This Sunday, I’m supposed to preach a sermon on Isaiah 41, a gorgeous text inviting Israel to come to God, not in fear but in trust and hope.\u00a0 It’s a powerful text, and in many ways an easy one to preach.\u00a0 But it’s got me to thinking about a couple of things.<\/p>\n
First, notice what the text says: “I the Lord am your God, who grasped your right hand, who says to you, ‘Do not be afraid; I will help you’.”\u00a0 This is a text about the mercy of God.<\/p>\n
This leads to a broad observation: the key to Christian theology is the confession that God has mercy on the world — on all of us collectively, and on each of us individually.\u00a0 God knows we need mercy, as anyone can recognize.\u00a0 Our history weirdly mixes together tragedy and irony, salted with just enough comedy to make it all bearable.<\/p>\n
Christians always struggle with a tragic view of life because we know too well the power of sin.\u00a0 We suffer under no illusions, so much so that our honesty often gets us killed (hence Christianity’s history as a community of martyrs).\u00a0 But in our struggle we must never allow the tragic sense to overwhelm us.\u00a0 Because we, in the final analysis, do not believe that the world is a place of tragedy.\u00a0 Because God is merciful, hope is possible.<\/p>\n
Then my second thought, also a bit random.\u00a0 In preparing to preach I always listen to music.\u00a0 Channeling my inner nerd, I think that means classical music for me.\u00a0 And this time it meant Bach’s “B Minor Mass,” which opens with about 10 minutes (10 minutes!) on the two Greek words “Kyrie eleison” (“Lord, have mercy”).\u00a0 On and on it goes.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Undoubtedly our ancestors had longer attention spans than we do (which wouldn’t be hard).\u00a0 But more importantly they knew they needed God’s mercy, and that they would get it because of who God is, and that as recipients of mercy, they should properly worship God.<\/p>\n
So, to tie these thoughts together, I think a focus on God’s mercy on us would get us out of the phony worship discussions some of us seem stuck in, in which we must choose between legalism and entertainment\/personal fulfillment as frames of reference.\u00a0 What if we thought of worship as the assembly of those in need of mercy and grace?\u00a0 What if we joined those who cry out to God in doing so?\u00a0 Would that make a difference?<\/p>\n
I’ll let you know how the sermon went (unless it’s a disaster).\u00a0 But let me know how the reframing of worship as the search of mercy might make a difference in your context.\u00a0 I’d like to hear from you.<\/p>\n
Dr. Mark W. Hamilton<\/a> This Sunday, I’m supposed to preach a sermon on Isaiah 41, a gorgeous text inviting Israel to come to God, not in fear but in trust and hope.\u00a0 It’s a powerful text, and in many ways an easy one to preach.\u00a0 But it’s got me to thinking about a couple of things. First, notice what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nAssociate Professor of Old Testament and
\nAssociate Dean
\nACU Graduate School of Theology<\/a>
\nAbilene, TX 79699
\nEditor, The Transforming Word<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"