Joyful news
Readings: Luke 2. 15-21, Galatians 4. 4-7
In our Gospel reading today we have the second part of the passage about the shepherds who, hearing the news from the angels about the arrival of the Saviour, are eagerly heading off to see for themselves. And what I love about this passage is shape of their response. The haste with which they hurry off to see. How, having seen it, they share what they have been told. And then return to their work changed, they return glorifying and praising God.
We ourselves have hurried to see Jesus born as one of us, come to celebrate the coming of the Saviour this past week. And soon we will go back to our normal lives as we return to work or school or simply our normal routines. But has our encounter changed us? Do we find ourselves joyfully sharing the news we have heard as the shepherds did?
Because the shepherds, having seen, share what they have been told about this child, they share the news. The news which they have earlier been told by the angel is ‘good news that will cause great joy for all the people’. The shepherds can’t help but share it, the wonderful things they have been told and now see. It overflows out of them and as they share it all are amazed.
And so as we continue our Christmas celebrations is that true of us? Does the joyful news that God has been born as one of us overflow from you? It might, but perhaps not. And if it doesn’t perhaps it’s because we don’t see this how the angel describes it ‘good news’ which will bring ‘great joy’.
So firstly perhaps it doesn’t feel like news to us anymore. The world has been radically reshaped by the coming of Jesus, our values, priorities, ethics have all been radically transformed by the coming of Jesus. In a sense Jesus permeates all our assumptions, particularly in the west. Much of what we might hold to as key in terms of our practice of faith are championed by those without faith. So in a sense the radicalness of what has happened has faded a little.
In our own lives we can become overly familiar with the reality that God has become one of us to the point that it loses the wonder of what we are saying. Many of us will have heard the Christmas readings at multiple services this year and will have heard them multiple times for many years, even many decades at this point. It’s not new.
So in our world the news is 2000 years old, in our lives the news may feel decades old. By the very nature of that time passing, it’s no longer news. I see this sense so often amongst churches, particularly at the higher levels, that we can’t simply tell the story of God become one of us again, its old and boring, we need a fresh angle, a new take, something which perhaps feels more relevant.
But such an approach misses something important. Whilst it may not be news for us, there are many in our communities for whom it is. Some who don’t even know those passages and the stories contained within with which we are so familiar. Others for whom they know the story but it’s just that, a story. Whilst the wonder of God become human may not be news to us, we can bear this news to others, share it with others in ways which will be life transforming. In such a way that, empowered by God’s Spirit, their lives might be transformed by that news as much as ours have. As much as the lives of those shepherds and those who heard their testimony were.
Whilst it may not be news for us, let that not prevent us from letting it become news for others.
And secondly perhaps the reason we don’t make known all we have heard about God come to us is that for us it is no longer joyful, no longer news of ‘great joy’.
As well as overfamiliarity with the story potentially making it feel no longer like news, it can also inoculate us against the joyful truth it contains. We can feel that we know the story of God coming to us so well that it’s just part of the fabric of our reality. It becomes like the nature of gravity or the fact that two plus two equals four. It just is. It’s mundane.
And if that’s true of us perhaps we need to re-engage with the wonder of the incarnation. The impossible, earth-shattering nature of it. The God who steps from his throne to be near us. The God who chooses not to come in power and might but humility and gentleness. The God who will not allow us to drive ourselves and this world over the edge of a cliff but instead comes to save us and all creation with us. The joyful truth that, as we heard in that passage from Galatians, God’s Son has come so that we might receive adoption as God’s children.
Perhaps what we need in this season is to re-engage with our world and re-engage with the word in Scripture to better see all that is not right with our world in order to understand the purpose and wonder of the God who comes to put it right as we read Scripture.
Because when we have news we share it don’t we, we can’t help ourselves. When we have wonderful, joyful news it bubbles up in us. Even when we just have news we share it don’t we. Even terrible news, we share it. But how much more so when it is joyful news, the news of a new birth, an engagement, a new job or home, a key birthday or anniversary. Joyful news overflows from us.
And we have even more joyful news than of births or weddings or key moments, we have more joyful news than that, the Gospel. Properly grasped it should bubble up inside of us, and we don’t need to keep it in, in fact we are told to share it as widely as possible.
Sharing the Gospel isn’t meant to be burdensome, it’s not a task Jesus has given us which needs to be completed, like a parent giving chores to their child. It should be the overflow of our faith, the overflow of our discipleship, we should be excited to share this amazing news with people.
Now that isn’t to say it won’t be nerve-racking at times, fearful at times, but it shouldn’t be burdensome, it should be a joy.
I pray that 2024 would be a year where we as individuals and as a church encounter Jesus afresh, come to know the wonderful news of the Gospel afresh. And I pray that we would rediscover the joy that comes with it, that the Spirit would fill us with the joy of the Gospel of Christ come to save us. A joy that would sustain us through good times and bad, through suffering and hardship, rejoicing and elation. Would 2024 be the year where we truly know that Christ and the Gospel is good news of great joy, that it would change us, just as it did the shepherds
The angel said to the shepherds ‘I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people’ and the shepherds ‘made known what had been told them about the child’. May we who celebrate Christ’s birth receive it as joyful news, and share what we have come to know, joyfully and hopefully.
Amen.