Liberating King: Another Answer to The Great ?
(Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” Us every day)
Rev. Tiare L. Mathison, Pastor & Soul-Tender
Who do you say that I Am? Our Lenten discipline is to answer this ? Out of the context of our own lives. A corollary question is raised in our Romans passage today: Who do you say that I am in your season of suffering?
Thursday on my sermon walk, I remembered my worst suffering, the deep hurt and betrayal of adultery in my 25 year marriage. The gut ripped pain sent me over the edge, the smoke of sorrow so thick I could barely breathe. I remember reading this very passage in the midst of it and not believing one word of endurance, character, hope. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. Everything was gone, the whole of my life shattered.
I had 2 things that needed my attention, though: parenting Isaac and pastoring the church in Iowa. I begged God for endurance as hope was out of the question. I listened to my mom’s anguished cry, “don’t let yourself get bitter” and prayed my anger would subside as the healing began. If there was to be healing. In the very moment, I was unsure. I clung to the promise found later in Romans 8: We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. I trusted I was loved by God, a gossamer thread. What good could come out of this terrible tragedy was a mystery, at least to me and certainly to 13 year old Isaac.
I sat at the foot of the cross for a long time until some dear family and friends gathered round with a promise of holding hope for me while I did the deep work of excavation of my soul. I had to discover two things: first, how deeply God held on to me even when I could not see, hear, touch or know this truth. Second, I had to see my own part in the demise of the marriage, recognizing, once again, my own sinfulness. It took the better part of 5 years.
This pilgrimage of pain is common in our lives, you have your stories too. It is not a formula for survival, ‘just follow this 4 step plan and you will be well’. Rather it is the reflection of one who has come out the other side, long enough out of pain to behold the presence of God when you thought He had turned away. And we do know folk who have walked away from faith because the hurt overwhelmed any resources they had, believing in love and hope and grace just a mean joke played by religion.
Let me suggest something to you, a practice. Read this passage at least 3 times out loud in one day, BUT change the plurals ‘we, our’ to I, me, my’. I did this a number of times this week and I’ve got to tell you it transformed how I understand the whole thing, including suffering! It goes something like this:
Justified, given peace with God, love poured out, so that WHEN
Suffering, endurance, character, hope, 4 of a kind comes, we are embraced.
We are given standing before God through the work of Christ on the cross. The echoed question of Genesis 3: why did you leave your place of repose? Now you are with the snake! Is the fundamental recognition of our sinfulness, our bondage entwined with the fallenness of all of humanity. This is not about individual moral failures that modern Christians label sin, but it is recognition of what depravity actually looks like.
What we so often forget, or sublimate, is our deep capacity for self-centeredness, that crafty ability to rationalize our desires, without restraint or discipline. Our bondage blinds us to this fundamental need of salvation. But that doesn’t stop God from acting! At the right time, Christ died for us, to give us status before God.
As Karl Barth, a mid-20th century theologian, suggests: “there is a wonderful paradox of justification: by justification we are what we are not.”
Therefore, since I am justified by faith, I have peace with God through Christ.
Christ’s grace gives me standing. I boast of hope, hope in sharing the Shekinah, God’s glory. Endurance in suffering produces character and character produces hope, a formula registered in the heart of God. God proves Her love for me, for while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me. I am justified. The Holy Spirit becomes my tutor of spiritual discipline, this deep lesson - to wait, a kind of self-mastery in the midst of such pain and turmoil, the ‘thousand natural shocks’ of life, as its been said. It means the angle in which I gaze upon life, my perspective as it were, is radically changed by this radical grace. I am not alone, I am not alone, a mantra repeated in the soul of my body.
From this well-spring of grace, comes the motivation for all relationships to be lived in the light of this sacrificial love. Our first lesson? We cannot earn God’s love. Our second? We cannot earn another’s love either. The psychology of attraction is complex but the commitment to love another, with all their defects and foibles present and accounted for, is always a gift. We have to continuously set aside our judgments of one another, the list of failures and short-comings burned in the fireplace of endurance and forgiveness. It is from one sinner to another, this free love. Remember? While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. All of us. So we set our will to love, our intimate partners, our congregation members, our neighbors, family, friends, enemies, the world. We are called to mimic Christ, even with our own shortcomings that hinder our best expressions sometimes.
But it is this rich vein of personal identity, IN CHRIST we are forgiven, that grounds HIs Presence in our bloody, breathing humanity. Openness to others, empathy, compassion, generosity, infuses our minds and hearts for we are filled up with what we call grace. This is what brings us to life, again and again, like the dawning of Spring, the buds of the magnolia whisper love as we walk by. God’s love is poured into us and we need it! We need lots of it! It is the water of our lives, this well-spring that never runs dry. No matter what.
And we know this. This is not a do-it-yourself project for Pinterest or Instagram, rather it is a do it together project of grace. We build the scaffolding of community through our prayers, worship, laughter, tears, music, even softball.
This is the good news of the gospel, In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.
The Liberating King has set us free from our bondage to the snake and all his shame, and sets our feet on solid ground. Amen