more good news

I’ve always been a little jealous of the many great Caribbean preachers and evangelists that I have met during my ministry here. Instead of just preaching , they engage in an active conversation with the congregation …when they are really on a roll the congregation is finishing their sentences and chanting the message themes. It’s every preacher’s dream, to have that amazing kind of connection with the listening crowd. Unfortunately, I’ve never really learned to do that,....but I came really close once!
Several months ago I was invited to speak to a little congregation in a squatter's neighborhood in Anse-a-Galet LaGonave. This is altogether a very unimpressive place; the people resident there are humble and poor, (even for Haiti) and their “tabernacle” is a blue tarp stretched between several trees. The little congregation had announced special services and the Pastor was very insistent so I agreed to speak.
I’m certainly no advocate of the “open your mouth and the Lord will fill it” attitude toward sermon preparation but this particular night, the notes that I had prepared eventually went by the wayside. I started down my carefully chosen path by reading several passages that referenced the word “gospel” . The Creole word "L’evangil" relates very close to the Greek expression which literally translated means “good news” I started the message with an explanation that the good news is a response to the bad news …… that because of sin every human being is broken and scarred by the effects of sin, generationally and personally. We exhibit our twisted-ness from infancy and as we grow older, further broken and deeply stained , we rush headlong towards the judgment of a Holy God. But that is exactly where the good news starts, that in the middle of our hopeless thrashing that this same Holy God comes looking for us.
I told that attentive crowd that the good news just gets better… because God is not pursuing us to judge us, but rather to make us an incredible offer. If we will allow him to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves and receive the provision made to us by the offering of his Son that he will restore us to our lost family and to the privileges of sons and heirs.
But there is more good news , I told them that evening…. God wants to begin a process of transformation and restoration in our lives even while we must continue to exist in this soiled place. The New Testament describes a process of new beginnings, sometimes joyous, sometimes painful but by which newly forgiven neophytes become battle hardened and effective warriors for in the kingdom of God. Even while occupying this foreign battleground , marred and marked by sin, God offers to us deliverance from strongholds, fear, pride, anger, unforgiveness, bitterness and ultimately….. victory over the arch enemy, death.
To make the deal even sweeter, God offers us significance, the opportunity to participate with the Eternal God in His work and to do deeds that impact eternity.
Up to this point the congregation was hanging with me. They listened thoughtfully , entranced by the idea that any kind of Supernatural Being could so love them. But it was here, when I reached the last point that the “magic” happened. As I looked at my carefully scripted notes, I realized that my last point in the “good news” list was unsatisfactory, the promise of eternal life. Looking in the faces of those simple people that night and recognizing that they were trusting me to speak truth to them, I realized that I didn’t really understand all that much about heaven. Daring not to create an imaginary place based on, Dante, Gospel songs and western traditions, I quickly decided that safest thing I could do was to tell these suffering people, based on scripture (of course) things that would not be present in the eternal life God is offering. Starting completely off the cuff, the first couple items were obvious. The Bible says there’s no night there, good news for people have lived all their lives tormented by fear things that go “bump in the night”. Frankly in a country where Satan is openly worshipped, it’s unfair to call this kind of fear irrational or superstitious. There is an awesome heaviness to the spiritual oppression that hangs over this country.
Then, gaining a little momentum, we moved on to declare that there is no sickness in our future life. To people who live with pain and disease as part of everyday life this is indeed good news. After announcing each familiar item that would be absent from heaven , I said to them in the Creole vernacular, “li pap la”, (it won’t be there). Before long I was off and running with a spontaneous litany of things not found in Heaven; no hospitals, no police stations, no courthouses, no thieves, no pain, no separation, no injustice, no caskets………And after each announcement the congregation responded “li pap la”, quietly at first but with gradually increasing enthusiasm. With tears streaming I continued to recite the list of present day realities that will not be a part of our future life. For that brief moment we , the believers, the ragtag followers of Jesus, were all caught up together in the hopeful joy and anticipation of that place. Amazing…..that the God of the Universe came looking for us to restore us to fellowship, to make us a new creations, to empower us and entrust us to represent him in this difficult place, Together we will build something of eternal importance and then at the end of the amazing trip, He will take us to a place where we will never again have anything to worry about, forever. What else could we call that if not… good news.