Good News

Passenger, by DankaShu (pin100)

Lections: Holy Trinity, AD 2026 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

The Gospel is Good News—literally means Good News—for all peoples, for all nations: the Good News of Jesus Christ our Lord; the Good News of His life, His death, His Resurrection; the Good News that God is made known to us in the fullness of His love, the outpouring of His mercy, His selfless self-sacrifice at our hands and for our sake.

We as Christians believe that Truth is not a proposition, Truth is not a book, Truth does not consist merely in the collection of facts, but that Truth is a person. Truth is God made Man. And to know this Man—His love, His grace, His mercy, His wisdom, His willingness to go to Hell and back for you and for all people—this is our salvation. In Christ we are rescued from sin and death and Hell, rescued from the vicissitudes of a fallen, broken world, rescued from the tyranny of our ego and the fear that we’re unloved.

And it is indeed Good News. Even those who share not our religion, even atheists, recognize the goodness, truth, and beauty taught by Jesus Christ. He revolutionized the world. He gave us, at last, true empathy for the downtrodden, the poor, the conquered, the enslaved. And when the Church has sinned, when the Church has been held to account for her horrors, she has not been measured and found wanting by the standards of a pagan world. No, she has been rightly rebuked for failing to live up to Jesus Christ, failing to offer His Good News.

The Greek word for Gospel, for Good News, is εὐαγγέλιον, whence our “evangelical.” Typically this connoted a messenger of victory. The Emperor would defeat some enemy in a far corner of the Empire, and the Good News would go forth throughout the land. That’s how Matthew presents us with the Resurrection this morning. “All authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to Me,” the Risen Christ proclaims. “Go therefore and make disciples in every nation!”

This is Jesus’ Great Commission, His command that we go and share the news of His conquest, the joy that He has first declared unto us. Commission means “sent together.” It’s not just about Baptism in and of itself, but about making disciples, making “little Christs,” sent out to serve humanity as members of Jesus’ Body. The Good News frees us, transforms us, resurrects us—kills us and makes us alive again! We are to be Jesus, together, for a world in need of Him.

So how do you think that we’re doing?

I think here, in America, maybe not so good. And I don’t just mean that because of dwindling attendance. I judge that as more a societal problem than a strictly religious one: not so much people refusing to join a church as refusing to join much of anything at all. More concerning to me is the way that our society has come to view the Church, how most people now see American Christianity.

They believe we’re bullies, and warmongers, and White supremacists. They believe that we have sold our souls in order to worship power. They believe that what passes for Christianity in these United States would rather die for our billionaires than lift a finger for our poor. And they’re right. God help us, they’re right. Far too many of our so-called Christians would scoff at the Beatitudes, at turning the other cheek, at loving our enemies, at welcoming the stranger, at the supreme humiliation of an Almighty God nailed to a Cross.

“I like your Christ,” Mahatma Gandhi is reported to have said. “I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

The challenge of the modern Great Commission is not that the world is hearing of Christianity for the very first time, but rather that it now associates Christianity with empire, and with all that goes along with it: violence, greed, oppression, war, rapaciousness, hypocrisy. That last one, mind you, proved a particular bee in Jesus’ bonnet. He never could stomach hypocrisy, “play-acting,” people pompously pontificating on religion whilst fleecing the vulnerable and the poor. That right there, my friends, is how we use God’s Name in vain.

So here’s the Good News.

The Good News is that Jesus loves you. That has never changed and never will. The Good News is that He is with us, unto the end of the age. He is with us in Word and in Sacrament; in bread and wine, water and Spirit; in this ragtag congregation of sainted sinners. The Good News is that we are forgiven, that He is and always has been our salvation, that He ever welcomes us home, cleanses our dross, kindles His fire within us, and sends us right back out to save the world. Gathered, sent, and gathered again.

The Good News is not a threat. It isn’t a “do this or else.” It is grace, grace unfettered, grace unlimited; the kind of grace that raises the head of the lowest beggar and bows the shoulders of the loftiest emperor. And the Good News is not limited to preaching. Ours is the evangelism of the rose: the evangelism of a life of honesty, humanity, gratitude, and love, poured out for our neighbors and our enemies alike.

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this,” writes St James, the Brother of Our Lord: “To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself uncorrupted by the world.” Love baptizes. Love makes disciples.

Whenever we feed the hungry, whenever we shelter the homeless, whenever we work for peace, whenever we care for our neighbor, whenever we teach one another, whenever we speak truth to power or offer a voice to the voiceless, whenever we refuse to be cowed by the threats of ignorant brutality, there is Christ alive inside of us. There is His Holy Spirit. There is the Resurrection!

The way that we make disciples is by becoming disciples ourselves. And yes, it is a process, wonderful and difficult and lifelong in its scope. Baptism is a promise: the sure fidelity of Jesus Christ; the gift of His Holy Spirit; His Father claiming us, as His own, forever. That cannot be broken. But it takes us a lifetime to grow into that promise, to be shaped by it. There is no end to an infinite gift; we pass from glory unto glory. And there remain as many ways to become disciples as there are gifts of the Holy Spirit.

To be a Christian—to walk in the Way of Jesus Christ, as members of His Body—necessitates prayer and study and virtue and repentance and love above all things. This might seem like foolishness to the world, and indeed to many nominal Christians who would place the bullet, the bomb, and the blade above the Cross. But the Good News, the Gospel truth, cannot be contained, cannot be obscured, cannot be denied. And people will hear it as such. His sheep recognize His voice.

I don’t want the world to look at our Church, at our congregation, and see good people doing good things to the best of our limited abilities. I don’t want the world to see us at all. I want them to see Jesus, in and with and through us. God knows I need to.

My brothers and my sisters, our victory has already been won for us. Our foes have already been defeated. And so now the Good News is proclaimed: “Go therefore,” our Christ commands, “and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded to you. And remember, I am with you always, unto the end of the age.”

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RDGStout/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsqiJiPAwfNS-nVhYeXkfOA

X: https://twitter.com/RDGStout

St Peter’s Lutheran

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064841583987

Website: https://www.stpetersnymills.org/

Donation: https://secure.myvanco.com/L-Z9EG/home

Nidaros Lutheran

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100074108479275

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026