Now
after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of
God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near;
repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:14-15)
Well then, what is the good news? The crucifixion and the resurrection haven’t
happened yet, obviously. Jesus, a young
Jewish man, comes into the region of Galilee, says Mark, with good news of God. What then is he telling the people which they
are hearing as good news, something surprising they didn’t know before…? I think the question matters, because in our
later years, when there is not much we haven’t heard in the church 100 times,
it may seem important to re-boot, in computer terms, to touch and grasp the
simple essentials, whatever they are.
We get some help here from contemporary theologian
Marcus Borg[1]. He says Jesus preached a way of being that moves beyond both secular and religious
conventional wisdom. The path of
transformation of which Jesus spoke leads from a life of requirements and
measuring up… to a life of relationship with God. It leads from a life of anxiety to a life of
peace and trust. It leads from the
bondage of self-preoccupation to the freedom of self-forgetfulness. It leads from life centred in the social,
tribal and family culture to life centred in God.
That was good news... that God is not our enemy, not our adversary,
and certainly not any capricious god needing to be persuaded, cajoled, pacified
or propitiated. Awe of God is not fear
of God. Jesus said God may be addressed
as Our Father. It was also good news that Jesus seemed unwilling
to recognise fences and boundaries, social or religious conventions separating
male and female, rich and poor, Jew and foreigner, righteous and sinner. These didn’t seem to matter to him, the way
they mattered to the religious establishment.
He taught that prosperity is not the same as building bigger barns while
ignoring human need. In fact, he said,
God does not tolerate arrogance and hypocrisy and neglect of others, whether it
happens in the church or anywhere else.
The God Jesus called Father requires justice along with mercy and love.
Now, we are in Lent, and I was encouraged by our
discussion last week, to think some more about the basic message of Jesus, for
the 21st century, but more particularly for those of us in our
senior years and perhaps declining powers.
These years, with their
limitations for us, and all the memories and lessons learned (or unlearned), we
may see as a perfect kairos –
remember kairos…? God’s time,
meaningful time, time for newness, freshness, change. So for these weeks of Lent we could have a
fresh look at what Jesus called Good News about God and life. If the basics were true in Galilee back then,
they are likely to be true in Mahurangi and environs! St Paul wrote to the Corinthian church: Do not
be children in your thinking… be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults.[2] It may be that these senior years are a time
for what one writer called unknowing, in order to grasp the Good News.
[1]Marcus
J. Borg,: Meeting Jesus Again for the
First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith
(HarperSanFrancisco: 1994), p.88. (Quote slightly altered.)
[2] I
Corinthians 14:20.
No comments:
Post a Comment