Good News, Old and New

“And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written,

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."”

And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.  And he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."   -  Luke 4: 16-21

The Christian gospel is both old good news and new good news.  The gospel of John says it was there at the beginning of the world.  But it is not stuck between the covers of an old book.  The gospel appears among us today, in fresh form, energized by its past form but not trapped by it.

Jesus took the sacred book of the Jews and read it to the people in the synagogue and declared to them that it was being fulfilled before their eyes.  The old good news of liberation from oppression and suffering, old good news spoken by the prophet Isaiah in his time, had become new good news.  Not just being declared by Jesus, but demonstrated by him in fresh ways, in a new context.

Jesus touched lepers whom he was not allowed to touch, according to a strict interpretation of the Jewish law.  Jesus talked to women in public, which he wasn’t allowed to do according to the standards of the Pharisaic Judaism of which he was a part.  Jesus healed the child of a Roman army officer, which was an outrageous affront to those Jewish people who opposed fraternization with Gentiles, especially with Roman soldiers.  St Paul said that in Christ there is no east or west, no Jew or Gentile.  It is hard for us today to appreciate how outrageous these early Christian words and actions were in their day.  And what good news they represented in that time.

We are called to do the same thing for the Christian scriptures that Jesus did for the Hebrew scriptures. Unfetter them from the museum of the past, and extend their promises and possibilities for our time, extending healing and inclusion and peace and justice even further than did Jesus’ early followers.

So we get to use our imaginations.  We get to extrapolate from what Jesus did in his day and visualize what a character like Jesus might do in our day.  A character who is ahead of our time, just like he was ahead of his time.  A character who is still moving, still progressing, still extending the boundaries of inclusion and access to the sacred dimension of life.   Jesus went far beyond the Old Testament’s rules in extending compassion in his time.  It is up to us to go far beyond the New Testament in extending love and healing to the world around us now.  Jesus was a progressive Jew; early Christianity was a progressive form of Judaism.  Today we are challenged to be progressive Christians.

Progressive Christianity is about making new good news out of the old good news.  Let me offer an example.  Jesus offered “universal health care”; he was eager to offer healing to everybody who asked him for it.  And it was “single-payer”:  he paid on the cross, to cover everybody.  He healed people even if, and especially if, they had pre-existing conditions like leprosy or mental illness.  That’s the old good news.  What would be the new good news?  I think it would be for us as citizens and as Christians to become activists for health care coverage for all.  The California Council of Churches is lobbying for a single-payer, universal health insurance system right now.  And they need our help!  (See more at www.calchurches.org and at www.californiaonecare.org .)

So may we progress further forward, following the One who is always ahead of our time, making new good news out of the old.