[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #547, Lent 4, 3/18/07

[rmcgregoralbq at aol.com]

Lent 4, March 18, 2007

Joshua 5:9 12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16 21
Luke 15:1 3, 11b 32

GOD CREATES FUTURE AND DEFINES PROGRESS

Gilgal was a landmark in the evolving future of the Hebrew people, a 
future whose progress God defined and worked out.  The Psalmist had 
lost a sense of progress and of a promising future until he turned to 
God in repentance.  Then his zeal for life and future was renewed.  
Paul proclaims a paradigm shift, a future with brand new possibilities 
subsumed under the name and power of Christ.  Jesus tells of a son 
whose life had run out of future until he remembered his father, 
surrendered himself to his father and allowed his father to define 
progress for his life.

Faith in progress is not faith in God, but faith in God revealed in 
Jesus Christ yields confidence in the future and guidance into the 
future.  Manna defined hope in the wilderness, but progress in God's 
plan brought it to an end.  Taking the Promised Land and taking a 
living from it was the emerging future.  It was progress.  God called 
the children of Israel to embrace it as such.

I am talking about future and progress not from "a human point of 
view".  Utopia or entropy, evolution or devolution, a new world order 
or innovative decadence -- these are futures from a human point of 
view.  The Gospel breaks in and offers a new sense of future and 
progress not dependent on human myopic, self-centeredness.  Since I am 
human, myopic and self-centered, I can't describe this God-given future 
and God defined progress in any detail.  It is not mine to describe.  
But, I can point to it and claim it.  I can be excited about my life in 
spite of all the contra-indications.  I can work with zeal for a 
progress I pray God to define as I go, as we go, a progress which is 
the kingdom of God. We live with fragmented definitions of future and 
of human progress -- political, economic, ecological, military, 
biological and so on.  Each has its doomsday scenario and its appeal 
for action to save the world.  Each tends to elicit either dread or 
fanaticism or both.   The future which is God's, on the other hand, 
doesn't weigh on us as heavily.  It is God's future for us, not our 
future for us.

When our futures, when our definitions of progress condemn us to eat 
what the pigs have left, we can arise and go to our father.  We can 
slip the trap of the human point of view.   We can move from listless 
marriage, from reluctant parenting, from sapping addictions, from 
withering employment, from feeble commitment and from exhausted 
spirits.  We can move from manna to agriculture, from industrial age to 
information age, from failed communism and the failures of capitalism 
to an economy that serves people rather than ideology, from the 
twentieth century to the twenty-first century.  We can move in faith, a 
faith that keeps affirming God’s future and God's progress.

Lent emphasizes reflection and repentance and thereby the renewal of 
zest for life, life with future and progress.


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

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