What is the Gospel? It has taken on so many secondary meanings that it has become a word lost to Christians and the world. It may mean a certain type of music. "For some it means the invitation to an individual to accept the forgiveness of sins, so to preach the gospel, to evangelize, is to spread the message oof this invitaiton. For others, it means correct teaching about the work of Christ, so that "evangelicals" are those who hold to traditional doctrines. Elsewhere 'evangelical' is the current word for protestant." John Howard Yoder.

But Yoder believes that Gospel is a word best understood in the language of revolution. Yoder says, "Gospel is the good news having seriously to do with the people's welfare." It is news that changes a community's fate, its status, its life. Gospel is when the Iranians set free the hostages in 1980. Its when the Berlin wall collpased. Its when nazi death camps were liberated. Gospel is when the fate of a community is changed from despair to hope., from tragedy to fortune.

For a long time, and for many Christians, gospel is the promise of eternal life---heaven. For others it is the forgiveness of sin, the expiation of guilt, the death of anxiety. These personal ways of understanding the gospel's purpose are true, but only partial visions of its far reaching consequences. When we understand gospel in the language of revolution we begin to see how transformative Jesus intended to be, indeed is for those who believe in Him.

"The priority agenda for Jesus, and for many of us, is not mortality or anxiety, but unrighteousness and injustice. The need is not for consolation or acceptance but for a new order in which [humanity] may live together in love. In his time, therefore, as in ours, the question of revolution, the judgment of God upon the present order and the imminent promise of another one, is the language in which the gospel must speak. What most people mean by revolution,the answer they want, is not the gospel; but the gospel, if it be authentic, must so speak as to answer the question of revolution. This Jesus did." ---Joihn Howard Yoder, theologian.

Luke's Christmas story is the story of this quiet revolution. Hidden in the babe of Bethlehem is the revolutionary, liberating, GOD.To take on that particular flesh was to take on the very weakness and vulnerability of an oppressed, backwater, impoverished "royal" family. Mary and Joseph embody all who are in need of rescue from the present world order. Without God's intervention and their trust in God, their story is impossible. It opposes every power and perception of this world. from the imperial might of Augustus to the tyrannical reign of Herod, Jesus is a a revolution waiting to happen.

Are we revolutionaries?