As Evening Falls Rev. Tiare L. Mathison, Soul-Tender
Evening falls in nature this time of year,
Darkness descends, early, early
We live in shadowed, threatened times
Rejoice.
This secret password moves along The ramparts of our lives,
Eternal Sentinel stands guard Upon our hearts.
As Evening Falls.
Let’s continue in prayer. Powerful and Holy God, We come before You with deep worries and even deeper fears. Everywhere we look there are tragedies, sorrows, angers, disbeliefs, despairs. We are scared this is the end of all we have known and loved. How can we possibly hear Your Word in the midst of such cacophony? Sing them over again to us, Your Wonderful Words of Life! Teach us once more to turn our frets and fears into prayers of lament, even anger and then give us a glimmer of hope, we beg You. Redeem us through Your Precious Son our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen
Listen for the Word of God for you today: Phil. 4.1-9; The Message Don’t waver, stay on track, steady in God. Is this where you find yourself today? Focused, clear-minded, your True North lined up with your heart and mind? Are you able to look for the best rather than the worst? The beautiful not the ugly? Things to praise, not things to curse? I pondered how I could even read these words out loud to you today. Rejoice, again I say rejoice. As Petersen says, ‘Celebrate God, every day all day. I mean REVEL in Him.’
How distant this notion seems as we head more deeply into Fall with its attendant restrictions on being outdoors, depression and anxiety rising in our guts and in our communities and churches. How is it possible to center ourselves, ground ourselves in Joy in these days? I propose that we build a scaffold around our hearts and minds. This framework is strong, steel-strong, grounded in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our true place of joy. It is held together by the discipline of forbearance. It stands as a sentinel against our natural propensities to offer harsh judgment of one another. This through line stretches from the original covenant with Ancient Israel all the way to Jesus’ life and witness, His death and rising, to Pentecost and the arrival of the Holy Spirit, right up to today, October 11, 2020. What is true, what is just, what is pure, what is pleasing, what is noble, authentic, compelling, gracious. All pieces of the structure to keep us clear-minded and open-hearted. How do we do this? In prayer. Always, in prayer.
But maybe not always with hands folded, head down, formula words. Rather a spirit of prayer that centers our rambling and chaotic minds. It is a practice to generate a space that reminds us that to pray means something! This is how Ross Douthat put it in an opinion piece in the New York Times last Sunday: “To pray is also- inherently - to behave as though life isn’t just one accident after another, as though narrative lines in history actually do exist, as though our choices are woven into patterns and not just left to unspool randomly.” Unquote. We claim that a sense of God’s wholeness, everything comes together for good, is possible. St. Paul tells us it will come and settle you down! To pray is to behave...a willfulness this is. Imagine having Christ displace worry at the center of your life! Just imagine. (Pause)
Within the scaffold around our hearts and minds, prayer offers us another angle to ponder the same painful situations we find ourselves in. God’s imagination is not limited, remember. She offers us numerous possibilities for a variety of outcomes. This is where joy comes to the fore. Joy is not an emotion in this context, rather it is a perception of reality. We read the economy of God’s activities through a Spirit given lens, often with what seems to be counter-intuitive ideas. It is in adversity that joy takes root, when we recognize God is in the midst of our sorrow, therefore, we can reinvest ourselves in life.
I know this is very difficult to practice when in the political realm, we have such sharp disagreements across the country and within our own congregation, about whom is best fit to be the next president and whose ideas will build up our country. The racial uprisings could be God’s handiwork you know, because it exposes the depth and breadth of racial inequality and injustice in this country, built on the backs of slaves. The pandemic could be God’s work as climate change is one of the reasons for these animal born illnesses moving in so close to where humans live. The economic collapse reveals the enormous economic divide between the wealthy and everyone else. God? Even our basement flooding might give us the possibility to rethink mission and service to our neighborhoods with a deeper focus on food insecurity and racial disparity. How can WPC partner in a more profound way through our connection with Familyworks and other community partners? What is God doing?
Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard, Paul says. Okay. We are having a canned food drive by for Familyworks this afternoon from 3-5, organized by our fabulous young people. Keep doing it. We have 20 people signed up for FW Sunday Supper at the end of the month. Keep doing it. We give to Campbell Farm - diapers, boxes for carry out food, cash to buy bulk items for their incredible feeding program of Native and Farmworker kids & the elderly. Keep doing it. We have a little Food Pantry out front. Keep doing it. We meet every week for worship and care. Keep doing it. We meet on Wednesdays as #WPCSTRONG!, mostly to giggle together. Keep doing it. We meet in small groups for study and prayer. Keep doing it. We pray for each other, our family and friends, our world, in our Wednesday virtual prayer meeting. Keep doing it. For this is the outcome of a life scaffolded in joy, a sign of the presence of the Risen Christ. Don’t fret or worry. Shape your worries into prayers. And the promise of God’s wholeness will spill out all over you. Amen