I’ve Got Some Good News!

Passages: Is. 13:2-11; 2 Corinthians 7:4-16; Mark 7:31-37
Ընթերցուածքներ՝ Եսայ. ԺԳ 2-11; Բ Կորնց Է 4-16; Մարկ. Է 31-37

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen!

One morning a mother came to wake her son up for Church. “Son, you need to get up and go to Church.” Begrudgingly the son responded, “I don’t want to, I’m tired.” But son, “you need to go and pray and be with others in the house of the Lord.” “No” moaned the son, “people are mean, they gossip, they argue; everyone is showing off and they all think they’re better than those around them. I don’t want to go.” “But son, you’re the pastor, you have to go.” My dear brothers and sisters, this satirical story while may make us chuckle is also perhaps how so many of us and those who don’t like to come to Church, feel about Christianity. Repeatedly I have heard from Armenian’s and non-Armenian’s, Christian’s and non-Christians, that the Church is so negative, full of hypocrites. Though perhaps there is some truth in this criticism, there is also goodness in the Church. There are kind people, givers, healers, and teachers. Yet, my dears as humans we tend to focus on the wrong, the negative, the hurtful rather than the positive. As the proverbial saying goes, “news travels fast, bad news travels faster.” Yet, I wonder my dear brothers and sisters, how much of our focus on the negativity is because we don’t fully understand why we are Christian’s, why we go to Church.

In the Gospel today we read of a man, “who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech.” Meaning this man had limitations. Yet, when he was brought to Christ, Christ Jesus healed him, “looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said to him, “Eph′phatha,” that is, “Be opened.” What was opened my dears? His ears and mouth? After all, that is what was his ailments were. Yes, he was healed of his bodily limitations. Yet, hearing can be corrected with a hearing aid or surgery, as can many speech impediments. No, my dears! What was healed, the miracle that took place was more than just physical. In verse 36 we read, “he [Jesus] charged them to tell no one; but the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well; he even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak.” The more zealously they proclaimed it! Anne Frank, the WWII teenage Jewish girl, who wrote a diary in the time she was in the concentration camps exclaims, “Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”

My dears, brothers and sisters, that good news inside of us as Christian’s, as the children of God is not about our physical health, it isn’t our money, our clothes, our jobs, our language or ethnicity; the good news that is in us and that reveals our true potential, that illuminates the love we are called to have for one another is Christ Jesus – the one who calls out “be opened”. Yet, how many of us are joyful about our faith? How many of us share, speak, witness to our faith in such a way that those around us are astonished of all the good that God has done? St. Paul writes that even in the face of persecution, in times of affliction, we are comforted and filled with joy. We are not joyful for the pain, we aren’t blind to the evil and sufferings of this world, but rather, when celebrating good news, when we speak and focus and acknowledge God in us, with us in the face of evil, it is a reminder to us that there’s still hope — and the end of the story isn’t here yet. This world, our limitations, our addictions, our struggles, the lies and hypocrisies, even our joys and success are not the end; we are not living for today but for the eternal. We come to Church not because everyone is nice, but because it is here we acknowledge we need healing; it is here we learn that we are all sick and it is here, we begin to be opened and healed by the Good News, the Greatest News of Christ Jesus, God the Son, who came, lived as we do and died for us on the Cross. Who through His resurrection gives us new life, opens not just our physical eyes to see but breaks open the tombs for the dead to rise, opens our minds, our hearts, our spiritual eyes to the knowledge and love that God our Heavenly Father has for us in spite of all the limitations and pains we face. Yet, how many of us see this joy in our Christian faith? Vs. how many of us like that story, drag our way into Church on Sunday mornings?

The Divine Liturgy my dears is full of joyful prayers and hymns. We sing and pray, “Greet one another with a Holy Kiss…” How do we celebrate this moment? By taking hold of one another and embracing one another as we share the good news of Christ in our midst. Yet, if Christ is not in us, if the Good News of God is not in us then this act is merely superficial, it is dishonest and it is not a sharing of that love because we have chosen to remain closed by focusing on our negative; the limitations. Yet, the love of God looks and sees that we are all in need of that love, of that healing, of that Good News! My dear brothers and sisters, come to Church, come to God, bring others to Christ just like those people who brought the sick man to Jesus to be healed. Live faith in such a way that others will look and see God’s love and greatness but also be ready to use words.

St. Francis of Assisi teaches, “Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.” Preach the Gospel all of us. Guess what the word Gospel means? Evangelion – the Greek Word for GOOD NEWS! If the Good News is in us, then the Gospel is in us. If the Gospel is in us than it is Christ Jesus in us. Preach it, all of us. Use actions but also, when necessary, use words; don’t think it’s up to the priest to only talk about God. This good news is given to all of us to share. The Good News, the Gospel has been given to all of us and all of us, and when we come to Christ Jesus in prayer, with humility and hope, directed by the Holy Spirit, we are embraced and God says, “Eph′phatha” – “Be opened.”

Be opened, Amen!