When it comes to looking at current events, the Church of God has long been viewed as having an unusual interest in the events on the news when compared with mainstream Christianity and even those with similar beliefs about certain doctrines. Given that the basis of our faith is not in what other people around us do or say but in what the Bible says, it is worthwhile to ask ourselves what the Bible has to say about the news. We may not think that the Bible has anything worthwhile to say about the subject, but as it happens, there are at least two occasions in the Gospels that deal with news and how Jesus Christ dealt with the news is worthy of our study as well as our emulation, at least to the best extent possible. Today, in the brief time available for me during this message, I would like to address a question you perhaps have never even thought to ask, and that is, how did Jesus deal with the news?

In our examination of how Jesus Christ dealt with the news, let us turn first to Luke 13:1-5. Luke 13:1-5 gives a clear call by Jesus Christ to his audience to repent. This is not in any way unusual, but it is striking that Jesus Christ uses an examination of two news stories that were familiar to his audience in Jerusalem at the time to give a special edge to his call to repent to his audience. Luke 13:1-5 reads: “There were present at that season some who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  And Jesus answered and said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things?  I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.  Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem?  I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.””

[In discussing the news with a Jerusalem audience, it is interesting that among the two news stories presented, the audience asks Jesus Christ to comment about the first situation, and that is the tyrannical violence that Pilate had undertaken against some Galileans in Jerusalem for the Holy Days, whose blood was mixed with their sacrifices. The second news story is one that Jesus Christ brings up to his audience, the death of eighteen people whom the tower in Siloam fell on. These are precisely the sorts of stories we regularly would read about online or in newspapers or watch on television, thanks to the journalistic convention that, “if it bleeds, it leads.” Human nature has not changed greatly, if at all, over the last two thousand years, and these are precisely the stories that would have gripped the people of Jerusalem in reflecting upon what sort of moral lessons that they could draw from the news of the time.]

In looking at these particular stories, we might think that the obvious question to ask is who is to blame for these disasters. We might even have ready answers for who is to blame. When we heard about the violence that Herod’s Roman soldiers showed against decent, upstanding Galilean folks just minding their own business in the temple, it would be obvious to us that Pilate was some sort of tyrant who had no interest in justice and liked to exercise his power by killing and injuring people who had few powerful people willing to defend their lives and interests. Similarly, if we saw or heard about a tower falling and killing people, we would likely figure that there had been some sort of malfeasance in thee design or construction or maintenance of the tower, and would be hauling a lot of people to court in lawsuits to pay the surviving family members of the tower victims, and there might even be professional consequences depending on the reasons why the tower happened to fall after an investigation of the disaster. Yet Jesus does not enter into what we would consider to be obvious implications of these sorts of news stories.

Indeed, Jesus appears to assume that many people in his audience would blame the victim and assume that people do not suffer misfortunate unless they are evil enough to deserve it. This was the infamous theology of Job’s friends, that Job’s suffering was deserved because he must have been an evil-doer of some kind, and God explicitly refuses to support this conclusion, whatever we might think of it. Hopefully none of us wonder, when we see someone obviously in suffering, that they must be some great sinner to deserve their pain and misfortune. In light of this common and popular assumption, the direction that Jesus takes his discussion of the news is to remind his audience that the people who were killed and injured by Pilate and his Romans and those upon the tower fell were no better or worse than the ordinary people of Judea and Galilee at the time. They were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time, but unless his audience repented, they would all suffer calamity alike, as those in Jerusalem did over the course of the next 40 years, up to the time when the city itself was completely destroyed by Titus and his Romans in 70AD. We would do well to profit by the example ourselves.

We find the second passage of news stories that Jesus addresses in the next chapter of the Bible, in Luke 14:25-33. Here Jesus addresses the news in a more subtle way and in a different context, in talking about the need of disciples to give up everything and follow Him. Luke 14:25-33 reads: “Now great multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.  And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.  For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’?  Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?  Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace.  So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.”

Both of these examples that Jesus Christ cites were also news, but were of a considerably more dangerous nature than the stories he had previously discussed, because they were both subtle swipes at Jesus’ own corrupt ruler, Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee and Perea. A careful reading of sources led the historian James Jeffers to note that Antipas’ colorful personal life and lack of devotion to biblical law had consequences in the two news items that Jesus delicately mentions. First, Herod Antipas was, like his father, a noted builder, but without having the money to finish the city of Tiberias, which he had foolishly and wrongly built on gravesites, thus making it impure for pious Jews to live in, leaving his city to be populated by forced migrants and foreigners, at least until enough time had gone by for the city’s siting problem to be forgotten. Second, Antipas’ infatuation with his brother’s wife Herodias, who left her non-ruling husband to be with him, led him to divorce his own wife, who was the daughter of the powerful Aretas, king of the Nabatean Kingdom based out of Petra. This Aretas then avenged the honor of his daughter by slaughtering Antipas’ outnumbered army. These sorts of national scandals had to be discussed with finesse, and Jesus Christ takes these juicy and spicy news stories about the failings of his corrupt Herodian ruler and discusses them as hypothetical examples, without making it clear to his audience (including ourselves) that he was intensely criticizing the folly and wickedness of his earthly ruler in Galilee.

[It is interesting to note that the counting of the cost and the calculation of risks and the wise actions that believers are to be taken is viewed as being akin to the behaviors of an authority figure. The people who heard the message were ordinary people, for the most part, but Jesus Christ was inviting them to enter into the strategic thinking of rulers, for like Antipas, believers who endure into the Kingdom of God will be kings and priests, and developing the thinking that allows one to rule well is of great use in the world to come, however modest our current existence is. Jesus is telling his audience of would-be believers that they needed to be more serious-minded and reflective than the idiotic and foolish people who ruled over them, and that is also good advice to us today given the contemporary state of politics not only in the United States but around the world.]

There are some obvious lessons that we can take from how Jesus Christ handled the news, even if we lack the insight that He possesses in being able to read the hearts and minds of others. One, we can avoid the lazy tendency to blame victims for their suffering and instead reflect upon how time and chance can affect us all, and in a world under God’s increasingly deserved judgment, we must all repent or face the calamities that are due to the nations of this present evil world. Second, if we have the temerity to criticize our corrupt and wicked leaders as Jesus Christ did, by referring to news stories that tended to paint them in a negative light, we would do well to be as wise and subtle as He did and phrase the facts of the matter as hypothetical examples rather than directly attacking those in power who would be expected to use that power against those they saw as their enemies and critics. Hopefully we can all learn from Jesus Christ’s example how to address and deal with the news in our conversation as followers of God and Jesus Christ.