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Lectionary, Year C, Easter 7
Christopher B. Harbin
Revelation 22:12-21
A parishioner recently told me that coming to Wingate UMC years back was the first time they had ever heard the gospel was about confidence in God’s love rather than a message of fear. That is not a hard concept. It’s not difficult to communicate. Yet it is somehow a message hidden far too deeply for many people to grasp, accept, and share. We seem too wrapped up in games of manipulation to embrace the notion of enabling people to freely receive a gift not wrapped in shame, guilt, or some other emotional blackmail. Fear is not a gospel tool, no matter how badly we might want to wield it. Manipulation does not yield transformation, even if it promises to control another’s visible words and actions. Access to God is free, simply because God wills to grant it lavishly.
Lavishly, abundantly, generously, graciously are the appropriate words here. God is not stingy. God does not withhold blessings from us, wielding them as weapons to coerce us. God does not deal in scarcity as a means to strangle humanity into conformity and submission. Scarcity and coercion are attitudes and actions that run exactly counter to the identity, will, and purposes of God. For John, those would have been appropriate descriptions of the way Rome operated. They were not, however, appropriate to apply to what God is doing and planning.
John lived in a world driven by fear. The massacre at a school in Texas this week would have been a run of the mill occurrence regarding its number of senseless deaths. Jerusalem in Jesus’ day saw three crucifixions a day on the average. Human life held little value to the Romans, as long as it was not the life of a Roman citizen. Others were little more than a means for Roman prosperity to grow. Keeping a tight rein on who could participate in Rome’s bounty and power was of the utmost importance. All of society was structured around the varied worth of individuals ...
Lectionary, Year C, Easter 7
Christopher B. Harbin
Revelation 22:12-21
A parishioner recently told me that coming to Wingate UMC years back was the first time they had ever heard the gospel was about confidence in God’s love rather than a message of fear. That is not a hard concept. It’s not difficult to communicate. Yet it is somehow a message hidden far too deeply for many people to grasp, accept, and share. We seem too wrapped up in games of manipulation to embrace the notion of enabling people to freely receive a gift not wrapped in shame, guilt, or some other emotional blackmail. Fear is not a gospel tool, no matter how badly we might want to wield it. Manipulation does not yield transformation, even if it promises to control another’s visible words and actions. Access to God is free, simply because God wills to grant it lavishly.
Lavishly, abundantly, generously, graciously are the appropriate words here. God is not stingy. God does not withhold blessings from us, wielding them as weapons to coerce us. God does not deal in scarcity as a means to strangle humanity into conformity and submission. Scarcity and coercion are attitudes and actions that run exactly counter to the identity, will, and purposes of God. For John, those would have been appropriate descriptions of the way Rome operated. They were not, however, appropriate to apply to what God is doing and planning.
John lived in a world driven by fear. The massacre at a school in Texas this week would have been a run of the mill occurrence regarding its number of senseless deaths. Jerusalem in Jesus’ day saw three crucifixions a day on the average. Human life held little value to the Romans, as long as it was not the life of a Roman citizen. Others were little more than a means for Roman prosperity to grow. Keeping a tight rein on who could participate in Rome’s bounty and power was of the utmost importance. All of society was structured around the varied worth of individuals ...
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