Homilies

Back to Homilies menu

We have all heard the saying, “There is good news, and there is bad news.”  Since we are continually bombarded by the media with bad news, we naturally look to religion for good news.  Indeed, the term used for the Christian message, “gospel,” is usually taken to mean “good news.”  But today’s gospel (Luke 6:20-38) is not just good news.  In Luke the Beatitudes (vv. 20-23) are followed by the Woes (vv. 24-26).  Jesus declares that those who follow his radical ethic of the kingdom are “blessed,” but the rich (v.24) get a very different message.  Luke has been calls “the evangelist of the poor,” and his “Woes” remind us of the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31).  The chasm between the two in this world is paralleled in the hereafter, where there is “a great gulf fixed” (v. 26), which no one can cross. 

So does this mean that good news is for the good and bad news is for the bad?  That is not the understanding of the apostle Paul when he declares, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  In an ingenious use of scripture Paul brings together two texts which happen to include the word “reckon:”  “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6), and a psalm verse, “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not reckon his sin” (Psalm 32:2).  By joining together these two texts, which have just one word in common, Paul turns the righteous Abraham into the model for the justified sinner (Romans 4:1-8).

Following in the Pauline trajectory, Luther coined the phrase simul justus et peccator: each of us is at the same time a just person and a sinner.  This expresses the psychological truth behind the abominable fantasy which pervades sacred scripture of the righteous enjoying the torment of the wicked: every human being is both victim and victor, an experience which Freud interpreted in terms of sadomasochism and which Jung called “the union of opposites.” 

But where does this leave the equation of “gospel” with “good news”?  It would seem that the conventional rendering of the Greek noun euaggelion is an example of overtranslation.  The word simply means “message.”  Whether the message is “good news” or “bad news” is determined by the context, and some contexts suggest bad news, for example when the word is used of divine judgment, when God judges of secrets of the heart (Romans 2:16).  Finally, let us recall the saying of Jesus which appears to put God beyond good and evil: God “sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45).

So on this anniversary of 9/11/01 which is so dominated by name-calling and finger-pointing, let us remind ourselves that for Christians there is both good news and bad news: the bad news is that we are all sinners; the good news is that we are all God’s beloved children. 

September 10, 2006

back to top