Come Alive: Alive to the Divine

Sermon Delivered at The Local Church
January 19, 2025
Scripture: Psalm 1; Matthew 6:5–13

I want to begin this morning with a quotation. It's from the 20th-century Christian mystic and theologian Howard Thurman. In his work, Meditations of the Heart, he writes this:

How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one's self pass by! The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic; our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences, while something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull. With full intensity we seek, ere the quiet passes, a fresh sense of order in our living; a direction, a strong sure purpose that will structure our confusion and bring meaning in our chaos. We look at ourselves in this waiting moment—the kinds of people we are. The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives?—what are the motives that order our days? What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go? Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused? For what end do we make sacrifices? Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life? What do I hate most in life and to what am I true? Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment. As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind—A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear. It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered, our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round with the peace of the Eternal in our step. How good it is to center down!

How good it is to "center down"—to intentionally pause, quiet our minds, and reconnect with the divine. This practice of stillness is our theme for the morning. But before we explore it further, let me back up a bit.

A little over a month ago, I was talking with my friend and mentor, Neil. We talk a couple of times each month, and I was doing what I often do in those conversations—sharing about the church, reflecting on how things are going, dreaming, and praying together about what might be next. I was telling him about our Christmas Eve plans, how excited I was to be back at the barn, and how worried I was that no one would come. But when it came time to talk about what the new year would bring, what good news you might need to hear in 2025—what good news I might need, I was coming up empty. Sometimes, the road ahead is clear. This was not one of those times.

But that's when Neil left a little silence—as he so often does. It's such a gift. And he said, "You know, I've been reading this book about Howard Thurman." And, I'm not kidding, the moment he said that, a voice within me said, "That's it." I didn't know what it would look like, but I felt something. A nudge to learn more. To become acquainted with his thoughts and ideas and contributions.

And so I did. When I got off the phone, I started reading everything I could get my hands on. Since my time in Divinity School, I'd had a cursory knowledge of Howard Thurman—but not much more. I knew he was a Christian mystic and a theologian. I knew he'd written a book called Jesus and the Disinherited. I knew he was someone I should know—and that was about all I knew.

But the more I learned about him, the more I read his own words, and the more I considered our present moment—one in which so much can feel heavy and uncertain and when perhaps the temptation is to disengage or retreat or bury our heads in the sand—I came to believe that Howard Thurman's words and witness are precisely those we need to hear right now. That's what Spirit had been telling me. Because amidst all of this, when we might want to numb the pain, surrender to distraction, and run as fast we can in the opposite direction, the particular witness of Howard Thurman and the invitation of Jesus is decidedly different.

Here, in Howard Thurman's own words, is that invitation—one of his most famous quotations:

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is more people who have come alive."

A Series on What the World Needs

So this morning, we're introducing a brand new sermon series on hope, healing, and purpose—rooted in scripture and inspired by the word and witness of Howard Thurman. It's called Come Alive: A Series on What the World Needs.

Each week in this series, we'll come alive to a different dimension of our faith that, by God's grace, will empower and equip us to become a people who've come alive for the sake of God's world.

This week, we're coming "Alive to the Divine."

Before Howard Thurman served as the very first Dean of Rankin Chapel at Howard University in 1931 or traveled to India to study nonviolence under Mahatma Gandhi in 1934, before he cofounded the intentionally interracial Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco in 1944, before he'd become a friend of Martin Luther King, Sr. and mentor to his son, before he'd authored twenty-one books, Howard Thurman was just boy in the Jim Crow South—Daytona Beach, Florida—born in 1899.

For Thurman and his family and other people of color like him—though slavery had officially ended, the prejudice and bigotry remained. This came through in sermons preached. In the fear of violence. In the presence of the KKK. In the continued segregation and name-calling that worked so hard to rid him of his sacred worth. But his grandmother, Nancy Ambrose, who instilled in him a deep, abiding faith, told the truth. She loved to tell the story of a preacher who led a yearly service on the plantation where she worked, and the preacher would end his sermons with, "You are not slaves... You're God's children." Howard grew up with that message ringing in his ears.

And yet, those voices and narratives of racism and hatred persisted day by day in the Jim Crow South. He lived in fear that he'd be the next to be beaten—or that someone close to him might. And so he sought refuge where he could. And for young Howard Thurman, that place of connection was in nature. Throughout his entire life, Thurman had an abiding love of the natural world—believing it to be a sacred place of retreat and recalibration with God. In particular, that connection began at an oak tree at his home in Daytona Beach. This was his place of refuge. This was his place of reconnection. Howard Thurman would later write this about that oak tree:

"When the storms blew, the branches of the large oak tree in our backyard would snap and fall. But the topmost branches of the oak tree would sway, giving way just enough to save themselves from snapping loose. I needed the strength of that tree, and, like it, I wanted to hold my ground. Eventually, I discovered that the oak tree and I had a unique relationship. I could sit, my back against its trunk, and feel the same peace that would come to me in my bed at night. I could reach down in the quiet places of my spirit, take out my bruises and my joys, unfold them, and talk about them. I could talk aloud to the oak tree and know that I was understood. It, too, was a part of my reality, like the woods, the night, and the pounding surf, my earliest companions, giving me space."

Here, Howard Thurman began practicing what he'd later call "centering down." It was here at this large oak tree—his sacred space—in prayer, in quiet, in meditation, where he could reconnect with the God his grandmother had told him about—where he could still his soul amidst a world seemingly in chaos, where he could turn down the volume of the voices that tried to reinforce a second-class status or rob him of his innocence and steal his joy, where he could name his hurts and hopes and be met by the God who'd hold it all—and hold him, too.

When I hear the psalm that was read this morning—the first of 150 from the Psalms, the prayer book of the Bible, I can't help but picture Howard Thurman.

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or take the path that sinners tread or sit in the seat of scoffers, but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper. (Psalm 1:1–3)

Here he was, like a tree planted by a stream of water. Finding his place. Returning to the divine. Centering down. And this was the beginning of a lifelong practice of stillness, contemplation, and prayer. Silence, for Thurman, was what he'd describe as the door to God.

But of course, Howard Thurman didn't pioneer this practice. In fact, when we look to scripture, we see Jesus teaching us much the same—and as a follower of Jesus, it makes sense that this would be a critical part of Howard Thurman's life of faith.

From the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's gospel, Jesus is teaching what a life of following him looks like. This is where the Lord's Prayer comes from. But for our purposes this morning, I want us to notice that sixth verse:

But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:6)

In the original Greek, the word for "room" is tameion which, more precisely translated, means "inner chamber" or "secret chamber." Another rendering is "the inner room for you."

When we consider the layout of first-century Galilean homes, we quickly realize Jesus isn't talking about literal private rooms in a residence. That's because this isn't how those homes were constructed. There were no private rooms or inner rooms. That wasn't a thing.

And so, taken together, we discover that when Jesus instructs his disciples "to go into your room," he's inviting them to go into the inner room of themselves. To look inward wherein they might discover the presence of God within—apart from the chatter, the noise, the over-identification with ego, the fears—and instead "center down" and return to the source of love.

Jesus's Example

And when we look to Jesus in the gospels, we find that Jesus doesn't just talk the talk. He walks the walk. Again and again and again, we find Jesus modeling this—retreating, encountering refuge, finding himself in his own inner room. Here are just a few examples:

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. (Mark 1:35)

But now more than ever the word about Jesus spread abroad; many crowds were gathering to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. Meanwhile, he would slip away to deserted places and pray. (Luke 5:15-16)

Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. (Luke 6:12)

And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone... (Matthew 14:23)

If we have eyes to see it, a pattern emerges: Jesus consistently moves between engagement and retreat, between public ministry and private prayer. And this isn't coincidental. This rhythm of retreat and return is the heartbeat of his ministry. Because here's the thing—and I cannot emphasize this enough: For Jesus, this prayer, this contemplation, this time communing with God—it wasn't for its own sake. It wasn't just something that he had to do.

Instead, for Jesus, in his regular times of prayer, when we find him about this inner work of prayer and contemplation, it was here where he could align his will with that of the Father. He could renew that relationship—refill his cup, center down. He could find his grounding and cultivate the resolve that further propelled him back into his vital work in the world. This time of prayer is like an inhale—preparing him for the exhale of feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, speaking truth to power, and bringing the marginalized into belonging.

And we might wonder, in fact, if Jesus calls us to this inner work—this pause, this centering down—because when we reconnect with the divine, when the inner critic is stilled, when we come home to the spark of the divine within, we're much better able to love our enemies, turn the other cheek, forgive seventy times seven times, cease our striving, and give ourselves over to the God's desire for us and for the world.

Our inner work has bearing on our outer posture. Howard Thurman believed as much:

"In the quietness of this place, surrounded by the all-pervading Presence of God, my heart whispers: Keep fresh before me the moments of my High Resolve, that in fair weather or in foul, in good times or in tempests, in the days when the darkness and the foe are nameless or familiar, I may not forget that to which my life is committed."

The bottom line we see in the life of Jesus and the witness of Howard Thurman is this: We cannot faithfully be on the way of Jesus and be in attunement with God's desire for us and the world without the pause. We will not be ready for the sacred action this world requires of us without spending time in that inner room. We can not fully come alive without coming alive fully to the divine.

As those who seek to follow Jesus, how are we doing? And I know that for many of us, this idea of contemplative prayer or "centering down" might feel foreign—maybe even a bit woo-woo. Perhaps you've tried to meditate before, and your mind just races, or maybe the thought of sitting in silence makes you want to run in the other direction. I get it. You're not alone in that.

From the time our feet hit the floor in the morning—many of us already feel behind—and it doesn't stop until our heads hit the pillow at night. It's a grind. We're on all day—back-to-back meetings, notifications lighting up our phones, texts, and emails well into the night—all the while, we spend what downtime we can find by scrolling Instagram or being bombarded with headline after headline that keeps us disoriented and distracted. And on top of that, many of us are doing it all while the anxiety festers, while trying to keep the existential dread at bay, while the relentless inner chatter of shame and "should haves" plays on a persistent loop.

Whether you feel some or all of this, you're not alone. In fact, neuroscientists tell us that many of us are living with our brains in constant fight or flight mode—leaving us anxious, disconnected, and depleted, unable to bring our best to our relationships, our work, our families, activism, our world. And it's not getting better on its own.

But here's some good news. Those same neuroscientists are discovering something that Thurman knew intuitively: you don't have to be a master of meditation or spend hours in silence for this to work. Even just a few minutes per day of centering down—whether through scripture reading, silence, contemplation, meditation, or prayer—actually begins to rewire our brains.

And remember that racing mind we talked about? What spiritual masters have taught for millennia, science is now confirming: Even with an active mind, these practices can get us out of that constant self-preserving fight-or-flight state, help better regulate our emotions, decrease stress, lead to greater awareness of our inner and outer worlds, and actually help us respond with greater intentionality to whatever comes our way.

And this is why we need the pause. In a world that leaves us anxious and fragmented, God offers us relationship—one that returns us to ourselves and helps us see ourselves as God sees us. Even when our minds wander, even when the silence feels uncomfortable, even when we're not sure we're doing it right, God meets us there. Heals what's broken. Makes us whole. Helps us become fully alive. This is why we need to center down.

This weekend, across the country, we're celebrating the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The stories of Howard Thurman and the Rev. Dr. King are inextricably bound. That's, in part, why we're starting this series today. The work of Howard Thurman laid the theological foundations for the Civil Rights movement, and his time with Gandhi helped shape the movement's commitment to nonviolence. The Rev. Dr. King was even known to keep an early copy of Thurman's classic Jesus and the Disinherited with him as he traveled.

But one of Thurman's biographers recounts an amazing story of how early one morning in 1958, Howard Thurman felt something strange. He felt this nudge from the Holy Spirit—that's how in tune he was—that he was supposed to travel to New York for some reason. And so he does.

And when he gets there, he finds that the Rev. Dr. King had been stabbed at a bookstore where he was doing a book signing. He nearly died. And Thurman visits MLK in the hospital and essentially gives him the same advice he gave countless others—the same advice Jesus gives us—the same wisdom we're exploring today. He tells Dr. King to take advantage of this time he needs for recovery to engage in spiritual introspection—to meditate on his life and his purpose. He says if you don't, this movement will consume you, and it'll all be for naught. If you want it to continue and if you want it to succeed, you need to spend time doing the inner work. Only then can you move forward.

King would later send a letter to Howard Thurman that said:

"I am following your advice on the question."

He wrote that he often felt the need for Thurman's insight and the importance of spiritual contemplativeness. And the rest, as they say, is history—a testament to what can happen when we dare to center down.

As we gather this morning, we may feel all kinds of things. Like King in that hospital bed, we might be wondering what's next, feeling overwhelmed by the work ahead, unsure how to begin. But whether you want to bury your head in the sand, find yourselves on the frontlines, or somewhere in between, Thurman's wisdom rings true: There can be no outer witness without inner work. We can not fully come alive without coming alive fully to the divine.

Indeed, how good it is to center down.

In the name of the God who meets us in the silence, the Christ who shows us the way of retreat and return, and the Spirit in whom we come alive. Amen.