[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #531 Christ the King Sunday, 11-26-06

[rmcgregoralbq at aol.com]

Pentecost 23, November 12, 2006

Psalm 127 or 42
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44

Social Justice

Don’t ask Jesus to manage your finance campaign.  He’s liable to 
alienate your biggest donors.  He doesn’t seem to have a pledge total 
in mind, ignores the red thermometer in the narthex.  He heaps praise 
on this person who won’t impact the budget at all and has some pretty 
bad things to say about those who have the most to give, the advance 
givers, the pace setters.  He hasn’t heard of the giving pyramid, too 
Egyptian I guess.  The church’s development officers have to keep a 
safe distance from Jesus, close enough to look religious but far enough 
away to keep the acquisitive in tow.  They should mention Jesus a lot 
but never quote him about people with money.  For this reason, the 
story of the widow’s offering is not a stewardship text.  Don’t use it 
for one.  It is, instead, a text about radical dependence upon God.  
That is why the other texts above are about our dependence upon God 
rather than our stewardship of possessions.

Psalm 146 identifies God as the savior of people the society tends not 
to save -- the oppressed, the hungry, the prisoners, the blind, those 
who are bowed down, the righteous, the stranger, the orphan and the 
widow.  The Psalmist counsels us not to expect the leaders of society 
to save us.  God alone is worthy of this trust.  Is this a text for 
conservative American politics?  The government has no business trying 
to save the people who fall through the cracks?  Or, is it a criticism 
of the hardness of heart of the princes of this age?  Clearly, God is 
the only one with the power to save, but does that mean the rest of us 
are excused from helping? Naomi shows Ruth how God saves and how one 
goes about getting saved.  She tells Ruth to use the prevailing social 
norms and structures to get in the way of God’s grace.  She tells Ruth 
to accept the welfare system and go glean the field.  She tells Ruth to 
accept the male dominated social structure and lie a Boaz’s feet -- 
uncovered feet!  Thus God saves.  Ruth uses the structures of society, 
and so does God.  How else would God save her, beam her up to the 
mother ship?  That is a  “Heaven’s Gate” senario.  So, is the 
government not a structure of society?  Is there anything inherently 
wrong with God using the government to protect the poor, the stranger 
(alien), the widow (abandoned wife and mother) and the orphan?  No, the 
only criticism is for government programs to do it poorly or to prevent 
others from doing it better.  The appropriate criticism of government 
programs is not ideological but practical.

Hebrews reminds us, however, that salvation is outside the realm of 
human institutions.  This is the fundamental criticism of socialist 
thinking.  It tends to cast the government in the role of God with an 
eye to winning the praise only appropriate to God.  That objective will 
always fail.  There is but one savior, one whose own blood was shed for 
all, one whose blood is sufficient once for all.  When the people look 
to him for their salvation, the government has a chance of doing what 
it needs to do.  When they abandon the joy in God expressed by the 
Psalmist, the ingenuity in finding God’s grace demonstrated by Naomi 
and Ruth, the transcendent vision of salvation described in Hebrews and 
the radical dependence on God admired by Jesus; the government will 
break down under the weight of the expectations that the people 
transfer from God to it, from themselves to it.  By the way, the local 
church breaks down for the same reason, misplaced expectations and 
dependence.


(Since Veteran’s Day is the 11th, another idea is to parallel the 
anonymous widow with the anonymous soldier who gave his/her all.)

May these thoughts strengthen you.

An Open Letter to Fellow Pastors
>From Roland McGregor, United Methodist Pastor
 (an e-mail service)

[See Web Page address below for a Children’s Message coordinated with 
these lections.]

http://www.webspawner.com/users/ChildPage/

Multiple Sermon Starter Essays are available at
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      --Copyright 2006, Roland McGregor, all rights reserved—
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