You can also hear a RealAudio recording of the sermon here , courtesy of Evangelical Reformed Church. A recent New Yorker cartoon shows God receiving a new resident at the pearly gates. Lurking beneath our amusement is the very real anxiety that we do in fact live in a capricious, essentially meaningless world where God is either absent, indifferent, or aloof. We see children arriving in their late teens and early twenties drifting along without any real sense of purpose, or making disastrous decisions that defy our best hopes and intentions for them. We watch marriages crumble before infidelities, or simply fade away to routine or resentment.
Work grows unfulfilling, or careers are jerked around by distant corporate interests.
Nations like Zimbabwe or the Congo break loose from the grip of racism and colonialism only to sink into economic collapse, political corruption, and civil war. New economies, or a new Europe, perpetuate old injustices or succumb to ancient ethnic tensions. In the grip of this anxiety people of faith are tempted. On the one hand, there is the temptation to surrender to a functional atheism. This person may still believe in God, still attend church, still serve on boards and committees, still give to good church causes.