[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #610, Pentecost 2, 5/25/08

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Pentecost 2 – May 25, 2008

Isaiah 49:8-16a
Psalm 131 
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 6:24-34 

Whence Comfort and Hope?

Each of these Lections presumes a former state in which comfort and hope were missing. 

"’Come out, … show yourselves.’ They shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down…” (Isaiah 49:9-10) Picture people in such want and fear that they are hiding.

“My heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.” (Psalm 131:1) The Psalmist says this following the previous Psalm, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.”

“But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court." (1 Corinthians 4:4) With these words Paul alludes to the heartbreak and disappointment he has experienced at the hands of the church he founded.

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matthew 6:24-34) Jesus begins this teaching by describing the common moral state that makes life so agonizing.

Where is the comfort, where the hope? You want the prose or the poetry? Jesus doesn’t mince words. One can either serve God or money, “money” standing for everything self-serving. Comfort and hope centered in the self vanish in hard times. If you want comfort and hope you can count on, then you had better count on God.

Paul demonstrates what Jesus said when he rests his case with God and limits the power his detractors over his spirit. He wouldn’t have spent four chapters on the subject, however, if following Jesus’ teaching were easy. He is struggling here to keep God at the center of his ego support, but by the time he gets to the thirteenth chapter he will have succeeded.

There is a prosaic side to life, but we also have a poetic side. The actual return to Jerusalem from Babylon was not what Isaiah describes. They got back, but there was nothing easy about it. Mountains didn’t flatten for them. They had to climb every one of them, but the climb was different because of the poetry. Comfort and hope are as much a condition of the heart and mind as they a condition of the circumstances. We need changed circumstances, but even more we need hearts and minds that draw comfort and hope from their source, that rest on God.

“But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.”  (Psalm 131:2)*


*Note the female images in connection with God’s comfort and steadfast love here and in Isaiah 49:15


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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