Good news

"Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people." Matthew 4: 23

After his baptism and time in the wilderness Jesus begins to travel. What is interesting to me is that people seem eager to hear what he has to say. He calls a number of people to follow him and they do. People flock to hear what he has to say. Okay, so many of them are just there to be healed or perhaps have come along for the spectacle, but the central message is magnetic. Good News.

In the twenty-first century, the church has a patchy reputation. People often see us as kill-joys. They certainly do not associate us with good news. Sometimes I think that secretly I don't either. If I did, why do I so often choose to be of the world as well as in it? And yet I wonder if integrity was the key to Jesus' magnetism. The fact that he lived what he believed wholeheartedly. He was honest enough not to reduce the gospel down to a religious system, but rather to live each moment as an expression of his relationship with God.

The message of the gospel is counter-cultural and it's difference is part of what makes it attractive. By blending in, am I watering it down? Am I turning it from good news to bland news. Living differently is hard. All too often I give in, but I guess I'll never really know if it works - unless I try…