I remember exactly where I was when the news filtered through about the assassination of the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. It was a Friday night in November, sometime after ten o'clock, as we walked back to our car, after a congregational meeting and supper in our local church, that Jack walked up to my dad and announced 'President Kennedy's been shot.' I was only about seven then and it was the first time I had ever heard of the man but, like most people, the whole event and its ramifications would be a part of my life for ever as the world explored the grainy camera footage, the conspiracy theories, the Warren Commission and the main players and followed the tragic experiences of the whole family over the following years. The episode had happened just after midday in Dallas but without internet, twenty four hour news bulletins and the like, somehow we had missed the initial announcement that probably covered our television screens and radios around tea time. Yet all these years later, I never forgot where I was that night nor the names of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.But that wasn't the only thing that made the news on the twenty second of November, though it's the one we all remember. But twenty seven years later, Britain's only female Prime Minister would announce that she was resigning her position and five years after that historic event, Rosemary West, Britain's most notorious female serial killer would be jailed fro life for her part in the murder of ten people. Two years later Michael Hutchence, lead singer with INXS would be found dead in his room and exactly forty years after JFK England would win the Rugby World Cup in Sydney, though of all those events, the latter is the only one that I know where I was when it happened.
Yet I think there are other momentous events that many people will recall exactly their location when the news broke. For instance 9/11, man landing on the moon, England winning the soccer World Cup in 1966, the deaths of George Best, Pope John Paul II and Princess Diana, the Omagh bomb, to name but a few.Sometimes I think we become obsessed with news. Dad certainly was. He usually listened or watched about seven or eight bulletins every day as well as reading two newspapers and during the Troubles of the last forty years in our province, almost every day there was something to read about. Often you woke up in the morning, wondering what terrorist activity had taken place during the night and whether it had happened on your own doorstep or to someone you knew. At other times you heard the explosion or the rattle of gunfire and watched every bulletin until what you heard or saw became news to everyone else. But it wasn't all bad news and to their credit, the television channels always searched high and low to find some item just to lift the constant cloud of dismay that seemed to cover everyone. Then there was the local news that never made any paper. News of somebody being ill, or getting wed or a new baby being born or a marriage falling apart or somebody starting a new job or buying a new car or moving house. For others it was passing an exam, getting engaged, going somewhere exotic on holiday, crashing their car, baling their hay, mowing the lawn or getting a new dog. News meant different things to different people and was never universal and all the paper in the world could be filled with news stories that never made the newspaper, radio or television but were important enough to the communities where they happened.
And of course in the little community around Galilee, the most important news was of a carpenter's boy who claimed to be the Son of God and whose life was certainly different. And though the whole world didn't know it at the time, several individuals who knew Him well, thought it important enough to record it in their writings that later became known as the Gospels or Good News about Jesus Christ. And what was that Good News? John, one of His closest followers, puts it best in the Bible's most famous verse, 'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.' And the real good news in that verse for you and I is that little word 'whoever' or as it appears in other translations, 'whosoever.' What an inclusive word, for not only doe it mean everyone but it also mean wherever and whenever. So, whoever you are, wherever you are and whenever you decide to believe, Jesus is ready to accept you and give eternal life. Now that's what I call good news.
