[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #581, Pentecost 24, 11/11/07

[rmcgregoralbq at aol.com]

Pentecost 23 – November 11, 2007


Haggai 1:15b-2:9
Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21
2 Thessalonians 2:1 5, 13 17
Luke 20:27 38

God of the Living

Is "dead" even a meaningful term to God?  The creator and sustainer of 
all is just that.  "Dead" is only meaningful to the creation bound by 
time.  A. Einstein first experimented with the proposition that time is 
not as rigid as we might think.  It might seed up.  It might slow down. 
  If that is so, might it not also stop?  Where would it stop if not in 
the one who is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end?

Jesus refuted the Sadducees' argument against the resurrection of the 
dead with what might look like a play on words, "the God of Abraham" 
not "the God of the late Abraham".  Or, it might be a glimpse at the 
reality that only Jesus, as the incarnation of God, could know.  This 
hypothetical wife of a series of husbands, proposed by the Sadducees, 
is not known to God in the framework of time but only as herself in 
relation to God.  Heaven, then, is not a reconstruction of earth.  Why 
should it be?  Heaven, rather, is a living within God, the God of 
Abraham, Isaac, and the God of you and me, not a god of stone or of 
iron, but the God of the living, made up of the living in the sense of 
embracing the living.  A man looked up to me from his bed, suffering 
 from un-treatable lung cancer, and said, "Don't shovel dirt in my face 
yet."  He is no less alive because he sick.  He is no less alive 
because his time is running out.  His life is in the God of the living 
not just in this body of death.  "Because I live, you also shall live, 
" Jesus promised.  Time will pronounce us all dead one day, but the 
timeless one who loves us pronounces us alive.  Medical science can 
give us time.  Death can take it away.  But only God gives life.

Paul speaks of one who takes life away, not just time, one linked to 
Satan, one that must emerge unrestrained before its powerlessness can 
be revealed by a single breath from God.  Its danger lies in the fact 
that people are free to embrace it rather than God, embrace death 
rather than life.  What the consequences are for us within the life of 
God when we embrace death we don't know, but the consequences in time, 
for us in ourselves is agony and oblivion.  As long as this choice 
exists, as long as people choose oblivion over a life in God, the Lord 
has not returned.  Ordinary human history continues.  "Don't worry," 
Paul says, "Christ hasn't come and taken the saints leaving you 
behind."  We continue to be free to embrace death.  We embrace the 
death of our planet with our unbridled appetites.  We embrace the death 
of our communities with our self-centered lives.  There may be coming a 
critical mass in this sinful embrace which will manifest it to all the 
world for what it is.  "And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom 
the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth, annihilating 
him by the manifestation of his coming."  (2 Thessalonians 2:8)

Undaunted by time or the times, though, we follow the God of the 
living.  "Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who 
loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, 
comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word."  
(2 Thessalonians 2:16-17)


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/

Children’s Sermons coordinated with McGregorPage  available free to 
your email inbox
To subscribe, write the word SUBSCRIBE in the Subject line and send it 
to childpage-request at intenex.net.

To unsubscribe, write the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject line and send 
it to mcgregorpage-request at intenex.net.

You may contact the author at RMcGregorAlbq at AOL.COM.

  --Copyright 2007, Roland McGregor, all rights reserved—
You have permission to share this material with any individual provided 
that you include the source with e-mail address.


________________________________________________________________________
Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail! - 
http://mail.aol.com