What is the Good News of Great Joy ? Can you give us a synopsis of it? Do you have the words? Is the answer on the tip of your tongue? Do you carry the Good News of Great Joy with you in your pocket always and everywhere ? Or is your pocket empty?
We tortured and killed him. He suffered and died. The evil that we did to Jesus on the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection ought to have, at the very least, pissed him off. It ought to have antagonized him. It ought to have earned us a place on his shit list.
The evil that we did to him ought to have provoked his natural instinct for justice. It ought to have triggered his reflex for revenge, retaliation and retribution .
It ought to have transmogrified him into our enemy - into a misanthropic monster - into the God who hates us. It ought to have shifted God from the pro-human team to the anti-human team with the serpent and his minions.
When the fuse is lit, the bomb ordinarily explodes. But, remarkably, it did not. The fuse worked but the bomb was a dud .
Jesus denied himself .
The natural progression is
"Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot," .
Symmetry. The law of symmetry governs the propagation of evil. Evil begets evil.
But Jesus took issue with the symmetry of evil. He, therefore, brought asymmetry into the mix. He repealed the law of symmetry as it pertained to evil. He upset the apple cart. He disrupted the chain of evil. He broke it. In breaking it, he freed us from it.
He did not permit the natural progression of evil to happen. Instead, he forgave us. The children of Adam and Eve were used to throwing and catching fast balls. Forgiveness is the curve ball that Jesus threw at us. He threw us the junk . With forgiveness, Jesus shifted the paradigm .
Forgiveness is the fruit of love. Love has its own symmetry. Love is also governed by the law of symmetry. Love begets love. Forgiveness was the catalyst that Jesus released into the Valley of Tears on the road from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection to jump-start our conversion - to raise us up from the level of the most miserable and hideous of loveless beast to the level of our loving God. Forgiveness was the fuel that Jesus fed the engine of our deification .
Jesus planted the seeds of forgiveness into the soil of our hearts. The seeds of forgiveness grow into trees of love. The trees of love bear fruit "some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold" . In the gardens of the new Eden, many will enjoy the fruits of the trees of love.
We tried but failed to drain his heart of love for us. Even though we tortured and killed him, God still loves us. God is our friend not our foe. God has always been our friend not our foe .
Reality is reliable. We can depend on the reality of his love for us. His love for us is trustworthy. His love for us is the rock on which the wise build their lives
. Take the yoke of his friendship upon you .
Whom shall we fear? Of whom shall we be afraid ? Will our almighty lover ever let us down? Will he ever disappoint ?
This is the good news of great joy - very good news for us indeed.
God paid us a visit for thirty-three years at and about the city of Jerusalem more than two thousand years ago. The Visit took place in the boodocks of time and space. News of the Visit was not going to propagate itself from then and there to us here and now.