Jesus, Good For What Ails Ya! -- For the Newspaper

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What does Good News sound like to you? Does it sound like forgiveness of sin? Or release from oppression? Or being accepted as you are? Or healing for your wounds? Maybe it means food for your empty stomach. It could be welcomed in when you have been tossed out. It might be the conquering of death, or the crushing of evil. What does Good News sound like to you?

Recently I saw a commercial for Northern Lakes College. Maybe you have seen it as well. It asks the question “where is Northern Lakes College?” and the answer was “wherever it needs to be.”. I suggest that in many ways the God we meet in Jesus is the same. In my Good Friday sermon last month I shared this idea. “God meets us right where we need to be met.” God comes into our lives and brings healing where ever we might be broken. For those of us who carry the identity of Christian we see that most clearly through the life, teachings, and resurrection of Jesus. In the Jesus story we can find soothing balm for our painful sores. In the Jesus story we find that our deepest longings are met. What wonderful news is this!

Long ago I realized that we do not all bring the same questions to our relationship with God. In hindsight this should have been self-evident. We all have our own histories, our own wounds, our own experiences. Of course we each meet God in different ways. Of course what it means to be reconciled to God, to be made at-one with God, is going to be a little bit different (or sometimes a whole lot different) for each of us. There is no one way to be in relationship with God. Why should we expect anything different?

There are two authors whose writing has helped me sort out what this means. One is Marcus Borg who suggests that there are three broad stories in the Bible. One is the story of being freed from slavery and oppression. One is the story of being forgiven for wrongdoing. One is the story of exile and return from exile. Borg points out that it would have been ridiculous for Moses to go to the Hebrew slaves in Egypt and tell them that they were forgiven. They did not need forgiveness at that point, they needed to be free from Egyptian oppression. God met them where they were, God came to resolve their greatest problem.

The other author I like on this is W. Paul Jones. In his book Theological Worlds Jones invites us to see 5 major ways people’s lives interact with their understanding of God. Some of us may wrestle with feelings of being separated (or exiled) from God, or feel there is an ongoing conflict (perhaps framed as good vs. evil) in the world, or just feel empty and outcast, or feel guilty and condemned, or have an overall feeling of suffering and exhaustion. God can meet us in each of these places. Christ meets us in each of these places. And each one is met with a different response. God meets us where we need to be met. The dominant notes and chords in the song of Good News sound different depending who is listening.

So what does the Good News sound like to you? What song rings in your ears, stirs in your heart, fills your soul when you encounter the Risen Christ this Easter season? And maybe there is another question of equal importance. What does the Good News sound like to your neighbour? How do we let our neighbours know that they too are recipients of Good News? What song do we sing to them?

For myself, and for my Christian neighbours, God is revealed in the life, teachings, passion for God’s Kingdom, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Risen Christ. In the stories told over the centuries about Jesus God meets me, God speaks to my deepest pain and brings healing. For Christians Jesus is a primary and unique way God meets us where we need to be met but I am under no illusion that this is the only way God meets people. God also meets me and offers healing in my lived experience of God’s presence in the world around me. Followers of other faith traditions meet God in other ways. But still for them God meets them where they need to be met. God offers hope and healing in many different ways. This is Good News, which is for all people.

God meets us where we need to be met. Then God brings comfort and healing and leads us where we need to be next. This is Good News!