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Each Sunday we hear or recite four lessons. The first is usually from the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. The second is a psalm. The third is usually a letter—an epistle—and usually from Paul. And the fourth is always a reading from one of the four Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. But this week I found a fifth lesson.

This is how I found it. Every Sunday night I print out the assigned readings for the following Sunday. These are the official lectionary readings, they all come from the version of the Bible that we use here. I copy the readings from a CD I have and paste them into a Microsoft Word document. Then I print them out. On Monday morning I read them all through. It’s a pretty regular and ordinary procedure.

But this week, I started reading the first lesson from Exodus, and then the psalm, and then the passage from Paul’s letter, and then the passage from the Gospel of John. Usually, that’s it. But this week, I had some weird feeling that something came after John. And sure enough, after the page on which those verses were printed, there was another page. Through some miracle of Microsoft Word, there was one more page. So today, we are going to talk about what was on that page.

Here is the page. [shows the page] I’m not so sure you in the back can see this. In fact, those in the front can’t see it either. That’s because, aside from the header which says “Page 4 of 4,” the page is blank. Just blank. It has no words on it. At least, not yet.

The word Gospel means “good news.” The word in Greek, which is where we get it from, is “evangelon.” That’s the root of the word evangelism and evangelize, which means to talk about the good news. It is also the root of the word Evangelist, meaning specifically one of the Gospel writers. That is, one of the four particular people who wrote about the good news of Jesus. So we say Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the four Evangelists. The word is also the defining word in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the denomination to which this church belongs.

So the gospel—the good news—and the Gospels—the four stories of the life of Jesus, are related but not identical. The gospel—the good news—comes in many forms and means. And today, I’d like to talk about three of them, each connected to one of today’s readings, including the last, newly-discovered one.

There is a gospel of the law. Though Lutherans tend to distinguish the Gospel and the Law, that distinction is a little technical. That is, the words have special, theological meaning. Gospel with a capital G and Law with a capital L. But gospel, little g, good news from God, includes more.

For the Israelites, getting out of Egypt, being freed from slavery—that was good news. But wandering around in the desert for 40 years, that was bad news. It was bad news because conditions were harsh. It was so bad that some people said to Moses: Let’s go back to being slaves; at least we had food to eat and a place to sleep. But it was mostly bad news because they were in a spiritual desert as well as a geographic one. They were wandering. They didn’t know who they were anymore. Slaves, ex-slaves, children of Jacob, what? They didn’t know what to do or how to act. They felt a little at loose ends; and the end that was loose was God. Where was God?

The giving of the law to Moses was good news. It answered a lot of those questions and allayed a lot of those worries. Today we heard the Ten Commandments. “Commandment” is not a very good translation of what these are. Better would be The Ten Words. In fact, our Bible says: Then God spoke all these words. These are God’s words, God’s speaking, to the wandering Israelites. And saying “The Ten” commandments is a little problematic, too. Because there are actually 613 laws. They deal with all sorts of stuff. Don’t worship other Gods. Don’t shave. Don’t get a tattoo. Don’t bear a grudge. Don’t charge interest. Leave some of your crop for the poor. Cancel loans every seven years. It’s a mixed bag, and people have been honoring these commandments—these words, these laws—selectively for a long time. We kind of pick and choose.

This exhaustive and exhausting list was good news because of two things. First, it gave direction. It was like roads where before there was only wasteland. A blank page, you might say. But now: roads with road signs, and with guard rails, and with little yellow lines down the middle dividing one thing from another. It gave structure to chaos. It turned random steps into a journey with a purpose and a destination. And second, it gave identity. We are the people, the Israelites could say, who honor these rules. Even more, the rules came with a love note from God. Because with these rules, came a special relationship with God. I am your God, said God, and you are my people. That’s better. Now we know who we are, what we are destined for, and how we are going to get there. That is good news.

That’s the gospel of the law. Then there is the gospel of the Gospels. That’s the good news of Jesus Christ according to—as presented by—the four evangelists. For Christians, the good news is the resurrection. The resurrection life is a life free from fear caused by the power of death. And because of that, it is a life of unlimited possibilities.

Jesus tells the folks that even though the Temple in Jerusalem might be destroyed, Jesus will raise another. Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up, he says. John correctly, I think, interprets this as a resurrection statement. Even though 46 years have gone into the rebuilding of this Temple, it does not have to endure. Another is possible. Jesus can bring it.

Resurrection is not a time-stopper. That is, Jesus’ resurrection does not mean that he would live as a 35 year old man forever. And it is not a re-winder. That is, Jesus’ did not back up his life to the time before his execution so that he could repeat his ministry all over again. The stones of the Temple fell to the ground. Jesus is not saying that like a video played backward that the stones—blip, blip, blip—would reassemble themselves.

Resurrection means that what seems to be an end is not. That what seems to be over is not over at all. The present does not predict the future. The future is not just the same as now, repeated over and over again. People can be renewed, sort of polished up again. And people can be reborn, made new. To say that our sins are forgiven means, among other things, that we can leave behind those things that burden us and bring us sorrow. We are not condemned to continue our obsessions, or repeat our patterns, or be controlled by our intolerable memories. Christianity is sort of anti-Freudian. We are just as likely to be products of our hope for the future as of our regrets of the past or of our sorrows of the present. That’s good news.

We have the gospel of the law. That’s Exodus. We have the gospel according to the Gospels. That’s John. And we have the gospel according to you. That’s the fifth lesson, the one with no words. Yet. The gospel according to Sally, and Leah, and John Nadao. And to Faith Lutheran Church.

The gospel is the good news of God in the lives of people. The good news of Exodus brought guidance and identity. The good news of John brought freedom and new life. What will the good news of you be? What will God bring you? What will happen in your lives? What will God show you? God is as present in you as God was to the Israelites and to the disciples of Jesus. God is still working.

The motto of one of our partner denominations is “Reformed and always reforming.” Another is “God is still speaking.” Both mean the same thing: God is as active in this time and place as God was thousands of years ago, or 500 years ago.

The very first verse of the Gospel of Mark, the earliest Gospel written, begins this way: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” The beginning. Just the beginning. And the very last verse of the Gospel of John, the last Gospel written, ends this way: “There are many other [stories of Jesus]. If everyone of them were written down, I guess the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

The gospel continues. The books are still being written. The pages that are blank now will be filled with new stories of Jesus. Stories of God in the lives of people now. The stories of the good news, according to you.

Amen.