To the rich young ruler, the good news is that Jesus is inviting him to cast off all of the wealth, possessions, and comfort that have blocked him from experiencing real life with all of its joys and sorrows, and he lays before him the opportunity to commune with God through loving service and relationship with other people. To the impoverished paralytic by the side of the pool of Siloam who has never known comfort or riches, who has spent years waiting for someone more powerful than himself to rescue him, Jesus speaks words of healing and empowerment: “Get up and walk.”
To the Pharisees, who have spent their lives pursuing the spiritual disciplines of fasting, pious works, and thorough obedience to religious law, Jesus breaks through the delusion that they have achieved true relationship with God by denouncing heir false piety and pointing them toward the path that would rescue them from their particular bondage: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” His repeated, harsh rebukes of these arrogant men are actually a loving and persistent call for them to embrace the only change that could save them. But with those who are buried in shame and guilt rather than pride and apparent righteousness, Jesus takes a different tack. There is no rebuke from him for the woman caught in adultery. Jesus never snuffs out a smoldering wick or breaks a bruised reed, and he recognizes the poor in spirit when he sees them. In this case, it is the self-righteous accusers who are shamed out of following through with the punishment they had planned, and Jesus offers that fallen woman the surprise of mercy and a fresh start instead of the anger she expected from God and society alike.
Everyone’s journey is different. Some people come chasing after Jesus with a determined hope that refuses to be turned away—think of the blind man crying out to Jesus over the demands of the crowd for him to shut up, or the guys lowering their disabled friend down to Jesus through a hole they had dug in a stranger’s roof, because they were determined to get to Jesus in spite of the long line of people waiting outside. Other people are just minding their own business, or even hiding from Jesus, when he begins pursuing them: that’s the Samaritan woman at the well, who’s taken off guard by the man who strikes up conversation with her in spite of the taboos which divide their genders, their religions, and their races. That’s also Zacchaeus, who thinks he is inconspicuously observing Jesus from the safe distance of his tree branch when Jesus puts him on the spot and invites himself over for lunch.
And so it is with our journeys: different people, different seasons, different truths which Jesus speaks into our lives to guide us down the particular path which will lead each of us to God. I’m trying to get better about accepting that, so I can stop judging other people according to the truth that has been give to me. Like Peter on the beach with Jesus, hearing that the road ahead of him will include suffering and a sacrifice of his personal freedom, I turn to others and want to know, “What about these guys? Are they going to have to give up as much as I do to follow you?” And Jesus, still the same 2,000 years later, replies simply, “What is that to you? You, follow me.”
It is probably my growing awareness of the unique and personal nature of journeying with Jesus that has me so frustrated with the spiritual formulas, the moral rules, and the angry God of judgment that I so often hear proclaimed in churches as supposedly “good news”. This message of fear and judgment does nothing to cure the disease of the righteous religious people who already know the formulas and keep the rules, and it crushes the people who are already “bruised reeds”–the sexually broken, the abused, those who already hate themselves and expect rejection from God with equal intensity.
I think the Good News is love—in all of its universal truth and individual expression. Love was what Jesus offered to pharisees, paralytics, and prostituted women alike, but because he knew each of them down to the very core of their being, the path toward God he offered to each of them was unique. The good news for each of them, and for each of us, is that the bad news is over.