MacGregor's Lectionary Sermon thoughts for the week

First Sunday After Christmas Day  -   (December 30, 2001)
  Isaiah 63:7-9
Psalm 148
Hebrews 2:10-18
Matthew 2:13-23


God In Time

Something fundamental in the relationship between God and people changed when Jesus was born.  Isaiah extols God as the people's savior.  The Psalmist calls for a universal shout of joy at what God has done.  The Letter to the Hebrews explains the why and how of this new saving act.  Matthew tells us that God in coming to us walked the bitter path of the chosen people out of Egypt.

It wasn't that God just became the savior or that people suddenly needed saving.  These had always been true.  It was the relationship between the savior and the lost that changed.  The favored conception of salvation has always been God's descending from the heavens.  With the birth of Jesus,  salvation emerges within us, comes into the world the way we come, flees from the threat of evil people, grows up within the context of family and community, wrestles with adversaries and dies in all the horror of human suffering.  Not exactly the salvation visualized by people who buy lottery tickets, a fortune dropping in one's lap.  Not exactly the salvation visualized by theists with a hierarchical understanding of community.

The new relationship is one of a fellow pilgrim, God as fellow pilgrim not "deus ex machina", God as cross-bearer rather than repairman, God as both priest and sacrifice.   The savior is among us and within us.  If anyone thinks we can force God out of the sky at the millennium by intensifying the desperation of people, that person has missed Christmas, two thousand of them.  God has come, and in coming has defined his coming within human history.  Rather than looking into the sky or looking for the end of history, look into the human community with the eye of the Wise Men who found a star not so much in the sky as resting above a stable.  Look at your community the way the shepherds looked at angel-defined Bethlehem.  Look at each other the way John the Baptist looked for "the one who is to come".  Look at yourself the way Jesus looked at himself.  If the eyes of faith are for seeing Christ in others, then these eyes are also for seeing Christ in one's self.   What better place for God to lift us than from within us.  Isaiah saw the savior within the history of Israel, "It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old."  (Isaiah 63:9)  The birth of Jesus calls us to see the savior within the present, transforming the future, within an individual just as Jesus was individual, within the human community just as Jesus embraced and reconstituted the human community.

The incarnation doesn't set the "end time" aside.  The incarnation is about time.  Visions of the role of God as savior in the "end time" sustain the messenger in time, and the Gospel in time, just in time to proclaim:  "Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death."  (Hebrews 2:14-15)  The
birth of Jesus means that salvation is always in time and that now is always the right time.  God's love is for salvation in time not salvation too late.


 

Advent 4  -   (December 23, 2001)

Isaiah 7:10-16
Psalm 80:1-7,17-19
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25

God's Hope And Ours

Since Ahaz won't ask for a sign of God's saving power, Isaiah gives him the sign of an Immanuel birth.  Since the Psalmist senses God's anger at the children of Israel, he asks for God to ordain and equip someone to lead them back into God's good graces.  Paul reminds us how we know Jesus to be the answer to that prayer.  Matthew tells us how God brought together Isaiah's sign and the Psalmist's prayer.

I deeply sympathize with Ahaz, who couldn't bring himself to take divine assurance seriously.  He might have enjoyed the Christmas Eve Service, but he would never have rested his heart there.  He couldn't rest until he had figured out his own salvation.  One moment he would be touched by the children's choir; the next, he would be thinking about buying a few thousand more shares of Assyria Ltd.  Seated next to Ahaz at that candlelight service was a woman who had heard too many times, "God won't give you more than you can bear."  Her prayer was that God would stop designing burdens and start
lifting them.  God brings together Matthew's story and Paul's faith to say,  "Jesus was born like you were born, and you will be raised like he was raised."

Knit together in this Mary's womb is the aspiration of Israel and the hope the Gentiles.  Knit together are God's initiative and the obedience of Mary and Joseph.  Knit together are the weakness of a child and the power of God.  Knit together are human need and God's love.  Knit together are our mortality and God's eternity.  Knit together are the Holy Spirit and human history.  Having failed to bond with his human creation as a father, God is going to become a child.  Having failed to win our allegiance as creator, God will become our brother.  Is there a heart so hell-bent that holding this infant to your breast, you don't feel the warmth of hope?  Is there a life so etiolated that God's calling you sister, calling you brother, you don't blush with self-esteem?

This birth is an act of God too glorious to be trapped in a religion and limited to a few.  This birth is like the sunrise.  It is for everyone to claim and for no one to stake a claim.  "...Jesus Christ our Lord,  through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name."  (Romans 1:5) "All," Paul, "Did I hear you say ALL?"  We've made so much of your saying "elect", we've missed your saying "all".  Did God bother to become our brother and fail to become the bother of all?  Far be it from Paul to paint God so small and the elect so large.  Elect we are like the rooster, to announce the sunrise.

So the sign is a son.  God's answer is a child.  Our hope is in God, and God's hope is in us.
 

Advent 3  -   (December 16, 2001)

Isaiah 35:1-10
Psalm 146:5-10
Luke 1:47-55
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11


The Desert Redeemer

Whatever it is that holds life hostage is about to be defeated.  Isaiah likens it to the transformation that water brings to a desert.  You have to live in the desert as I do to see, hear and smell the land turn to life -- cactus overnight sprout flowers delicate like that of a crocus; toads sing in chorus the joy of their redemption through the night; and the mesquite gives the cooled air a fragrance that glorifies God.  It is a redeemed desert through which a redeemed Israel will return home.  The Psalmist offers a partial list of lives previously held hostage:  the oppressed, the hungry, the prisoners, the blind, those who are bowed down, the strangers, the orphan and the widow.  Jesus uses a similar list to verify that the redeemer, the Messiah has arrived.  Luke shows us that Mary knows a liberation is about to happen.  She borrows the song of Deborah of old to sing her own testimony to God the redeemer.  So, why does James have to admonish the church to wait in patience?  Was the coming of the Messiah
really just a desert shower?

It has long bothered me that after the dust settled from the emergence of the church, the religion looked like a Gentile version of its Jewish precursor, the faithful trying to lead a righteous life so that the Messiah would come or so that they would be included in the new kingdom when the Messiah did come.   The intense anticipation in first century Judaism became the intense anticipation of first century Christianity.  What happened to the consummation?  Had the Messiah not come?  Christians proclaim his having come.  Jews deny it.  But both emerge staring at the heavens still waiting.  Could it be that anticipation is the Good News, consummation in this life being over rated?  But what can anticipation mean without consummation?  Can
a people anticipate the Messiah forever without his coming?  Wouldn't someone call the whole enterprise into question?

The rain did come in our desert.  The kingdom of God did bloom in the life of Jesus.  The chorus of the saved did fill the air at the sight of the risen Lord.  And the fragrance of the Holy Spirit has filled the church ever since.  The coming of the Messiah achieved the end that Isaiah foresaw and Mary extols.  Christ achieved the end that awaits the end.

"He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly..." Mary proclaims.  In anticipation of this end the world devises ways to imitate it.  Democratic government is a tool for bringing down the powerful and lifting up the lowly.  We fight over the redistribution of wealth every day on Capitol Hill.  "A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray," Isaiah
promises.  Consider the handicapped parking space and all the other ways we have become more considerate of our fellow pilgrims, how we have changed the road so that "no traveler, not even fools" are pushed away.   (I take Isaiah
to use the word "fool" in a narrow sense, but I mean it in the sense that no traveler, not even one who faces more challenges than the rest, will be excluded.)  "Go and tell John what you hear and see," is the consummation John sought from his prison cell, a consummation of the heart.  It is the consummation that belongs to all who have been blessed with faith in Christ
by the Holy Spirit.

Yes, the desert is real, but its redemption is just as real.  Yes, the end is accomplished, but the end has not arrived.  Take each phrase of the prophesies for this Sunday and consider how many ways our lives have already conformed to that end.  With the end then in sight, the end then assured,  let us rejoice in the victory of God, and let this rejoicing include leading the human community toward conformity with that victory.

May these thoughts strengthen you.

 

Second Sunday of Advent  (December 9, 2001)
Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7,18-19
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12


Not Without a Fight

Isaiah's vision of The Peaceable Kingdom to come restores Eden.  There are no poor.  There is no violence (after the wicked have been killed, that is).  Neither man nor beast kills to eat.  (A vegetarian Advent?)  The Psalmist prays for the king to come who will fulfill Isaiah's dream, again a peaceable kingdom once the oppressor has been crushed.  And so, The Peaceable Kingdom is announced in the Gospel by a hell-fire and damnation preacher.  The kingdom of God can't come without a fight.  But Paul assures the church in Rome that the fight is not between Jew and Gentile.

God is picking a fight.  It is a fight on behalf of the dispossessed.  Those who were evicted from the Garden will be restored.  Who?  Adam and Eve, certainly, but God too was dispossessed -- no more walks in the cool of the evening, indeed no more
garden.  The fight is not just on behalf of the dispossessed.  It is a fight by the dispossessed.  It is God's fight.

When we humans pick a fight, it never results in "The Peaceable Kingdom."  Our fights just prepare the way for the next fight.  God is picking this fight; therefore, it is perfectly chosen.   "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" John hurls at the Sadducees and Pharisees.  (Matthew 3:7) Is God's fight with the Sadducees and Pharisees?  Maybe, but who warned them to flee the wrath to come?  "...he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked."  (Isaiah 11:4)  The fight is with the wicked.  The fight is not with wickedness, but with the wicked; not with sin, but with sinners; not with materialism, but with materialists; not with urban blight, but with blighters.  Isaiah is talking about a Messiah who kills people.  So is the Psalmist.  John the Baptist doesn't sound adverse to such an idea.  Neither are we.  Killing Bin Ladden would be just fine.  Our holy war is better than his because we have a narrower definition of "infidel." Many think, death row should move faster and have more people in line.  Periodically, to St. Paul's horror, Christians think killing Jews is a step forward.  Pope Leo's Crusaders  went to kill Muslims but added Jews and Eastern Orthodox Christians for good measure.  Were these the fights God picked or the ones we picked?  Were these the people God labeled "wicked" or  the ones we labeled?  Does killing these people lead to "The Peaceable Kingdom?"

I believe defensive killing can keep the wicked at bay, and we should keep the wicked at bay.  But we shouldn't presume that peace will be the result.   Pogo Possum, the prophet, may have been right, "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"  But, in that case, the Messiah is coming to kill us.   In the "Family Section" of the newspaper was a long article outlining a battle plan for wives and mothers to be able to survive the holidays.  Church staffs and volunteers are steeling themselves for the onslaught.  Retail managers are pacing the floor as if they were the Joint Chiefs.  "Just thirteen more shopping days 'til Christmas," strikes terror.  It will be a huge battle,  but it is all for the promised peaceable kingdom, just one day of it when the lion lies down with the lamb, when Bob Cratchet gets a day off (with pay?), when families gather and the poor are fed -- just one day between the
all out attack and the ignominious retreat into credit card exhaustion.  Could Isaiah have thought it would be just one day?  The Psalmist?  Could Paul have been satisfied with God's people eyeing each other suspiciously from behind Hannucha and Christmas fortresses?  And what about the wrath to come?  Are the wicked not slain?  It may have been a shock to John the
Baptist that the Messiah when he came didn't kill anybody. It was a disappointment to Judas. Instead Jesus found much that needed to die in us and among us before this kingdom could come.  It will be a fight, but following the fight, God's fight, consider the victory, consider the peace that will descend and prevail.

 

First Sunday of Advent  (December 2, 2001)
Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44


The Perpetual Vigil

Isaiah is keeping the watch for international peace administered from Jerusalem.  The Psalmist keeps a prayerful vigil for Jerusalem at peace.  Paul exhorts the church to watch for the day of the Lord.  Jesus adds,  "Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."  (Matthew 24:44)

The message is not that Jerusalem is the center of the world or that one person is taken and another left.  The message is "Remember what you are about."  And what are we about?  We are about another world and  another reality, a world under God's rule and a reality more like heaven.  "Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  That is what
we are about.

For this reason, we are always uncomfortable with business as usual, the conventional wisdom, "real politique."  The media version of life rings hollow to us.  The "alternative media," no better.  First it was "World War."  Then it was "Cold War."  Now it is terrorism.  We have tried ending war with war and winning cold war with unthinkable war.  Now terror is all that is left.  We are ready for something better, much better.  We watch day and night for another possibility, one that God alone can initiate.

"Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left."  (Matthew 24:41)  Jesus gives no rationale for one being left other than she was not ready for the return of the Son of Man.  This is a lesson about being ready not a plot for a science fiction movie.  Readiness means knowing what you are looking for.  The Christians in north Africa were looking for something much better than what they had in the seventh century.  When they saw Mohammed, they were taken.  Or, were they left?  When certain Christians in upstate New York saw Joseph Smith, they were taken.  Or, were they left?  Being ready doesn't just mean being alert.  Alert sentries wind up shooting their own people unless they know what they are looking for,
unless they know what they are about.

An important part of being ready for the return of the Lord is to keep watching for the real thing when the next person has run off with a substitute.   We Christians ran off with imperial church in the fourth century.  We run off with mega-church today.  We ran off with the Social Gospel early in this century.  Now the society has run off without the Gospel at all.  We were the alert.  We were yearning for a breakthrough, but what we got, fell through.  We were looking for the return of the Lord, but
we didn't know what the Lord looked like. We were alert without being ready.

"For as the days of Noah were..."  Jesus says, but he could just as well have said, "For as the days of Jesus were..."  We weren't ready for the Lord the first time, and we won't be ready for the Lord the second time unless we know what the Lord looks like.  We know how the Lord looks when we live as he lived.  We are ready when we know what we are about.  "...Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires,"  Paul advises.  His coming will be trans-national, Isaiah reminds.  It won't be the triumph of a nation or a race or a religion.  It will be the victory and the glory of God.  Our readiness will be that we had already turned ourselves over to God's reign.   Our alert will be that we proclaimed the
Gospel rather than settle for a sinful world.  This is what we are about.  This is the perpetual vigil of the church.

(Pope John-Paul II did something to get ready for God's reign last week. He apologized to the indigenous peoples of the South Pacific for missionaries who, in the past, took their children from them in order to make them Catholics. Some day Islam will have to step to the microphone and apologize to the world for ordaining missionaries of murder.  Jews will need to step
up to the microphone too. Every religion is guilty of the sin of arrogance,  that God has given one group a prior claim over life and land. The message of Advent is that God is coming to judge the world.  That certainly includes the religions of the world.)

 

Christ the King  (November 25, 2001)

Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalm 46
Colossians 1:11-20
Luke 23:33-43

The Cross Next To Ours

Jesus claims us with his life.  He claims us with his death.  And he claims us for his eternal kingdom.  First Jesus claims us by the way he lived.  God was his refuge and strength to such a degree that he required no other.  Then he claims us by dying a death that could not be ignored, a death that was deemed by God the perfect sacrifice on our behalf and vouched safe with
the resurrection.  Finally Jesus claims us for his heavenly kingdom.  "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (Luke 23:43)

On the one hand he is king because of his hereditary claim: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation."  (Colossians 1:15)  On the other hand he is king because of his leading us in victory over sin and death.  "...through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,  whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his
cross.  (Colossians 1:20)  In the history of kingdoms, bloodline and conquest have been essential to being a king, but ruling a territory has been just as essential.   When Jeremiah talks about the coming king, he identifies the territory:  "In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety."  (Jeremiah 23:6)   The Psalmist is more expansive, "He makes wars cease to the end of the earth."  His kingdom is the whole earth.  Paul breaks free of the earth with a seeming reference to another realm,
"the inheritance of the saints in the light".  Is this the paradise that Jesus promises from the cross?   Remember, Jesus said, "My kingdom is not from this world."  (John 18:36)

So, Christ is the king of what?  With world religions  in open competition,  can the world be subject to Christ?  With our hearts the scene of open competition, can they be subject to Christ?  Christ has the legitimate claim to be king, but where is his territory? Where can Christ be king?  Not where we strut and make bold claims for ourselves, not where we stake out
territories to defend, but rather at the periphery of our petty kingdoms where we find ourselves helpless to cope with sin and death -- on the cross next to ours he can be our king.  From the cross next to ours, he can reign in our hearts.  From the cross next to ours, he can reign in the world.