[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #596, Lent 2, 2/17/08

[rmcgregoralbq at aol.com]

Lent 2 – February 17, 2008

Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

Yielding To Be Born

Trust is implicit in birth.  What does an infant remember of yielding to mother's contractions?  Perhaps nothing, perhaps a yielding trust that is the foundation for faith.  Abram yielded to God's call (God's push?) and was born by God as a blessing to many nations.  The pilgrim reciting Psalm 121 yields to God's protection pressing her/him on to Jerusalem.  Paul sees through righteousness as a human work to righteousness as a yielding to God in trust.  Only the righteousness of God is worthy of this yielding trust and efficacious for salvation.  Nicodemus, mistrusting his own righteousness, is directed by Jesus back to his life's original lesson.

Nicodemus asks,  "How can anyone be born after having grown old?"  The concept was harder for him than it is for us because we have seen God in labor and delivery.   "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."  (John 3:16)  We have seen the crucifixion in the flesh.   "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit."  (John 3:6)  We have seen the risen Lord in the spirit.  We know we must be born again to inherit the resurrection.  We will yield to death.  We have no choice.  But, we know that in death we will be yielding to a new birth at God's hands.  

As people of faith, the spiritual descendants of Abraham, we have great confidence in death.  Thus, all the more we have great confidence in life.  For to be born again is to be born again and again, not in the sense of reincarnation but in the sense of renewal throughout life.  What is confession and forgiveness before God but renewal, rebirth?  What is holy communion?  What is the yielding of our will to God's will?  What is an act of charity?  All are the experience of being born from above, feeling God's push, God's contraction, yielding to the new life that is born from above.  It is living in this faith that makes dying in faith possible.  It is faith in the face of death that makes this living possible. This yielding in faith to the grace of God is a yielding trust in God but no other.  It is a meek willingness to be born along the way that leads to life.  We do not go softly into that night some call good -- a death that is nothing but oblivion.  We kick at the traces of that way and make a horrible commotion.  Faith in God is not a general credulity; meekness is not gullibility.  Just as Jesus was absolutely defiant of the evil powers of this world, our faith is defiant of birth's opposite.  Just as our yielding trust in God finds birth, Jesus found life for us through the cross.


May these thoughts strengthen you. 
 
An Open Letter to Fellow Pastors 
>From Roland McGregor, United Methodist Pastor 
(an e-mail service) 
 
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