I’d like to start where most others do: in translating Gospel as ‘Good News’, specifically the good news of Jesus. My understanding of what the Gospel is, therefore, flows from my interpretation of the four Gospels that describe the life and work of Jesus.
Jesus’ life is ‘Gospel’ as much as his death, in fact his death, in as much as it is a symptom of his life, can not easily be read in isolation.
How do the stories of Jesus’ life amount to Good News then?
- Jesus challenged both the political and the religious powers of his day that were oppressing the people. The religious leaders limited access to God, controlling who was ‘holy’ and themselves enjoying status, power and in some cases, wealth. Jesus, rather, sought to empower the people, removing the ritual boundaries between them and God, telling them their faith made them well and that the kingdom was in them, using parables where ordinary labourers, housewives and beggars are the heroines/heroes.
- He had a particular ministry to the marginalized, healing people who would have been made poor and outcast in society because of their ailments so that they could be restored in economic justice. He challenged taboos that upheld the inequality of women, and promoted the education and discipleship of women (See Mary and Martha, and the Samaritan Woman at the well). He elevated the status of children by teaching their importance as a special reflection of the Divine.
- Jesus sought to establish a ‘kingdom’ where there would be economic Justice; where all would have enough and be able to live life in all its fullness; where people would be in right relationship with each other, the earth and with God.
What is good news may necessitate for some, bad news. For in a world, both presently and in Jesus’ time, where a few are privileged and many suffer, what is good for the many may not be in the interests of the few, which is why those few in power have not changed the situation for the many. And although the kingdom also offers true fullness of life for the rich, part of Jesus’ message was one of personal cost which included giving up power/wealth/status and putting others first, giving and sharing into a community.
Jesus exemplified this way. The personal cost for Jesus in speaking his message and vision, in fact in living that vision out, was to be murdered as a political rebel by the powerful. In his death as a scapegoat he challenged the mechanism by which society needs to continually scapegoat (See the theories of Rene Girard) and he simultaneously identified with other marginalized and oppressed peoples who had similarly experienced violent and unjust deaths.
Something extraordinary happened in the death of Jesus, however. Many noble people have died as Jesus did, laying down their lives for a cause bigger than themselves, giving themselves incredibly for others. Yet Jesus was resurrected as a sign that Jesus’ way is ultimately transcendent, that the domination system and the ‘principalities and powers’ which took Jesus’ life are not victorious. The resurrection gives us hope that, though the powers are still at work in the world they can be overcome.
In a sense we have a choice as to whether we fight the powers as Jesus chose to do. There is, I suggest, no guarantee that ‘good will triumph over evil’ only the word from God that it is possible if we chose to pursue it, laying down our lives in the interest of others. When Jesus established the Church it was the body he intended to carry on his transforming work, although not exclusively (for those who are not against us are for us – Mark 9). The Church is meant to change the world and to bring the kingdom in following Jesus’ example and in this way we continue to be ‘Gospel.’ For the Gospel is not something we can tell but something we have to be.
My vision of the kingdom is one where the church exists as a community of hope, and one that is not necessarily named ‘the church’: a community where people are fulfilled and living life in all its fullness, where there is not hierarchy or power but only service, where all stories are included and all people welcome, where what is difficult in life is shared out and carried between many people, where there are no rich and no poor, where everyone has enough, where the powers are challenged together, where prophetic lifestyles are lived out and hope continues to smudge out despair.
Becky Worthley
