WHAT IS THE GOSPEL? THE SCANDALOUS, GOOD NEWS THAT INCLUDES US ALL
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When I was growing up, the “gospel” meant something very specific. It was something to be “preached,” something to be “accepted,” and usually involved a series of set Bible verses and a formulaic prayer. Once infected, the convert was then to transmit this holy virus onward to as many people as possible. I specifically remember a story in a children's bulletin once where this child was dying of something in the hospital but before they died, they converted their doctor and two nurses, and upon arriving in heaven received three stars in their crown for their efforts. As near as I can tell, stories such as this one are based on a 19th-century hymn “Will There be Any Stars in my Crown?” which makes the idea that “souls saved” equal stars in your heavenly crown. I don’t know about you, but reducing our fellow humans to some kind of holy Pokémon to be captured so we can win the heavenly star contest isn’t exactly what I consider to be good news. What kind of relationship does that imply between the “saved” and the “lost” they are pursuing?
While we refer to the four books in the Bible—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—as “gospels,” they got this name because they tell the story of Jesus' life on earth, and telling Jesus’ story and what that means for humanity has traditionally been called “the gospel.” The word “gospel” is an Anglo-Saxon word that simply means “good story.” It was the closest translation of the Greek word which meant “good news.” So taken at its most literal, the gospel should be good news. But good news of what? Again referring to culture and cultural Christianity, we get the idea that the gospel is the good news of salvation for all eternity, usually with a vivid dose of eternal damnation rolled into it. Watching a “fire-and-brimstone” preacher get all hot and bothered about the torments the “lost” are going to face, doesn’t seem like good news. If the gospel is good news, then it should be good news to everyone, and something that is that good should affect, well, everything.
I read recently that fourteenth century mystic and now saint, Julian of Norwich, asked God for suffering. In her 30-day devotional on Julian’s Showings (1) (Julian’s recordings of her mystic revelations), Carol Howard Merritt notes that while we often seek to avoid suffering, there’s a unique connection experienced when we discover someone who has suffered in similar ways to how we have suffered. There’s a part of us that is seen and understood on a new level. And it hit me in a different way as I thought about this: what if that’s really what the incarnation is all about? God became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ because it was the only way to fully connect with us. And then if the incarnation is the foundational belief among all of the beliefs in Christianity, what does it mean to focus on the incarnation as its own end, instead of as a means to an end in the cross?
What would that change?
Of course both the cross and the incarnation are part of a continuum, part of the same divine purpose, and if we neglect to consider them together I think we miss key attributes of God’s revelation. However, if we only make it all about the cross, or about salvation, (soteriology, in theological terms), then, as Katherine Sonderegger says, we make the cross all about us instead of all about God. “Rather we sinners must be moved, quietly but firmly, out of the living center of the Christian religion. Only God stands there.” (2)
We can examine the centrality of the incarnation (3) without denying the importance of the cross, indeed we can sit between the two and ask what does it mean for God to become human? What does that tell us about God’s relationship with humanity? What clues do we get about the nature of God and the nature of Scripture? If we take the incarnation as the central theme, and look at Jesus as the most perfect revelation of God, then that gives us a lens not only to understand all of Scripture, but a lens to interpret our own actions in relationship to God and each other as we move forward in our present time.
Examining Jesus’ own actions in relationship to those viewed as “other” in his day gives us an idea of what he considered to be inclusive. God-in-the-flesh sat with known sinners, sex workers, and tax collectors—all people on the fringes of society. In one story in the gospel of John, Jesus sat at a well and had a conversation with a woman who had been married five times, something that would be seen as scandalous on multiple levels because she was a Samaritan outsider and because devout Jewish men, let alone Rabbis and teachers, didn’t talk with women they weren’t related to, at least not alone. And Jesus said he must go through Samaria, (4) going through the region most took the long way around to avoid, and sat at the well as though he had an appointment with this outcast female from a reviled nation. The disciples are astonished and, I think we can infer, a little scandalized when they returned to find him alone with her.
John’s gospel puts this event early, not long after a story in which Jesus attends a wedding at Cana and changes water into wine where the good wine was shared in abundance with all the guests, and the cleansing of the temple where Jesus overturned the tables, cleared out a marketplace, chasing the sellers and money changers from the temple grounds. This made a powerful statement about people putting barriers between other people and God. The cleansing of the temple is also significant in its emphasis on inclusion as the sellers would have had to be set up in the court of the Gentiles, (5) meaning that those who weren’t Jewish would have had no place to pray that wasn’t filled with the sounds of a marketplace and people hawking their wares.
Everywhere we look God is showing us that the good news of God’s message is that no one is left out. This radical inclusion is bound to scandalize someone, but I’ve become increasingly certain that the gospel isn’t the gospel if it’s not at least a little scandalous.
One of my favorite illustrations of God’s scandalous inclusion is much earlier than this, but it’s also the gospel. In the story of Hagar, (6) we see an enslaved, female, foreigner, rape and abuse survivor, (7) who is the only person in all of Scripture who names God. God meets her at a well and makes a covenant with her before he even finishes his covenant with Abraham. And what does she name God? El Roi, the God who sees me. Again, for the time where the story happened, God speaking to a woman—much less a woman like Hagar—would have been considered impossible. And yet here we have this story of how God meets people where they are, and moves them into better relationships, and moves those better relationships into better communities and systems. And that’s gospel, right there.
The baptism service in the Episcopal Book of Common prayer is a place where we find a clear and intrinsic definition of what the gospel—the good news—is. The baptismal service involves a set of questions for those being baptized (or their parents and godparents to make on their behalf) and these questions give us a really clear sketch of the jumping off points of this movement into a more just and equitable society. “Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?.” (8) After affirming this, the next two questions lay out what proclaiming the good news “by word and example” looks like. “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” and “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”
These questions get at the heart of what the good news is all about. Far from a simple, individualistic solution, the gospel is a call to live, as Lisa Sharon Harper puts it, “in forcefully good relationship with one another.” (9) It’s not enough to have a sort of benign hope for your neighbors’ well-being, nor is it sufficient to take a supposed “neutral” stance on matters of injustice. Rather, the good news of the gospel means that we get to join hands with God and each other and work towards a “shalom kingdom.” This phrase is found repeatedly in the work of Keetoowah Cherokee theologian Randy Woodley: “The message of a shalom kingdom is that everyone is eligible for entrance. The shalom kingdom is always inviting others, especially the disempowered and marginalized, and thus is ever expanding.” (10) The best thing about this ever-expanding kingdom is that it includes you! And once we find ourselves included, it’s our job to help continuously expand the borders of inclusion and thriving for everyone.
According to the prayer book questions, striving for justice and peace among all people is integrated with respecting the dignity of every human being. And the dignity of every human being is directly tied to seeking and serving Christ in all persons, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. I recently saw someone post on Instagram that part of our problem is that we do love our neighbors as ourselves, and we don’t acknowledge the full value of ourselves. And while I think this is partially accurate in that not nearly enough people acknowledge their full value, I do think we also tend to not automatically seek the thriving of our neighbors equally with ourselves. Rather I think this is a practice that must be cultivated as we live into a gospel reality.
This practice is one which our liturgy, our communal worship, calls us to each and every week. I know as we read this past the one-year mark of a pandemic that has prevented many of us from worshipping in person for a long time, it may be harder to feel the call of the liturgy as one calling us instead of just me but it is there. As I wrote in an earlier article, “The confession in our prayer book stands as a humble reminder that we need to repent regularly, and not just from individual mishaps, misdemeanors, and more serious offenses. We as a people need to repent from our complicity in systems of oppression: systems that benefit certain people while preventing the total thriving and well-being of others.” (11) The good news of the gospel means that we are all called to participate in moving ourselves, our communities, our cities, our states, our nations, and our planet into places where everyone can thrive. Not just live, but thrive. This is the essence of shalom. The shalom kingdom the gospel invites all people to is an active peace, a forcible peace, a peace that loudly demands systems make the well-being of everyone an equal priority. As I said earlier, “Peace isn’t peace if anyone is left out of it. Peace isn't an absence of conflict for those in power or the ignorance of those with more societal privilege. God’s peace—shalom—is an active peace that is only possible for us when all are included within it.” (12) Another way to think of it is this is a fleshed-out or embodied gospel. Rather than an idea to be accepted, believed, and taught, the gospel is a way of life to be practiced, lived out, and experienced.
This peace extends beyond the borders of any one nation to the entire world, and indeed, even creation itself. Living into the call of the gospel means we get to partner with God and work towards the fulfillment of the kingdom that all creation—not just humans—is described as longing and groaning for in Romans 8. As Kaitlin Curtice puts it, “It is the lie, since the beginning, that we are made to be alone. We are not only made for community within our own species—we belong to all the creatures of the earth, our kin.” (13)
The gospel is only good news if it is understood on an embodied, communal level. It is something that we can believe as individuals, sure, but it is not something that can be lived out on the individual level. The gospel is a call to participate in the work of reconciliation and shalom. The good news is that no one is left out, not even you, and to participate in the gospel means living into an embodied practice that also leaves no one and nothing in all of creation outside the boundaries of a just, equitable, and thriving community.
Carol Howard Merritt, 30-Day Journey with Julian of Norwich (Minneapolis: Broadleaf, 2021), 3.
Katherine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology Volume 2: The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: Processions and Persons (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2020), 34.
Anna Elisabeth Howard, “Bad Theology Leads to Terrorism,” Accessed 3/27/21, https://aehowardwrites.substack.com/p/bad-theology-leads-to-terrorism
John 4:4
Marc Huys, “Turning the Tables: Jesus’ Temple Cleansing and the Story of Lycaon,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 86/1 (2010), 137-161.
Genesis 16
Anna Elisabeth Howard, “The God Who Sees Me,” Accessed 3/27/21, https://aehowardwrites.substack.com/p/the-god-who-sees-me
The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 305.
Lisa Sharon Harper, The Very Good Gospel (New York: Waterbrook, 2016), 36.
Randy Woodley, Shalom and the Community of Creation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 33.
Anna Elisabeth Howard, “Things Done and Left Undone: The Confession as a Call to Right Relationship,” Earth & Altar, September 2020, Accessed 3/27/21, https://earthandaltarmag.com/posts/eygvsgi1i2czkbxsss9xgyvd6lfbyf
Ibid.
Kaitlin Curtice, Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2020), 129.
