can you explain it in your own words? Try it, you will be surprised.
Let me clarify something; Jesus did not die on the cross; he was killed on the cross. What is the difference, you might ask. There is a big difference. It is not like Jesus woke up the morning of that Friday, and decided that he was going to die on the cross and asked the soldiers to pin him down and pierce his hands, legs and heart so that he could just die, something like an assisted suicide! He was just 33 years old. Who wants to die at 33? Who wants to die at any age?
If Jesus were to die of cancer at age of 90 under hospice care, we will not be sitting here. There would not have been any Christianity. It is the power of his resurrection that fueled the Christian movement. Resurrection means that the powers of evil cannot overcome the power and grace of God.
Jesus was brutally murdered by the authorities because his message and ideas were a threat to their very survival. The Pharisees did not want to give up their idea of religion. The Romans did not want to give up their grip on power. Jesus was a threat to both. They wanted to get rid of the troublemaker, so they conspired, fabricated a case and executed him.
In that sense, Jesus didn’t die so much “for” the sins of the world as he died “because” of the sins of the world. In other words, Jesus was killed “because of our sins,” rather than “for our sins.”
It makes us responsible for his death rather than beneficiaries of his death.
See how re-framing our thinking about Jesus' death, changes our image of Jesus.
This understanding will hopefully help us not to kill Jesus today through our hate, prejudice and insensitivity towards other people who are Jesus in disguise, because, “whatever you did to the least of my brothers, you did it to me.”
So, back to the topic of good news. What is the good news of Jesus? I think the good news of Jesus is his “life,” not his “death.” Preachers and teachers have focused so much on the “death” of Jesus that they forget the “life” of Jesus, the message he preached, the kind of life he lived, the boundary-breaking love he showed, the forgiveness he practiced, the mercy he manifested for the lowly and the downtrodden.
If you read the gospels carefully, you will find that Jesus never called us sinners. Jesus never said that he came to die for our sins. Jesus never said he came to take us into heaven.
In the first 3 three gospels, Jesus appears on the scene when he was about 30 years old. He is baptized in the river Jordan; he is tempted for three days in the desert and after that he officially begins his public ministry.
What are the first words that Jesus spoke? According to Mt: 4:17, they are, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near. According to Mk: 1:14, Jesus says: The Kingdom of God is near; repent and believe the good news.
The fact that the kingdom of God is “near” is the good news. Mathew and Mark do not explain what the kingdom is in that statement. In Luke we get an explanation. Jesus does not use the word kingdom in his inaugural speech as recorded in Luke 4. Like in Mark and Mathew, Jesus begins to preach after the baptism and temptation. He goes to a synagogue and reads from the book of Isaiah.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor.
So what is this good news? The next lines unpack it: The good news is that Jesus has come to “proclaim freedom for the prisoners;” to bring “recovery of sight for the blind;” “to release the oppressed,” “to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” If you follow Jesus you can experience all the above.
So the good news is that if you are a prisoner to your addictions and narrow mindedness and prejudices and hatreds, your one track mind, your arrogant nationalism, your thinking that everybody who disagrees with you should be destroyed, everybody who does not believe in him will go to hell, Jesus has come to help you change that.
The good news is that if you are blind to the beauty of God's creation around you, if you are blind to the goodness of people in the world, if you are blind to the blessings you already have, if you are blind to the poverty and injustice around you, if you are blind to the needs of others, then Jesus has come to heal your blindness and open your eyes.
The good news is that the Kingdom is near. This is not a far away land, a location beyond the clouds, a gated community for selected people, but a reality right here in the midst of our world. A Kingdom of love, peace, joy, patience, goodness, kindness and a sense of well being. That is why Jesus taught us to pray: “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”
The good news is that Jesus has come to proclaim the “year of the Lord’s favor” when debts are forgiven, mercy is shown to strangers, compassion is manifested, and peace and harmony prevail among the people. You can read about what the year of the Lord entails in Leviticus chapter 25. It is called the Jubilee year.
The good news is not a headline in a news paper. The good news is not words in a holy book.
The good news is the person of Jesus himself. Remember when he was born, the angel announced to the shepherds: I bring you good news of great joy to the people. (Lk 2:10)
So to experience the good news, we have to get to know the “historical Jesus” and follow him.
Most Christians don't know the historical Jesus; they only know the “Christ of faith.”
They know him as the Son of God, begotten by the father, born of a virgin, and the second person of the Holy Trinity. It is an “impressive resume.” But, focusing on the divinity of Jesus has very little impact on our humanity.
We will worship him in church and leave, but how can we follow the “second person of the Holy Trinity”?
We have to discover the “human Jesus” in the pages of the gospels who has the power to transform our lives as he did the lives of Nicodemus, Zacheus, Jairus, Nathaniel, Mathew and a lot of others. Everyone who encountered Jesus was transformed. We need to encounter Jesus and follow him rather than put him on a pedestal and worship him.
We cannot be like Jesus unless we find out what Jesus was like. We have to change our whole mind-set about what it means to be a Christian. That is why the first word out of the mouth of Jesus was: “Repent.” But repent does not mean, feel sorry for your sins. It has nothing to do with feeling bad or sorry for anything.
The Greek word for repent is metanoeo which means, a different mind. You have to have a different mind about things. You have to change your thinking and align that with the mind of Jesus: a new way of thinking and seeing the world. As apostle Paul would say: “You have to put on the mind of Christ.”
You have to think like Jesus, feel like Jesus and behave like Jesus. When you do that, you will start feeling the good news and that will lead you to being good news for others.
