“Now That's Good News!”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Text: Romans 8:31-39
There is often a very strange relationship between good news and bad news. Sometimes they even come to us simultaneously. Good news is received and bad news will soon follow it, or vice versa. The truth of this really came home to me in a very practical way just a couple of weeks ago when I received a telephone call from one of my good friends. “Andrew,” he said, “I have some very good news! Today, on the television program Little Mosque on the Prairie, Timothy Eaton Memorial Church was mentioned.”
I said, “Well, that is just wonderful! We've arrived!”
He said, “Ah, but there is bad news. Did you see the program?”
I said, “No, I didn't.”
He said, “You need to go to CBC.ca and click on the episode that was on this week, three-quarters of the way though, and you will see what I mean.”
I tuned in on the Web, and three-quarters along there is this encounter between Reverend Thorne, who is the minister of the little Anglican church in Mercy, Saskatchewan, and the visiting bishop. After meeting with the Muslim community, they walk out to their car together side-by-side. Reverend Thorne says to the Bishop, “You know,” he says, “I would really like a parish in Toronto.”
The Bishop replies, “Ah, so you have heard about the opening at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church?”
It gets better!
Reverend Thorne says, “Timothy Eaton Memorial Church! That's an opportunity of a lifetime! I'll go there.”
The Bishop in says, “Oh I am sorry, I have already recommended Henshaw for that position.”
Thorne replies, “Henshaw is a pompous bore.”
The Bishop said, “Yes, and he is a boozer! But, you don't want to go to Timothy Eaton! That is a rich parish in a snotty neighbourhood. You don't want to go there. You want to stay right here in Saskatchewan where you are doing a wonderful job. You should stay here for the rest of your life.”
I thought about that. My friend phoned me about a week later. He said to me, “Did you see the show?”
I said, “Yes, I did!”
We laughed. I said, “It is bad news, isn't it? Evidently, it appears that we are now Anglican (not that there is anything wrong with that) and that the incumbent is a pompous bore and a boozer (may be some truth to the first part) and the congregation is a snotty lot.”
He said, “Yes, I thought you would appreciate that. But, now I have some good news. I received a telephone call from a member of my parish asking me if Timothy Eaton Memorial Church is actually like that and I replied that she would have to come and find out for herself.”
So, if you are here this morning, welcome to Timothy Eaton United Church. I am not boring, and we are not snotty!
So often bad news goes with good news, does it not? I hope P. T. Barnum was right that “No publicity is bad publicity!” But on a more serious note, life in the world really is living in a tension between good news and bad news. The great philosopher, Hagel describes this with one word: “dialectic.” In dialectic there are two competing views that are brought together, and having come together, the truth emerges from them.
Both good news and bad news form part of a dialectic from which the truth itself ultimately emerges. Is that not what life is like? For example, in the media we are often bombarded, with bad news. It is part of the human condition. Take for example the terrible devastation in the island nation of Haiti and the awful number of deaths and the chaos and the poverty that resulted. It is an awful story! It is going to take years to bring that island back to any semblance of normality.
Yet, for all the bad news about Haiti, just a couple of weeks ago I received an e-mail from a friend who has helped create a ministry called Frontiers, which works with poor people throughout the world and with aboriginal people here in Canada. The founder is a United Church minister, Charles Catto. Charles was telling me that there is good news from Haiti. A school that he and his organization helped create ministers to and takes care of orphans from HIV families is actually being spared the devastation. In the midst of all the bad new and chaos, this school has been able to minister not only to its normal students who were there, but to students throughout the island. Bad news; followed by good news.
Isn't that the case in daily life? Many people have struggled financially with the recession over the last couple of years. Many businesses have teetered on the brink of destruction and some have actually fallen over the brink. There has been bad news. Yet, we also know that there are moments in which businesses thrive and flourish. There are times when the economy prospers, when the markets are buoyant and people are prosperous. It isn't always all bad news, nor is it always good news.
Even in our relationships, either at home or with people with whom we work, not all relationships are perfect, wonderful, symbiotic symbols of love and affection. Often there are struggles and conflicts when people feel ill at ease or depressed in a relationship. Just because there is bad news does not mean there is not also in that some redemptive good news. Whatever part of life, there is this dialectic between bad news and good news, the tension between these two things.
As Christians, we understand why there is bad news. We understand the sinful nature of life. We know that we are mortal and that we are unrighteous. We know that we are imperfect and that creation groans with the pain of that sin. But we are also aware of the good news - that love and life and faith and righteousness also can emerge in this life.
Throughout history, many people have tried to deal with the bad news part of life in different ways. In very ancient times, paganism was really nothing more than a way of dealing with bad news and with the sin and mortality of life. People created gods, making them the gods of the elements or the earth, and they believed that these gods were pernicious or evil and dangerous, and that somehow they had to appease these gods and atone for the problems of life. People lived in fear of the gods. Often they wanted them to control the way the world operates. Even the Romans, that great, powerful symbol of all that is an empire trying to control and manipulate society to hold back the tide of bad news and insurrection, to bring order where there is chaos, were basically pagan at their core.
Even when people came to believe in one god, they too often thought that God was pernicious and angry and hateful, and tried to appease God by some sacrifice or by obedience to some law, because this holy god was out to get them.
Unless we get so smug ourselves and think that kind of paganism is old hat, in our own age, though not in an overt way, we do the same thing.
Is not materialism and the desire to have a lot of things nothing more than a way of protecting ourselves, a buffer in a sense from the problems and bad news of life? Do we not think that if we can afford wonderful things, we can find pleasure and somehow rise above the problems that are there? Do we not also, as a culture, and this was brought out this last week by Steve Paikin on The Agenda, avoid the realities of death? People now seem to have celebrations of life at the end of a life, but any talk of death is somehow removed, because that is bad news.
As a culture, we too have a pagan core. We deal with bad news by obliterating it, ignoring it, protecting ourselves from it. But can we really? No! There is in life, bad news. Hence, the reason why the words from The Book of Romans come with a power and a joy and a grief like no other. The Apostle Paul writing to the Romans said, “If God is for us, who or what can be against us?”
Si deus pro nobis: if God is for us, who can be against us?“ This radical statement” said Karl Barth“ is unprecedented. ” It says that God, who is the God of this earth, the Creator God, the maker of each and every one of us is actually not pernicious, is actually not a god of bad news, but is the God of Good News. He is the God that is for us, not against us. On what did the Apostle Paul base that? What was the foundation to what Paul says?
Well, it is Easter. It is today! You see, Paul understood that throughout the whole of Holy Week leading up to Easter, it was one piece of bad news after another. It was the bad news that when Jesus had come into Jerusalem as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, very soon after, when he found himself in the Temple he was in conflict with the religious leaders. It was just a matter of days before he was performing miracles in the capital city and telling marvellous parables that people started to be suspicious of his power and of his ministry.
It was just a matter of days when the people who should have surrounded him with love, remained silent. It was at a time like this that one person went so far, his beloved Peter, to deny knowing him. In a garden amongst his other disciples, one of them came up to him and kissed him on the cheek and betrayed him.
When God and his Son come here to deliver in person good news, nothing but bad news occurs. It occurred so much so that the religious leaders were offended by him and wanted him to die. It is no coincidence that the Roman pagan's powers wanted to conspire also to kill Jesus for fear of an insurrection and that the crowds who had praised him on Palm Sunday shouted “Crucify him!” on Good Friday. So, between two thieves in an ignominious death with a crown on his head and his robes sold for chattel, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and put in tomb. It seemed that all was bad news. But was it?
On Thursday morning I went to my usual coffee shop on Overlea Boulevard. I went in to order my coffee, and there greeting me was the proprietor of the store, someone I have come to like very much over the last few years. Her name is Suzie, and I believe she is listening today on the radio. She is a Muslim.
When I got to the desk, rather than asking me what I wanted, she said, “I have a question for you today.” It is a question that many people ask me and I do not know the answer: “Why is tomorrow called Good Friday?” I paused for a moment. I thought, “This could be an opportunity! I might be able to get a Boston Cream and a double-double for no charge!” But I held off my natural, human bad news instinct, and I gave her a simple answer.
I said, “We Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth on Good Friday was crucified, and in being crucified, he took upon himself our sins, he bore our mortality, he bore our afflictions, and through that suffering, our sins are forgiven, our eternal life is assured, and that is good news.”
She said, “Thank you. I have never heard it explained so clearly.”
I went back yesterday to see if I could get a double-double and a cream pie and nothing was forthcoming. But, she said thank you again for telling me about that good news.
You see, my friends, Easter is good news. Even in the midst of defeat, even in the midst of a tomb, God was at work. The reason why Good Friday is good is because of Easter Sunday. It is because the one who was crucified and took the burdens and the bad news of our life was raised from the dead. That which was our defeat has now been turned into our victory. That which was our sorrow has now turned into our joy. That which was our death has now become our life. And, that which seems to be against us no longer has power over us. “God is for us, who or what can be against us?”
How then should we live? How then should you and I live our everyday existence? The great New Testament theologian, someone that David McMaster and I both read and love very much indeed, the Bishop of Durham-Tom Wright, wrote the following, and I think these are brilliant words: “Jesus is raised, therefore God's new world has begun. Therefore, we, you, and everybody else is invited to be not only beneficiaries of that new world, but participants in making it happen.”
In other words, the power of Jesus Christ is such that there is no separation between him and us, now or ever will be. The gift of eternal life is not something that we just await for in heaven at the end of our lives or in the glorious Resurrection of the dead. It is the very power that is present here. Paul summed it up so clearly. And again, I repeat: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
In other words, nothing separates us. As we live and breathe, no matter what bad news we encounter, no matter what struggles we face, no matter what challenges lie before us, the Risen Christ is with us now in the bond and the power of the Holy Spirit. No matter how short our lives may be, no matter what travails we may face, at the end of this life that same Jesus is there for us: “For I am convinced that nothing separates us from the love of God” says Paul “for God is with us, so who can be against us?” But, should that not mean that we live in a powerful and righteous way in the world? I think it does.
On Good Friday, I began my sermon by quoting, on that day, Albert Bayley, a great family friend of me and my father, a great hymn-writer. In one of his lesser known hymns, he wrote these words, and I have always held them dear to my heart:
Still your children wander home
Still the hungry cry for bread
Still the captives long for freedom
Still in grief we mourn our dead
As you, Lord, in deep compassion
Heal the sick and free the soul
By your Spirit send your power
To our world to make it whole
If Bayley is right, and I think he is, then this day, this congregation, you, all those who are listening, have something profound to say and bear witness to, something to live and to change your life once and for all. And, it says to the poor and the dispossessed “God is for us and we are for you.” To the political prisoner, to those who have suffered injustice, it says “God is for us and we are for you.” It says to the addict, struggling with addiction, deep in their soul, “God is for us and we are for you.” It says to the lonely, to the despised, to the depressed, “God is for us, we are for you.” It says to the dying, it says to the mourning, “God is for us, we are for you.”
Why? It is because on Easter we know this truth: that if God is for us in the Risen Christ, nothing can be against us. Now that is Good News! Alleluia! Amen.