Sometimes it’s a shock to recall that as Christians we have good news to share. We can find ourselves so locked in other narratives that the term ‘Gospel’ passes us by.
Even when we translate it out as ‘good news’ it feels like a worn-down term, lacking vitality. Much of this is self-inflicted. Too often the Christian community has been concerned with saying ‘no’ and, especially in recent times, allowing itself to be defined by what it is not. We also carry an understandable collective shame about the crimes, sins and systemic failures of the past. This bears on us collectively but also affects our own spiritual lives.
Yet, we insist at the heart of our faith is good news. Do we ever come to the Gospel of the day, come to our own unique reading of it, thinking ‘What’s the good news today?’ Such a disposition might just upend our prayer. Our engagement hits us fresh each time, if we allow it.
In proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus, the newness of the God-encounter is insisted on as much as the goodness. In the mystery of relating to God, something contemporary is expressed to us each time we consciously engage in the relationship. We might say, God meets us where we are at.
GOD MEETS US
God meets us in and through the deep story of his relationship with humanity, even as it is made new by our own reading of it. For the past few years, I have been working with young people in various pastoral roles and I have found that gently presenting scenes from the Gospels is one of the best ways to open up the possibilities of faith for them.
Many of us who grew up immersed in the biblical tales can miss just how much they shape and pattern our thinking and feeling. Unless they become familiar, almost to the point of being overdone, then they don’t get into our imagination.
The stories are so important, especially in the Gospels, because they draw together our intellectual and emotional perception. Sometimes we are hoodwinked into understanding Christian faith as completely characterised by an intellectual ascent to a series of definitions. We are, of course, a creedal religion. We are also, however, of the book. Immersing ourselves in the stories moves us out of a sense we are ticking intellectual and behavioural boxes and into relationships. For young people today, as maybe for all of us, this is so much more attractive.
DEEPER ENGAGEMENT
It is attractive, I would suggest, because it engages us at a fuller and deeper level. In contemplating Jesus as he lived in relationship with others, we can come to develop our own relationship with him. We see Jesus responding to the Father and consider how we shall respond to the Father too. In this way we can be led into the ascent to definitions and ways of behaving as an authentic response to our experience of Jesus.
For relationship with Jesus is the good news. Not Jesus as some remote historical figure to be looked on with disinterested respect and cool reverence. Rather, as someone with whom we are invited into relationship here and now. It’s only in taking up this relationship that we can find ourselves living responsibly and fully the web of relationships which make us human.
Again, there is something attractive for all of us here because real relationships engage our wellbeing. There is great power in drawing the connection between a relational spirituality and wellbeing. A spirituality that elides scrolling and instead speaks to discovering meaning and purpose in community.
The good news that is those four books can provide a basis for all, but especially young people, to speak to their own experience in light of the deeply human encounter that comes from meditating with the stories of Jesus. This is no catch-all. It’s deeply countercultural, precisely because it takes time and quiet. But in its gentleness, which so many people crave in the midst of the bombast on their screens, it really can connect.
UNIQUE EVENT
This is the joy of the newness of Jesus. Each encounter with him is a unique event because we come as we are, and he meets us that way. God’s people have been encountering him through Jesus for 2000 years. The details and, maybe especially, the language used to describe those encounters has changed through time. We should not be surprised and even less suspicious that young people today will have their own unique experience of encountering Jesus and their own language to describe it.
If the encounter is authentic, it will bear good fruit. It will lead us into service of others, and especially those most in need. The goodness that flows from relationship with Jesus is something young people respond to. Ours is a faith that calls us to action, to concrete steps to be of service to others. In this way the good news comes alive and is shared even more.
