At our gathering last Sunday we were led by the president for the day to consider change to be the source of our hope for the future. This report is one response to what was presented.
After gathering words by Rev Dr Linda Hart, and prayer based on words from John D Caputo, we had two readings, a musical interlude, a time of silent meditation and a simple ritual for those who wanted it. And we sang two hymns.
But for me, this time, it was the readings that made it a gathering to remember.
First, there was a short reading from the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, Book of Isaiah chapter 52 verses 7 to 15, starting with: ‘How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion: “Your God reigns!”’
And the second reading came from the New Testament of the Christian Bible, Book of Mark chapter 1 verses 1 to 15, ending with: ‘Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”’
Now I was immediately engaged with this combination of readings. I have long been told that “gospel” means “good news”, but for me all sorts of churches have been very woolly about exactly what the good news is. For the most part, churches seem to say that the arrival of Jesus himself was the good news. But when reading the New Testament I feel short-changed on that. Whilst Jesus speaks several times of the Good News, he did not ever say anything like that. Verses in the New Testament are more along the lines of ‘Jesus and his disciples went around preaching the good news’, without actually saying what that good news is. The closest I have ever got to understanding it is in the Book of Luke, chapter 10, in which Jesus gives instructions to his followers to go out and spread the message. He says (verse 9) that they are to say to people that “the Kingdom of God has come near to you.” And in a reinforcing teaching in Luke chapter 17 verses 20 and 21, Jesus says:
`20 Some Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come. His answer was, “The Kingdom of God does not come in such a way as to be seen. 21 No one will say, ‘Look, here it is!' or, ‘There it is!'; because the Kingdom of God is within you.”’
What happened on Sunday was that at last someone was giving me a clear idea about what the good news actually is. It felt to me that the idea being put to us was that the good news is about God, not about Jesus. That Isaiah was saying that the good news is that God is in charge and will comfort ruined people and redeem the brokenness. And that, moving forward in time, when Jesus was talking about spreading the good news, he was repeating the news of Isaiah - that God is in charge and will mend brokenness - but over and above what Isaiah said, what Jesus said was that actually there’s no special time nor place for that, because that action of God is available all the time, inside each person.
What our leader for the day has helpfully provided me, for this report, is this:
"Essentially: we are living in a world where bad things happen, unjust things, terrible things. For all the good and the beauty that we see, there is a constant threat of it all coming to a sudden and sticky end. And that is all we have ever known.
Yet right there with that, there is a voice saying that this isn't the way it is meant to be. Right there with all the misery, there is that relentless call to make things better, to change ourselves and the world we live in. Sometimes it is gentle and sometimes it roars in the thunder.
The Good News we are called to believe in, right here, right now, is that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, things can be better, we can be better; and that no matter how often we fall, how often we fail, we can get back up.
That call, to a place where the voice that demands better is heard and made real, is the Kingdom brought near.
And experiencing change in ourselves, and believing in that Good News, is ‘that which we call God’ happening in us, and to us, and through us."
I’m really grateful for the connections of thought that we heard on Sunday. Wisdom teachers through the ages have taught us that there is always a way back from knots and disorder, to order and peace. And that the changes we may experience in ourselves as we travel that way back may often look and feel like behaviours of compassion, humility, renunciation and attentiveness; attentiveness to the needs of those around us as well as to our own. But surely these come later: the first step is to act on what Jesus and others have said: to trust the Good News that “change is possible and that things can be made better.”
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