Lent 2023: Week 2

There are websites and even print papers that only report good news. Mainstream media is so depressing, these publishers reason, that there’s a market for majoring on positive stories to lift people’s spirits. As I write this evening, UK-based Positive News led with a bubble-generating tube developed in the Netherlands that channels ocean waste to collection points on the shore, a French street artist who has been repairing potholes in Lyon and further afield by filling the cavities with colourful mosaics, and the imminent total eradication of Guinea-worm disease (which used to afflict around 35m people annually in the 1980s) thanks to better access to clean and treated water. We all need a bit of good news from time to time.

The longest section in the New Testament on the ministry of John the Baptist is found in Luke chapter 3. In the Gospels, Jesus is the one who preaches on repentance the most; but his cousin John comes in second – and proportionally, John tops the list. He is first and foremost a preacher of repentance; his is a ‘baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ (Luke 3:3); and it was his call for Herod’s repentance concerning his relationship with Herodias that eventually cost him his head (Matthew 14:3-11).

We hear some of John’s preaching every Advent in the lectionary. In liturgical churches like mine, we herald the Gospel reading with an acclamation – three sung alleluias, a suitable sentence, more alleluias, and then the announcement of the reading: ‘Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke’ (or one of the other three Gospel writers), and away we go. Many readers of this blog will know that the word ‘gospel’ comes from Old English gōdspel: a portmanteau of gōd ‘good’ and spel ‘news, a story’; itself a translation of εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion), the Greek word for ‘happy/good news.’

I remember 18 months ago, on the Third Sunday of Advent 2021, heralding the Gospel in this customary way before beginning the passage Luke 3:7-18. Joyful alleluias and the usual liturgical promise of ‘happy news’ succumbs via a crunching gear change to John berating the crowds that had sought him out on the shores of the Jordan: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” A further 10 verses of John’s choleric harangue follow – replete with choppings-down with axes, uncompromising commands, winnowings of chaff, and unquenchable fires. The last verse of the lection, however, summarises John’s ministry with the following précis: “So with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people.” Good news? Yes, apparently. Luke uses the verb form of the noun we translate as ‘gospel’ – ‘εὐηγγελίζετο’: John ‘good-newsed’ the people with this, and other like examples, of his preaching.

It is tempting to think that if John’s rant on repentance was his good news, I’d hate to hear his bad news! I can’t see it atop Positive News’ landing page any time soon. But let’s think some more: why should Luke deliberately characterise John’s preaching of penitence as ‘good news’ – using the very vocabulary that he will elsewhere use to denote Jesus’ unambiguously good news message of salvation, healing and wholeness, and the kingdom of heaven?

The good news that is contained in John’s uncompromising preaching on repentance is precisely this: that repentance is possible. It is good news that, with a warning having been received, John’s original hearers and we today can ‘flee from the coming wrath’ (Luke 3:7). It’s a bit like hearing, ‘Good news! HMRC will be auditing everyone’s tax accounts next week – so make sure you’re compliant: free appointments with tax specialists are available all week’ (resisting here the mention of any particular politicians). Or another example: ‘Good news! You have got cancer but we’ve caught it in time and it is fully operable and treatable!’ If such a notice were given, the good news is contained within the bad – a date with destiny is coming, but you’ve got time, opportunity, and the help you need to prepare and fix the situation. If we are unable to receive John’s intense and heated message on repentance as good news, it’s possibly because what we really expect by ‘good news’ is nice news. The sort of ‘And finally’ story towards the end of News at Ten – a heart-warming story about a couple getting married for the first time in their 90s or a fluff piece about a cat that can meow the National Anthem – that sort of thing. John the Baptist’s preaching certainly isn’t nice news. It’s uncomfortably direct, inconveniently practical, inescapably clear, indisputably hard: a calling to walk in the way of uncompromising selflessness, honesty, meekness, and contentment; allied to a hellish warning for the hypocritical, complacent, covetous, and deceitful. It is not nice news. But it is good news. Good news that the Messiah is coming; good news that when he comes he will put the world right; and good news that there is time and opportunity to prepare for his coming so that when he does come, we may be wheat gathered into his barn, not chaff burned in his fire. Hear, in the Baptist’s call to repentance, the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God.

John the Baptist’s preaching certainly isn’t nice news.
But it is good news.

Published 8 March 2023