[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #613, Pentecost 5, 6/15/08

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From: Roland McGregor <rrmcgregor at mac.com>
To: Roland McGregor <RMcGregorAlbq at AOL.COM>
Sent: Sun, 8 Jun 2008 4:41 pm
Subject: McGregorPage #613, Pentecost 5, 6/15/08



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Pentecost 5 – June 15, 2008

 

Genesis 18:1‑15

Psalm 116:1‑2, 12‑19 

Romans 5:1‑8

Matthew 9:35‑10:8, (9‑23)

 

 

The Chosen Have the Choice

 

Surely God loves all God's children, but some of their births are the result of planned parenthood.  The barren Sarah was surrounded by women who had given birth to children.  They were born according to God's will that human beings be fruitful and multiply.  Isaac was not born that way but rather by God's specific choice, personal to Abraham and Sarah and all their descendants.  It is this kind of child that Paul assures us we have become through faith:  "But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us."  (Romans 5:8)  It is this kind of child that Jesus seeks first to rescue when he sends the disciples not to the Gentiles, not to the Samaritans, but to the lost of the house of Israel.  And it is this kind of child that rejoices in the goodness of God with the words of the Psalmist:  "I love the LORD, because he has heard my voice and my supplications.  Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live."  (Psalm 116:1-2)

 

The chosen take salvation personally.  The chosen have a personal relationship with God.  

"...he has heard my voice..."  "...You have loosed my bonds..."  "...died for us..."  "Then Jesus summoned HIS twelve..."  Personal pronouns for God in relation to people abound in the Scriptures.  This is not the talk of people who were born by the process of nature, who think they came from an egg in the nest.  This is the talk of people "...who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.  (John 1:13)  Their joy is personal.  They don't stumble onto the gifts of God.  God hands them the gift.  They do not receive a gift without seeing the hand of God.  The rain doesn't fall on their field because "God makes the rain to fall on the just and unjust."   It falls on their field because God has chosen them, the beloved, to receive rain.  They are all the apple of God's eye, the chosen child.

 

Clearly this is the stuff of arrogance and abuse.  Joseph taunted his brothers with it.  David slew the Philistines with it.  The leaders of a lynch mob used it to claim Jesus should be crucified.  It is powerful stuff for evil, but it is powerful stuff for good, this passionate embrace, this self-understanding, this chosenness.  How can we know ourselves as chosen without at the same time defining an inferior, un-chosen, race?  How can we have the self-assurance of Joseph in Pharaoh's court and not taunt our siblings with it?  How can we have David's courage to lead and not take it as a license to kill?  How can we have an unshakable trust in God and not react to people who threaten our understanding of God?  How can we have a personal relationship with God without depersonalizing the un-believing world? 

 

"Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation."   (Exodus 19:5-6)  God has chosen us.  We are God's beloved.  God has given us the best gift God has, God's self.  We can understand ourselves as chosen out of God's love for us and at the same time chosen for service to the world God also loves, the servant role of priest rather than the authority role, the mentor sense of holy - mentor to the world that God loves - rather than a self-righteous relationship with the world.  Blessed to be a blessing?  The chosen have the choice. 

 

 

May these thoughts strengthen you. 

 

An Open Letter to Fellow Pastors 

>From Roland McGregor, United Methodist Pastor 

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