November 13, 2016 I ve Got good news and Good News Rev. Dr. John Ross Jeremiah 31:31-34

November 13, 2016 I ve Got good news and Good News Rev. Dr. John Ross Jeremiah 31:31-34 Rachel s coming forward to read our scripture passage this morning. I want to tell you that no matter what Three Dog Night says, Jeremiah was not a bullfrog. Jeremiah was a prophet, the second prophet that we have in scripture. He was a prophet that was historically around the time of King Josiah through King Zedekiah, from about 627 BC to 582 BC. So, this is a guy a long time ago, far away, and that s about where our similarities end. They begin and they end right there. What we do know is that he was a prophet in a time filled with bad news. Before and during and after his prophetic time, the world was on fire. It was a time when Judah was invaded by the Babylonians, when Jerusalem fell and was occupied by the Babylonians. It was a tough time in the world and for Jeremiah and for his people. It is out of that context that he writes some of the most important words in all of scripture. I really want you to listen because in the moment that we think that a prophet from long ago and far away has nothing to say to us, I think it s exactly in that moment when we need to listen up for the good news. Let s hear from Jeremiah 31. (Rachel Sorrentino reads Jeremiah 31:31-34.) Hey, I have some good news and I have some... (holds out his hand to the congregation and about half the people shout Good News and the other half Bad News. ) Oh, Wow, that wasn t bad. That was about half and half. Let s do that again. I have some good news and I have some (from the congregation) Good News. Okay, now, it I hadn t queued you up with the sermon title what would you have said? I have some good news and I have some... bad news. I mean that s how we do it, isn t it? We start with the good news and then so quickly it goes and gives way to bad news. I ve got good news, and I ve got bad news. That s normally how it goes, but not today. I ve got good news, and I ve got GOOD News. I ve got some good news to share with you first, that I learned from a minister friend of mine, a buddy of mine named Jim Keck. Jim started very recently a message in this way. He said, The greatest ethical advance in the entire human history just took place. He said, The single greatest thing to ever happen in the epic-long story of humanity just happened. He said, The most stunning spiritual and moral advance that the human race has ever experienced just occurred. I agree with him. That s the good news that I want to share with you on Mission Sunday. This Good News. It s really a remarkable thing. That good news came out of the United Nations General Assembly less than a month ago. The good news is this: The worst and deepest poverty in the world, the harshest form of poverty that we see around the globe in the last twenty years has been cut in half, fully halved. The worst poverty in the world, in places like the Kibara Slum in Nairobi, where I ve walked through streets that are literally paved with stuff that you wouldn t even want to know what it is, the place of poverty where people of all ages have no chance to fully flourish and become the people that God created them to be. The worst poverty around the world has been cut in half in the last twenty years. Now, we didn t throw a party here at the church. I didn t see any hats or horns. I mean it s even Mission Sunday, and I might be the only one who walked in the door knowing this good news. Did anyone else know the good news of this poverty cut in half, this report out of the United Nations? I m waiting for

a hand to go up this morning. I m not sure there will be one, but don t feel bad about that yet. I ll say why you might not know. (What s that? Oh, Ann, come on. Ann, you got to stand up. You re the Vice Moderator. Be Bold!) But, there s more good news. Same report 6 million more children will grow to adulthood than would have in that same time period. Over the last twenty years, we have made strides in caring for children that will allow 6 million children worldwide to grow through childhood and into adulthood who twenty years ago wouldn t have survived for any number of different reasons. And if that wasn t enough, there was more good news. Across the arc of history know that literacy among adults has been always pretty low. I think there was a long stretch when that literacy rate among adults adults who could read and write was hanging right around ten or fifteen percent right? And there was, you know, only in the last couple hundred years where it began to rise. This same report indicates that 85 percent of adults in the world are now literate. This is remarkable. I mean, I agree with my friend Jim who said the most stunning spiritual and moral advance. Global poverty halved. Six million children annually saved. Literacy rate 85 percent and climbing, which means that all adults, many more adults than ever before around the world, have access to education and the arts and all those things that edify us and glorify God in the ways in which we get to live. And it doesn t seem like anybody even knows this good news. And I know for a fact that we didn t have a party here at the church because I m around a little bit here and there, and I think I would have seen it. We didn t have a party, and we didn t celebrate it, I think, in part because we know there s still a lot of people suffering in the world. Nine thousand people tonight as we head into the winter season of Minneapolis and St. Paul nine thousand people will be homeless tonight, including a huge number of children. (John turns to the middle school children sitting on stage who slept outside Saturday night.) That s why you slept out in the cold last night was to tell everybody sitting behind me that there are nine thousand people in our city that are still homeless, including hundreds and hundreds of children in the context of a family. So, we haven t thrown a party, and we might not have known all this good news because there s still suffering in the world and much to be done to be sure. We should never allow good news to illicit complacency. I think another reason we didn t know about it is because I think there s an over-arching mood of fear and negativity. We have become a culture that feeds on fear and negativity, and perhaps the volume knob on that was on eleven through this entire nightmare of an election season. Can I get an Amen? (Amen.) The fear and negativity was absolutely oppressive from start to finish. I think a reporter on NPR got it right a couple of weeks before election when he described this election not as the Hindenburg or the Titanic but as the Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic. The United Nations has put forth a goal to eradicate poverty, totally get rid of it, by the year 2030. It s a remarkable goal and there s a whole bunch of really smart people who think we can eradicate global poverty, the worst forms of poverty, all the way around the world by the year 2030. That s not very far off. You will still be young adults in the year 2030. It s their goal to eradicate poverty, and there s a whole bunch of people who think it will really happen, but only 13 percent of Americans think it can happen. There is a negativity. There is a fear that permeates us. In spite of all the good news, we still turn to that fear or that negativity. We also maybe didn t know some of this good news because, even though we are as connected as ever, we are also in many ways as clueless or oblivious as ever. I mean, in spite of the information age and the total barrage of information, there s still, by the way, only one percent of the US that

knew the good news that I announced. So, Ann, you re in that one percent of the US, and the rest of you, it just is what it is for a bunch of different reasons by in part because, even though we re connected, we are clueless. We are subject to a media that goes toward negativity, that goes toward fear, that goes to bad news because bad news sells. Now, there s evidence that good news sells also. Raise your hand if you ve ever heard of CNN. Okay, that s not my point. Raise your hand if you ve heard of GNN. Dog gone it. I hate being right. The Good News Network. The Good News Network. This is a real thing. This is the real thing. It s the Good News Network, GNN, and it s a for-profit venture, started almost twenty years ago 1997. This woman who was raising three kids just got fed up with all the bad news in the world and said, You know what? I m going to start a network, and it s going to be all good news. GNN Google it. Make it a favorite. Save it. Tap into it - it s the Good News Network for how it might help to bring this thing around. Global poverty. Childhood mortality rate. Adult literacy rate. All good news. There s even more. I saw a friend of mine, Jenny, last night posted that crime, violent crime, in the United States is half of what it was in 1991. Who knew that? Some of you. Some of you are tracking that because that really matters to you. Now, we re still not where it was in 1960. We ve got work to do, but it s been cut in half. That s good news. Church. Lots of people believe that church is just dying right? It s just what you read in the headlines. Oh, attendance rates are at an all-time low. That s total hog wash. We re still way ahead where the church in America has spent the majority of its time. We ve got a big bump in the early part of the nineteenth century. Do you know what moved the attendance needle in church more than anything? I mean, of course, other that good preaching. Air conditioning and automobiles. That s what did it. It brought people in from the countryside and from far away, and it put them in a nice cool room. Some people say more people are into sports and all that kind of stuff. Did you know that today, there ll be 52 million Americans in church? That s a staggering number. 52 million, and it s about half of what the mainline researchers say. They say like 40 percent of Americans. It s more like 20 percent of Americans, but it s still 52 million Americans. Now, let s just compare that to other things happening on Sunday. We think, Oh, my God, look at all of these people going to NFL football games. Some people kind of bemoan that. Wow, we see more people oriented and excited about the NFL that we are church. Well, 52 million people in church in one day compared to 39 million people attending National Football League games all season. So, it s not even close. There s good news everywhere we turn, and yet we either don t know about the good news or we ignore it. This morning our Board of Mission and Outreach is sharing with you some remarkable figures in that bright yellow flier that you ve been given. Put it into your pocket, take it home with you, and really sit with it this week and learn that, if you didn t know, 10 percent of the gifts that you pledge to this church are then pledged to other organizations outside this church. Wayzata Community Church tithes. Raise your hand if you knew that. I m just really curious. A good number of you but not every single one of you. Isn t that fascinating? Ten percent. And in addition to that, there s all kinds of fund raising things happening so that every year we give away about a quarter million dollars, about $250,000 from Wayzata Community Church to about 50 different organizations around the world, and that doesn t account for all the hands-on volunteers and mission work that s being done. It s really remarkable. It s really good news, and we don t always know it.

There is good news out there, to be sure, but it is often lost in the dirge of dispiriting dooms-day news. A dirge of dispiriting dooms-day news. Now, forget that phrase. That s no good. Let s replace it. Let s just replace it with the Good News, the Good News that we get from Jeremiah, a guy who had every reason to bemoan and to blame the world for bad news right in the middle of his prophecy, in the midst of 48 chapters of dispiriting dooms-day news, Jeremiah said, No, no, no. There s something good happening here, too, and we can t miss it. You heard it read out just a moment ago. He says God is giving us a new covenant, that the God of the Universe is saying to the people through him as a prophet. I will make a new covenant with you, a new promise, a new deal. The kind of language that we use when we gather around the table for communion. That new deal is that I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people, and I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. That s remarkable. That is incredible good news, and it was read out a moment ago, and you were queued up, Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church, and you said, Thanks be to God. You should have said, THANKS BE TO GOD! This law has been written on my heart. The law written on our heart. I will be their God, and they will be my people. I will forgive their iniquity. I will remember their sin no more. This is remarkable good news, this idea that God has written it on our hearts. This is a big move, everybody to have the love of God and the law of God written on our hearts meant it was no longer on a stone cold tablet but written on the warmth and the softness of every human being s heart, that this is no more about stone-cold law but heart-warming love. One heart at a time; it does nothing less than change the world. He says, I will be their God, and they will be my people. This is all of us together. We start with the power of one on one heart, but then we come together and amazing things happen. I ve got some Good news, and I ve got some Good news. Young people, you are just like Jeremiah. Jeremiah was just a boy when God began speaking to him, when Jeremiah became a prophet. The opening lines of the Book or Jeremiah have God saying to Jeremiah don t tell me you re only a kid. Don t say you re only a little boy so you can t do anything. He says I m with you, and so someday I m going to make you go sleep out on the front lawn of the church in a box to send an important message to the world. Young people, I ve got some Good news, and I ve got some Good news. Old people nobody of course in here in that category but I ve got some Good news and I ve got some Good news. God is always doing a new thing all the way through every chapter of our lives. I ve got some good news, and I ve got some good news. I ve got some good new-ness, says God - to all people from young to old and everyone in between. Let me remind you that no feeling is ever final. Whatever you re feeling today, it doesn t take a war or a disaster in a city being crumbled as Jeremiah was experiencing for us to need to know the love of God and to tap into that good news. It can happen every day of our lives in everyday things that you face all of you. No feeling is ever final, and God will be our God, and we will be God s people all together, and you all know this because it s all been written on your heart. It says, I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. This may be the best news of all. I will forgive their iniquity. That has to do with forgiveness for us in not doing the things that we know we should have done. Last night you all did a good thing, but if you re like me, you get right in line behind me and recognize lots of things I knew I should have done, but I didn t do them. Might have something to do with focusing on the bad news rather than on the

good news, but whatever it is, it doesn t matter because it s forgiven. And not just forgiven, forgotten. I will remember their sins no more. This is GOOD news. I need to say just one thing about this election because I know when we get this many people together, and there are people in this room right now when Tuesday night was really good news in your world, and there s those of you in this room right now where Tuesday night was really bad news. I m telling you no matter what you wrote on your ballot doesn t change what God wrote on your heart a long, long time ago. What matters is how each and every single one of us responds to that, and I m pretty sure we ve been given some pretty clear instructions. Another prophet, Micah: What does God require? Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God. Jesus, himself, said you ve got to love God and love your neighbor. It s straight up and down. It s not that hard to figure out. No matter what you wrote on Tuesday doesn t change what God wrote on your heart a long time ago. Not only did Jesus say love God with all of your heart. Right, you ve got it. That was the first thing on his list. Love God with all of your heart because Jesus knew that s what God had written, God s vision for each and every one of us. On our hearts. I love what Billy Graham said. Billy Graham long time life long 98 years an evangelist in our country, who lived through lots of elections and met tons of presidents, had a massive very late in life said a really important thing for us to hear when he said that it s the Spirit s job to correct us; it s God s job to judge us; it s our job to love. Period. It s the Spirits job to correct and convict us. That s the work of the Spirit. It s God s job, and only God s job, to judge. What s our job? It s to love. Our one and only job is to love, love that always leans into the good news so that when we say we know the Good News, we also then become the good news because we can t always hear the good news through the bad news, and it s in those moments that we must be the Good news. This passage comes every year about the fifth week of lent, just as the people of God are running out of gas for the seven weeks in the winter time when we re focusing on all the darkness and the going deep and all that sort of stuff that s hard work, and all of a sudden along comes Jeremiah to remind us that although somedays feel like a dark Friday, some days feel like what we call Good Friday, when somedays we feel like death and the Cross is the only story to be told, we re reminded by Jeremiah time and time again that it s Friday, but Sunday s coming. Let s be of good news, people of God. Let s BE the good news. Amen.