Good News . . . .anyone remember that?!

2021, another Covid Christmas . . . . good news is in short supply, fear levels ratchet up with every daily doom laden pandemic projection. This year has been a challenging one by any standards, and the few fleeting days of Christmas cheer and goodwill to all men will, as always, melt away quicker than a morning frost as we rejoin the ‘real’ world.

But Good News is the overarching theme of Christmas, so in recent days I have found myself returning again and again to the advent stories in the Gospels . . longing for that second advent, when God will come to make good his original dream for his world. For more than forty five years I have, falteringly at times, trusted in a God who created us out of love, for love, whose son Jesus came to earth, lived as a man, died and rose again in order to rebuild that relationship of love, and who one day will return to restore his creation to the beauty and purpose he eternally intended.

I don’t believe I am deluded, naive, gullible, or that my faith is a thoughtless attempt to prop up my feeble, broken nature - it is actually a thought-through conclusion that like all humans I cannot do anything about my feeble, broken, nature - but that God can - and has, in the person of Jesus, and I would be an abject fool not to surrender to his loving, and infinitely better plan for my life. But why would I even bother if the story of Christmas is, as a well known self-proclaimed atheist reiterated on TV the other day, just a fairy tale?

I can see his point. If you have been brought up in a meritocratic, patriarchal society built on a foundation of religion, tradition and morality tales, as most of us of a certain age were, why on earth would you want to carry through your life the weight of guilt that is a part of that heritage? How does a 2000 year old story about a baby born to an impoverished virgin in a stinking stable somewhere in the middle east, visited by a group of astrologers, a bunch of scruffy shepherds and a choir of angels have any relevance to your life and mine today? Where do we find Good News when it is hidden behind 2000 years of religious piety and a large slice of Victorian sentimentality?

and yet . . .

I keep coming back to those two phrases that are central to the Christmas story . . “Good News” and “Don’t be afraid” . . . I need Good News and I don’t want to be afraid - whether for myself, for those I love, for this dysfunctional world . . . what difference does the birth of Jesus make in this fear-ridden world of bad news?

The Angel said “Fear not, for . . I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people, for today in the city of David there has been born a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).

The Gospel is Good News, not good advice, the baby born in that filthy stable was God himself, come to earth, fully God and fully man, come to rescue us from ourselves for the one simple reason. He loves us; and it has nothing to do with religion. Throughout my life I’ve had a bellyful of good religious advice, whether from church leaders or self appointed luminaries. “Don’t preach to me!” is a familiar phrase for a reason. I don’t need good advice on how to clean up my act, I need the Good News that God has done that for me, and all I need to do is trust him; and I am not alone.

Could our aversion to the good news of Jesus be precisely because it is not presented as good news, but as good advice? I don’t want to know the how, but the Who. I think that is why Matthew in his gospel, as Tim Keller reminded me recently, goes to such great lengths to give details of Jesus’ genealogy - even including four women - unheard of in any respectable person’s family tree of the period - let alone these women - one a foreigner (a Moabite), one who committed incest, one a prostitute and one an adulteress. Matthew is saying that this Jesus was both the son of God and at the same time a human being, with a real, sometimes unacceptable back history; these are his forebears, and he’s not ashamed for people to know it. Everything about Jesus is Grace and Truth. He didn’t come to give us advice on how to earn his acceptance, or to judge us for our failings, he came to die in our place, so we can be in relationship with him forever. He came because he loves us.

That’s Good news! A life condemned to trying to be a good person ‘like’ Jesus is not good news - but it is what the church has too often become known for. “Do this. . don’t do that . . . accept this person . . reject that person . . and God will be pleased with you”. That is not the Gospel I read, that is not Good News that brings great joy for all the world. Jesus was not born just to be a role model. He came to die, so we might live. That’s grace. Mark Twain once said “Heaven goes by grace. If it went by merit you would stay out and your dog would go in”. The Good News is not what we can do for God but what he has done for us.

So . . .

“Don’t be afraid”

as the angels said to Zechariah, to Joseph, to Mary, to the Shepherds . . to me?

How can I not be afraid when there is so much in this life to fear - and as I get older that list grows ever longer! My body, and the body of the man I love, don’t work so well any more, my mind has scarily lost any sharpness it may once have had, I fear for the health, safety and future of my children and grandchildren. Jesus was so right when he said “In this world you will have trouble” . . but he also said “In me you may have peace”. In me. So, on those times when I can trust, and surrender my fears to him, without fail they are subsumed by his grace and peace.

God made this world out of love, Jesus gave up the glory of heaven and the presence of his father for one reason, love. No moralising, no judgment. Just grace and love.

Good news . . . Great joy . . . no fear . . .

Happy Christmas!

Big Thank You to Jamie for his images!x