1
Here’s the Good News…God is a God of love.
Pastor David Halaas
October 2012
But now, here’s the bad news… An old, often used “collect prayer” or prayer of the day, begins
like this:
O God, you know our frailties and failings…
God knows your frailties. God know your failings.
You can’t hide it…you can’t get around it.
God knows.
God knows you are frail. God knows you fail.
Here’s more bad news: we are judged by how we judge.
God judges us by how we judge our neighbors...
Hmm..that is often bad news.
In Mark’s Gospel, chapter 9, the disciples come running to Jesus like a bunch of noisy kids. They
had news to report. “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried
to stop him, because he was not following us.”
Jesus surprised them with his answer: “Do not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power
in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.” Then Jesus paused, and said:
“Whoever is not against us is for us.”
The thing that made the disciples really upset was that the person who was healing in Jesus’
name was not a follower. They wanted to stop him from healing because he wasn’t one of
them. They wanted to limit those who could heal to only “real” followers.
Jesus speaks out against this kind of judging among his disciples. Jesus speaks out against
building a narrow fence around those who can do God’s work.
Here’s more bad news. We judge, we pre-judge, we are prejudiced…we often take the narrow
rather than the wide view in defining who God can or who God would work with. It’s likely we
often think that God will only work with “our kind.”
As followers of Jesus we aren’t to be narrow, or to be closed off from the world. We understand
that all of the world is God’s creation. We are called to see the wide view of faith. The old hymn
sings “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea.”
2
A good question is: Can we… must we… let God be God?
One of the apparent problems facing the people of the Old Testament, as well as the New, is
always the eagerness to judge…to make judgments “on God’s behalf”… ha! What that is is
simply a human effort to limit the spirit of God. It is a failure to let God be God…to let God work
in God’s time and in God’s way.
Consider this story of Moses, from the Old Testament book of Numbers, chapter 11.Moses is
urged to limit the prophesy of Eldad and Medad. Joshua tries to convince Moses that these two
prophets were out of line. Moses finally responds: do not judge…let God be God….saying,
“Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on
them!”
How often do we, in effect, restrain the spirit of God? …when we judge our neighbor, trying to
distinguish between the worthy and the unworthy? How often do we refuse to let God be God
when we insist on doing it ourselves (so we’re certain that it is done right!)?
Jesus said, “Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will
by no means lose the reward.” Even the disciples apparently found cause to criticize that!
Jesus is tender…slow to anger (usually)…slow to judge.
Let us learn such tenderness from Jesus. Let us learn how to cherish the bruised reed rather
than trample on it… how to nourish the tiny spark on the lamp’s wick, and not smother it… how
to celebrate the smallest deed, smile, or gift and to not wish for more.
It’s bad news that we’re so often NOT tender! Our frailties and failings are known.
And so, in Mark, chapter 9, Jesus says, to make a memorable point, that the knife must be used
to cut off the offending hand, or foot, or to cut out the offending eye. However you understand
that strong imagery, the message is loud and clear, and painfully unmistakable: We…you and
me…are to work, labor, struggle, and pray so that we never, never lead anyone away from
Christ.
Look out for the millstone! It threatens anyone who imperils the faith and life of another. It is
indeed right and salutary to worry about how our words and deeds influence and affect those
about us.
Our frailties and our failings are many and great…but the salt within us is even greater.
Jesus is the salt that has healed the wounds of self-glory, self-righteousness, self-rightness, selfambition. All these have been cut off and life now means to love, to rejoice in the least of God’s
little ones, to become small and meek so that others may be built up, and to live by nothing
other than the treasures of God’s hope and promises.
3
Jesus was the servant. He took the hurt into himself. He gave himself for you…and created
peace between us and our God. Jesus empowers us also to be at peace with one another.
Bad News.
Good news.
And here is good news:
God is love.
God’s judgment over our lives is first that we are loved, and second that we are guilty. But, that
is not the last word, or the last judgment.
God has another word for us. God has sent an incarnate, in the flesh, word to us in Jesus Christ.
God’s final judgment upon our lives is a loving and forgiving word. Jesus Christ says to you: You
are forgiven. This is my body. This is my blood. Your guilt is taken away. You are judged to be
worthy in the eyes of God.
Judgment belongs to God. These readings from the Bible make that clear. But it is also clear
that God in Christ Jesus judges us to be called “children.”
We are created in God’s image. That’s good news.
We are by nature sinful, and we are regular sinners. God judges us to be guilty. That’s the bad
news.
The Good News is that God is a God of love. And, God judges us to be forgiven in Jesus Christ.
Judged to be forgiven. Judged to be loveable.
Let our response to this gift, with joy and thanksgiving be to make these kinds of judgments
about each other.