[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #614, Pentecost 6, 6/22/08

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Pentecost 6 – June 22,  2008
 
Genesis  21:8‑21
Psalm 86:1‑10,  16‑17
Romans  6:1b‑11
Matthew  10:24‑39
 
 
The Lord Loves The  Loser
 
Hagar got caught in a  love triangle and lost.  The  Psalmist found himself 
on the losing end of a power play.  Jeremiah lost the public opinion  game.  
Jesus says that the game is  over, and Paul reminds us that we were all losers 
before God saved us;  therefore, we should stop playing the game.  But it is 
hard to stop playing the  game when the winners keep getting all the marbles.
 
There are moments in  the Hebrew Scriptures when the game seems to stop, when 
God opened Hagar's  eyes and she saw a well of water, when God led the slaves 
out of Egypt, when  God commanded compassion for the sojourner, the widow and 
the fatherless.  But most of the story is set in the  game that creates 
winners and losers -- who wins the war, who wins the land,  who gets the girl and 
especially who gets to be on God's all-star  team.
 
In Christ, God blew  the whistle on the game.  God  joined the game in the 
person of Jesus and lost miserably.  Then God asked, "Do you really want to  
play a game at which God loses?"   "What then are we to say? Should we continue 
in sin in order that grace  may abound?  By no means! How can  we who died to 
sin go on living in it?"   (Romans 6:1-2)  For those  who have received the 
grace of God in Jesus Christ, the game is over.  It is dead over.  It makes no 
sense to keep  playing.  But of course, when the  world around you is still 
playing, it is hard to keep the faith Paul  describes, this being dead to the 
world and alive in Christ Jesus.  "We know that Christ, being raised  from the 
dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over  him.  The death he 
died, he died  to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.  
So you also must consider yourselves  dead to sin and alive to God in Christ 
Jesus."  (Romans 6:9-11)
 
The early church  gathered as often as possible to practice living with the 
game over in a world  still playing.  They gathered  every Lord's day but even 
more often than that.  If we don't turn our thoughts to faith  daily, we will 
find ourselves playing the world's game.  The government is considering using  
some of the revenue from the gambling (gaming) industry to provide 
psychiatric  help for addicts to gaming.  We  are all addicts to gaming.  The  person 
who puts his last dollar in a slot machine is just acting out the  pathology of 
the whole human family.   If there is a conflict between my child's soccer 
game and a gathering  of the faithful to practice the grace of God, where do we 
go?  We put kindergarten girls into beauty  contests.  We groom children for  
the Olympics.  We drill our  children in the skills for the competitive, 
high-tech future.  "Competition makes perfect" is the  moral reasoning of our 
society, but it sounds too much like "Arbeit macht  frei."  No, you don't get out of 
 this game alive.  Those who are in  Christ Jesus have died to this game. 
 
"Are not two sparrows  sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the 
ground apart from your  Father.  And even the hairs of  your head are all 
counted.  So do  not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. 
Everyone therefore  who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before 
my Father in  heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny b
efore my Father  in heaven. Do not think that I have come to bring peace to 
the earth; I have  not come to bring peace, but a sword.   For I have come to 
set a man against his father, and a daughter against  her mother, and a daughter‑
in‑law against her mother‑in‑law; and one's foes  will be members of one's 
own household.   Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of 
me; and  whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and 
whoever  does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  Those 
who find their life will lose  it, and those who lose their life for my sake 
will find it.”  (Matthew 10:29-39)
 
Truly God loves us  all.  But the Lord loves the loser  because the Lord 
loathes our game.
 
 
May these thoughts strengthen  you.  
An Open Letter to Fellow  Pastors  
>From Roland McGregor, United Methodist  Pastor  
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