January 24, 2021 - "And Then God Speaks: 'Draw Near:"

And Then God Speaks: Draw Near!

Jonah 3:1-10; Psalm 62; Mark 1:14-20

Rev. Tiare L. Mathison, Pastor & Soul-Tender

A Mash-up. I borrow this word from the rap/rock music scene where the word “DJ” now refers to someone who has multiple turntables at her fingertips, along with her computers, so she can ‘mash’ the music together.

This sermon is a mash-up of borrowed, maybe even stolen words. As one of my colleagues from grad school says, “all artists are thieves”.

Wednesday, January 20, was loaded with incredible words, words of hope and healing, vision, truth, setting the stage for a renewal of our commitments as a country to ‘a more perfect Union’. Just 2 weeks before, literally, 2 weeks to the hour, when white supremacists stalked our nation’s capital ‘hunting down congress people threatening the life of Then Vice President Mike Pence with a chant, ‘hang him’ their noose outside ready’. The contrast is shocking, the wound from that day still lingers as we hear Rev. Sylvester Beaman, pastor of Bethel AME Church in Wilmington, Delaware, offer his benediction at the inauguration: the powerful words of Jesus echoing throughout:

Americans, in our common humanity, will “seek out the wounded and bind their wounds.”

“We will seek healing of those who are sick and diseased,”.

“We will mourn our dead. We will befriend the lonely, the least and the left out.

We will share our abundance with those who are hungry.

We will do justly to the oppressed, acknowledge sin and seek forgiveness, thus grasping reconciliation.”

“we will seek the good in and for all our neighbors,”

loving the unlovable,

removing the stigma of the so-called untouchables

and caring for our most vulnerable: our children, the elderly, the emotionally challenged and the poor. “We will seek rehabilitation beyond correction,” he said. “We’ll extend opportunity to those locked out of opportunity. We will make friends of our enemies.”

Unquote.

Friends, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news. In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.

We are still in the season of Epiphany, where God’s disclosure of power and purpose in our daily world is seen up close and personal. It is disruptive, ill-fitting to our comfortable life.

But when our life is torn asunder, we cry out for God to save.

Jesus demands we follow Him, to fish for something ‘real’ to reorient our occupational and economic and social worlds toward generosity and welcome. The kingdom of God is at hand.

Hold out your hand for a minute would you please? What can you touch? Your devices, your partner, a child, a dog or cat, a cup of coffee or tea? This is how close the kingdom of God is. It is within our reach. It has broken into our world and joined itself to us. This is what makes it possible to believe. Our Psalm for today, #62, has this amazing string of epithets:

My hope Our hope

My rock Our rock

My salvation Our salvation

My fortress Our fortress

My deliverance Our deliverance

My honor Our honor

My refuge Our refuge

It got me thinking about this notion of joining one thing to another in a deeper way.

The kingdom has come. It brings hope, salvation, and deliverance. It provides a refuge, a fortress. It gives us honor and dignity as God’s creation. We are surrounded, enveloped, contained within the kingdom of God. It’s right here, right now within reach. No wonder the angels always say, “Don’t be afraid” it’s right here right now! and Jesus promises to be with us always even to the end of the age, right here, right now. And all those other declarations of the promise of the presence through the Holy Spirit, spoken in Scripture over and over again.

The reign of God is not produced by our faithfulness & discipleship. It is the groundwork, the foundation and the scaffolding in which we live into our calling as Christians. We give up command of our lives and we follow after the One who says the good news of God is this: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, captives are set free and there is plenty for everyone.

We stumble and fall, mess things up in our own lives and other people’s lives. We sin, lets be honest. The. Good news? Within the kingdom at hand is all the forgiveness you’ll ever need. Indeed, all the forgiveness the world will ever need is contained in the kingdom of God.

Jesus not only proclaimed it, He became it. Took on the sins of the world, offered the final sacrifice, and rose again from the dead. He binds Himself to our world and His saving grace is poured out. He says, Draw Near.

I drew near to Jesus Voice and words in Amanda Gorman’s, the first Youth Poet Laureate, beautiful poem, The Hill We Climb: listen carefully. God has a word for u today.

When day comes we ask ourselves,

where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

The loss we carry,

a sea we must wade

We've braved the belly of the beast

We've learned that quiet isn't always peace

And the norms and notions

of what just is

Isn't always just-ice

And yet the dawn is ours

before we knew it

Somehow we do it

Somehow we've weathered and witnessed

a nation that isn't broken

but simply unfinished

We the successors of a country and a time

Where a skinny Black girl

descended from slaves and raised by a single mother

can dream of becoming president

only to find herself reciting for one

And yes we are far from polished

far from pristine

but that doesn't mean we are

striving to form a union that is perfect

We are striving to forge a union with purpose

To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and

conditions of man

And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us

but what stands before us

We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,

we must first put our differences aside

We lay down our arms

so we can reach out our arms

to one another

We seek harm to none and harmony for all

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:

That even as we grieved, we grew

That even as we hurt, we hoped

That even as we tired, we tried

That we'll forever be tied together, victorious

Not because we will never again know defeat

but because we will never again sow division

Scripture tells us to envision

that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree

And no one shall make them afraid

If we're to live up to our own time

Then victory won't lie in the blade

But in all the bridges we've made

That is the promise to glade

The hill we climb

If only we dare

It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit,

it's the past we step into

and how we repair it

We've seen a force that would shatter our nation

rather than share it

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy

And this effort very nearly succeeded

But while democracy can be periodically delayed

it can never be permanently defeated

In this truth

in this faith we trust

For while we have our eyes on the future

history has its eyes on us

This is the era of just redemption

We feared at its inception

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs

of such a terrifying hour

but within it we found the power

to author a new chapter

To offer hope and laughter to ourselves

So while once we asked,

how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?

Now we assert

How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

We will not march back to what was

but move to what shall be

A country that is bruised but whole,

benevolent but bold,

fierce and free

We will not be turned around

or interrupted by intimidation

because we know our inaction and inertia

will be the inheritance of the next generation

Our blunders become their burdens

But one thing is certain:

If we merge mercy with might,

and might with right,

then love becomes our legacy

and change our children's birthright

So let us leave behind a country

better than the one we were left with

Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,

we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one

We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,

we will rise from the windswept northeast

where our forefathers first realized revolution

We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,

we will rise from the sunbaked south

We will rebuild, reconcile and recover

and every known nook of our nation and

every corner called our country,

our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,

battered and beautiful

When day comes we step out of the shade,

aflame and unafraid

The new dawn blooms as we free it

For there is always light,

if only we're brave enough to see it

If only we're brave enough to be it

January 17, 2021: And Then God Speaks: "Follow Me"

And then God speaks: “Come, follow Me”

1 Samuel 3:1-10; Psalm 139:1-6; 13-18; John 1:43-51

Rev. Tiare L. Mathison, Pastor & Soul-Tender

Here, let me explain. You have been handed Epiphany’s Invite, that is, like the 3 Wise Men who followed the star at its rising to find the baby in Bethlehem, you are asked to not simply believe, but to follow. Jesus that is. This is not so much an encounter with doctrine, but with the very human, historical person named Jesus of Nazareth, Son of the Living God. Can anything good come out of Nazareth you might ask? An insignificant village of a few hundred folk, dependent on the bigger city of Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee. 75 miles north of Jerusalem. Not even mentioned in the prophetic words of the First Testament. You would think the Messiah would come from a better known place!

It was not uncommon for students to pursue a particular rabbi for study. There were many prestigious yeshivas throughout Galilee. To gain authority and therefore power, you wanted to align yourself with the ones whose star is rising. But Jesus doesn’t have His own school with Torah scrolls and commentaries shelved by decade. Rather, He calls His disciples to follow Him. To get up and walk in His way. This first step the action of belief, called into relationships.

A peculiar way to gather a community. And He doesn’t call the proud and the haughty, those of only high regard, the rich or the famous. He honors ordinary people, like you and me, from out of the way places whenever He says, “Come, follow Me.” Jesus’ discourses with thieves, prostitutes, tax collectors, Samaritans, women, centurions, fishermen, all point to Epiphany’s Invite - there is something going on with this man which is different, both holy and woven together in whole cloth.

“Where did you get to know me?” We might ask of Jesus. Ah yes, the psalmist answers:

“You know me. In my rising and my falling

You know my loves and my hates

You know my plans and my schemes

You know my competence and my conniving

You know my mastery and my manipulating

You know my sobriety’s and my addictions

You know my loves and my hates

You know my resentment and my forgiveness

You know my fear and my peace.

You know me.

Jesus notices you. He sees you under your fig tree, taking shade or picking figs. He doesn’t need facial recognition, He already knows you. The Book of Common Prayer puts it, “...all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid...”. Jesus knows you. He calls your name and says, “follow Me.” He doesn’t take a measure of your worthiness or what you have accomplished, on a scale of 1 to 10 how great is your success. His eyes filled with love and forgiveness, He looks directly at you and speaks.

Let’s just sit with this for a moment. (Pause)

Do you sense resistance rising? To the structure of this thought - you are known - for all of us are aware how complex it is to know someone fully. Ask anyone who has been married a long time - healthy relationships are a cartography of discovery over a lifetime. Even to know oneself is a matter of intentional reflection. Yet the claim of the Psalmist is God knows us, whether we know God or not. To accept God’s knowledge of us does not mean we set aside the incredulity of head-shaking as I like to call it. Really. Ok, God knows us. Ok then. Hmm.

I can tell you as a pastor who has sat at the bedside of many dying people, this notion, this psalm, brings enormous comfort. No one argues with its premise at that moment, they simply rest in the comfort - “I’ve come to the end. Redemption is near complete. All are at rest. Jesus, the First, the Last, the Holy One, is enthroned forever. We are saved. God knows us, names us, loves us forever. No one can take it away. “. It's usually with a very deep sigh, a breath of knowledge when someone takes in this truth.

I've been thinking deeply about how to craft a sermon or a series of sermons that would convince you. I find, at this moment, intellectual argument is not going to prove fruitful. Rather, I am going to witness to the moment in my life when I finally surrendered to the presence of God everywhere, before me, behind me, above me, below me.

At the end of the worst season of my entire life, after the betrayal and divorce, after moving from Iowa back to Seattle leaving my then 18 year old son, Isaac in the Mid-West, I was out for a walk, praying, pondering, not knowing what was coming next. This call was not even on the horizon at the moment. I came to the end and realized I had a choice - to follow Jesus, live in the mystery of not knowing, and simply say yes to the Holy Presence. Or not. It was that clear. (pause) I said ok, out loud, I'm in, all the way. No dramatic scene, no angels coming forth, only a sigh. This is it.

There is another, more powerful testimony I want you to listen to today: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s last speech, the night before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. One of his followers, then a 19 year old sanitation worker, named Lorraine Palmer, recently said on NPR: "he gave his own eulogy that night". Dr. King knows what it means to follow Jesus, all the way to his own cross.

IBW21 "Ive Been To The Mountaintop"