by Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
Good news! That’s what the word gospel means. Good news! That is the gospel that is proclaimed by the angels, the gospel that the shepherds spread after they see the Christ child, the secret that Mary his mother treasured and pondered in her heart. Good news, not only in words spoken, words sung, words mobilized and sent into the battle to change hearts and minds: but also good news in person, and good news in persons, good news personified, good news embodied, good news made concrete in a person and in persons.
Good news for poor teenaged mothers, having children too young, by surprise, in a place where there is no doctor or midwife and no public healthcare. Good news! You are forever blessed by the mother of the savior of the world.
Good news for the poor and the working class, who labor dark uncomfortable hours at jobs none of the rest of us want to do. Good news, because angels honor you in heaven and make you the first to hear that God is among us–that God is among you.
Good news for a land torn then and now by war, conquest, and the tensions between races and ethnicities, a land torn by oppression from without and dislike and distrust and prejudice from within: Good news for a land of deep darkness, because it is on you that a light has shined.
Good news for scientists and philosophers, for that is what the Wise Men who come to see Jesus are: Good news that we can find the wonders of God in the wonders of nature, and that all your striving to teach the world virtue and goodness has not gone unnoticed by God, and in the end virtue and goodness will triumph.
Good news for the commonplace, for the drudgery of everyday: Good news because it was in the midst of a bureaucratic necessity, a census, that the Christ child was born; good news because it was in a modest, overcrowded inn, run by a harried innkeeper, in the stable of that inn, with the stink and smell and bleating of animals, that Immanuel, God with us, came to be with us.
Good news for the poor, so often neglected, or worse, victimized by the bureaucratic machinery; whose needs are so often ignored or considered a burden on society; good news because God specially chose the poor to receive the good news of the gospel.
Good news for the rich, for those who can afford gold, frankincense, and myrrh; good news that if they humbly give of their abundance to the most vulnerable and the most needy, they are giving to the Son of Man.
Good news for children, children everywhere; children who are so often the most tragic victims of war, or societal neglect, or parental self involvement, so often victimized because they are
simply such easy targets: Good news for you, children, because God came among us vulnerable and weak and helpless and innocent, came as one of you, to honor your childishness, and to call us all to child-like faith.
Good news for angels, which is why the angels sing “Glory to God in the highest”—for the angels know better than most the suffering of God in the division that exists between the realm of God and the realm of the human; good news for the angels because they know at last that wound will be healed and that heaven and earth are made one in this one tiny infant, this impossible combination of God and human, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.
Good news for us, if only we are willing to see what God has hidden in plain sight, in children, in workers, in the poor, in the rich, in the wise, in the foolish, in the weak, in the strong, in nature, in our fellow human beings, in ourselves, in the world all around us: God is with us. God is with us. If we see.