Preaching Bad News

The Gospel. The good news. The better word. We think that it is one size fits all, that not only is it a novelty, but that it is good universally.

Such qualities are problematic. The Gospel, the life and times of Jesus, are not as "new" to us as those events were to eyewitnesses. Not only do we know that Jesus comes back from the dead, but we also know that Jesus did not come back from heaven "soon", like he seemed to have said. Jesus's contemporaries seemed to think that he would return and bring his new regime much, much sooner than…well, he still hasn't come back yet and we're going on 2000 years.

Good news, this quality is problematic as well. Good is in the eye of the beholder, is it not? Is Jesus the exception to the rule, that one cannot please all people all the time? Judging by the fact that he was killed by his own people, I think that the news Jesus brought was not judged as good by all people. And they didn't kill him in the way that many of us think of it. He wasn't sacrificed like the old guy on Survivor…"he taught us a lot, but he had to go for the good of the tribe." No, they actually wanted Jesus to die,that he deserved to die. We can look back and see that God had his own narrative going on, but on the human level, Jesus wasn't popular. Also, unless we think everybody goes to heaven (and dogs too), then his news isn't even actually good for everybody, regardless of how they might feel about it. Jesus comes as a seal of the nature of reality: God exists, he is holy, and we must be born again if we want to endure his judgment.

Thus, Jesus's news is only good to a certain subset of society, the one's who don't mind being born again. Jesus goes to recess at an elementary school and finds a group playing kickball. True to human nature, there's a team of all-stars and a team of rejects. Jesus comes and says he's going to reassign the teams. To some, this is good news. They suck and any change can only be a step up. To others, this news sucks. They were going to win. That's about as far as that analogy can go, but the point is, Jesus's news has implications which are evaluated differently by individuals in different situations. This seems rather obvious to me, but our culture seems to think that the Gospel is one dimensional, good news for all.

The Scriptures speaks of the ones who desire to be born again, to receive their King, to have their lives transformed, as being the poor, even sometimes as the poor in spirit. I take "poor in spirit" or "poor" to mean individuals who are not invested in their own identity or their place in the structure of reality. They are divested from reality because they are sinners and they know it. They feel that the world is broken; they know that they are broken; and they are in a state of lament until God kills them or delivers them. Jesus comes and his coming is good news to such men, because his news is that they are to be delivered from the world.

It isn't hard to understand why this same news is bad news to many others. There aren't really any good terms to oppose to "poor". We could use "rich", but the connotation of this antonym is too material. My thought is more in the direction of the independently rich investor who lives off of the grift he can shave off of the backs of foreign slaves due to the structure of the system. Such men are usually more power-hungry than greedy. They don't even really attend to their money, since it is their birthright as sons of a superior race. They are supreme in the world system because the world is as it should be. They just took the opportunities afforded them by fate, and cannot be blamed for advancing themselves, even at the injury of others. If other men want to ascend as well, then they should walk in the same way. That's the system. If you buck it, you lose. They didn't make the rules

When Jesus comes into this world system, these independent men (and women thanks to Beyonce) get pissed off. Jesus isn't just a politician come to redistribute the wealth. Politicians can be handled, and as long as the system remains in place, the coins still settle to the bottom anyway. No, the threat of Jesus to such men is that he is coming in order to subvert the structure of the system. Jesus does not want them to make a charitable donation to the poor, but maintain their positions. No, Jesus wants their positions, their power, their vestments. Needless to say, Jesus had to go.

Even today, Jesus is dividing humanity. The poor are known by their submission, inheriting the earth in meekness. The independent ones, however, are known by rebellion and violence. They killed Jesus bodily, and they kill him still by domesticating his news. They say:

Jesus is a man of peace and love. He didn't come to cast anybody out, to send anybody to the outer darkness. No, Jesus accepts everybody. Jesus loves us just the way that we are. He loves our cities, our cathedrals, our vestments, and is honored by the tons of gold we give to the poor every tax season. Jesus would never ask us to give him more than we can afford or bear. He never asks us to change who we are deep down inside. Jesus loves us because deep down inside we are God just like Jesus. This is why he loves us, because deep down inside, we're the same. Jesus shows us that what we've heard about God is wrong. God isn't about laws and rules. God is at least as nice as Jesus, and Jesus accepts you just the way that you are. "Judge not lest you be judged." More like judge not because judging is pointless and unkind. 

Well, that's what they say anyway. You gotta remember though, this is always the message of the rich to the poor. When the rich, independent man preaches tolerance to the poor, you can wager that he's only protecting his own skin. The independent man preaches tolerance because he needs to negate the news of Jesus, needs to maintain the system, needs to regulate.

This is where we are today. We're living in a world seemingly reclaimed by the independence party, in a world which has forgotten the razor edge on the message of Jesus. The message of Jesus is not good news, not on such terms. The danger today is that everybody forgives the sins of the independence party because we all think that someday they're going to ask us to join. To follow Jesus, we'd have to give up that dream. We need to hear the bad news. That the system is going down, and pining for a seat on the Titanic is insane.