I recently had the honor of baptizing my eight-year-old nephew. He is the greatest kid. He’s into baseball, soccer, Ironman, and the Lord of the Rings; he mostly gets along with his older sister; and he’s always up for a wrestling match. Matthew lives across the street, and on any given day I’ll see him kicking goals in his driveway, running around with his dog, Luna, or whooping through an NBA video game with his cousins. One of the things I love most about Matthew is that he never does anything halfway. He wants to live everyday to the fullest, and he feels the highs and the lows of life with all his heart. He loves things deeply—and about a year ago he “got religion.” My wife, Kate, is the rector at Christ Church in Little Rock, and Matthew has been wanting to attend Sunday worship as often as he can to participate in the Eucharist and watch his cousins—my kids—acolyte, and his aunt serve behind the altar. Despite his young age, he waives off all invitations to skip the liturgy of the word attend children’s chapel, insisting that he’ll miss something important if he’s not there for the sermon. (As a preacher, that warms my heart.) His parents are supportive of this newfound passion for church, but I’m not quite sure they know what to make of all the zeal. Thanks to Matthew, their church attendance has increased too.
To prepare Matthew for baptism, I visited with him and his parents to discuss the service and the meaning of the sacrament. I wasn’t quite sure where the conversation would go, or what would resonate with him, given his age. There are a lot of big words and phrases—and even bigger concepts—in the baptismal liturgy. It’s heady stuff for someone of any age. We talked about what he knew about baptism, why he was interested, and then discussed the renunciations and promises he would be expected to make during the service. The moment of connection for him, I think, was when we got to the part in the baptismal covenant where the celebrant asks, “Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,” and the people respond, “I will with God’s help.” This was also a moment of connection for me. As someone who often works with congregations facing thornier worldly issues, such as financial instability, interpersonal challenges, or institutional change, it was refreshing and grounding to find myself in conversation about the Good News—the foundation our faith—with a passionate eight-year-old.
The Good News is not a complicated theological concept, although it incapsulates Christianity’s most beautiful and essential mysteries. The Good News is not just for insiders. It’s meant to be heard and felt by every person everywhere. The Good News predates the councils and creeds of the early Church and has endured the many varied iterations of Christianity that have sprung up around it since. The Good News in Christ is this: God loves you, no matter what. “This is what love consists of, not that we have loved God but that God loved us,” writes the author of 1 John. It’s not about what we deserve, or what we have or haven’t done, or how much or how little we own. There are truly no conditions. We have value—we are worthy—because we are loved by God. That’s the Good News. That’s where we start as Christians. Matthew seemed to get this intuitively, but I think it helped a bit when we related the concept to parts of the Lord of the Rings story. God loves us, and it’s only natural that we would want to return that love, and be baptized into a tradition that makes sharing the Good News its mission.
Now, here’s the thing about the Good News. Don’t be fooled by its simplicity. The Good News is actually the most powerful, and radical message you will ever hear. We live in a world that flat out rejects the Good News. In fact, it does everything it can to bury it, or seal it in a tomb, if you will, so that the myths we hear everyday can remain dominant. Myths like “if you’re not a winner, you’re a loser,” or “you’re only worth what’s in your wallet,” or that there’s “simply not enough to go around.” The Good News in Christ flies in the face of all of these measures. It says, “the worldly powers do not define me. God does.” But what if this Good News were to get out? What if the tomb was to somehow become unsealed, and we ran off to tell our friends about it? What might happen to the world then?
Today is Easter Day, our annual celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead—you know, that place that supposedly no one can come back from. That’s what those who crucified Jesus thought. The Romans, the chief priests, and the crowds threw everything they could at him. Through mockery, taunts, violence, and ultimately execution, they tried to show that he was a loser of the highest order. But they were actually terrified of his message. Jesus’ vision of God’s kingdom—where love rather than coin was the currency of the realm—threatened their power.
The resurrection is the ultimate triumph of the Good News. No matter what the world throws at you and me, no matter how much it tries to define our value, our worth, or our purpose, nothing can separate us from our true identity as God’s beloved, not even death. And knowing this—believing this—shapes everything about us. We will never be the same. When we learn to see ourselves and others as God does, we, too, will be freed from whatever tombs we inhabit, and the world will be transformed. Love begets love.
I don’t care if you’re eight years old, forty-eight years old, or seventy-eight years old. Jesus’ news is still good, and it is precisely the news that this world needs to hear today. I think Matthew, my nephew, has it right. There’s something to get excited about here. Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
Easter Day, Year B