"...Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news'." [Mark 1:14b-15]
If you lived during the time of the Roman Empire--say, oh, about what we call the first century AD--these words would have either sounded dangerously provocative or downright ridiculous... or maybe both. And I would propose to you that both Mark our narrator and Jesus himself know how subversive this message is, and they deliver it anyway, letting the mic drop once it's delivered, and letting the chips fall where they may.
Here's what I mean. We 21st century church folk are used to hearing the phrase "good news" (or "gospel," as it is sometimes translated--same thing here) and immediately thinking "This is a religious message, in particular about how to get to heaven when you die." Ask a Respectable Religious Person what the word "gospel" means, and more often than not you'll hear some version of a ticket-to-heaven sales pitch ("...if you want to go to heaven when you die, then say these words, pray this prayer, or go under this water, and then you're in the club..."). Now, to be sure, the "good news" that Jesus brings does have something to do with life beyond death and the coming of God's space ("heaven") into our kind of space ("earth"), but we often hear all that as though it has little to no impact on the here-and-now powers of the day. Rome didn't care what your religion was, after all. You could worship one god or goddess, many, or none, so long as you acknowledged that the Empire called the shots and the Emperor was the "lord" (the title Caesar ascribed to himself, mind you).
But before "gospel" became a churchy word, it was already a term the Empire had co-opted and used for declarations of imperial propaganda. In the Greek that Mark was writing in, the word is "euangelion" (and you can kind of see our word "evangelize" in there--it's literally just the prefix for "good" [eu-] and the word for "message" or "news" or "declaration" [angelion]. When Rome had won a military battle, occupied new territory with its armies, defeated some enemy, or conquered a now subservient people, the official imperial victory pronouncements were called--you guessed it--"euangelion," a "declaration of good news." They were state press-releases of the empire's propaganda. Think of those old World-War-II-era newsreels that were shown at movie theaters during the war--they were meant to drum up popular support back home for the war effort, to promote citizens to buy war bonds and the like, and to highlight victories on the battlefield. Well, Rome was already doing that sort of thing nineteen and a half centuries prior, except instead of announcing the latest defeat of Nazis or Mussolini's forces, it was the declaration of whomever Rome had most recently conquered (er, "brought peace and security to," if you get my drift). Rome's way of describing its military conquest was always framed as "good news"--good, in particular, for the citizens of the Empire, but of course, at the expense of those who were conquered, killed, enslaved, or defeated. So if you lived in any territory that the Empire claimed, you would have heard plenty of imperial edicts and propaganda pieces, listing who else had been conquered, dominated, or destroyed, all coming from Roman mouthpieces, and you would have heard each one of those called a "gospel"/"euangelion"--a declaration of good news.
And so when Jesus--this itinerant rabbi from the backwater of the empire, with no political power, no official title, no armies at his command, and no money to his name--comes along and starts speaking a message that he himself calls "the good news" (yep, same word, "euangelion"/gospel), right off the bat, this is going to get people's attention and provoke the attention of the Empire. This is a shot across the bow. And the empire would have heard it as potentially subversive, possibly revolutionary, and definitely provocative, just by Jesus announcing that his message (and not Rome's) was the genuine euangelion--the real declaration of the authentic victory that was newsworthy.
Once Jesus actually said what his "good news" declaration was, it put more fuel on the fire. As Mark gives it to us, the heart of Jesus' message, his "good news" was this: "The time has come; the Reign of God has come near! Turn around, and believe it--this is the good news I have for you!" The Empire would have had a conniption: Jesus was declaring that God's Reign (not Rome's) was the real deal, calling for our response to turn from old allegiances and instead to give our allegiance to God's Reign. And by framing it all as "good news," using the Empire's own term for war propaganda announcements, it's like Jesus is saying, mockingly, "Oh, does Caesar think that his wins on the battlefield are good news? Well, bless his pea-pickin' li'l heart, because that ain't the good news. God's Reign is breaking out right under Caesar's nose, and that's the real good news."
From the very beginning of his public career, Jesus has known exactly what kind of trouble he was getting himself into, and he didn't shy away from it. Jesus knew that God's kind of Reign was nothing like what the Empire was expecting, and yet that God's Reign would finally expose Rome for being the pompous bully that it was, and that the emperor (whichever one happened to be on the throne; past, present, or future) was wearing no clothes. This is the news Jesus brings. This is the life Jesus calls us into.
To follow Jesus--to answer his call--is always going to mean a change of allegiance for us. Jesus has just been willing to say that to the empire's face from the beginning. And his utter fearlessness in saying so gives us the same freedom he has. It will mean recognizing that the loud (and often angry) voices from positions of power do not get the ultimate say over our lives, that the Dow Jones or S&P 500 do not get to determine our real worth, that the talking heads on TV and influencer on social media do not get to tell us what to think or how to feel. Rather we dare to align our minds, our actions, and our love with the character of the God we have met in Jesus.
What would it look like today to step into the way of life Jesus is announcing? What could it mean for us to live today like it is God's Reign we will live in, and that we do not have to obey the merciless Law of the Jungle? And how could we help someone else to be freed by Jesus' declaration, too?
That's the adventure we are already pulled into, one that leads us to call into question everything the empires of the day want us to believe is the gospel truth. The Reign of God has already come near--it has started with Jesus' shot across the bow.
Lord Jesus, bring us into the new reality you've begun with the announcement of God's Reign.
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