PREACHING THE LECTIONARY: THE McGREGOR PAGE
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The End Is the Beginning
1 Samuel 1:4-20; 2:1-10
Psalm 16
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Mark 13:1-8
Every year about this time the Minister of Music would start explaining in staff meeting why we weren't going to sing Christmas carols in Advent. "Certainly not until the third Sunday," he would add after the furor had died away. Maybe what we need to do is re-frame those fun Christmas songs in a Advent motif, for example: "You better watch out. You better not cry. You better not shout. I'm telling you why. The Son of man is coming in clouds with great power and glory." Well, maybe not, but isn't the Santa Claus myth a bit apocalyptic? You know neither the day nor the hour any more. Surely not before Thanksgiving! But no, he can show up in July. And what about the tribulation that precedes his coming? We dread it every year. Power? Does he come in Power!? I'd call saving the retail industry power. Are we living in the Parousia without knowing it? Somebody check the sun and the moon. No, not enough air pollution yet to fulfil the prophesy, but the time must be approaching. Never too soon for the elect to begin jostling for position.
Apocalyptic thinking is human thinking. It appears wherever existence is perceived as dreary and often where it isn't. Even from the cool, rational realm of science comes the cry, "Watch!" "The end is near!" "The clouds will part and technology will descend in power and glory." Or, on the dread side we deadly pestilence approaching, swarms of bacteria tutored by our own antibiotics on how to survive us. No, genetic engineering to the rescue! No matter -- how long can it be until another meteor hits the earth like the one that wiped out the age of reptiles? We don't know the day or the hour, but somewhere out there the curtain comes down with a thud, and there will be hell to pay.
To what then do we cling? To the temple in Jerusalem, or to the person of Jesus Christ? This was the dilemma facing the disciples as they listened to Jesus' farewell address. He was leaving, and he had been their dynamic alternative to the temple. Was there a way to choose him over the temple after he had gone? Yes, a way, the apocalyptic way, and it worked. The early church survived on this hope, flourished on this hope. The church through the ages has survived and sometimes flourished on this same hope, or a combination of dread and hope. Why does it work? Because human beings are so desperate or because God is so reliable? It seems to work when we feel most desperate, but it seems to work when God seems least reliable.
It is the inextinguishable faith in the human heart that life must be meaningful and finally just, even merciful. Why is it there? Why does it work? Because it is true.
"He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the LORD'S, and on them he has set the world." (1 Samuel 2:8)
"Preserve me, O God, for in thee I take refuge." (Psalm 16:1)
"But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, then to wait until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet." (Hebrews 10:12)
Roland McGregor, Pastor
Asbury United Methodist Church, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
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