My favorite verse in the whole Bible just might be Mark 1:1. It seems pretty straightforward. “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” We are reading it here in our comfortable church steeped in 2,000 years of tradition.

Yet to first century ears, this is a cannon blast. Firecrackers are going off here in the sanctuary! These words are dripping with meaning.

“The Beginning…” This Gospel is just the start of what’s to come. At the end, the original end of the Gospel of Mark, it is told that Jesus has been raised and “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him just as he told you.” But the disciples told no one. The idea is that you the reader of this gospel would continue the story. To live out the life of Christ contained in this story and to look for Christ in Galilee.

“The Beginning of the Good News…” Good News.. Gospel… The word in Greek, “Evangelion” has military overtones. Good News means Military Victory. In the Roman Public Squares, town criers began their announcements saying, “And now the Good News of the First Legion.” Evangelion carries those connotations.

“The Beginning of the Military Victory of Jesus Christ…” Christ means “Anointed One.” This word is used for all the kings of Israel, including David and his house. Including many prophets. This word has political and theological overtones. God’s Messiah, the BIG anointed one was to be this great military and political leader chosen by God.

“The Beginning of the Military Victory of Jesus Messiah, the Son of God.” Son of God in Roman society was a very specific title that referred to only one person–Caesar. The Emperor. Julius Caesar adopted this title and had Roman coins printed with his title on the back and his head on the front. Other titles Caesar liked were, “Lord and Savior” and “Master and God.” When we call Jesus Lord and Savior, when we say “son of God,” we mean Jesus, the Jewish Palestinian Rabbi has our loyalty, and Caesar does not.

“The Beginning of the Military Victory of Jesus Messiah, Emperor.”

Whoa. And in the wilderness, John the baptizer appeared. And he looks like Elijah in his dress and his actions, Elijah who would herald the return of the messiah. Mark is laying it on thick. There is no doubt who Jesus is and what he represents.

It’s hard for us to feel what this would mean in context. It’s hard because we here in America are the dominant global power. It’s hard because we have 2,000 years of tradition and theology behind us. But for the early church, this was good news! This story featured women! Christ spoke to them, healed them. This story valued children! “Let them come to me,” Jesus said. And he taught them and healed them. Christ crossed tribal boundary lines, ministering to Jew and Greek. He taught his followers to love your enemies and turn the other cheek. If someone makes you carry their pack, which any Roman solider could make you do, Christ said to “Go the extra mile.” To risk relationship, to risk humanizing yourself to them. They in turn might see your humanity and stop being so oppressive.

It’s hard for us to see how Good this News is and how awesome it would sound…but you know it. Maybe you’ve seen the stories hidden in the 24-Hour news cycle of fear and violence, about people doing good things. Of boundary lines being crossed. I heard one recently in our area.

My first church men’s breakfast in April featured two speakers from the County Drug Court talking about Robby’s Place, a recovery center for addicts that was set to open in July in the old steakhouse on Liberty, down by A.I. Root. The neighborhood homeowner’s association was against this. They feared that addicts would come in and sell drugs. And we fear the unknown. It’s understandable. But the addicts were already here. One woman was really vocal in her opposition.

Yet I know the Good News. How Christ came and hung out with the undesirables. We who don’t suffer from addiction have no idea how dark that place can be. How we would pawn everything we own, ruin every relationship we have, all to feed our addiction. Yet Christ came with news of God’s love to the undesirables, and this message launched a movement that has outlasted so many empires that sought to kill it, persecute it, or co-opt its power.

Then the men’s breakfast in November featured Stefanie Robinson, the director of Robby’s Place, opened in July. She told us how 20 recovery support groups are meeting. How hopeful the place is. We all saw her passion for this project. She spoke of the plans to put in a restaurant with high hopes that this will give people a sense of purpose and direction in their life and be a source of sustainability for something that is so needed in our community. And that woman who was really vocal in her opposition? She was just named volunteer of the year for Robby’s Place.

Our God has a wicked sense of humor. We want a warlord, we get Jesus. We want our enemies to be crushed, and God tells us to love them. We don’t want addicts in our neighborhood and then we realize that they’re already here so we might as well help them. God’s great military victory comes to us in a baby. And in this season which is all about hearth and home, Jesus’ family had neither. The Good News of God’s victory is all around us if we can perceive it. It doesn’t look like what we think it should.

The economy and victory of Caesar is just war all the time. I was once conquered so now I will conquer others. We’ll have peace when I’m in charge and our enemies are put under foot. I was hurt, so now I will hurt others. Pain is never taken out of the system with that. And humanity is addicted to it. Pain just gets passed around. Yet if we take steps toward recovery… if we say we seek not to rule but to serve and respond to violence with peace… we start to understand more the way of Christ and turn, the theological word for turn is Repent, from the ways of Caesar… then we start to see God’s kingdom in our midst. The kingdom that doesn’t look like we think it does.

It looks like a baby born in a barn. It looks like a recovery center. It looks like you and me and those before us gathering on this corner of the square for close to 200 years, learning to live alongside one another and to talk openly about our joys and concerns. The great military victory of God will finally be realized when we see others as children of God. Every. Single. Other. This is good news! For you and for me.

Bibliography

Bolz-Weber, Nadia. Pastrix: the cranky, beautiful faith of a sinner & saint. New York: Jericho Books, 2014.

Borg, Marcus J. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. Thorndlike Press, 2006.

Crossan, John Dominic. Jesus: a revolutionary biography. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.

Myers, Ched. Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. Ossining, NY: Orbis Books, 1988.