The Good News And The Bad News
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle C
Have you ever had someone come up to you with a message and then introduces it by saying, "I've got good news and bad news; let me give you the bad news first"? For example, the bad news is that terrorists attacked our country on September 11. The good news is that it has led to a resurgence of patriotism and a healthy sense of civil religion. The bad news is that you have cancer. The good news is that this is an early diagnosis and there is a good prospect for cure. The bad news is that you spent your last dollar on a lottery ticket. The good news is that it is a winning lottery ticket. The bad news is that a snowstorm is coming. The good news is that school has been cancelled. The bad news is that the picnic was rained out. The good news is that the rain has ended the drought and your garden now will thrive.
No one ever wants to hear bad news. No one wants to be a bearer of bad news. But when you know that good news is coming, when you know that your last word will be not bad news but good news, then bad news is so much easier to take.
Today's First Lesson is a good example of just this kind of bad news/good news phenomenon. There is both bad news and good news here. However, it is because of the good news, that the bad news is not just easier to take. No, even more, the good news transforms the bad news into a surprising blessing.
It is approximately 520 B.C.E. and the Israelites are returning from exile in Babylon. They have begun the massive job of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Ezra, an Israelite priest, has been sent by the Persian King Cyrus, who had defeated the Babylonians resulting in Israel's release from captivity, to inspire the Israelites in this undertaking. He intends to do that by teaching them the Torah, the books of Moses including the Sinai Covenant. Today's First Lesson recounts the occasion of its first reading to the Israelites gathered in Jerusalem. You might say that the reading was a kind of pep talk, a half-time locker room oration, intended to encourage and motivate the dispirited Israelites. Ezra reads from the Torah and reminds the people of all the great things God has done for them in the past.
Immediately the people began to weep. Why such sorrow? Why was this such bad news? The reading reminded them that this horrible fate they had suffered in Babylon was self-inflicted. They had brought all this suffering on themselves because they had failed to keep the Torah. That is why God had sent them into exile. They had turned away from God and his ways. The consequences of their disobedience were the destruction of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem, the loss of the monarchy, and forty years in exile. It was bad news to be reminded once again that they had paid dearly for their unfaithfulness. It is no wonder that they wept.
But Ezra also has good news for them. In fact, Ezra encourages them not to mourn and weep but instead to rejoice, feast, party, and celebrate. Why? Because this is a holy day, a special day, a day like no other. And what makes this day so special is that the Torah Ezra read to them not only exposed their failures but also recounted God's mighty acts of deliverance and salvation. The Torah also included the account of God's providential care of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It recounted the sojourn of God's people in Egypt. And most of all it recounted their miraculous deliverance from bondage in Egypt in the Exodus. This is good news because it reminds these troubled Israelites, who surely must have been wondering if God cared for them any more, that God truly is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and, most of all, keeps his promises. And as sure as they heard Ezra read the Torah before them in Jerusalem, they can be sure God will keep his promises again. "The joy of the Lord is your strength." And that good news makes all the difference in the world. The bad news has been trumped. The good news has the last word. God will save his people. They can count on it.
Here we see in this simple report from the rarely read book of Nehemiah a wonderful truth about the word of God. The word of God is always both good news and bad news. It is always both Gospel and Law. Like those fifth-century Israelites who gathered that day in Jerusalem to hear the words of Ezra, so also we gather in this place every sabbath to hear the word of God. And that word, just as it was for those ancient Israelites, is both good news and bad news. Like a two-edged sword it cuts and heals. It kills and makes alive. It accuses and forgives.
The big temptation is that we skip hearing the bad news. We always want to run to the good news, ignore the bad news, and think that sparing ourselves such pain has got to be an improvement. But such a shortcut is dangerous. We run the risk of missing the true healing power of the good news. It turns the good news into "cheap grace" or a simple "getting off the hook." It is like slapping a bandage on a wound that has never been cleaned. The bacteria have only been covered up and are still free to grow and spread their deadly infection. Such a cover up never faces the truth. It only postpones the dangerous consequences. So also proclaiming only the good news and at the expense of the bad news, pretending it doesn't even exist, only postpones disaster.
Unlike other communities and organizations, when we gather here for weekly worship, we do not avoid the bad news. We face it head on. We relish confronting it face to face. If you have ever been to the meeting of a civic organization or club, to the Rotary, the Boy Scouts, or the annual stockholders meeting, you will notice that they always begin by trying to paint a rosy picture. It is almost seems as if it is forbidden to acknowledge all the mistakes, failures, and disappointments. The dirty underwear is to be kept out of sight. Bad news is to be avoided at all costs. Bad PR! Can you imagine starting the monthly Boy Scout Troup meeting by calling attention to all the scouts who failed to earn merit badges, by citing the mistakes of various patrols, and by pointing out all the scouts who received demerits? This is no way to start a meeting, especially if parents or visitors or prospective members are there. We don't want to air our dirty underwear. We want to put our best foot forward. We want to impress them. This is no time for bad news. Only good news will be tolerated.
But that is not how the church functions. When we began our worship this morning, we started with the Brief Order of Confession and Forgiveness. We started by confessing our sins, our failures, our mistakes, and our crimes. There is no spin. There is no pretending. There are no qualifications. There are no excuses. We have failed.
We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. We have sinned against you (God) in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
What a way to start a meeting! That hardly seems like the way to impress visitors who have come to check us out. It would seem far wiser to put our best foot forward and show them how good we are. But here we strangely start by listing and acknowledging our failures, our sins. Talk about bad news! Why would anyone want to come to a place that starts its public gatherings like this?
Worse yet, this seems like some crass form of bargaining, like some sort of "let's make a deal" with God, some sort of "tit for tat." Is this wallowing in the bad news the price of admission? Is this something that we "have to" do in order to get God's forgiveness? If so, this is terribly depressing. It seems downright manipulative. It seems to be daringly arrogant to think that we can somehow bribe God into forgiving us by the length or sincerity of our confession.
But that is not at all what the Brief Order of Confession and Forgiveness is about. If anything, it is just the opposite. This recitation of our sins and shortcomings is not a "have to" that we "must" do in order to get something. Rather it is a "get to," something we willingly and joyfully do because of what is already ours. Yes, dare we say it, confessing our sins, airing our dirty underwear, bringing the skeletons out of our closets, is a privilege.
But how can this be? If anything, this seems like bad news. Isn't it terrible, a travesty, downright bad news, that people like us are such rotten sinners? Who in their right mind would ever want to be a part of a group that seems to be so distant from perfection? Who wants to tell the world their problems? Isn't it actually embarrassing that we mess up so badly, when the rest of the world is determined to put its good foot forward? Shouldn't this stuff be covered up?
But this is not what it appears to be. This is not a telling of the bad news in order to receive the good news. This is not "let's make a deal." We come to this place not to earn our forgiveness but to be assured of our forgiveness. We come to this place because our sin has put that forgiveness in doubt. Our conscience bothers us. We know that we have done wrong. We feel badly about it. So, we come here to be assured of God's forgiveness. We crave hearing the Good News of the Gospel and hearing once again that our slates are clean. Trusting that it will happen, we willingly tell the truth. We willingly confess our sins. This is not a reward to be earned but a gift to be opened. This is an opportunity to get it off our chest and off our conscience and on to the back of Jesus. We have heard Jesus tells us that he wants to carry our sin for us. The only way that we can do that is to acknowledge it, confess it, and give it to him.
Liturgically, the Brief Order of Confession makes that clear. This is no "let's make a deal." This is no divine bribery. This is a joyful expression of our faith and our freedom. We came here to tell the truth and get the pain and burden of our sin off our back and on the back of Jesus. That is why we make the sign of the cross on our bodies. That is why we invoke the name of the Triune God. This is the name of the God we have come to know in Jesus. This the name of the God who first claimed us and made us his own in our Baptism ("I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"). Now, we have come to this church to hear him speak to us again. And he does. We hear the bad news and the good news. We willingly acknowledge the validity of the bad news (we are sinners!) and joyfully claim the offer of the Good News (our sins are forgiven!).
Isn't that exactly what happened in today's first reading from Nehemiah? The people willingly came to hear Ezra read them the Torah. They knew that the Torah was surely going to bring bad news. It surely was going to expose and accuse them for all their shortcomings. Nevertheless, they got on their knees. They raised their hands.
"Give it to us, Ezra. We are ready. We can't wait to hear the bad news."
And as they heard it, they wept. They mourned. They were sorry and filled with remorse. But there was not only bad news here. There was also good news in the Torah. And after hearing the good news, the good news of God's grace and mercy for his people, Ezra urges them to rejoice and celebrate. Even though they had deserved that terrible suffering of the Exile, they now are freed and forgiven. That was the good news of this day. That was the good news of Torah. Such good news inspired them to do what seemed impossible, to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and the Temple.
But the joy the people experienced that day in Jerusalem when Ezra read the Torah to them still was incomplete. The walls of Jerusalem and the Temple were eventually rebuilt. Those were wonderful accomplishments and great joys. But life was still far from perfect. During the next 500 years Israel still had to struggle. The nation was never quite able to get out from under the domination of one great world power after another. Their joy was never complete. They never quite seemed to arrive. For every step forward they seemed to take two backward. And to continue moving forward, to continue to be sustained as a people, to continue to keep faith in the face of so many setbacks, Israel gathered to hear again and again God's word, just like that day in Jerusalem when Ezra read it to them. They knew that they needed to hear both the bad news and the good news again and again. They knew that it had to be God's word in all its fullness, both the bad news and the good news. No shortcuts. No abbreviations. No abridged versions. They needed the whole word of God to sustain them.
Today's Gospel recounts another reading of God's word to his people. It had been 500 years since Ezra read the word to the people in Jerusalem. For 500 years God's people had been hearing the good news and the bad news. This time it was the local synagogue in the small town of Nazareth. Hometown boy, Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter, who had become somewhat of a celebrity, had returned and had been invited to take his turn reading the word and offering a commentary. It was nothing out of the ordinary. All the Jewish men of the synagogue took their turn at this. They were proud of their famous resident and wanted to hear what he had to say. But they were not prepared to hear what Jesus had to say.
Jesus took the scroll and started reading what was probably the appointed reading for the day, a portion of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 61. This passage spoke of the grand and glorious Year of Jubilee, that future time when God was finally going to come and set all things right. In that time God would personally send an anointed, messianic leader to "bring good news to the poor ... proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (vv. 1-2).
It was promises like these that had sustained the Israelites for centuries. At the time of Jesus the Israelites were still waiting. Judaism was filled with all sorts of versions of what it would take to bring about the Year of Jubilee and the coming of the messiah. The Zealots believed that it would happen through the power of the sword and armed rebellion. The Pharisees believed it would happen through the religious reform of the people and the keeping of the Torah. The Essenses had given up on the masses and believed that it would only happen by fleeing to the desert and establishing a pure, monastic community of Torah keepers.
But now Jesus, hometown boy made good but still just one of them, still just the son of Joseph, the carpenter, still just that kid they remember playing in the dusty streets of Nazareth, made a most incredible claim: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21). Jesus claimed that the Year of Jubilee, the messianic, age was here now! He was the chosen one for whom they had been waiting. He was the one who would finally bring about the liberation and vindication for which they had been thirsting for so long, for at least 500 years, for at least since the days of Ezra, and even long before that. Of course, this was too much for the people of Nazareth. They knew too much about the ordinary kid from their town. This was too much to swallow. This was blasphemy. So they drove him out of town and would have killed him had he not miraculously escaped.
As Jesus' life and ministry unfold in the pages of the New Testament, we see Jesus actually living out these words from the prophet Isaiah. We see him setting free all kinds of people who had been captive to various oppressors. The blind are given sight. The deaf can hear. The lame can walk. The dead are resuscitated. Jesus, the ultimate friend of sinners, embraces those whom the rest of society had shunned and excluded. And most of all, Jesus dares to announce that their sins are forgiven.
Jesus claims to be the ultimate Good News from God. He dares to overrule God's own "bad news" judgment of sinners by welcoming and forgiving them in the name of God. The defenders of the righteous judgment of God were convinced that Jesus was a blasphemer, undermining the integrity of God's expectations of his people. So, in the name of God, they had to put Jesus to death. And they did it on that awesome and awful Friday on a hill outside of Jerusalem. They thought that they had ended this foolishness once and for all. But we know that this wasn't the end of the story. "On the third day," he was raised from the dead. God raised him. God vindicated his claim to be the messiah and to be able to do the things he did.
Jesus suffered on the cross the ultimate bad news for us. He silenced its criticism. He ended its crushing judgment of sinful humanity in his own body. And because of his resurrection, it at last became clear to his followers that what he first claimed that day in the synagogue of Nazareth was true. The Year of Jubilee had arrived. Jesus had saved the world in a way no one had anticipated. God had kept his promises. And most of all, the Good News for which this broken and frustrated world had waited so long had finally arrived. God's love is reliable. God can be trusted. No one or no thing can separate us from that love. The bad news of our sin and guilt has been overcome by the Good News of Jesus' death and resurrection.
Ezra had declared similar good news 500 years before: "The joy of the Lord is your strength." This good news strengthened the Israelites to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. In the same way the Good News of Jesus' resurrection sustained the first Christians in their mission to an often incredulous and hostile world. In spite of the opposition, first from the Jewish community and then from the Gentile world, those first Christians boldly went into the world proclaiming both the Good News and the bad news. It is clear from today's First Lesson that proclaiming this twofold, double-edged, bi-vocal word of God was nothing new. God's word had always functioned this way. Therefore, Christians could dare to tell the bad news because the Good News was even better.
Trusting the Good News of God's love in Jesus Christ, we have nothing to fear. We can dare to tell the truth in ways that the rest of the world is afraid to do. There is no need to lie, cover-up, pretend, deny, or equivocate. The debacle at Enron and the recent collapse of other such huge corporations under the cloud of executive corruption should remind us all that the world is filled with thieves. In fact, we all are thieves. Not one of us has clean hands. Our society is filled with sick and broken marriages. Even the most healthy of relationships has its skeletons in the closet. There is no such thing as a "normal" family because every family is afflicted with its own unique brand of dysfunction. Christ Church, like every Christian congregation that has ever existed, is far from perfect. The bottom line is that we are all sinners. And sinners rightly ought to tremble in the presence of a righteous God.
This is the bad news. But the bad news is not all there is. There is also the Good News of God's love for sinners just like you and me. In fact, it is the sinners, "those who are in need of a physician," to whom God is partial. It is for people just like us with all of our flaws and embarrassments that Jesus came. It is "for us and our salvation" that Jesus lives. And because of that, Ezra was right: "the joy of the Lord is (our) strength."
Empowered by such good news, the sixth-century Israelites were able to do what few thought was possible: confess their sin and then dare to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. Empowered by the same good news we can do the same. We can afford to gather here every week and face the bad news head on. There is no need to equivocate, dissemble, or rationalize. We can fess up to our sins without blinking. And we do it because we "want to." We do it because we also know and trust the Good News of God's mercy. And trusting the love of God means that there is no need to do anything else than tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And then, buoyed by this truth, we can dare to go out into the world free to tackle head on all the bad news in this world, trusting the Good News that, regardless of our failures or successes, we are always the beloved children of God.
Can you imagine the healing that could happen, can you imagine the pain that people could have been spared, if the people of this world would only honestly face the bad news? Can you imagine all the hurt and devastation that could have been avoided, if the executives of Enron had told the truth about its finances? Can you imagine the suffering that families could have avoided, if someone had only stopped enabling the addict in their midst and forced him to face the truth about his addiction? Can you imagine the marriages that could be saved, if the couples would only end the denial and seek counseling? Can you imagine how much better our country might be, if more citizens would stop being "the silent majority" and start holding their government and politicians accountable? Can you imagine how much better our schools would be, if more parents would actually take time to support their children and their teachers?
Then Jesus' words would start coming true already now, just as he declared that day in the synagogue in Nazareth. Then the Year of Jubilee would actually be taking shape among us here in this place and this time. Then the messianic age would be happening among us now. Then that hope uttered by Ezra some 2,500 years ago in the city of Jerusalem would actually be a reality. Then we would be able to testify to the fact that "the joy of the Lord is (our) strength."
Such a life is possible when the word of God is proclaimed among us in all its fullness, both the Good News and the bad news. Because of the Good News we can dare to face the bad news. And because we can face the bad news, when we hear the Good News, the Good News of God's grace and mercy for bumblers like us, it will be the greatest news we have ever heard!
No one ever wants to hear bad news. No one wants to be a bearer of bad news. But when you know that good news is coming, when you know that your last word will be not bad news but good news, then bad news is so much easier to take.
Today's First Lesson is a good example of just this kind of bad news/good news phenomenon. There is both bad news and good news here. However, it is because of the good news, that the bad news is not just easier to take. No, even more, the good news transforms the bad news into a surprising blessing.
It is approximately 520 B.C.E. and the Israelites are returning from exile in Babylon. They have begun the massive job of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Ezra, an Israelite priest, has been sent by the Persian King Cyrus, who had defeated the Babylonians resulting in Israel's release from captivity, to inspire the Israelites in this undertaking. He intends to do that by teaching them the Torah, the books of Moses including the Sinai Covenant. Today's First Lesson recounts the occasion of its first reading to the Israelites gathered in Jerusalem. You might say that the reading was a kind of pep talk, a half-time locker room oration, intended to encourage and motivate the dispirited Israelites. Ezra reads from the Torah and reminds the people of all the great things God has done for them in the past.
Immediately the people began to weep. Why such sorrow? Why was this such bad news? The reading reminded them that this horrible fate they had suffered in Babylon was self-inflicted. They had brought all this suffering on themselves because they had failed to keep the Torah. That is why God had sent them into exile. They had turned away from God and his ways. The consequences of their disobedience were the destruction of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem, the loss of the monarchy, and forty years in exile. It was bad news to be reminded once again that they had paid dearly for their unfaithfulness. It is no wonder that they wept.
But Ezra also has good news for them. In fact, Ezra encourages them not to mourn and weep but instead to rejoice, feast, party, and celebrate. Why? Because this is a holy day, a special day, a day like no other. And what makes this day so special is that the Torah Ezra read to them not only exposed their failures but also recounted God's mighty acts of deliverance and salvation. The Torah also included the account of God's providential care of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It recounted the sojourn of God's people in Egypt. And most of all it recounted their miraculous deliverance from bondage in Egypt in the Exodus. This is good news because it reminds these troubled Israelites, who surely must have been wondering if God cared for them any more, that God truly is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and, most of all, keeps his promises. And as sure as they heard Ezra read the Torah before them in Jerusalem, they can be sure God will keep his promises again. "The joy of the Lord is your strength." And that good news makes all the difference in the world. The bad news has been trumped. The good news has the last word. God will save his people. They can count on it.
Here we see in this simple report from the rarely read book of Nehemiah a wonderful truth about the word of God. The word of God is always both good news and bad news. It is always both Gospel and Law. Like those fifth-century Israelites who gathered that day in Jerusalem to hear the words of Ezra, so also we gather in this place every sabbath to hear the word of God. And that word, just as it was for those ancient Israelites, is both good news and bad news. Like a two-edged sword it cuts and heals. It kills and makes alive. It accuses and forgives.
The big temptation is that we skip hearing the bad news. We always want to run to the good news, ignore the bad news, and think that sparing ourselves such pain has got to be an improvement. But such a shortcut is dangerous. We run the risk of missing the true healing power of the good news. It turns the good news into "cheap grace" or a simple "getting off the hook." It is like slapping a bandage on a wound that has never been cleaned. The bacteria have only been covered up and are still free to grow and spread their deadly infection. Such a cover up never faces the truth. It only postpones the dangerous consequences. So also proclaiming only the good news and at the expense of the bad news, pretending it doesn't even exist, only postpones disaster.
Unlike other communities and organizations, when we gather here for weekly worship, we do not avoid the bad news. We face it head on. We relish confronting it face to face. If you have ever been to the meeting of a civic organization or club, to the Rotary, the Boy Scouts, or the annual stockholders meeting, you will notice that they always begin by trying to paint a rosy picture. It is almost seems as if it is forbidden to acknowledge all the mistakes, failures, and disappointments. The dirty underwear is to be kept out of sight. Bad news is to be avoided at all costs. Bad PR! Can you imagine starting the monthly Boy Scout Troup meeting by calling attention to all the scouts who failed to earn merit badges, by citing the mistakes of various patrols, and by pointing out all the scouts who received demerits? This is no way to start a meeting, especially if parents or visitors or prospective members are there. We don't want to air our dirty underwear. We want to put our best foot forward. We want to impress them. This is no time for bad news. Only good news will be tolerated.
But that is not how the church functions. When we began our worship this morning, we started with the Brief Order of Confession and Forgiveness. We started by confessing our sins, our failures, our mistakes, and our crimes. There is no spin. There is no pretending. There are no qualifications. There are no excuses. We have failed.
We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. We have sinned against you (God) in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
What a way to start a meeting! That hardly seems like the way to impress visitors who have come to check us out. It would seem far wiser to put our best foot forward and show them how good we are. But here we strangely start by listing and acknowledging our failures, our sins. Talk about bad news! Why would anyone want to come to a place that starts its public gatherings like this?
Worse yet, this seems like some crass form of bargaining, like some sort of "let's make a deal" with God, some sort of "tit for tat." Is this wallowing in the bad news the price of admission? Is this something that we "have to" do in order to get God's forgiveness? If so, this is terribly depressing. It seems downright manipulative. It seems to be daringly arrogant to think that we can somehow bribe God into forgiving us by the length or sincerity of our confession.
But that is not at all what the Brief Order of Confession and Forgiveness is about. If anything, it is just the opposite. This recitation of our sins and shortcomings is not a "have to" that we "must" do in order to get something. Rather it is a "get to," something we willingly and joyfully do because of what is already ours. Yes, dare we say it, confessing our sins, airing our dirty underwear, bringing the skeletons out of our closets, is a privilege.
But how can this be? If anything, this seems like bad news. Isn't it terrible, a travesty, downright bad news, that people like us are such rotten sinners? Who in their right mind would ever want to be a part of a group that seems to be so distant from perfection? Who wants to tell the world their problems? Isn't it actually embarrassing that we mess up so badly, when the rest of the world is determined to put its good foot forward? Shouldn't this stuff be covered up?
But this is not what it appears to be. This is not a telling of the bad news in order to receive the good news. This is not "let's make a deal." We come to this place not to earn our forgiveness but to be assured of our forgiveness. We come to this place because our sin has put that forgiveness in doubt. Our conscience bothers us. We know that we have done wrong. We feel badly about it. So, we come here to be assured of God's forgiveness. We crave hearing the Good News of the Gospel and hearing once again that our slates are clean. Trusting that it will happen, we willingly tell the truth. We willingly confess our sins. This is not a reward to be earned but a gift to be opened. This is an opportunity to get it off our chest and off our conscience and on to the back of Jesus. We have heard Jesus tells us that he wants to carry our sin for us. The only way that we can do that is to acknowledge it, confess it, and give it to him.
Liturgically, the Brief Order of Confession makes that clear. This is no "let's make a deal." This is no divine bribery. This is a joyful expression of our faith and our freedom. We came here to tell the truth and get the pain and burden of our sin off our back and on the back of Jesus. That is why we make the sign of the cross on our bodies. That is why we invoke the name of the Triune God. This is the name of the God we have come to know in Jesus. This the name of the God who first claimed us and made us his own in our Baptism ("I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"). Now, we have come to this church to hear him speak to us again. And he does. We hear the bad news and the good news. We willingly acknowledge the validity of the bad news (we are sinners!) and joyfully claim the offer of the Good News (our sins are forgiven!).
Isn't that exactly what happened in today's first reading from Nehemiah? The people willingly came to hear Ezra read them the Torah. They knew that the Torah was surely going to bring bad news. It surely was going to expose and accuse them for all their shortcomings. Nevertheless, they got on their knees. They raised their hands.
"Give it to us, Ezra. We are ready. We can't wait to hear the bad news."
And as they heard it, they wept. They mourned. They were sorry and filled with remorse. But there was not only bad news here. There was also good news in the Torah. And after hearing the good news, the good news of God's grace and mercy for his people, Ezra urges them to rejoice and celebrate. Even though they had deserved that terrible suffering of the Exile, they now are freed and forgiven. That was the good news of this day. That was the good news of Torah. Such good news inspired them to do what seemed impossible, to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and the Temple.
But the joy the people experienced that day in Jerusalem when Ezra read the Torah to them still was incomplete. The walls of Jerusalem and the Temple were eventually rebuilt. Those were wonderful accomplishments and great joys. But life was still far from perfect. During the next 500 years Israel still had to struggle. The nation was never quite able to get out from under the domination of one great world power after another. Their joy was never complete. They never quite seemed to arrive. For every step forward they seemed to take two backward. And to continue moving forward, to continue to be sustained as a people, to continue to keep faith in the face of so many setbacks, Israel gathered to hear again and again God's word, just like that day in Jerusalem when Ezra read it to them. They knew that they needed to hear both the bad news and the good news again and again. They knew that it had to be God's word in all its fullness, both the bad news and the good news. No shortcuts. No abbreviations. No abridged versions. They needed the whole word of God to sustain them.
Today's Gospel recounts another reading of God's word to his people. It had been 500 years since Ezra read the word to the people in Jerusalem. For 500 years God's people had been hearing the good news and the bad news. This time it was the local synagogue in the small town of Nazareth. Hometown boy, Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter, who had become somewhat of a celebrity, had returned and had been invited to take his turn reading the word and offering a commentary. It was nothing out of the ordinary. All the Jewish men of the synagogue took their turn at this. They were proud of their famous resident and wanted to hear what he had to say. But they were not prepared to hear what Jesus had to say.
Jesus took the scroll and started reading what was probably the appointed reading for the day, a portion of the prophet Isaiah, chapter 61. This passage spoke of the grand and glorious Year of Jubilee, that future time when God was finally going to come and set all things right. In that time God would personally send an anointed, messianic leader to "bring good news to the poor ... proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (vv. 1-2).
It was promises like these that had sustained the Israelites for centuries. At the time of Jesus the Israelites were still waiting. Judaism was filled with all sorts of versions of what it would take to bring about the Year of Jubilee and the coming of the messiah. The Zealots believed that it would happen through the power of the sword and armed rebellion. The Pharisees believed it would happen through the religious reform of the people and the keeping of the Torah. The Essenses had given up on the masses and believed that it would only happen by fleeing to the desert and establishing a pure, monastic community of Torah keepers.
But now Jesus, hometown boy made good but still just one of them, still just the son of Joseph, the carpenter, still just that kid they remember playing in the dusty streets of Nazareth, made a most incredible claim: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21). Jesus claimed that the Year of Jubilee, the messianic, age was here now! He was the chosen one for whom they had been waiting. He was the one who would finally bring about the liberation and vindication for which they had been thirsting for so long, for at least 500 years, for at least since the days of Ezra, and even long before that. Of course, this was too much for the people of Nazareth. They knew too much about the ordinary kid from their town. This was too much to swallow. This was blasphemy. So they drove him out of town and would have killed him had he not miraculously escaped.
As Jesus' life and ministry unfold in the pages of the New Testament, we see Jesus actually living out these words from the prophet Isaiah. We see him setting free all kinds of people who had been captive to various oppressors. The blind are given sight. The deaf can hear. The lame can walk. The dead are resuscitated. Jesus, the ultimate friend of sinners, embraces those whom the rest of society had shunned and excluded. And most of all, Jesus dares to announce that their sins are forgiven.
Jesus claims to be the ultimate Good News from God. He dares to overrule God's own "bad news" judgment of sinners by welcoming and forgiving them in the name of God. The defenders of the righteous judgment of God were convinced that Jesus was a blasphemer, undermining the integrity of God's expectations of his people. So, in the name of God, they had to put Jesus to death. And they did it on that awesome and awful Friday on a hill outside of Jerusalem. They thought that they had ended this foolishness once and for all. But we know that this wasn't the end of the story. "On the third day," he was raised from the dead. God raised him. God vindicated his claim to be the messiah and to be able to do the things he did.
Jesus suffered on the cross the ultimate bad news for us. He silenced its criticism. He ended its crushing judgment of sinful humanity in his own body. And because of his resurrection, it at last became clear to his followers that what he first claimed that day in the synagogue of Nazareth was true. The Year of Jubilee had arrived. Jesus had saved the world in a way no one had anticipated. God had kept his promises. And most of all, the Good News for which this broken and frustrated world had waited so long had finally arrived. God's love is reliable. God can be trusted. No one or no thing can separate us from that love. The bad news of our sin and guilt has been overcome by the Good News of Jesus' death and resurrection.
Ezra had declared similar good news 500 years before: "The joy of the Lord is your strength." This good news strengthened the Israelites to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. In the same way the Good News of Jesus' resurrection sustained the first Christians in their mission to an often incredulous and hostile world. In spite of the opposition, first from the Jewish community and then from the Gentile world, those first Christians boldly went into the world proclaiming both the Good News and the bad news. It is clear from today's First Lesson that proclaiming this twofold, double-edged, bi-vocal word of God was nothing new. God's word had always functioned this way. Therefore, Christians could dare to tell the bad news because the Good News was even better.
Trusting the Good News of God's love in Jesus Christ, we have nothing to fear. We can dare to tell the truth in ways that the rest of the world is afraid to do. There is no need to lie, cover-up, pretend, deny, or equivocate. The debacle at Enron and the recent collapse of other such huge corporations under the cloud of executive corruption should remind us all that the world is filled with thieves. In fact, we all are thieves. Not one of us has clean hands. Our society is filled with sick and broken marriages. Even the most healthy of relationships has its skeletons in the closet. There is no such thing as a "normal" family because every family is afflicted with its own unique brand of dysfunction. Christ Church, like every Christian congregation that has ever existed, is far from perfect. The bottom line is that we are all sinners. And sinners rightly ought to tremble in the presence of a righteous God.
This is the bad news. But the bad news is not all there is. There is also the Good News of God's love for sinners just like you and me. In fact, it is the sinners, "those who are in need of a physician," to whom God is partial. It is for people just like us with all of our flaws and embarrassments that Jesus came. It is "for us and our salvation" that Jesus lives. And because of that, Ezra was right: "the joy of the Lord is (our) strength."
Empowered by such good news, the sixth-century Israelites were able to do what few thought was possible: confess their sin and then dare to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. Empowered by the same good news we can do the same. We can afford to gather here every week and face the bad news head on. There is no need to equivocate, dissemble, or rationalize. We can fess up to our sins without blinking. And we do it because we "want to." We do it because we also know and trust the Good News of God's mercy. And trusting the love of God means that there is no need to do anything else than tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And then, buoyed by this truth, we can dare to go out into the world free to tackle head on all the bad news in this world, trusting the Good News that, regardless of our failures or successes, we are always the beloved children of God.
Can you imagine the healing that could happen, can you imagine the pain that people could have been spared, if the people of this world would only honestly face the bad news? Can you imagine all the hurt and devastation that could have been avoided, if the executives of Enron had told the truth about its finances? Can you imagine the suffering that families could have avoided, if someone had only stopped enabling the addict in their midst and forced him to face the truth about his addiction? Can you imagine the marriages that could be saved, if the couples would only end the denial and seek counseling? Can you imagine how much better our country might be, if more citizens would stop being "the silent majority" and start holding their government and politicians accountable? Can you imagine how much better our schools would be, if more parents would actually take time to support their children and their teachers?
Then Jesus' words would start coming true already now, just as he declared that day in the synagogue in Nazareth. Then the Year of Jubilee would actually be taking shape among us here in this place and this time. Then the messianic age would be happening among us now. Then that hope uttered by Ezra some 2,500 years ago in the city of Jerusalem would actually be a reality. Then we would be able to testify to the fact that "the joy of the Lord is (our) strength."
Such a life is possible when the word of God is proclaimed among us in all its fullness, both the Good News and the bad news. Because of the Good News we can dare to face the bad news. And because we can face the bad news, when we hear the Good News, the Good News of God's grace and mercy for bumblers like us, it will be the greatest news we have ever heard!
