The First Element

Looking at how has God cried for His people, what elemenst can we glean that will give us meaning worship, for example this conversation found in Malachi - “’I have loved you,’ says the Lord. But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’” - we see a pattern of dialogue begin to take shape - I say this, but you say, How?  I make specific changes, I make specific changes, and you deny them.

Imagine, after one thousand years of history with God they have the audacity to ask.

Don't you feel sorry in a way for Hosea?  He was used by God to show His love to a people who abused it terribly.

Hosea had three children -
–Jezreel – meaning “judgement” as in a day of reckoning
–Lo-ruhamuh – meaning “no more mercy” – as in God saying that time has run out
–Lo-Ammi – meaning “not my people” – as in ‘I disown you’

Hosea's wife, Gomer, deserted him and had to sell herself into prostitution - God told Hosea to take her back as a real life analogy of His love for His people.

So as Hosea is walking down the street the gossip begins - "How can a holy man like you be married to an adulterous woman like that?”

Hosea gets involved - “I have been waiting for you to ask. And I will be glad to tell you how easy it is to love a woman like that if you will first explain to me how a holy God can love an adulterous nation like us?”

How could a people have missed that kind of love, which loved the unlovely, one that loved the undeserving, indeed, the disgusting?

There is a boy in the neighbourhood… whom I have defended in some of his troubles with the law. He used to stop in often on Saturday mornings to shave and wash up, after having spent the week on the streets. He has been addicted for a long time. His father threw him out three years ago . . . He has contrived so many stories to induce clergy and social workers to give him money to support his habit that he is no longer believed when he asks for help . . . He is dirty, ignorant, arrogant, dishonest, unemployable, broken, unreliable, ugly, rejected, alone. And he knows it. He knows that at last he has nothing to commend himself to another human being. He has nothing to offer. There is nothing about him that permits the love of another person for him. He is unlovable. Yet it is exactly in his own confession that he does not deserve the love of another that he represents all the rest of us. For none of us is different from him in this regard. We are all unlovable. More than that, the action of this boy’s life points beyond itself, it points to the gospel, to God who loves us though we hate Him, who loves us though we do not please Him, who loves us not for our sake but for His own sake, who loves us freely, who accepts us through we have nothing acceptable to offer Him. Hidden in the obnoxious existence of this boy is the scandalous secret of the Word of God.
~William Stringfellow, My People is the Enemy: An Autobiographical Polemic, 97-98

The point worth remembering…
–God’s rejected love, so flagrantly abused, was given the parallel of a woman who left her husband to wallow and revel in a life of prostitution, yet remained love by Him

 

Remember what the prophet Isaiah shared about God's thoughts – “what more could I have done for you that I have not already done?” If God could ask that centuries before the cross, what does that say about our modern world? For the raw expression of love was carried all the way to the cross.

God can use the same word to describe His feelings and do so in a meaningful way while at the same time exceed our context of that word. For example, when I say I love somebody and that person refuses to love me, I hurt – because I lost something. When God says He loves us and we refuse to love Him, He hurts too – because we have lost something We make ourselves less then we were meant to be.

So, the first element of meaningful worship – one cannot worship without love. Not emotional, emotion – not emotionalism, emotions.