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PROCLAIMING THE GOOD NEWS WHICH IS JESUS THE CHRIST - stephenkhoo - 10-12-2015 10:31 AM
PROCLAIMING THE GOOD NEWS WHICH IS JESUS THE CHRIST
SCRIPTURE READINGS: ROM 1:1-7; LK 11:29-32
Many people are seeking for wisdom so that they might have life. This is true also of those days when the Queen of the South, supposedly the Queen of Sheba from Ethiopia in South Africa, had traveled from afar to seek the wisdom of Solomon. But the point of today’s liturgy precisely is that we have someone who is greater than Solomon here, someone who is not merely wise but the Wisdom of God in person.
This person of course is none other than Jesus who is the Word of God in the flesh. Indeed, this is the Good News that we are all called to proclaim which is “promised long ago through his prophets in the scriptures”. Consequently for us Christians, our great privilege is not that we simply have a message of wisdom, but we have God who has come to us in our humanity by taking upon our human nature; and in the order of the Spirit, was given the “power of holiness through his resurrection from the dead”. In other words, to proclaim the Good News is nothing else but to proclaim the person of Jesus the Christ expressed in the two-leveled Christology of St Paul in his letter to the Romans, namely, the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ.
But why should that be considered the Good News? This is because if we fully understand the full meaning of the Incarnation, then we would also understand the meaning of humanity and God. In the Incarnation, we understand the love of God for us. In the Incarnation, we are introduced to the life of God which we are called to live. Similarly, in the Resurrection, we experience the power of the Spirit bestowed upon us to live the life of God. It is indeed through His Spirit that God has inserted our humanity; which is finite to the infinite. Indeed, the life of God as lived in Jesus cannot be lived by us simply as a result of human will, but necessarily requires the power of God in us, which is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus given to us after His resurrection.
Yet, what still remains to be seen is whether we have really understood and experienced for ourselves the presence of the Risen Christ in our lives. The danger is that due to our lack of openness to the Good News, we are still seeking for signs and not giving ourselves to the Good News. We are still unrepentant and not giving that “obedience of faith” as St Paul exhorts us. In other words, we are still not surrendering ourselves to the gospel and most of all, to Jesus. Although we claim to be Christians and followers of Jesus, we are not converted, like the Ninevites who repented on account of the preaching of Jonah. Neither do we live the sign of Jonah in our lives, which is to die with Christ and so rise to a new life in Him. Only when we become the sign of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection in our own lives can we share the Good News and become the incarnation of the Good News. Let us therefore pray for this grace to respond to the Good News, which is the person of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, the Word of God in person.
Written by The Most Rev William Goh