Allow me to pose a question to you. Does it give you more pleasure to share good news or bad news? Now, before you come up with an answer to that question, I want you think for a moment, and to help you think honestly about this seemingly easy question, ponder the peanut: I like peanuts, love them. I enjoy eating them out of the shells at the ballpark. I like them salted, dry roasted, honey roasted, or sweet and crunchy. I like them all fused together with caramel and popcorn in a box of Fiddle Faddle and tucked inside the chocolate and shell of an M &M.
Now, I don’t do cashews, I don’t munch on macadamias, and I am not wooed by walnuts. I’m not a fan of pecans and if I am served a piece of pecan pie, forgive me Paula Dean, but I’ll dig out the filling and crust to enjoy, and set the pecans to the side. Almonds are ok, and can be quite nice when slivered and mixed with a salad or casserole. But if you put a bowl of peanuts next to a bowl of almonds, I’m reaching for the peanuts every time.
So, it stands to reason that if I were to catalogue all I consume, my preference for peanuts over any other member of the nut family would be clearly revealed in the number of times I reach for the Planters as compared to the number of times I roast chestnuts on an open fire. You see, there’s a direct connection between what we habitually choose and what gives us pleasure. If something gives us pleasure, we are more likely to do that or choose that more often. Behavioralist B. F. Skinner understood that long ago.
So, let me ask you the question again, considering honestly how often and how quickly you are to share either bad news or good news, what would your habits suggest gives you more pleasure?
Undeniably, there is a dark, delicious pleasure that we seem to derive from sharing bad news. “Did you hear…” “You won’t believe…” “Have you heard about…” “Wait ‘til you hear this!” Scientists are saying that neutrinos travel faster than light, but let’s face it; they both get left in the dust by a good juicy piece of bad news. Consider the news we read, hear, and watch. It is no secret that the negative, troubling, bleak, and gloomy stories far outweigh the heartening, optimistic, and favorable stories. This, of course, is not a new phenomenon. It has been that way as long as I can remember.
Lindsay Lohan is a mess;
Will the senator confess?
Our infrastructure’s crumbling;
Our politicians… bumbling.
The apple juice has arsenic.
The pension fund ain’t worth a lick.
And now, for the weather.
Life in the digital age means that if you haven’t seen enough bad news, you can wait 5 minutes, refresh your preferred news website, and discover a whole new front page of woe and tribulation.
My older son attends a small college, and I was talking with him about news sources, and he spoke of living in what he called the Rhodes bubble. In college, you are so caught up in campus life and studies that your world can shrink and you find yourself not paying as much attention to the news of the larger world. Considering the daily barrage of bad news, I thought that sounded rather nice.
Of course, the news is presented as it is because we are the way we are. We latch onto each morsel of misfortune and pass it on like a cold going through a preschool class. The neighborhood scandal. The classmate’s behavior at a party. The colleague’s domestic disruption. The friend’s trials with the rebellious child. We race to be the first to tell it to the next person. “Did you hear…?” “You won’t believe…” “Have you heard about…?” “Wait ‘til you hear this!”
Our behaviors may suggest a preference for experiencing the pleasure of sharing the bad news over the good. Yet, every once in a while, even the most seasoned cynic will receive some word of news so good, that he or she is just busting with a desire to tell someone, anyone, everyone.
You open the envelope, answer the phone, hear the doorbell, and the next thing you know you are struttin’ around the room like Mick Jagger on stage at Wembley. You managed to pull a B in Algebra. Hallelujah! The X Ray was negative. Thank you, Jesus! The pregnancy test was positive. Praise the Lord! You got the job. Can I hear a whoop whoop for God!
You are so excited that you just have to tell someone, anyone, everyone. Good news that is so good that holding it in would surely cause organ damage. You must share it now. You are like Jim Valvano back in ’83 running around the basketball court, looking for someone to hug.
The news anchor may fill a half hour heaping stories of bad behavior upon stories of woe. Your friends may be circling a piece of gossip like buzzards around road kill. But for you, in that moment, the clouds have parted, the sun is shining, and you desperately want to share it with someone, anyone, everyone.
Isn’t it great? That chest bumpin’, high fivin’, bear huggin’, moment when good news is shared. So, why is it that we so easily slip back into that never-ending relay race of bad news? “Did you hear…?” “Get a load of this…” “You won’t believe…” “Wait ‘til you hear this!”
To a group of unsuspecting, and quite possibly, just marginally religious shepherds out in a field, an angel appears. “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
For all we know, those shepherds could have been chewing on the latest piece of gossip about that sheep shearer down in Hebron, or gnashing their teeth on the latest report from Jerusalem about the lowering price on wool futures. But something, some amazing, incredible, life transforming thing, lifted them from the mire of all of this world’s bad news, and led them to a manger’s side. "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us."
As uplifting as it is to look upon the sweet face and tiny toes of a newborn infant, there is something more grand that is taking place in Bethlehem’s cattle stall. Sure, friends and relatives love to gather around and coo at the infant in the little portable car seat, but we quickly and easily return to our habit of wallowing in the gossip and gloom of a culture always obsessed with the faults and frailties of others along with the woes and injustices to which we are subjected.
However, the Christ event, this incarnation of God we celebrate this night has the power to lift us from the mire and muck of a world that finds too much pleasure in its own misery. On this night, we declare that the truth of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ lifts us to a place where, Paul would say, even death is swallowed up in victory. Consider the sentiment of the traditional Lenten hymn, “In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time.”
At the manger, the promise of the angel is confirmed, “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” It is a message so compelling that a group of shepherds, who were not necessarily known for their trustworthiness or optimism, are transformed into heralds of good news. And so it is, that God continues to choose the most unlikely of candidates to be the bearers of Christ’s good news.
We, who so easily are drawn toward the cynicism and gossip mongering habits of modern day America; we, who are weary of economic doldrums and are preparing to enter a year of campaigns in which all those who say they are the right ones to lead us will be doing everything they can to inflame our worst instincts and most irrational fears; we, who are quick to pass on the bad news and slow to celebrate the good news; WE- are the very ones God has entrusted with the greatest news.
Luke tells us the shepherds returned to their flocks and went home to their villages, “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” That is supposed to be us. Are we up to it? Heralds of good news.
Anytime the cynical, bad news wallowing, good news ignoring urge creeps up upon us, it would be good for us to remember the ongoing witness of two ninety year old women, living saints really, who have every reason to be world weary, pessimistic, heralds of bad news. And yet, their lives shine with the light of Christ, in whom, they too, tower o’er the wrecks of time.
Mama Louise, as our good friend Terry Gaines calls her, has surely endured multiple doses of bad news. Her daughter, a former cheerleader and homecoming queen died of cancer at 40; her husband, too, succumbed to the disease. Certainly, with a breaking heart, she watched the marriages of two children come apart. Yet, Louise’s life has been an enduring witness to the good news of the manger.
Those who know Terry are grateful for the way she personifies hospitality and graciousness. Well, that didn’t happen by accident. She is the beneficiary of many who modeled for her what the good news of Christ means, and Mama Louise Carter, is right there near the top of the list.
When Terry’s father was a youth, Mama Louise, a young adult then, was the one who made sure he had a ride to church. Terry remembers her teaching Vacation Bible School, organizing pot-luck dinners, and serving as a youth leader, directing Terry’s wedding, her life and spirit always reflecting the good news that is Christ.
And in spite of all the valleys of bad news she has endured, her character continues overflow with the grace of Christ. Now, at 90, instead of being besotted with the sorrow she would have all rights to claim, Mama Louise persists in being a bearer of good news, joy, and grace.
You know what this tireless nonagenarian is doing these days. This is a great tradition. Having saved all their Christmas cards, every morning, Louise and her 96-year-old second husband, Chet, pull a card from a basket and pray for that person or family. Then, they write a note to them to let them know they have been lifted up in prayer. Mama Louise, who could be living on the bitterness of bad news, chooses instead to embody the light of the manger’s good news.
In the same way, personally, I look to my dear friend Jane, who is also 90 years young, and who also has experienced plenteous woe. She endured extreme poverty as a youth. She lost her husband to alcoholism. She watched her daughter endure breast cancer. In addition, Jane has experienced traumas you and I can scarcely fathom. She and her family were stalked and threatened for years by a man whose mind had been warped by the horrors of Viet Nam. A few years later, she was brutally violated and assaulted at gunpoint by a home invader.
And yet, through it all Jane has embodied and evoked the light and grace of Christ. You cannot spend five minutes in her presence without feeling good and hopeful about the gift of life. Her laughter is a healing balm.
In spite of all she has endured, you know what she is up to these days in addition to shepherding youth to Montreat, volunteering at church and the crisis center?
A youth who lived nearby had made some really bad choices, and in a drug-fueled rage had brutally killed another neighbor. Jane was horrified by the brutality that drugs can inspire, and yet, knowing that this young man, who was convicted and sentenced to death, had faced plenty of judgment, she chose the path of compassion, and Jane has basically adopted him, keeping in contact with him, providing for him in concrete ways, letting him know that he is not alone.
The inmate is now a different person, fully cognizant of and remorseful for, the person he had become. Jane’s infectious faith found root in his heart, and in the midst of his darkness a light shines. Time after time, Jane could have chosen to chew on the bitterness of this world’s bad news, but her witness is one of light and mercy and grace and goodness.
In the cross of Christ, I glory,
Towering o’er the wrecks of time.
The “shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” Like the shepherds before us, we too, have been called to be heralds of good news. Are we up to it? Mama Louise and Jane have shown us that in spite of all this world’s bad news, it is possible.
O, by the way, you know what else my 90-year old-friend Jane is up to these days? She is taking ukulele lessons and has started an intergenerational ukulele ensemble at the Presbyterian Church where she is an elder. In fact, they may be playing this evening at her church. Glory to God in the highest. Amen.
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