"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me...
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;"
- Isaiah 61:1-2
It gave me great joy this past Sunday to officially kick-off our new sermon series, "The Beautiful News". It's going to be a fun, interesting, and hopefully life changing journey for all of us at United Life, so it was exciting to finally be able to preach this sermon and get this wagon train rolling. With that said, there was one thing that I wanted to get across that I think I didn't get a chance to. Please allow me to do so electronically.
For the first half of our sermon series, we're using James Choung's (an alumnus of UPCS) "Big Story" method of outlining the message and news of Jesus Christ to test for ourselves whether the gospel really is good and beautiful news. Choung divides the gospel into four sections or scenes (you can check out his full explanation here), beginning with, where else, the Beginning. That's where we started this past Sunday, testing for ourselves whether God's original design for creation was truly beautiful or not. After all, if God didn't create us with a beautiful purpose in mind, why would we think his plan to redeem us was beautiful?
Well, hopefully we were able to see that this past week as we compared and contrasted the Scriptural account of our origin and purpose both against the modern secular humanist account, as well as the ancient Babylonian account. Reflecting on this past Sunday, however, I wish I could have stressed more clearly one final point of contrast. That is, I would like to have focused our attention a bit more on beauty of the Israelite notion of "The year of the Lord's favor".
The fact is, both the Babylonian and the secular humanist accounts of our origins basically imply that we and our world are accidents. What I argued was that neither really can tell us what our purpose is, and thus by implication have little to say about meaning, goodness, or beauty. WhatI would like to add is that they also fail to provide any sort of meaningful ending. If the whole of our existence is simply a few days spent on the rotting corpse of one deity defeated by another, or the lucky (for us) byproduct of millions and millions of fortunate coincidences, then our stories really aren't stories at all. If there is an ending for us, it will simply be another meaningless accident or coincidence, and the universe will go on without a pause.
Now I dislike Hollywood endings as much as the next person (except when I'm in the mood for one), but are we really satisfied with that picture? Are we really content to say that our time on this earth and everything we do with it is, in the end, basically without meaning? And, if we are, then why are we doing whatever it is that we are doing?
Isaiah, speaking to a people who have suffered long, reminds them of an ancient Mosaic decree, one that evidence suggests they never actually followed: the year of the Lord's favor (also known as the Jubilee Year). Originally, the people were meant to take every 50th year to cancel all outstanding debts, even returning land that had been taken from others. All prisoners and slaves were released, and everyone was called to start anew. Isaiah, by reminding them of this special God-decreed year, declared to them this was the kind of God they worshipped: One Who ended what He started, One Who cared deeply about every life, no matter how insignificant.
Our time on earth might be short, and our planet is indeed just a miniscule sphere in large expanse. If there is any sentient life out in that expanse, I doubt if they would care very much if we happened to wipe ourselves out. But there is One who does care, the one who made all of this in the first place. And He is the one who is going to finish what He started.
So, let me ask you: Beautiful, or not?
4 comments:
VERY good post.
I personally cannot classify where I stand with this issue, however, I enjoyed the point you brought up about the importance about the origin of life. Should it be focused on the mechanism or the purpose? Which brings up diversity[body of christ], is it wrong to get caught up on the mechanism but ok to get captivated in purpose[being christianity]?
But once again, great post!
thanks jk!
re: mechanism and purpose, I would have to say that purpose is essential, while mechanism is secondary. I can worship next to someone who disagrees with me over the exact archaeology, biology, and physics of how we came to be on this planet, as long as we can agree that it is same God who put us here that also saves us on the cross.
two quick thoughts:
"What I argued was that neither really can tell us what our purpose is, and thus by implication have little to say about meaning, goodness, or beauty."
'Meaning' I would agree with, but the existence of some larger meaning is a starting assumption, isn't it? 'Goodness' and 'beauty', though, can be defined satisfactorily within a simple framework of the accidents that led to our current existence and the way that experiences make us feel, and the natural development of our culture.
"Now I dislike Hollywood endings as much as the next person (except when I'm in the mood for one), but are we really satisfied with that picture? Are we really content to say that our time on this earth and everything we do with it is, in the end, basically without meaning?"
I'm not sure that our satisfaction, as either sculpted creations of a deity or a local apex in the continuum of evolution, has any bearing on the reality of our existence.
hey new baby daddy (or BDJr.? not sure what to do with two new dads here!)
in any case, I've been wanting to respond for awhile now, but have been out of town for the past week. of course, you've been busy too! I've been appreciative of the updates.
- meaning. The existence of a larger meaning is indeed a starting assumption, but where would we be without such an assumption? I have a hard time imagining a world worth living in without the presence of some kind of metanarrative, even if we disagree what that narrative is.
- goodness and beauty as phenomenons can be explained well by science, but I believe they are more than our ability to perceive them. One can argue that any meaning we want to attribute to them is completely of our own doing, or only exists because it gave us a survival advantage, but doesn't that strip them of their essence? Doesn't "the good" and "the beautiful" have to be so apart from how perceiving them have helped us to survive?
- "I'm not sure that our satisfaction...has any bearing on the reality of our existence." Agreed. I think what I was trying to say here has less to do with our existence, and more to do with the existence of a reality that transcends our universe. I'm trying to argue here that what we seek, the hungers that we still have despite all human efforts to satisfy ourselves, point towards the existence of something that actually can satisfy us.
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