Sermon - 11-7-21

25 min•0 تشغيلات•0 مفضلات

Religion

الوصف

Throughout this pandemic, I feel as though we have been living what one theologian calls “the Saturdays of our lives.” The Saturdays of our lives represent those despairing places in life between the crucifixion of Good Friday and the resurrection of Sunday morning. They represent the stench of death we have experienced and felt throughout this pandemic. They represent the emptiness and longing we may feel in the wilderness of despair. They represent those places in life where what is crystal clear is the suffering and the pain and the agony and the chaos, and where the resurrection of Sunday and the promise of new life seem like a fantasy or fairytale that is certainly nowhere in sight. Living in the Saturdays of our lives is a difficult place to live. And, that place of death and despair is the context for all our readings on this day, readings that are truly life-giving. It is important to note that, when the Bible speaks of death, it does so in terms of the future. Using poetic writings and visions, the Bible speaks words of hope and promise, and words of a future that is before us but not yet here. They are words we need to hear in the Saturdays of our lives. In our first reading, Isaiah was speaking to displaced people in the 8th century BCE. The Assyrians had swept in and captured the Israelites and forced them to scatter throughout the empire. It was, in essence, yet another wilderness experience and the people were asking THE big despairing question, “Where is God?” Many had lost their faith and it was there, in the anguish, that God came to the people of Israel. God met them right where they were, made God’s presence known to them through the prophet Isaiah, and gave them desperately needed words of hope. God gave them words of hope and promise that ring down through the centuries to provide the words we so desperately need to hear in the Saturdays of our lives.

المبدعون

OscarStar

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