Homily

Every once in a while I think about news. There are three kinds of news: good news, bad news and neutral news. Neutral news is fine, probably because it’s so neutral. But we love good news. We love good news. And yet it seems that we spend a whole lot more time, thought, energy and attention on bad news. It affects us more deeply and tends to have a stronger and more lasting impact on our lives. We like good news, but we are much, much more attuned to bad news.

You get a letter from the IRS. Do you expect it’s good news? I mean, why not? I actually have gotten refunds a couple of times on my taxes. But when I see that government envelope it does not produce happy thoughts. The doctor says, “I would like to run a few tests.” Do you expect he’s probably going to end up saying the test results are fine? But why not? Your mother phones and says, “I have something I need to tell you.” Do you think she’s going to say she just won the lottery? And isn’t it interesting how we phrase things. If someone says “I need to tell you something” it has to be bad news. But why? Why can’t someone need to tell you good news? But that’s not how we speak.

“It’s a boy! It’s a girl! You passed the test! You’ve been accepted! You’re hired! It’s not cancer!” These are all expressions of good news and genuine opportunities to rejoice. This kind of news can have a big impact in our lives. But if I asked you what kind of news has made the deepest impact on your life, I suspect you would say bad news.

The effects of good news seem to vanish rather quickly. Bad news tends to stick with us a whole lot longer. People do like reading good news stories, but they actually prefer reading about bad things, dangerous and deadly things, troublesome and sinful things, scandals, setbacks, war, and pestilence. E.g., virus news. Nothing against reading about, but… every day? The media know the power of bad news.

Today we heard the start of St. Mark’s Gospel, where he writes, “The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ the Son of God.” The word for the 4 Gospels in Greek is “euangelion” –good news! The word “gospel” comes to us from the early English “god” (meaning “good”) and “spel” (meaning “news”). Good news! St. Paul uses the word “gospel” over 60 times in his letters! For him, “gospel” euangelion, good news describes the whole event of the saving work of Jesus. It is all good news.

So, here's our problem, perhaps. We are not well built to hear and receive and hold on to good news. We like the good news, but we are much more focused on bad news, attentive and watchful for bad news, more expectant of bad news. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have good news, but it's not what we pay the most attention to. We pay the most attention to bad news. And that is, in a sense, why it's so hard for us perhaps to keep Jesus and His saving love present and active in our conscious lives.

We may have at times experienced the joy, the peace, the grace, the goodness of the Lord, but those thoughts, those experiences seem to fade very easily and quickly, while bad news and all it represents can seem so relevant, so persistent, so powerful. It's always ready to dominate our lives and is it not true that we very often allow it to dominate our lives? "Sure, Jesus is good news. We know that. But what we really have to focus on is all the bad stuff that can or might or will happen. That's more important." So, should I be surprised if people, seeing how I live and react and talk, should I be surprised if someone doesn't think I really have good news? Or that the good news I have is not truly as powerful in my life as the fear of the bad news I might receive?

Yes, we will have sadness, and, yes, bad things do happen, but Christ our Lord does not disappear because of them. Yet it's so easy to let that euangelion, that gospel, slip away from our sight and from our lives as we face hard times. And strangely enough we can also let it slip away even during good times, because, so often, even when our lives are very good, we do not give thanks to God.

It is so easy to lose sight, to lose awareness, to get distracted, to desire self-reliance, to believe that plotting our own way through life will get us where we want to be. And we are prone to pay the greatest amount of our attention to bad news, or avoiding bad news, so much so that it is possible we forget the good news we bear. We forget Christ Who is gospel for us.

St. Paul in today's epistle says his life is being poured out as a sacrifice but even so, Timothy ought to continue to preach the good news. St. Mark doesn't write, "The beginning of the biography, the theology of, the story about, an account of Jesus Christ." No, it's "the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ." We cannot afford to lose this news. We must remind ourselves of it at Liturgy, in our daily prayer, when we're faced with temptation, when trouble comes our way, even in the face of disaster and death, we must remind ourselves, again and again and again of the truth that we carry within us, this gospel, this great news, which is not simply information. The good news is Jesus Christ.