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Isaiah 52:7-10 –
7.How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion; ‘Your God reigns!’
8 Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes.
9 Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. 10 The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.
In Sanctuary this week, I talked about heralds. Herald is a word which can be used to describe a sign that something will happen. For instance, snowdrops are a sign of the new year, it is a sign that something is going to change.
The word also describes a messenger who proclaims change, someone who carries an important message, a messenger, perhaps, such as described in Isaiah 52.
Not all heralds bring good tidings though. The news channels we are exposed to are also heralds. But the messages they carry so often rob us of hope and joy. Greenland this and Gaza that, etc.
So what message should we, as Christians, proclaim? Do we parrot the media, with all its doom and gloom? Or should we be heralding the advent of Jesus? The salvation of the cross? The forgiveness of sins? The good news of the Gospels? As the verse from Isaiah says, “how beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion; ‘Your God reigns!’”
Our world needs heralds, heralds who bring good news, beauty, joy and hope into this world. But the thing about heralds is that they don’t just proclaim this stuff on a Sunday, they take it away, they take it home with them, to work, to wherever they go. They become glory carriers for the Lord.
The other aspect of being a herald we mentioned was the idea of heraldic crests – these can be seen at any stately home. The one you see most often is the crest of the royal family, which reads (in French) ‘God and my right’, adopted as the royal motto by Henry V in the early 15th Century. Given their heritage, these heraldic statements could be described as medieval mission statements. So… if you had a heraldic crest, what would you choose, what words and what image? What’s your mission statement?
Below I’ve added one of the songs we worshipped to on Sunday, ‘I Just Want To Speak The Name Of Jesus’. If you were looking for a mission statement, I think this would do the job.
