First Baptist Church of Asheville Podcast
Sermon: Our Global Kinship
Jesus is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. And how we need the Lord's powerful word. We've tried to use the most powerful words we could find this week. Catastrophic, unprecedented, unfathomable, unimaginable, staggering, biblical. But it seems to me none of these words are able to do quite the lifting that we've needed them to do. Helene has brought us again to our knees and to the end of words. Some of our friends and neighbors, friends of friends, neighbors of neighbors, sons and daughters, grandmothers and grandfathers have been swept away in a torrent. Some of us have seen terrible things. We don't know how many people have been taken. Words catching our throat as we try to explain to our loved ones who aren't here to see this and experience this. Entire communities have been swept away, pulverized. Swananoa. Chimney Rock. Marshall. Hot Springs. And dozens and dozens more. Her ears ring with the Blair of sirens and our bodies feel the thrum of the helicopters. Our eyes widen at the devastations that we see, our hearts break into a thousand people. We have no electricity and we have no water. Among other things. We may more fully convey our shock and our grief with stunned silence and tears and moans and cries, and this we must do, we can't pretend. We must lament, mourn, cry out, shed our tears and anger and protest and in grief. Words, what words? There are no words. What are words? Are there any words? But one, there's one word that rises up from this Hebrew's text like the son, kinship, siblings. For this reason, Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters saying, I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters in the midst of the congregation. I will praise you. Kinship. Kin. Kind. Kindness. In spite of what we can't bring to expression with words, God has come so close to us as to call us kin. And this is the good news for us today and that in life and in death, we are God's kindred. And this is the kindness of God for it was fitting that God for whom and through whom all things came into existence and bringing many children to glory should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. God has sent Jesus so that we would know and could be kin to God, the creator of all things. And now in the midst of devastation, our kindred are shining out to us and around us. I want to introduce you to some of the kin folk that we've met this week. Just as our supplies were dwindling on one of the several days ago, I don't know what day. Our atrium had become a way station of relief for our community and things were beginning to look just a little bit thin and all of a sudden a caravan arrived from Winston-Salem from one of our sister churches, First Baptist Church on 5th, Winston-Salem. Led by Emily Hull-Magishi and her crew brought what seemed like 12 Toyota Tacomas, Tundras, full of everything, everything. Friends from Clemson, relatives of my colleague Casey Callahan have been coming almost every day bringing things that many others have not brought and filling in these kinds of, they brought fuel. And we needed just the kind of cans they brought because I don't know how to siphon gas, but apparently there's like siphon guards now and if you punch through that first little metal plate, there's another one waiting for you. These guys had the kind that punched us through both, Kindred. I met BK, my next door neighbor, for years. I never met him. He lived in an apartment building across from the circle and I first met him. He was wearing a tie tie tie t-shirt and cooking at the grill and serving our neighborhood. We were all cooking everything we had before it followed. The next day he was out there in tie-dye socks. And a few days later he was here and he was on his way elsewhere, but he wanted to stop by and see us and bless us. And he was wearing, God bless him, a deaf leopard t-shirt. And as a child of the 80s it was just a comfort. Kindred. I don't remember, I guess it was yesterday, the day before. A couple showed up with a 12-passenger van full of, again, everything. I don't know how they found out about us, but they just came. They showed up. They started unloading and for an hour. It took us an hour to get everything out and I ran into them again in the hallway. I said, "By the way, what are your names?" And she said, she just kind of smiled, she said, "Meghan will." No last name. But Kindred. Samira Zubie. 28 years old. Swept away in her unit at Riverview Apartments on River's Edge Road near Tunnel Road and off into the Swannanoa. The rescuers were there. She couldn't get hold of the ropes. Her mother, Colette, said she was a creative spirit. Everybody loved her. She was so loving, everybody who knew her loved her. She was like a bright light in the room. Samira Zubie. A hundred. She is kin to us. She's kin to God. I don't know her. I don't know where she's from. I don't know what she believes, but it is our faith that when the scroll of time is rolled up and the great tribulation has come to an end, that God will have back what belongs to God and what has been taken from Colette and from Asheville and from all of us. Last year, last July, 16th, was flying back after Tommy died. The sun had risen over the mountains by then, and I was stunned by how the green of North Carolina across the eastern part of the state, the coastal plain, and then the Piedmont changed to an emerald green when we began our descent into these Appalachian mountains. And it took my breath away. It was emerald green. It was thick and lush, beautiful, gorgeous. It felt like I was landing in Eden. And on Friday afternoon when I drove down high 26, it looked like somebody had taken all the space paint and just spattered it across the masterwork. But there is hope and there's more good news this week about kinship. A Dr. Sarah Sallen reported that she had found a seed in an old storage unit in a university where she works in Jerusalem. They've carbon dated the seed to over a thousand years BC, so ancient. She planted the seed. Whatever could come of a thousand, two thousand, three thousand year old seed. And yet five weeks later, there was a sapling. The seed was from the Judean desert. She believes it is highly likely the source of the biblical sorry, the family of trees, from which we get frankincense and mer. The seed was two centimeters long when she planted it. It is now a tree. It now has bark. It now gives away resin. And from this resin comes a balm for gilead. There is a balm in gilead. And I want you all to know that there stands a tree in the midst of the city, akin to the tree that is destined for all of us in the new Jerusalem. And its leaves are for the healing of the peoples.