I like the concept captured in this cartoon by The New Yorker's cartoonist, Benjamin Schwartz. This guy in the cartoon should have read the sign.
David, the senior pastor at my church, has just begun a sermon series on the book of Amos. Amos was one of the Old Testament prophets. His book is only nine short chapters, but, like all the other Old Testament prophets' books, it's a doozy. God is angry with us. Or, as David reminds us, God is angry with these particular people at this particular time in history.
However, I tend to think that God is most likely angry with a good many of us at this particular time in history!
One of my favorite subjects is the Nature of God. To me, God's overriding nature is love. But Pastor David reminded us this morning that "The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are the same God." And that God uses the prophets and others to call us back to our identity as God's chosen ones.
This morning David referenced the 1986 movie The Mission. I saw it in 1986 and felt the very same way he did about it. However, I'm not a cryer (he described himself sobbing in the theater) so I had to carry the images around for a while before they dissipated. In the movie an official who has been part of an horrendous atrocity shrugs it off by saying "Thus is the world." (Insert any current atrocity that has been recently committed in our city, state. country, world.)
In the film the response to "Thus is the world" was "Thus have we made the world."
I'm looking forward to the next sermon.
***
