Rachelle’s mom is known for telling a particular kind of story. It goes something like this:
“Do you remember John Smith?”
“No.”
“We knew him back in New Mexico. He went to our church.”
“It’s not ringing a bell.”
“He taught your Sunday School class.”
“Which year?”
“When you were in second grade. His wife was Sandra. He had two young boys.”
“What were their names?”
“Tom and Marcus. Marcus got in trouble a lot. He had bright red hair.”
“I think I remember him.”
“Well this is his dad. He was really tall and always wore a bowtie.”
“Oh! Now I know who you’re talking about.”
“Well, he died.”

These are often the first stories she shares when we come back to Indianapolis. Having been away from one another for so long, she seems almost eager to catch us up on the bad news: who is sick, who’s in jail, how the neighborhood has deteriorated. Of all the stories she has heard and experienced in the previous six months, it is these little nuggets of negativity that have stuck with her. And while she may have a unique way of telling them, my mother-in-law is hardly alone in her tendency to remember and share bad news.

Scientists have long known that as a species we tend to privilege bad news. One study found that the ratio of bad news to good in the national media was 17 negative stories for every positive one. And not only do we share bad news more, we are more likely to believe it and remember it. Evolutionary biologists, believe this is an adaptation which helped our ancestors to survive attacks from predators and rivals. Remembering stories of death and danger is helpful when you’re a great ape sharing space on the African savannah with lions and elephants. But when you’re a great ape scrolling through the New York Times on your smart phone in modern day Gainesville, the stories of crime and corruption, war and natural disaster may have an outsized impact on your sense of safety and security.

A recent study of the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, revealed that violent crime was cut in half between the years 1990 and 2009. Yet nearly every year in that span, Americans who were polled reported that the believed crime was getting worse. Even as the danger lessens, our sense of safety drops. Similarly, the social scientist, Steven Pinker, caused a stir with his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, in which he made the claim that human violence has been declining for the last 2000 years. As he said in his TED talk on the subject, “we are probably living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.” Yet, Pinker found that by and large we think of our own time as exceptionally violent and romanticize earlier eras as more peaceful.

This phenomenon of privileging bad news is so well documented that social scientists have given it a name: The Mean World Syndrome. The Mean World Syndrome says that the more violent stories we hear, the more we dangerous we believe the world is and the less accurate those beliefs become. The more bad news we share, the more bad news we believe there is and the less we believe in the good news we hear.

I think something like the Mean World Syndrome has been at work in Christianity over the course of its life, and probably in most religions, a tendency to privilege the negative aspects over the positive, to remember the images of death and destruction and overlook those of life and beauty. How else would we account for the rise of terrible violence in a religion of peace? Or the emphasis on judgment in a faith of forgiveness? Or the obsession with death in a story about resurrection? The human tendency to focus on the negative has transformed these ideas into their opposites, made good news into bad.

One example of this is the idea of “evangelism.” A little shudder just went through the congregation when I said that. Evangelism. In our time, evangelism has come to mean at best, selling your church to others, and at worst, scaring people into a fear of hell. Evangelism is the sharing of the bad news that we are sinners who must repent. Perhaps it is bad news meant to guilt us into the wonders of heaven, but it is bad news. And that is ironic, because evangelism literally means “sharing good news.” From the Greek. “Eu” meaning good. And angelos, meaning news. Evangelism is good news, and an evangelical is someone who has a great story to tell. Someone like the Jesus of our scripture this morning.

The story that Isabelle/Tricia read is a kind of prologue to the Sermon on the Mount. This is the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, the first time we see him in action as teacher and preacher. The story begins, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom…” At this point we don’t yet know what the good news is, but we hear that everywhere he goes, people are healed, they share the stories with others, and crowds gather. The passage says they gather to follow him from “Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.” To us that may sound like just a string of random bible place names, but to translate it into Florida terms, it might say something like: Great crowds followed him from Starke and Miami, from Naples and Immokalee, from bluest Gainesville to reddest panhandle.

You get the point. This good news, whatever it is, is something powerful and exciting, a message that appeals across every border and boundary, a story that brings healing, a story you want to share as soon as you’ve heard it. This whole passage is a giant wind-up for the sermon that follows, and when the crowd has gathered and the reader’s interest has reached a fever pitch, Jesus sits down on a mountain and begins to preach. And does anyone know how that sermon begins? “Blessed.” Blessed are the poor and the peacemaker. Blessed are the merciful and mournful. Surrounded by crowds who have come from far and wide, Jesus speaks a word of blessing to those who need it most.

That’s real evangelism. It has nothing to do with inviting people to church (though that’s also great). It certainly has nothing to do with scaring people into a feeling of guilt. It is exactly what the word says, the sharing of good news. Whatever else faith is about it has to be about good news, the sharing of powerful stories that bring blessing and healing. Good news has to man just that, the kind of story that begs to be told, a story that feels like a blessing not a guilt trip.

As those who seek, as our church compact says, “to follow the way of Jesus in personal involvement with each other,” there is no better practice we can engage than to become true evangelicals (though we don’t have to call it that). Even those among us who don’t identify as Christians or who don’t believe in God, all those who want to live in a world of love and peace should become sharers of good news, tellers of great stories. Stories of death and danger create communities of fear and suspicion, and those stories have their place and time. But what our world is in greater need of are stories of good news that have the power to promote healing and bestow blessing on the poor and oppressed. The sharing of good news creates communities of love and justice, communities capable of facing into the seventeen bad news stories and boldly proclaiming one good news story powerful enough to transform a mean world into a compassionate one.

This is just such a community, where we practice proclaiming just such stories. This is one of the most evangelical church I know (though we don’t have to call it that). And I want to close with three brief examples of when good news spread from this place, and drew a crowd.
Five years ago this spring, four women from our congregation decided to form a support group for caregivers of those with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. They formed the group intending to try it out for four months, and for the last 5 years, every month without fail, they have shown up to listen to the stories of those who are dealing with some of the worst news of their lives, and they have provided a place in which hope and healing are spoken. And the word has spread. It became an official support group of the Alzheimer’s Association, at times the only one in the county, and social workers and medical professionals have sent their clients, and weary caregivers have found it on the web. Dozens of people have been blessed by the work of this group. The word spread and people found their way here for healing.

This fall our church hosted the community service for the Transgender Day of Remembrance, and dozens of trans people and their allies gathered here to remember those killed by violence in the previous year. Most had never been to UCG. After the service I talked to one of the people in attendance. He told me that he had been at Spikes, the bar on NW 6th St., and a rumor had been going around the place that at some church in town a man had stood up in the middle of a worship service and asked another man to marry him. And the crowd went wild. That man asked me, “Was that this place?” And I got to tell him it was. The word spread, and people found their way here for love.

Sometimes good news doesn’t even need to be spoken. At the hospital where my daughter is on the neonatal intensive care unit, I’m just a dad, not a minister. But one night one of our favorite nurses asked Rachelle what I did for work, and Rachelle told her. And the nurse asked where, and Rachelle told her that, and then the nurse got a funny look on her face, and she said “That makes sense. Because you and your visitors have this sense of peace around you. You just have this spirit that’s hard to describe, but it’s the same spirit of peace that my friend Ruth has, and she was just saying last week how I should try UCG. The word spreads, even when it isn’t words, and people find their way here for a blessing.

The world needs good news, even when it wants bad news. We all need stories of love and acceptance, especially because we tend to remember the times we’ve been hurt. This is a place where we tell those stories. This is a place where we create and share good news. And the word spreads, and the mean world is transformed. The word spreads, and people are healed. The word spreads, and the blessings are multiplied. I love to tell those stories.