“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk. 1:1).
The gospels are called “the gospels” because of St. Mark the Evangelist, whose feast we celebrate today, and who describes the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as “gospel” or “good news.” The way in which his work starts out,“The beginning of the good news [or gospel] of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk. 1:1), as we ‘ve heard it today, suggests that what’s beginning is “a gospel.” Only Mark puts it this way, and so we can credit him with putting “gospel” into “the gospels.”
It’s good news indeed. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is good news for a world that is burdened with sin and death. We’ve had a heaping helping of chaos and fragmentation, not to mention war and civil strife, served up recently in the life of the world, so the case for good news is a compelling one. On Easter Day the risen Lord stands in our midst speaking a word of peace and hope: peace on earth, and hope for the world to come. This is good news: for each of us, and for a world that is desperately in need of it.
The “beginning” of this good news, as our reading says, is significant. It’s the beginning of the story of Jesus, but this story has a larger context. Remember the book of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1.). In other words, God made a start to the great story of life long before the coming of the messiah. It’s a cosmic tale that reaches from the highest heaven down to the very earth beneath our feet. This story includes the creation of flora and fauna, among them human beings in their diverse complexity. Everything we hear, taste, smell, see, or touch is a part of that created order. In Genesis, God makes a beginning.
Part of that story is God’s call to Israel. After human beings go astray, God makes a beginning of redemption by shaping a People for his own. God calls Abraham to leave his country and his father’s house to go to the land that God promises to give him. God frees the People from slavery in Egypt and gives them prophets, priests, and kings, who rule and guide them, and call them to repentance. From the family of David will come the messiah, who will establish the kingdom. You know it: it’s quite a story.
The same God who created all things “in the beginning” (Gen. 1:1) in Genesis, is now at work in Jesus Christ. The same God who called Abraham and began the work of redemption has raised up Jesus Christ from the dead. Our reading brings the last and greatest of the prophets to prepare the way for his ministry. As we heard in our Gospel today, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me… he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mk. 1:7-8). The story did not begin with Jesus, but it culminates with him.
So, the “beginning” that St. Mark announces is more than simply the start of the story. But there’s another sense in which it all really does begin with Jesus Christ, who sums up every beginning in himself. The Gospel of John tells that the Word was in the beginning with God. “All things came into being through him” (Jo. 1:3), St. John writes, reminding us that Christ was present even in the beginning that God made in Genesis. The story begins with him.
Jesus is the first and the last, as it says in Revelation: the beginning and the end (Rev. 22:13). As St. Paul says in the Letter to the Colossians, Jesus is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation… He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything” (Col. 1:15, 17-18). That’s right, Jesus Christ is the “beginning.”
The good news for the world is that the “beginning” that God makes in Christ means a new beginning for us. Every dead end that we encounter; every false start that ends up in a jam: all of it is overcome in Jesus Christ. God made all things through Jesus Christ, and now through his death and resurrection is remaking them. The same God who brought all things to life with the creation of the world is now bringing new life. Jesus is the “beginning.” Easter is the season, and we are the People.
Thank you, Tennessee Daughters of the King, for the ministries you exercise in your parishes and in our diocese. We’re on the cusp of a new beginning in Tennessee, and anticipation should be building! There’s good news to tell, and now’s the time to start.