Weeping and Joy

An Introduction and Call to Worship
Delivered by Pastor Glenn Durham at Dominion Covenant Church, Omaha, Nebraska, on September 4, 2005.

Mo Leverett (PCA Pastor and founder of Desire Street Ministries) wrote a song back in 1997 which is very appropriate for today, the Sunday morning after Hurricane Katrina: “For Love and New Orleans.”

Down the delta ∙ round the crescent ∙ Swelling wetlands ∙ haunting seas ∙ Lake of fire ∙ mud and mire ∙ Come to lay your mind at ease
Through the fields of sugar’s Psalter ∙ Sweet the litany of her way ∙ Crime and culture ∙ vice the vulture ∙ Like a predator for prey
Do you care to give a prayer ∙ For love and New Orleans
Mistress calling ∙ scent of perfume ∙ Come and drink Hosea’s wine ∙ She’s a city ∙ long the harlot ∙ Long the friend and concubine
Do you care to give a prayer ∙ For love and New Orleans
Mist arising ∙ mesmerizing ∙ Bourbon flowing down like rain ∙ Veil of virtue ∙fails to hurt you ∙ If the voodoo’s in your veins
Do you care to give a prayer ∙ For love and New Orleans

Psalm 30.4-5: “Sing praise to the LORD, You saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name. For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”

It feels incongruous to sing with joy in the face of such overwhelming suffering and devastation as we have seen this week. Surely we can weep with those who weep, but how can we rejoice, since they do not?

Daniel Schoor is an National Public Radio Senior News Analyst. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Schoor found a chance to mock God through the theory of “intelligent design”: “If this was the result of intelligent design, then the designer has something to answer for.” Does God have something to answer for? Many believe so: “God is unfair in his wrath and judgment. The innocent suffer—God must answer.”

Interestingly, the Bible agrees that God is unfair. But not that he is unfair in wrath—He is unfair in mercy. The problem is not that New Orleans is judged for her sins—for they are many and in many ways they are “gross”—“bourbon flowing down like rain.” The problem is that we were not judged for our sins. We deserve far worse than the putrid squalor of the Superdome; what we receive is unfair—mercy and grace and the call to repent and come to God before the waves of His judgment overrun us all. Is this not exactly the message Jesus preached in the aftermath of an all too similar natural disaster (recorded for us in Luke 13.1-5)?
So we grieve this morning.

We grieve, not that God is wrong to judge, but that we all so rightly deserve judgment. And we rejoice, not only that all of God’s judgment is just, but that there is One who has been judged for the sins of us—and of New Orleans.

We weep, not simply because there is much human suffering. But because, in our suffering, we find our hearts like that of the Mayor of New Orleans, blaspheming God and cursing the Messianic State on whom our hopes too often depend. And we rejoice that the suffering is but for a moment, and the day is fast approaching when every tear will be wiped away and every sin ended.

One of the most famous Christians of the 1900s, C. S. Lewis, said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures; he shouts to us in our pain.”

We have some sense of shared pain this morning. Let us listen to the voice of the Lord, shouting in the wind and the rain. And let us praise his name; for though weeping endures the night; joy comes in the morning.

A Prayer: Holy Father, righteous judge, sovereign Lord, merciful Savior—We do care to say a prayer for love and New Orleans. We ask that in wrath, you would remember mercy. We ask that in suffering, many would meet the Savior. We ask that Your people would rise to the call and respond in many ministries of mercy. We ask that the wrath of Your storm would lead us all to repent of our sins.

But we do not stop with weeping over sin, for you have not left us to suffer and die guilty. We turn to Jesus, upon whom the sins of New Orleans have been laid, and we urge our hearts to believe and praise with joy the God of our salvation. Come, Holy Spirit, we plead, and lift us heart and soul to heaven. We ask this all in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Please stand and hear God call you to worship.
Psalm 30.4-5: “Sing praise to the LORD, You saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name. For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”

- As I was listening to this two weeks ago at church you can guess what was going through my mind- I wish I could get a copy of this to post! So I finally did. I thought he put into words very well what comes out so wrong from me... wonderful message.

God bless America!
Jennifer