Repent and Believe in the Gospel

Repent and Believe in the Gospel.  While we cannot easily recognize the name of the ancient Greek courier, Pheidipiddes (sometimes spelled Philippides), without a little help from Google®, we can immediately recognize the foot race that Pheidipiddes inspired: the marathon. Versions differ, but Greek lore tells that Pheidipiddes sprinted the 42.2 kilometers (26.2 miles) back to Athens with urgent news from the Battle of Marathon, where Darius I first invaded Greece in 490 bc. “Joy, we win,” Pheidipiddes declared, his last words before his sudden death. The Battle of Marathon was the watershed victory in the Greco-Persia Wars where Greece first learned, if the City-States banded together, that they could defeat Persia despite Persia’s overwhelming number of soldiers.

We may not easily recognize the places Athens or Sparta or the name Darius either, but we can all recognize the role that Pheidipiddes filled. He was an evangelist, euangelion, a proclaimer of the gospel, the good news. From Classical Greek literature, which predates the New Testament, the word euangelion already existed, though rarely. A secular evangelist proclaimed victorious news from afar. The angels, announcing Jesus’ birth, masterfully commandeered this uncommon word, euangelion, recasting it in an exclusively Christian sense. “And the angel said to them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news [euangelion] of great joy that will be for all the people’” (Luke 2:10). The rest of the New Testament follows the angelic pattern of speech; every New Testament occurrence of euangelion refers to Christ’s victory.

Therefore, the term gospel in the New Testament is either the good news of Christ’s redemption (76 times) or the action of proclaiming of Christ’s good news (77 times). Or we might repurpose Pheidipiddes’ words, “Joy, we win,” to summarize the gospel, yet in a sense that Pheidipiddes could have never imagined. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel [euangelion]” (Mark 1:15). Our great joy comes from Christ’s victory over death.

My Father Is Working Until Now

My Father Is Working Until Now.  Two days past June’s full moon, which in years past Native Americans might have called Strawberry Moon, the pre-dawn dark remained remarkably lit. The moon cast blue shadows wherever its glow escaped the tree line. 

I arrived at the woodland theater late. The moon was already taking his bow behind a sturdy stand of Southern pines to the applause of owls, frogs, and a surprisingly early tanager. The neighborhood rooster(s) noticed the first First Light of July, heading out into the chicken yard. The field rabbits did, too, heading into their burrow for sleep somewhere beneath the muscadine vines. The day was just starting for humans, but it was nearly over for most of creation. “And there was evening and morning” (Gen. 1:5), the next day.

It is easy to imagine that activity in the universe stops when we close our eyes at night, like the refrigerator light going out when we close the door. But it doesn’t stop. Every dawn reminds us that though the Lord does not need us, he wants a relationship with us and tirelessly provides it to us. He literally works while we sleep.

“My Father is working until now” (John 5:17a), Jesus said, infuriating the crowd. God rested on the seventh day (Gen. 2:5), but God did not cease working altogether. His first Sabbath brought a close to his creative action, but his sustaining and redeeming action continues without a pause throughout each night and during every Sabbath. “Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep” (Psa. 121:4). “In him all things hold together” (Col 1:17).

When Jesus added his next line, the crowd turned into a mob. “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:17). Only barely would they allow the theological truth that God is continuously “working until now,” but Jesus makes himself equal with God. “This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18).

Moonset on pine ridge, which I stumbled upon this morning, was not for me but for Christ. God allowed me a front row seat today to see him working his glory in the pre-dawn dark.