'How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!' Paul in his letter to the Romans quotes these words from the prophet Isaiah.
Good news. Before we moved to Switzerland, I was working as Chaplain in a home for the elderly. My work involved leading services, visiting the residents in their flats, and organising different kinds of activities to help build up a sense of community and encourage the residents to engage with the Christian faith. One of the activities I organised was called Good News, Bad News. I asked the residents to bring with them good news stories and bad news stories from local and national papers. Then we shared these stories together, talked about them and prayed about them. As you might guess there always tended to be more 'bad news' stories than 'good news' stories!
Perhaps that is always the case. Certainly at the moment we may be overwhelmed by 'bad news': the whole world is grappling with the Covid 19 pandemic and its painful and challenging consequences, in addition to the longer term issues of violent conflict, poverty, natural disasters and climate change.
But in the midst of the bad news, both on a big scale and sometimes in our own personal lives, we need to remember that the heart of our Christian faith is Good News. That's what the word 'gospel' means - 'good news'. The Good News is that God loves the world and that this love, revealed supremely in the life and ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is for everyone. In this love, there is new life and hope, healing and forgiveness for individuals, communities and societies. Indeed, for the whole of creation.
Paul talks about the good news in the passage we heard earlier from his letter to the Romans. Here he emphasises various things. One thing is that the love of God in Christ is not remote and inaccessible; we don't have to go on a difficult and painful spiritual quest to find it. We don't have to search the heavens or go down to the depth to find it; for 'the word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.' The good news of God's love in Christ is near to us all the time. We simply have to put our trust in him. The heart of that trust, for Paul, involves believing that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.
To confess Jesus is Lord is to say that Jesus is more than a great moral teacher who tells us a few nice, inspiring things; it is to say that he reveals the full nature of God and that he claims our love, our loyalty and our obedience. And believing that Jesus is Lord is based on the resurrection. If Jesus had stayed dead, there would have been no Gospel, no Good News, no Church, and we wouldn't be here this morning.
So Paul first emphasises that the Good News is not remote and inaccessible; we simply have to believe that Jesus is Lord. He then makes it clear that this Good News is for everyone. He repeats the words 'all' and 'everyone' again and again. There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, he says; neither is there any distinction between male and female, rich and poor, slave and free, as he says elsewhere. The Good News of God's love in Christ is for all. I wonder if we really believe that? Or whether we tend to think that it's just certain types of people who are likely to believe, and other types of people are never going to put their faith in Christ, and maybe we secretly believe that some types of people are just too bad and are beyond the scope of God's love anyway...
The Good News is for everyone. But how are people going to know if no one tells them about it? As Paul says, 'how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?' This was certainly true in Paul's day when the account of Jesus' life, death and resurrection was a brand new news story. But it's also true for our own day. So many people - even here in Switzerland and across so called 'Christian Europe - have never really heard the Christian story and have no idea what Christians believe about Jesus.
Most people don't come to faith in Christ through dramatic experiences, but through the friendship and witness of other Christians, sometimes over a very long period of time. I'm sure that would be true for most of us here and we would all be able to think of individuals and groups of people who have pointed us to Jesus, through their words and through their lives, and have encouraged and sustained us in our faith.
All of us have a story to tell. A few years ago, Pope Francis wrote an Encyclical called The Joy of the Gospel. In it he writes these challenging words: 'All of us are called to offer others an explicit witness to the saving love of the Lord.... In your heart you know that it is not the same to live without him; what you have come to realise, what has helped you live and given you hope, is what you also need to communicate to others.'
What difference does the love of God in Christ make to our lives? Perhaps we need to encourage one another to think about this and to find opportunities to share our faith journeys with one another so that we then have more courage and are more at ease in sharing our story with those beyond the Church. I know this is not easy – contrary to what you might think, clergy don't find this easy either! But we are never going to be able to share the Good News of God's love with others if we haven't reflected on that love in our own lives, and what it means to trust in God and follow Christ. One of the projects of the Diocese at the moment is called Setting God's People Free; as part of this project, church members are encouraged to share their stories about their faith and work and how God's love impacts their daily lives. Some of you may remember an interview I did with Archana a few months ago. We were hoping to do that regularly, but it was interrupted by the lockdown. Hopefully we can now consider having more of such interviews, to encourage one another.
Of course, if we were to share our life and faith experiences together honestly we would have to talk about 'bad news' as well as 'good news'. We all know that life can be painful, dark, confusing and stormy, and that we all fail at times. Sharing our faith does not mean pretending otherwise. But at the heart of our Christian faith is not a set of doctrines, but an encounter with the person of Christ, who meets us even in the darkest and most challenging times, who forgives us our failures, and calls us to trust him and step out in faith.
In our gospel reading today, the disciples are out on the lake in rough water, their boat battered by the waves, when Jesus comes to them walking on the water. This miracle, like that of the feeding of the 5,000, which we heard last Sunday, is a sign pointing to who Jesus is. Jesus takes up the role of God in the Old Testament as he feeds and nourishes his people, and then calms the wind and the waves. Indeed, when Jesus reassures his disciples saying, ' it is I: do not be afraid,' these words can be translated 'I am: do not be afraid'. 'I am' are words associated with God in the Old Testament; God reveals to Moses that his name is 'I am who I am'. Matthew wants to emphasise that Jesus is the Lord, that he reveals God, the great 'I am'. As the wind and the waves subside, the disciples worship him saying 'Truly you are the Son of God.'
Christ, the Lord, calls us to step out in faith and to follow him. Just as Jesus originally called Peter , here he calls him again, 'come'; to step out of the boat and follow him walking on the water. The other gospel writers record the miracle of Jesus walking on the water, but only Matthew records this vivid detail of Peter also stepping out onto the water to come to his Lord. In this short scene, Peter displays the familiar mix of rash impulsiveness, confidence and doubt, courage and weakness that characterises his following of his Lord. We might recognise a similar mix of trust and fear in our own Christian lives and perhaps we might identify with Peter. He is eagerly confident and enthusiastic in stepping out of the boat and following Jesus. But as soon as he takes his eyes off Jesus and notices the wind and waves around him he begins to sink. His faith is not as great as he thought it was; what else can he do then but cry out 'Lord save me!'
It may be that we too have times of confidence and joy in following Jesus, but also times when we are overwhelmed by fearful circumstances, when 'bad news' seems to press down upon us; times when we are dismayed at our own failure, when all we are aware of is that we are sinking. Fortunately, the Good News does not depend on us but on God. However much we might grow in our faith and discipleship, we never leave this simple prayer behind: 'Lord save me', 'Lord, help me.'
'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.' as Paul says in Romans. Here, when Peter cries for help, we're told 'Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him.' Peter calls for help and Jesus takes hold of him. When we call upon him, Jesus takes hold of us; the life giving love of Christ takes hold of us. This is good news, and good news to share.
In the midst of the bad news in our own lives and families at times, the bad news in our wider society and across our world at the moment, comes the message of the Good News of God's love in Christ, a love that is stronger than death. May each one of us know that love more deeply and encourage one another by sharing it together. And may we speak and live that Good News in our ordinary daily lives.
Revd Helen Marshall