Unspoken Sermons
Everyone who reads MacDonald knows that whether it is fantasies, novels, or sermons, MacDonald was singularly focused on revealing the Father Heart of the Divine! Every introduction or biography I have read, one way or another, expresses Fatherhood as the central theme of his life and work. Recognizing this focus makes finding the thesis of the “Unspoken Sermons” quite simple. It is “Abba, Father!” Interestingly, it is at the dead center of the three series and of the thirty-six sermons published over a twenty-year period.
MacDonald teaches as Isaiah says God does in chapter twenty-eight verse ten, “He is trying to teach us letter by letter, line by line, lesson by lesson.” MacDonald says, “I do not say this as some doctrinal truth, for I aim at no such logical certainty. Rather than prove, I aim to show, using my thoughts progressions to reveal the ideas I am relating.” “Child” Paraphrase
MacDonald would have us all drawn into the big-picture reality of the Divine as C. S. Lewis was in his testimony in Surprise by Joy.
“But now I saw the bright shadow coming out of the book [Phantastes] into the real world and resting there, transforming all common things and yet itself unchanged. Or, more accurately, I saw the common things drawn into the bright shadow. Unde hoc mihi? [Why am I?] In the depth of my disgraces, in the then invincible ignorance of my intellect, all this was given me without asking, even without consent. That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized; the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer.”
As it is with many truths discovered in my journey, Baxter Kruger is once again the source. Some four years ago in our Tuesday night group, he decided to spend a few sessions with, “SURPRISE”, the prologue of John. He had written his paraphrase of verses one through eighteen in chiastic structure, and this was my introduction to this ancient writing structure. Baxter said he had spotted the reference for John the Baptist in section two and then again in section six, and this is called point and reflection and is an indicator that the passage is chiastic. However, this is not just a writing style but a way of organizing your thoughts. Many of us use this structure quite naturally, and I would say it is a safe bet that MacDonald was one of those people.
Chiastic structure comes from the Greek letter Chi or “X” and used in this case as simply the left half, the “>” arrowhead. Unlike our more modern and simpler version of three points and the theme “\,” the chiasm has the downward edge of the reflections that mirror the points above. The beauty of this point, theme, and reflection style is that it clearly reveals and emphasizes the theme structurally and adds more clarity through the reflections.
Point One
Point Two
Point Three - Thesis!
Reflection Two
Reflection One
Tooltip contentExample of 1 John 1:1-5 The Message in Chiastic Structure
From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in—we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands, the Word of Life.
The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this:
The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us. We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you!
So you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy! *
This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there’s not a trace of darkness in him.
* Note: Most translations make this section just verses 1 – 4 and start a new section with verse 5.
Therefore, there is no need to guess at the theme because it is right there in the middle. Structure is not simply an artificial embellishment. It is a key to meaning. To overlook the structure may be to miss the POINT entirely! Here the chiastic structure also confirms the theme of the “Unspoken Sermons” as “Abba, Father!”
The other beauty of the chiasm is its use of bookends—these help to identify it by its starting point and ending reflection. Much of the Bible, as in John’s prologue, and many of the Psalms are chiastic. In the Sermons, the bookends are “The Child in the Mist” and “The Inheritance.” For MacDonald, this creates the circle of Divine Life. For where you begin is where you will end and reveals the nature of the journey between!
The Child in the Mist
MacDonald begins in “Child” with our oneness and union with the Father and Son in the Spirit. He starts with Relationship. Relationship is the irreducible truth of the Trinity as Father, Son, and Spirit. It is from this relationship that love and creation flow. The Trinity is not one option among many, but the only one in which love can exist. There can be no love where there is only one! And he defines the nature of this union within the character of God as other-centered and self-giving.
Let us take this truth to yet an even greater revelation that the devotion of God to His creatures is perfect! The truth is that They loved and were devoted to us first. And our devotion is but a mirroring of Theirs in return! They do not think of Themselves, but us! They want nothing for Themselves, for the Trinity lacks nothing and only lives to be a blessing! Their devotion and self-giving love are at the center of the Divine Childlikeness, the Universe’s Heart and Life! They are the source and ultimate expression of human relationships at their best as a friend, brother, sister, father, and mother, expressed fully in our love-perfect God! They are grand and strong beyond anything our imagination could conceive of heroic thinking and actions! Yet, delicate and tender surpassing human intimacy as husband and wife! They are comfortable and welcoming, exceeding all we could envision as the height of love and acceptance coming from fathers and mothers! “Child” Paraphrase
This passage is, to me, one of the most foundational and beautiful ones in all of the Sermons. MacDonald was not a universalist, for this love could never be forced through some form of determinism, but only reciprocated from a free heart. Having established the character and nature of our union, we can follow the sequence of his thoughts to love, in “Consuming Fire” and then, to knowing the Father himself as “The Higher Faith” and eventually arriving at his thesis “Abba, Father!”
Abba, Father!
“The most beautiful and challenging thing in the world is to cry Abba Father from a full heart! And I would help everyone I could to call upon this Father.” George MacDonald
In “Abba,” MacDonald builds upon the foundation of the “Child” by emphasizing our origin and childhood as the eternal children of our Heavenly Father. His is not the message that starts with separation in which it is our responsibility to become children, but our divine childhood as the Father’s children maturing into the sons and daughters of the “Most High!” This journey is the theme of the sermon, our “Spiritual Coming of Age.”
Becoming what we are!
Creation’s origins lie within the mind and heart of the Trinity. Therefore, our Divine destiny is in becoming what we are! In creation, the Word expressed the Father’s thoughts about us, and the Spirit made them so! So we, humanity, were made in Their “image and likeness” and have within us Their Divine Life! And this Life is the Light that reveals everything. Those who choose to live in a relationship with the Light, living as Jesus lived, living in obedience to the Father’s love, realize and participate in their own becoming! And this Light guides our journey into the fullness of Their Eternal Life. Jesus, the firstborn in His incarnation and vicarious Life, lives for all humanity. And so through Jesus, we are alive with Their Life in our obedience and union with Him!
“Yet wherever men did accept him he gave them the power to become sons of God. These were the men who truly believed in him, and their birth depended not on the course of nature nor on any impulse or plan of man, but on God.” John 1:12 Phillips
The Father does not make us sons but gives us power, as Their children, to become sons. By choosing and obeying the Truth, that is living and loving with Their Life. By this Life, we are transformed into what we are! That is fulfilling our destiny by becoming one with Them and sharing in the Father of Light! “Abba” Paraphrase
This statement is the thesis of the Unspoken Sermons, and to unpack it is to remove The Mist from our hearts and minds and understand the meaning of Life!
MacDonald goes on to unpack the meaning of “this coming of age” as that of transformation. Transformation is not a change of being but a change of form. It is not fish becoming birds, but caterpillars becoming butterflies. We cannot become what we are not, but only what we are in our true selves as children of God made in Their image and likeness. Our true selves as becoming sons and daughters of God! This transformation brings us to our ending bookend, “The Inheritance.”
The Inheritance
We come from the Trinity, and we will return to Them. Interestingly, MacDonald opens the sermon by defining the “inheritance of the saints in light” as that of a share. This share is not the earthly idea of dividing some finite inheritance by the number of inheritors. But the combining of each inheritor’s share “The New Name” in forming an incredible whole! Heaven is not about what you get, but what is yours to give! Remember, we began this journey with the other-centered and self-giving God, and we will end it as His other-centered and self-giving children! WOW! What a beautiful and Life-giving journey this will be.
The Kite Story
. . . Alone . . .
. . . Together . . .
. . . Others . . .
However, what boy, willing to be a disciple of Christ and a child of God, would prefer a sermon to his glorious kite. A kite is the most divine of toys, and with God Himself as his playmate, watching it together in the blue wind, tossed hither and thither in the golden sky! He might be willing to part with his kite, the wind, and the golden sun and go down into the grave for his brothers, but surely not to be admitted to an eternal prayer meeting!
For my part, I rejoice to think that there will be neither church nor chapel in the heavenlies. Yes, there will be nothing of religion but its Love and no law but the perfect Law of Liberty. There is no need for law or religious practice where every heartbeat expresses the Divine, where selfishness is too revolting to be considered, and every voice is eager with thanksgiving! Where the rushing of these joyful waters is bursting from beneath the throne of God, they being the joyful tears of the Universe! Religion! Where will there be room for it, where the essence of every thought is the Divine? What place for honesty, where love fulfills the law to overflowing! Here a person would rather dive into hell than wrong his neighbor in the smallest way!
Heaven will be continuous fellowship with God, in this relationship, in this very sense of being, is joy! For to experience real Life, there must be actual and conscious contact with its very source. Therefore, this life is simple goodness, as good as the very Life of God is good, filled with the joy of our very being! “Inheritance” Paraphrase
They wanted a relationship with us from before the beginning, and what we will receive in the end will be Them! God is our Inheritance! All our human speculations and projections about heaven are mostly unfounded cr*p. Cr*p that appeals to our human desire for things as revealed in “The Way,” “The Hardness of the Way,” and “Spiritual Stupidity,” and not RELATIONSHIP!
Home
All that is needed to set the world right for me – and no celestial heaven could be without it – is that I care for God as He cares for me!
That I, with my will and desires, am in harmony with and keeping time with, His music. That I, with my thoughts and feelings, am springing from Him and not from myself. And finally that my individuality is experiencing the freedom born and belonging to His. That I am no slave to my body, my ancestry, my prejudices, or any unknown impulses, but in obedience, I am free in the law of my being. That I am living in the life-making will by which life is Life and having Life in myself!
What springs from my selfish self is not from God and is evil; it is a perversion of something of God’s. Whatever is not of faith, that is of not trusting and living from the Life of God, is sin! Independence is a stream cut off – a stream that has cut itself off from its source and thinks it runs on without it. But Light is the inheritance through Him whose Life is the Light of men, to awaken in us the Life of our Father in heaven. All love be to Him, Who in Himself generates the Life, which is the Light of men! “Inheritance” Paraphrase
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