That which is often portrayed as a love of freedom is really an adoration of autonomy.
Freedom builds communities because it can only operate where there is trust.
Autonomy fragments communities because it must view others as either threats to autonomy or the means to expressing it.
In the Gospel there is freedom.
This is one of the reasons why God gathers communities of folk together under his word.
If your basic consideration about resumption of worship is what you’ll get out of gathering with others in contrast to what you’ve been able to get in your loungeroom on your own, you’re motivated by autonomy and not freedom.
Gathering is not about means of effective content delivery, gathering is about the means through which God ordinarily dispenses the grace that changes and grows his people.
It is a supernatural activity, not a didactic one.
And it’s another reason why preaching is not lecturing in moral improvement.
From Will Willimon:
Preaching is not primarily about racism or any other human sin. Preaching is about the God who, through Jesus Christ, justifies, seeks and saves, loves, forgives, sanctifies, and transforms sinners. We preach about racism in confidence that God wants us to succeed at this task, to free us from our sin against others and to liberate those who are oppressed by the sin and injustice of various domination systems. Preaching forms a community of faith over time. Gradually, Sunday after Sunday, image by image, sermon by sermon, people are being sanctified, formed, reformed by the sermons they hear.
Will Willimon, Who Lynched Willie Earle?, Abingdon, 2017, pg 58.
