Good News? Given Up For Dead, Broken People Worship a Broken God

7 But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. 11 For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.

2 Corinthians 4:7-12 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

1. Like a “good news / bad news” joke, the Good News of God in Christ is paradoxically both good news and bad news - for Christians and non-Christians alike.
2. The bad news aspect is that which provokes hostility and even violence from its hearers - again, Christians and non-Christians alike.
3. The good news aspect is that which makes - and has always made - the foundation of the Christian community the dirty, the sick, the whore, the thief, the disabled, the foreigner, the murderer, the poor, the hungry, the marginalized, the scandalous, and - ultimately - the enemy, no matter how wealthy, popular, sophisticated, erudite, politically savvy, influential, and glorious the edifice their more righteous brethren have built upon that foundation.
4. The good news is that in dying a scandalous, tortured, death at the hands of the political and religious authorities, Jesus so embodied and recapitulated the goodness of God’s creation that Christians came to recognize him as the definitive self-expression of God on earth. That is, by dying the death of every person - in high or low places, in glory or dishonor, in peace or in terror and agony - Jesus declared all of life holy. In Jesus, there are no godforsaken people, places or events no matter how broken those people (that is to say, US people), places and events may be.
5. Why Jesus? Why not? As God’s self-disclosure has been embedded in all personal and corporate human history, the eccentricities of the human narrative caused a far-off, obscure and religiously weird province of Rome in antiquity to reveal the focus of that revelation in the person of Jesus and the people of Israel - to those with eyes to see and ears to hear - at that particular place and time.
6. Now, the bad news. The bad news is that it is only in the acceptance of life as it is, as a free gift, without indulging destructive and ultimately murderous fantasies of overcoming death through power, escape or negotiation, that - despite the inevitable struggle and corruption of life and our ultimate biological end in suffering and death, one can be saved from power and authority death and its precursors would claim to have over us in life.
7. For those rich and powerful, for those lost in their entertainments and vanities and trivialities and folly, and for those who have built immortality monuments to themselves through their good works, their charity, their accomplishments, and their reputation (if not even and especially their religiousity! :-) ) as a way of salvation from death,  this can be very bad news indeed.