Sermons of Arthur C. McGill. Arthur C. McGill

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Sermons of Arthur C. McGill - Arthur C. McGill


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Strangeness and newness can be fearful and frightening—and exciting, exhilarating. Barth wonders:

      McGill risks it. Barth continues:

      So long as there is death, the power of God is not primary, is not Lord. Where there is death, there is not God’s kingdom. Therefore the Christian lives under death, or rather against death. Not against death by a more secure having, but against the whole logic and metaphysics of having and of the death which gives the metaphysics its proof. (Sermon 14, p. 120)

      For in this perspective [“(i)n Christ”] death has become an event in the communication of life, real and true life. And that is the meaning of death in the domain of Jesus.” (Sermon 9, p. 85)

      Maddening McGill

      Are we so filled with fear—fear of the hate that is in us, and fear of the hate that may be in other people—that our love has no reality of its own? . . . Thanksgivers, unless you let your God see the exasperation and outrage that you feel at the negatives of life, unless you stop making thanksgiving a mask to hide despair and resentment, how is any movement toward authentic thanksgiving even possible? . . . Thanksgiving day should be a day of truth, love and anger, of anger making claims on love by being indignant about abuse and neglect; and of love making claims on anger by forgiveness. Thanksgiving Day should never become a lie of sweetness and light. (Sermon 7, pp. 69–70, 72–73; italics added)

      Sounds like a recipe for a great Thanksgiving dinner. Family gatherings can be risky. McGill’s sermon (“Be Angry”) closes with a prayer preceded by these words: “Let us have a little more openness about our animosity. Then—and only then—can we begin to receive and exercise [receiving comes before exercising] our generosity” (Sermon 7, p. 73). “Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterwards.”

      Related failure: in his sermon on “Loneliness,” McGill advances the view that “. . . we try to build artificial bridges across the gap that separates us from one another, bridges made of such easy and faithless acts as the shaking of hands” (Sermon 1, p. 25). (Why should shaking hands be a faithless act?) “How we flee from God! How we seek to make a false god of our neighbor . . .” (Sermon 1, p. 25): the failure of “neighborolatry.” Failure: “We, of ourselves, do not worship God. We cannot” (Sermon 12, p. 108). Rather, one steps into—or is caught up in—the worship of the Father by the Son. We participate. Now participation can be freeing, can be fun because freeing. I join in singing the chorus but am not (thank God) the guardian of the verse. The freedom to fail is also the freedom to succeed, and both freedoms are the freedom to live.

      The Recognizable and the Revolutionary


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