[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #631 Pentecost 23, 10/19/08

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Exodus 33:12 23
Psalm 99 
Thessalonians 1:1 10
Matthew 22:15 22


Life Can Make Sense, Good Sense

"I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god." (Isaiah 45:5)  "The LORD is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!"  (Psalm 99:1)

Life has a coherent center.  The universe has but one architect.  There is only one righteousness.  Human beings have but one judge.  Because there is one god, life can make sense. 

"Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob." (Psalm 99:4)  

Life could have a coherent center, the universe a single architect.  It could make sense and still have an evil intent or at least an indifferent intent.  Life would still make sense, but the glory of God is that life makes good sense.  Because there is one god, and that god is good, life can make good sense.  "He [God] said, 'My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.'"  (Exodus 33:14)

Life makes good sense to those who know the one god.  "Moses said, 'Show me your glory, I pray.' And he [God] said, 'I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, 'The LORD'..."   (Exodus 30:18-19)   
"For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not
 in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction..."  (1 Thessalonians 1:4-5)

The knowledge of the one god came to Moses in face-to-face encounters on Sinai.  It came to the people in his charge in a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.  It came to them in the law.  It came to the church at Thessalonica through the Gospel proclaimed and Holy Spirit experienced.  The people were hungry for a single center for life and for their lives.  God answered their hunger with the Gospel nurtured in the faith of Abraham and Isaac, championed in Moses and delivered in Jesus Christ.  Praise the Lord!

There is a fork in the road for believers in the one god.  Does this one God integrate human life making us all brothers and sisters, or does this one God radically divide the human community into God's people and the other people?  There is biblical evidence on both sides.  In the lections for this Sunday, however, we find God talking to Cyrus as personally as God talked to Moses.  "Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus..."  (Isaiah 45:1)  When the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with that fork in the road, he took the one less traveled by and integrated the secular into the sacred.

Asked if it bothered her to join in the Christian devotional before opening the morning's food distribution to the poor, a Jewish volunteer working beside me said, "We only have one god."

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoi
ce; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. (Psalm 96:11) 


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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