Gospel Ordinary

The Gospel is the good news that Jesus preached. If you had asked me in my youth what that good news was, I would have answered something about salvation from sin and the death and resurrection of Jesus. I think you’re likely to get the same sort of answer from an Evangelical Christian of just about any protestant denomination. A Google search will most certainly produce similar insights.

The angel who told the shepherds about the birth of Jesus of Nazareth said, Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy. That angel was relaying good news (Old English god meaning "good" and spel meaning "news, a story”) to an earthy, quiet group in the middle of the night. That angel was sharing gospel, and that gospel was the birth of a poor baby in unromantic circumstances. The good news was that human life, no matter how humble, is glorious.

Church is an interesting thing to experience. I’ve spent most of my life going to one church or another, and the thing about attending an American Evangelical Protestant Christian Church™ is that it’s tremendously normal. If you go to church, no one will necessarily notice. However, if you go to church and get involved and exhibit the characteristics desirable for the practice – obedience, piety, religious fervor, devotion to the faith – you will usually be celebrated. The churchgoing experience provides opportunities for ordinary people to be celebrated by peers.

It feels good to be celebrated, and it’s likely that most of what we do in life we do in search of being celebrated. Friendships have mutual celebration as their foundation; well, good friendships do. We’re drawn to people who make us feel good about ourselves, even if that feeling is fleeting. To be human is to be social, and to be social is to be insecure. While we each possess insecurity to varying degrees, we all possess it nonetheless. Every human being wants to be celebrated, to have our insecurity assuaged. Ideally we will be celebrated simply for who we are.

Herein lies the good news of Jesus of Nazareth; the man who, as a baby, was celebrated by a sky full of angels simply for being born. Born to a young girl who knew very little about life. Born to a young carpenter who was probably quite poor. Born in an animal pen in a dusty backwater town. Born like all of us are – humbly, writhing and bloody, made in the image of a creative deity who surely imbues our existence with meaning.

The Gospel then is a celebration of each one of us, and spreading the good news is as easy as loving every other human simply because they are. You don’t have to possess the right skills, exhibit the proper behavior, recite the creeds correctly, or believe the same stories. It shouldn’t require anything of you for us to celebrate the miracle of your existence. And it shouldn’t require anything of us for you to do the same in return. The good news is that we’re all human, we’re all in the same boat, and we all contain mysterious multitudes. To be in this world is to be divine.

I don’t know just who this man Jesus of Nazareth was, or whether his mother really was a virgin, or if his birth was the culmination of a sweeping divine narrative of reconciliation and spiritual redemption. I can’t attribute motives to his life, the ways he taught common people and ran in the circles of society’s rejected class. But this much seems obvious – that Jesus brought good news to people, and celebrated them for who they were without requiring anything of them. Personally I like that kind of news.