Imagine that you are sitting quietly in a café with a couple of friends when suddenly the door bursts open and in rushes a stranger with a wild, excited look on his face. "Good news" he shouts. "You'll never guess. The greatest news you can imagine." What on earth can he be talking about? What could his good news be, and why does he think it justifies barging into a café and telling strangers about it? Here are three possible scenarios:

Scenario 1: Perhaps the doctors just told him they had managed to cure his daughter of the disease that was killing her. That would be great news indeed, at least for his immediate family and friends, but it does not explain why he would announce it to strangers.

Scenario 2: Perhaps he heard that the local football team had won a great victory against their old rivals down the road. In some parts of my own country, people would indeed celebrate such a thing as good news, though most fans probably would have been at the pub watching the game with him. Why leave the celebration to tell the nonfans at the café?

Scenario 3: Perhaps, in a region with high unemployment and poverty, he just learned that people had discovered huge new reserves of coal, oil, or gas. Suddenly there would be thousands of new jobs and a new start for everyone. I know places where that would cause otherwise quiet people to burst into a room and shout the news to everybody. That might justify such a dramatic announcement.

Possible Preaching Angles: Easter; Gospel; Good News—N.T. Wright goes on to compare how each of these three scenarios is like the good news of the gospel. In each scenario (1) the news isn't just something that has happened out of the blue. Like the gospel of Jesus, each scenario assumes a larger context. (2) The news is about something that has happened, because of which everything will now be different—like the resurrection of Christ. (3) In each scenario, the news introduces an intermediate period of waiting that is filled with hope. For instance, the child is still in the hospital, but her family is now waiting for her to get better.