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PREACHING THE LECTIONARY: THE McGREGOR PAGE
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CURRENT CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE
(Updated November 15, 2009)
--Advent 2 – (December 6, 2009)
--Advent 1 – (November 29, 2009)
--Christ the King – (November 22, 2009)
--Links
Advent 2 – December 6, 2009
Malachi 3:1-4
Luke 1:68-79
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6
Back We Go, Looking For The Future
Ad-vent anticipates an e-vent: “...the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come...” (Malachi 3:1); “...the dawn from on high will break upon us...” (Luke 1:78); “... in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless...” (Philippians 3:9).
Advent anticipates a transforming event: “...he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi ...” (Mal 3:3); “ ... we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear...” (Lk 1:74); “...the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion...” (Phil 1:6).
Advent anticipates the consummation of God’s plan begun in a classical period: “Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years..." (Mal 3:4); “...Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors...” (Lk 1:72); “... the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion ...” (Phil 1:6).
So, we decorate -- not permanent decorations but party decorations. An event is coming. It won’t last forever, but it will be a high moment. It will be the Garden of Eden revisited. The lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the grown man will play with electric trains. The Lord will restore unto us the joy of God’s salvation. Therefore, we set out snow-covered, plastic New England villages and put up pictures of Santa drinking a Coke and listen to music that was popular in 1950, hokey stuff we wouldn’t tolerate any other time. Back to the womb we go expecting this event. Back we go, looking for the future.
This is hardly the behavior of people expecting to be transformed. Fasting, not eating; praying, not shopping; pondering, not partying are preparation for transformation. All that emerges after Thanksgiving is about nostalgia, about the good that used to be, not the good that will be. It implies the degradation of life from a better time. It implies the despair of the future. Or does it?
Perhaps it is all a way of saving that which is of lasting value, that which God has done in the past is a key to what God will do in the future. This event we hope for will gather up all that is good and leave the rest. The problem for us in anticipating the “refiner’s fire”, though, is that we are so attached to the dross and so confused about the distinction between dross and gold that the fire frightens us. We settle gladly for a cool Christmas. But, Paul prays for God to complete the work begun in us. That means a Christmas just like last year’s is not the right Christmas at all.
Paul is dreaming of a right Christmas. (Sorry.)
What is a right Christmas? It is one that gathers and celebrates the mighty acts of God from the past. Among our tree ornaments is one made by our grown son when he was in the third grade with his picture in the center of it. The baby in the manger is ours too.
It is one that foreshadows the coming kingdom characterized by the free gift, especially the free gift to the needy, that foreshadows the Messianic Banquet by gathering people joyfully, that foreshadows the end of enmity by gestures of peace.
But, a right Christmas is always one ready to be completely transformed by the sudden appearance of God’s self.
Advent 1 – November 29, 2009
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:1-10
I Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36
“Warning: The End Is Near!”
God will act. This is the assertion of the church as the curtain goes up on another year of proclamation. God will act. God will act to preserve and protect Jerusalem or the new Jerusalem, the community that looks to God for protection. That protection will be both a restraint of forces outside and forces within threatening to undo us.
The word is not “maybe God will act” or “if God acts”, but “God will act”. So, the issue is not whether God will act in the world this year, but when and how. The issue is not the purpose of God in acting -- God will establish justice, execute mercy and preserve the righteous -- but the method, the method this time.
"And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” (Luke 21:25-26) On the seventh day of June 1944, this happened on the beaches of Normandy. During Advent of the preceding December, the church said it would happen without knowing how or when. It said it not because it is the church’s word but because it is God’s word. It is hard for the church to speak God’s word because it has no control over it, to make it happen. It can only proclaim it and tremble, tremble for fear of being labeled a fool, tremble for fear of the word coming true and tremble in anticipation of deliverance. Much easier to talk about things the church can make happen, like Christmas activities and new programs for the coming year. Much easier to talk about the unraveling of the current culture than the unfolding of God’s plan.
I thought it was the trailing vehicle to a mobile home in transit, this pick-up truck with a flashing yellow light, but as we got closer, I could see a sign below the light on a billboard made of a sheet of plywood fastened to the back of the camper shell, “Warning! The end is near. Repent and pray to Jesus.” Concentrating on the sign, I nearly rear-ended him. I mused as I continued west on Interstate 20 between Dallas and Fort Worth, how appropriate and misunderstood this message was. The man driving the late model truck had unleashed the word of God in paraphrase to be thought a fool by most, admired by some and understood in a different way by others.
“Warning! The end is near.” How hard it is for the church to sound this warning -- to be thought a fool. But, the end is near, and who will sound the alarm? The end is always near. A local man killed himself by strangulation this to increase his pleasure in sex while the church accommodated itself to a society bent on its own pleasure. The user-friendly church affirms the culture around it and promises that things can go even better with Jesus. Sin goes unchallenged, and the end draws near, the inevitable end of sin which is death.
“Hurray! The end is near.” I’ve never seen that sign, but it is just as good a paraphrase of the word of God. Surely, there is an end to torture, to child abuse, to wife beating -- a school teacher showed up at the shelter for battered women with missing teeth; she said her husband would hold her down and pull them out with the pliers when she crossed him -- an end to the perversion of human life, the perversion of the earth. The world accommodates itself to endless degradation, but the church sees the end.
Christ the King Sunday – November 22, 2009
Psalm 132:1-12
2 Samuel 23:1-7
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37
Where Does Our Thanks Lie?
Thanksgiving? Is it Thanksgiving for Christ the king or for Christ the servant? "God, I thank you that I am not like other people..." who don't have Christ on their side. Can we really say thanks for Christ the servant if we don't recognize Christ the king? Can we take the blessings and not the orders? Can there be a God who serves and a people who don't? Is it possible that our deepest thanks should be, not for our blessings, but for Christ the king, a ruler who is righteous and whose rule that is just?
Do we really think that world peace is the result of the common sense of humanity and not the reign of God? Do we really think that "the American way" will civilize the world? China will be coaxed into human rights? Terrorism is an aberration? What if killing people for their organs to transplant is as much the common sense of humanity as is the Bill of Rights? What if the Bill of Rights has more to do with Christ the king than with any "common" sense? Then where will any further civilizing of the world come from? What power? What reign, if not the reign of Christ? Will it come from the moral authority of the American Presidency or Congress? The reign of Christ is the world's only hope for peace.
David recognized the relationship between the reign of God and the peace of Jerusalem. The Apocalypse sees Christ above all the rulers of the earth, and Jesus sees himself in a taunting question, "Are you the King of the Jews?" But, can we see God as the authority for our lives -- yield, surrender, serve and be thankful? And, if we can't surrender our wills to God's, how can we proclaim to the world the only reign with a blessed future? If the church can't surrender to Christ, if the church can't conceive of the reign of God apart from the reign of the church, can the church deliver its saving message to a dying world? Since Constantine, the expansion of the reign of God has been understood as co-extensive with the expanded reign of the church. Can the church put itself beneath the feet of Christ before God has to do it for us?
But, to stand beneath the feet of Christ is to feel the drops of his blood, to see him ascending and to yearn for his return. To stand beneath the feet of Christ is to live in the paradox of the martyred king, the dying God. To stand beneath the feet of Christ, to stand at the cross is to reign with him through sacrifice and service.
There is an urgency for God to have God's rightful place in the world. It is not God's urgency. It is ours. "I will not enter my house or get into my bed; I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob." (Psalm 132:3-5)
Roland McGregor, United Methodist Pastor
Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
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