Good news and Bad news
In Luke 21, Jesus speaks of terrible calamities to come. “Nation will fight against nation,” he says, “and kingdom against kingdom.” He says there will be “earthquakes and plagues and famines.” He says that there are “fearful sights” yet to come. Jesus says that his followers will suffer persecution and imprisonment and betrayal and hatred, and even death. Then, he comforts his disciples with words of assurance, something they had learned to anticipate because he had spoken such words to them many times before. He said that despite these disturbing events, despite these torrents of suffering, “Not a hair of your head will be lost. Your endurance will win you your lives”.
The beautiful Good News of the Gospel is that while God loves us in an infinite number of ways, He never loves us more clearly, more beautifully, than when we’re hurting. We can’t explain it, but it’s part of the Gospel -- part of the Good News.
As Christians, we are not listening to Jesus if we cannot answer another’s cry for help. We are not listening to Jesus if we are worried about the implications of getting involved. We are not listening to Jesus if our first impulse is to say, how will this affect me, rather than how can I help you? And if we are not listening, won’t that will speak volumes about the people we are?”
Our Christian Faith offers us no illusion that we are a People chosen for exemption from pain and suffering. It holds no promise of a trouble-free life of carefree comfort. It grants us no immunity from evil and its consequences. It makes no exception to the rule of God’s judgment. Instead, our Christian Faith provides us with the spiritual and the moral stamina to face up to the burdens and the fears and the evil days that overtake us -- often in the most unexpected ways. With the eyes of Christian Faith, we see things as they are and then answer the call in the light of things as they should be.
To be alive is to risk death, injury, sickness, disease, anxiety, embarrassment, shame, rejection, loneliness, and betrayal. And because these are risks, they subject us to the most significant risk of all -- the risk of our spiritual destruction, which is a loss of faith.
Given this as the condition of life from which there is no escape -- given the fundamental insecurity of life -- given this image of ourselves as minute specks in a vast universe, subject to the flicks of fate over which we have no control, by what power and authority do we resist the forces of spiritual destruction? By what power and influence do we assert our human dignity? By what power and authority do we dare to sustain hope for our fulfillment? By what power and authority do we dare assert our significance?
To bear the burden, to accept the risks, to reject the passing comfort of false security, to live as we are meant by God to live, we follow Jesus who carried His Cross purposefully. We follow Jesus, who teaches us that our lives are worthwhile; that we are significant to a remarkable degree. We follow Jesus, who teaches us that who we are and what we are to become are crucial elements in God’s purposeful design of creation.