“The Journey of Grace”

Psalm 139:1-12 and Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/29/23

¹ O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
³ You search out my path and my lying down
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue,
    O Lord, you know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is so high that I cannot attain it.

⁷ Where can I go from your spirit?
    Or where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
⁹ If I take the wings of the morning
    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
    and night wraps itself around me,”
¹² even the darkness is not dark to you;
    the night is as bright as the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

(Psalm 139:1-12 – NRSV)

What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? ² For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. ³ For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” ⁴ Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. ⁵ But to one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.

¹³ For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴ For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. ¹⁵ For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there transgression.

¹⁶ For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (who is the father of all of us, ¹⁷ as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”), in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. (Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 – NRSV)

         I’ve said this before, but Paul often comes across as if he’s trying to win an argument rather than to share a timeless mystery. And when I read some of Paul’s densest and most convoluted passages, something in me recoils. I feel like I’m back in high school physics—a subject I never grasped and was able to flunk with such efficiency as to make failure look, well, effortless.

Over the years, I’ve learned that, when reading Paul, it helps to step back, as if viewing a pointillist or impressionist painting in which the individual dots or brush strokes reveal their secrets and their beauty only in relationship to the rest of the dots or brush strokes. Paul is using all those rhetorical twists and turns to say that God deals with humankind on the basis of grace. Grace is hard for human beings, though. It’s just too gracious, especially when we stand so close to the canvass that all we can see is the flaws in ourselves and others.

When standing back from Paul’s letters, and by that I mean not obsessing over each statement but looking at his work as a whole, we begin to hear him proclaiming that to profess faith in Jesus on the one hand, and then to qualify grace on the other almost inevitably leads to religious legalism. Paul’s own version of that legalism was his Pharisaism—his certainty that those who followed Jesus did not deserve a voice, or peace of mind, or even the right to live. So, he persecuted them until God intervened and made Paul a disciple of Jesus.

Paul understood that when one’s belonging in God must be proven or deserved, grace no longer refers to God’s radical gift of love. It refers to God merely withholding vengeance. That means we have to suppress God’s anger by regurgitating pious formulas. And if we have to activate God’s redemption—even if only by “accepting” it—we are saved by our action, not by God’s grace.

Now, Paul knows his audience. The Romans argue and debate, and Paul speaks that language. So, he uses complicated dialectic to engage his readers. What makes that tricky is that he’s trying to into invite them into a faith that has more in common with an artistic process than with constructing a winning argument. So, he invites them into the story of Abraham.

We referred to Abraham’s story just last week. And in that story, God tells Abraham, “Go.” And Abraham goes. He leaves his home trusting that God will guide him, accompany him, and meet him when he reaches his destination.

Even in the first century Abraham’s story was ancient, so Paul uses it as a kind of mural, a spiritual portrait. The apostle wants his readers to enter and experience the story the same way Abraham begins his journey—by faith.

When Paul speaks of Abraham’s faith being “reckoned as righteousness,” he’s not referring to a characteristic of law-abiding citizens. He’s talking about the spiritual gift of trust. While trust is a gift that cannot be earned, it does have to be learned. And practiced. Writing to Roman Christians, Paul is trying to motivate and empower them to share the stories of faith with other Romans. He wants them to say to their neighbors, Come, listen to this story about a man named Jesus. Enter it. Experience it. Trust it. There’s new life in it!

To be transformed by story rather than argument takes a different kind of openness. It takes the openness of faith.

“Faith,” says the writer of Hebrews, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) Then he, like Paul, recalls the ancient, archetypal stories of faith. In a kind of litany, he says:

“By faith, Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household…

“By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance…

“By faith, Isaac invoked blessings for the future on Jacob and Esau.

“By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God…

“By faith, the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land…” (Selected verses from Hebrews 11)

These stories story us toward an identity, purpose, and hope that formulas and arguments cannot convey.

During officer training, the most interesting discussions we have usually occur during our review of Church history. What makes us Christian is not the doctrines we profess, but the story we share. That story goes all the way back to Abraham. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all claim that story. And while each tradition takes a different trajectory, we all have to name and confess the errors and brutalities that our stories have committed and continue to commit in the name of God. Sadly, most errors and brutalities occur when we try to make righteousness a matter of principle and process instead of open-ended, love-actioned faith, that is, when we try to make faith a legalistic matter rather than God’s ongoing story of grace. 

When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus says, “‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, and…soul, and…mind…And ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Mt. 22:36-40)

Paul says the same thing to the Romans: “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder…steal…[or] covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love” says Paul, “is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:9-10)

Neither righteousness nor love can be proved through argument. They’re not academic courses to pass or fail. Because love and righteousness are about relationship, God stories us toward and into the journey of grace.

Over the centuries, the Church has, in many ways, retreated into the ways of gracelessness, the ways of meritocracy and imperial religion. That retreat has led to the church colluding with materialism and violent power. And nothing about that is consistent with the ways of Jesus.

Living by grace, dares us to commit ourselves to the unsentimental, action-oriented love that overcomes fear, that defies every institution and every voice that sows selfishness, suspicion, and division.

While our individual lives may often feel as insignificant as single dots or brush strokes on the canvas of Creation, when we live according to the ways of God’s expansive, welcoming, reconciling love, we participate in God’s power of resurrection already at work in the world. Along this path of pure grace, God is transforming all things into one. And on this pathway, righteousness weaves our garment. Joy and thanksgiving inspire our song. Compassion tells our story. And justice is the footprint we leave behind.

“And He Was Speechless”

Genesis 12:1-4a and Matthew 22:1-14

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/22/23

The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you. ² I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing.

³ I will bless those who bless you,
    those who curse you I will curse;
        all the families of the earth
            will be blessed because of you.”

⁴ Abram left just as the Lord told him.   (CEB)

I don’t really like Matthew’s rendering of the parable of the wedding banquet. I much prefer the kinder, gentler version in Luke 14. It helps, though, to understand two things about Matthew’s context. First is the wider context. Matthew is often called the gospel to the Jews, so one can imagine Matthew as a kind of updated version of the call to Abraham. God is telling Israel, Go, to new land! I’ll let you know when you get there. Second is the immediate context.

In Matthew 21, Jesus drives moneychangers and merchants out of the temple. Now, the people aren’t evil, but they have traded faithfulness to God for membership in an institution which has begun to exist for its own sake. That institution cannot fully carry out its call to be a blessing, a call that dates back to the call of Abraham. So, while Jesus is brimming with passion, he’s not motivated by anger or vengeance. His heart is breaking. And rather than saying, All you bad people get out, he’s saying, This is not who we are! We’re better than this!

         The morning after Jesus clears the temple, he curses a fig-less fig tree. That seems harsh, but a fig tree without figs is good only for shade, then maybe kindling and compost. Similarly, a spiritless spiritual community is nothing but a consumer of resources. Having abandoned its spiritual center and its prophetic voice, such a community has given up on mystery, holiness, and its for-the-sake-of-othersblessedness. 

         After cursing the fig tree, Jesus returns to the temple. Still upset, the leaders confront Jesus. They question his authority. And he tells them that tax collectors and prostitutes have a higher standing in God’s realm of grace than those who sell themselves to power by making temple finances more important than the people and their ministry. Then Jesus tells a parable in which a landowner sends his servants, and later his son to collect a harvest. After the workers murder the servants and the son, the landowner obliterates all the workers.

“Therefore,” says Jesus to the leaders of Israel, “I tell you that God’s kingdom will be taken away from you and will be given to a people who produce its fruit.” (Mt. 21:43)

The leaders want to arrest Jesus, but they fear the crowds who love him. Enslaved to their institutional power and privilege, they are speechless. Into that troubled silence, Jesus tells his next parable:

Jesus responded by speaking again in parables: ² “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding party for his son. ³ He sent his servants to call those invited to the wedding party. But they didn’t want to come. ⁴ Again he sent other servants and said to them, ‘Tell those who have been invited, “Look, the meal is all prepared. I’ve butchered the oxen and the fattened cattle. Now everything’s ready. Come to the wedding party!”’ ⁵ But they paid no attention and went away—some to their fields, others to their businesses. ⁶ The rest of them grabbed his servants, abused them, and killed them.

⁷ “The king was angry. He sent his soldiers to destroy those murderers and set their city on fire. ⁸ Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding party is prepared, but those who were invited weren’t worthy. ⁹ Therefore, go to the roads on the edge of town and invite everyone you find to the wedding party.’

¹⁰ “Then those servants went to the roads and gathered everyone they found, both evil and good. The wedding party was full of guests. ¹¹ Now when the king came in and saw the guests, he spotted a man who wasn’t wearing wedding clothes. ¹² He said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ But he was speechless. ¹³ Then the king said to his servants, ‘Tie his hands and feet and throw him out into the farthest darkness. People there will be weeping and grinding their teeth.’

¹⁴ “Many people are invited, but few people are chosen.” (CEB)

This parable and the stories preceding it unsettle me. And isn’t that the intent? The Pharisee within me cringes because the stories expose my own pettiness, self-righteousness, and laziness. The 21^st-century Christian in me rankles at all of that violence. The only part of me that tolerates these stories is that smug, first-world religionist within me who allows political and religious institutions to create in me suspicion, fear, and judgment of people I don’t understand and don’t want to understand.

I deal with that guy every day. He always hears Jesus agreeing with him. He assumes that God is as small, vindictive, and merciless as I can be. Like those who were invited to the wedding banquet, he makes light of the invitation. He’s more interested in looking busy in an office than he is in following Jesus in the world. Like a shark smelling blood, he enters the feeding frenzy of acrimony and insult where neighbors attack each other with weapons and with words—resentful, polarizing, Christ-crucifying words.

In the presence of that spiritless religionist, I lose my voice, and become a speechless wedding-crasher. Even when aware of the brokenness around me, I tell myself that I’m just trying, in trying times, to hold together a congregation of varied theological and political viewpoints. And that’s not a bad goal—unless all I’m really trying to do is hold onto affirming comments and an income. So, I spin my speechlessness as pastoral sensitivity. But whom does a speechless disciple really trust, worship, and serve?

The only time Jesus is speechless is when Pilate asks him if he’s the King of the Jews. Jesus says nothing because he’s already spoken with the Creation-transforming voice of his life.

         When the king in the parable confronts the man who has no robe, the man is “speechless.” He says nothing of gratitude to the king, no congratulations to the bride and groom. He says nothing to lament the short-sightedness of those who ignored the invitation. He says nothing about the injustice of all that God-denying revenge and murder. And no word of solidarity with the other guests.

Could it be that our wedding clothes are woven of words of prophetic, welcoming, and reconciling grace?

         Now listen, I’m not advocating for works righteousness. We do not have to earn our place at the banquet. The parable is about responding to the call to live as ones chosen and equipped to bear the tangible and audible fruits of a truth-telling faith. It’s about living as embodied speech.

         As a Trappist monk, Thomas Merton took a vow of silence, but his spirited life was all about speaking, all about doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. Out of his silence he rendered such fruitful speech, both lived and written, that his life and words continue to challenge and nurture people of faith today.

Whatever one’s particular gifts, and whatever the situation, speechlessness is not an option for disciples. Our words and actions are our figs, the fruit of our faithfulness. We claim our voice and speak not in order to receive God’s grace, but in bold and grateful response to having already received and experienced it. Speaking truth and justice to power is not easy, because power does not tolerate opposition, especially from prophetic voices driven by the love incarnated in Jesus.

Christ speech—patient, humble, honest, truth-telling, and yes, challenging speech—is both our robe of righteousness to wear and our cross to bear. As the late John Lewis said, it lands us in “good trouble.” Faithful disciples cry out to humankind, We are better than this. Let’s live our better selves!

         If all we want is a personal savior to get us into heaven, we’ll be satisfied with speechlessness, even in the face of injustice. And we’ll do far more to protect our comfortable religious institutions than to love the holy Mystery that is God. If Jesus is truly Lord of our lives and of our living, then we are more than an institution, more than this building. We are the living body of the living Christ.

Daily concerns and challenges can wear us down, but they’re also opportunities to remember that our true calling is among a humanity who has forgotten that we live in a good and beautiful Creation which is made real and lively by an inviting and welcoming Creator.

As followers of Jesus, our call is to go to “the roads on the edge of town” and invite everyone to God’s banquet, that great celebration where we find our true voice—a voice of gratitude, generosity, and justice-seeking love.

“Gateways of Grace”

Psalm 65 and Matthew 6:28-33

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/15/23

God of Zion, to you even silence is praise.
    Promises made to you are kept—
²     you listen to prayer—
    and all living things come to you.
³ When wrongdoings become too much for me,
    you forgive our sins.
⁴ How happy is the one you choose to bring close,
    the one who lives in your courtyards!
We are filled full by the goodness of your house,
    by the holiness of your temple.

⁵ In righteousness you answer us,
    by your awesome deeds,
    God of our salvation—
    you, who are the security
        of all the far edges of the earth,
        even the distant seas.
⁶     You establish the mountains by your strength;
    you are dressed in raw power.
⁷     You calm the roaring seas;
        calm the roaring waves,
        calm the noise of the nations.
⁸ Those who dwell on the far edges
        stand in awe of your acts.
    You make the gateways
        of morning and evening sing for joy.
⁹ You visit the earth and make it abundant,
    enriching it greatly
        by God’s stream, full of water.
You provide people with grain
    because that is what you’ve decided.
¹⁰ Drenching the earth’s furrows,
        leveling its ridges,
    you soften it with rain showers;
        you bless its growth.
¹¹ You crown the year with your goodness;
    your paths overflow with rich food.
¹² Even the desert pastures drip with it,
    and the hills are dressed in pure joy.
¹³ The meadowlands are covered with flocks,
    the valleys decked out in grain—
        they shout for joy;
        they break out in song!

         (Psalm 65 – CEB)

28And why do you worry about clothes? Notice how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. 29But I say to you that even Solomon in all of his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. 30If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, won’t God do much more for you, you people of weak faith?

31Therefore, don’t worry and say, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going to drink?’ or ‘What are we going to wear?’ 32Gentiles long for all these things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

33Instead, desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:28-33 – CEB)

         Late in these fall afternoons, as Marianne is shuffling pots and pans while cooking, or as I am shuffling pots and pans while washing dishes, one of us often hollers at the other from our west-facing living room. “Come look at this!” we say. When all the playful ingredients of physics come together just right, we stand at the window in awe of the brilliant fires of sunset.

         Sunrise and sunset happen every day. And some days the colors are more vivid and varied than others. Still, both sunset and sunrise can be hypnotizing wonders, experiences to enter rather than mere sights to behold.

So, with the psalmist we declare: “You make the gateways of the morning and the evening sing for joy.”

         To imagine sunrise and sunset as joyful gateways calls our attention to them as holy moments. And while their bright, lava-lamp magic isn’t a unique occurrence, each event is kind of like seeing a new painting by the same artist.

There’s never even a moment when those gateways are not singing for joy, because just as it’s always “five o’clock somewhere,” the sun is always rising somewhere and setting somewhere else. Even when it’s noon or midnight for us, at some far edge, someone stands at the gateway of the morning and someone else at the gateway of the evening. Like grace itself, these numinous gateways are a continuous presence on the earth.

         The psalmist’s reference to those who dwell on the far edges asks us to think not only of those who live far away, but those who lived before us, and those who lie many generations beyond us—citizens of a future we can’t imagine, but to whom we are responsible. How we live on this earth, the steps we take to treasure it and care for it right now, these are our shouts of joy and songs of praise. They’re signs of our love for ancestors, for neighbors, for descendants, and thus, for God.

          Praise is itself a kind of gateway. And while songs of thanksgiving can express human gratitude for God’s generosity, praise is about far more than the giddiness of getting or the happiness of having. Whether spoken or embodied, true praise acknowledges the limits of human understanding. The only certainty declared by praise is the incomprehensible fact of existence itself. How did we get here if not by some ineffable love? Beneath and beyond all the terrifying turmoil, life is a breathtaking wonder! Like music, awe is a universal language, and it opens portals to new ways of seeing the world, of knowing and being known, and of loving God.

         Water is another central symbol of Psalm 65—God’s stream, full of water.  And along with sunlight and earth, the holy flow of water creates the life-giving vibrancy and the life-sustaining abundance on which all things depend. When reading this psalm, one begins to see that the source of the earth’s life and liveliness doesn’t hover in the heavens but churns deep within the earth herself. The hills are dressed in pure joy, says the psalmist. The meadowlands are covered with flocks, the valleys decked out in grain—they shout for joy; they break out in song.

         The affirmations of sun and water, coastline and mountain, meadow and forest invite us to see God’s incarnate presence in the very earth from which all life arises and to which all life returns. 

         When we allow ourselves to embrace the Creation as Incarnation, how can we possibly allow ourselves to take the earth for granted? A megachurch pastor once declared that God “intended” for the earth to be a “disposable planet.”¹ It seems to me that the writer of Psalm 65 would weep and gnash his teeth at such ingratitude for and desecration of God’s immediate presence through the Creation. A disposable planet does not dress itself with flocks. It doesn’t deck itself with grain. It doesn’t shout and sing for joy. That pastor’s awelessness leads to more than poor stewardship. It becomes the cancer of selfish apathy that consumes the Creation by allowing us to turn blind eyes toward injustice, poverty, war, and humankind’s wanton abuse of the environment. The earth may have a life cycle, but if it’s disposable, then so are we. And no lives matter. And that is contrary to the witness of scripture.

         Psalm 65 presents a vision not unlike Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom in which“The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat…[and] They won’t hurt or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain. [And the] earth will surely be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, just as the water covers the sea.” (From Isaiah 11:6-9 – CEB)

The psalmist is convinced of the God-purposed goodness of the Creation, the very same goodness affirmed in the stories of Genesis 1 and 2, and reaffirmed in Revelation 21 with the prophecy of “a new heaven and a new earth.”

In no way is the psalmist unaware of the challenges to that vision or to the arguments that question the Creation’s fundamental goodness. He might be grieved by the horrific violence in the Middle East and in Ukraine right now, but he would not be surprised by it. That’s why confesses human iniquity and transgression. His song of praise is his impassioned Nonetheless. Psalm 65 is his declaration of faith that “God’s stream” will continue to flow and to bless to the earth. It’s also his vow to live in faithfulness to God who calms the roaring waves and the noise of the nations, and who redeems the Creation so that the earth may sing and shout for joy, again.

         Psalm 65 calls us to live, individually and corporately, as visible and tangible signs of God’s presence. When we pledge ourselves to lives of grateful praise, we can become gateways of grace, witnesses to God’s desire and power to fill deserts with rain, hopelessness with hope, and brokenness with wholeness.

As Christians reading this ancient Jewish text, we claim that Jesus is the unique incarnation of the same God incarnated in the Creation as a whole. As God Incarnate, Jesus enters the world as an expression of God’s own praise, of God’s own delight in and pledge to the Creation. As the body of Christ, then, we are called to be a place where every Friday finds its Sunday.

Today is the first Sunday of our stewardship month, and when we commit ourselves to God through a particular congregation, we pledge more than money. We pledge ourselves to living as gateways of grace. The praises we sing, the missions we do, the care we offer each other, the study, laughter, tears, and meals we share—all of this is praise.

         Whatever the constraints and challenges of any given moment, we are called and equipped to be a fertile field, an overflowing pasture, a meadow clothed in flocks, and a valley decked out with an abundance of grain. Even when the tumult around us is loud and violent, God calls and equips us to live in grateful wonder, to “shout and sing together for joy.”

¹https://theconversation.com/god-intended-it-as-a-disposable-planet-meet-the-us-pastor-preaching-climate-change-denial-147712

“Neither Death Nor Life”

Psalm 23 and Romans 8:26-39

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/1/23

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
²     He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters; 
³     he restores my soul. 
He leads me in right paths
    for his name’s sake.

⁴ Even though I walk through the darkest valley, 
    I fear no evil,
for you are with me;
    your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

⁵ You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
⁶ Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    my whole life long.

(Psalm 23 – NRSV)

²⁶ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. ²⁷ And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

²⁸ We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.  ³⁰ And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

³¹ What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³² He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³ Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.³⁴ Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. ³⁵ Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;
           we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:26-39 – NRSV)

         Every human community has its share of hurt to deal with. And while no one in this room is running from drone strikes or dying from malaria, none of us remain untouched by some kind of illness, loss, or anxiety.

         In Romans 8, Paul talks about the Spirit helping us when we are weary, and praying for us when our own words fail.

He talks about being known by God, about being predestined to bear the image of Christ.

         He talks about things working together for good whenever our actions are fueled by love for God.

         And when we embody God’s love, says Paul—that is, when we follow the path of humility, compassion, and justice for the oppressed—God stands with us in such a way that any who stand against us don’t stand a chance. Not in the long run.

         I know that Paul is writing to encourage new Christians who are suffering persecutions that we can’t imagine. Still, after reading the assurances of this chapter, it feels a little bit like listening to the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. Even when he says exactly what we want to hear, Paul can come across as a little pie-in-the-sky.

Then again, that’s not entirely fair to Paul.

         While some biblical passages do say that God protects the faithful from suffering, the overwhelming witness of scripture, and of life experience, exposes that idea as wishful thinking at best. And at worst it’s a futile attempt to protect and preserve a distorted and distorting image of God—the image of God as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

         Let’s go back to Paul’s promise. With the deep conviction, born of his own experiences of suffering and of causing suffering, he says that God stands faithfully with us and sees us through: “hardship…distress…persecution…famine…nakedness…peril…[and] sword.” And this very assurance itself declares the equally trustworthy promise that human beings will endure such trials. Regardless of God’s presence with us, regardless of our faithful intentions, and regardless of whether we think any given experience of suffering is deserved or undeserved, human existence includes suffering.

         While that sounds depressing, maybe even fatalistic, the gospel being revealed through Jesus does not allow us to associate faith and faithfulness with lives of perfect ease. And it seems to me that to suggest otherwise is to lead oneself and others into denial, and, ultimately, into violence, because the only way one can create the illusion of avoiding suffering is by causing others to suffer.

I’m not saying there’s a literal and eternal hell. But if there is, it’s not something we have to wait on. To do more than imagine hell: Twist greed into a virtue. Impugn the humanity and dignity of others. Cultivate division. Seek retribution. Do these things and a life of hellish misery will certainly follow, because the only way to do them is by denying the image of God within oneself and others.

Paul knows about such hell. As a former persecutor of Christians, he helped to create it. So, when he talks about being killed all day long and being accounted as sheep to be slaughtered, he is both commiserating with the current experience of the Roman Christians and confessing his own past sins. Then, Paul turns and declares hope and deliverance not just from the deep quagmire of suffering, but within it.

         “I am convinced,” he says, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation” can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

         I hear Paul saying that even in the midst of the worst that the world can throw at us, we can still love as we are loved. We can still love ourselves and others the way Jesus loves the Pharisees who harass him, the way he loves the disciples who abandon him, and the way Jesus loves even the soldiers who blindly follow the order to crucify him. That is the love from which we cannot be separated. 

         You and I, we are equal parts recipients and bearers of the love that is creating and redeeming the universe. And the point of Paul’s teaching, like the point of Jesus’ life itself, is that God calls us to be signs and demonstrations of God’s love in, with, and for a suffering creation. God intentionally makes us aware of suffering so that, as followers and imitators of Christ, we might enter that suffering with healing and redeeming love for everyone and everything that suffers.

         This Wednesday will mark the completion of my 13th year as pastor of Jonesborough Presbyterian Church. Over these years, I’ve witnessed you enflesh the gospel in countless ways. You have struggled and suffered with friends and loved ones as they have struggled and suffered. And you don’t withhold that blessing. You don’t make membership in this congregation a prerequisite for care. In love, you have stood in solidarity with neighbors in this community to proclaim that God’s unbounded love does not play favorites, that the household of grace welcomes all people. You have, as Paul also says to the Romans, rejoiced with those who rejoice and wept with those who weep. (Romans 12:15) And, with sighs too deep for words, you have prayed with and for each other.

         Even now, you are at work declaring the relentless love of God in Christ. And I stand in grateful awe of all of that.

         Now, our work is never perfectly done, nor is it ever complete. God continually calls us into a world, a culture, and a denomination that are always changing, always growing and becoming. Our challenge is to allow the ever-present, ever-praying Spirit to lead us into ever more daring and ever more vivid expressions of God’s relentless love for the Creation.

         So, even as we affirm ourselves, let’s ask ourselves: Are there people in our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our church, our families for whom we just cannot muster the energy to love with the kind of love with which we are loved? The answer to that question is always Yes. And yet, even now, with deep, wordless sighs, the Spirit is calling us to and equipping us for a love we may not be able to receive or offer right now. We may not even be able to conceive of it.

         If that’s true for any of us, we can take heart. Christ’s table of grace and renewal is set before us this morning. And at his table, he feeds us with his own embodied holiness, with his own prayerful Spirit, and with the very energy and courage that animated his own life. He feeds us with all of that so that we may receive and share the love of God—the love from which we cannot, under any circumstance, be separated.

“Scandalous Grace”

Psalm 105:1-2, 37-45 and Matthew 20:1-16

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/24/23

         

Give thanks to the Lord;
    call upon his name;
    make his deeds known to all people!
² Sing to God;
    sing praises to the Lord;
    dwell on all his wondrous works!

Then God brought Israel out, filled with silver and gold;
    not one of its tribes stumbled.
³⁸ Egypt celebrated when they left,
    because the dread of Israel had come upon them.

³⁹ God spread out clouds as a covering;
    gave lightning to provide light at night.
⁴⁰ The people asked, and God brought quail;
    God filled them full with food from heaven.
⁴¹ God opened the rock and out gushed water—
    flowing like a river through the desert!
⁴² Because God remembered his holy promise
    to Abraham his servant,
⁴³     God brought his people out with rejoicing,
    his chosen ones with songs of joy.
⁴⁴ God gave them the lands of other nations;
    they inherited the wealth of many peoples—
⁴⁵         all so that they would keep his laws
        and observe his instructions.

(Psalm 105:1-2, 37-45 – CEB)

“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. ² After he agreed with the workers to pay them a denarion, he sent them into his vineyard.

³ “Then he went out around nine in the morning and saw others standing around the marketplace doing nothing.⁴ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I’ll pay you whatever is right.’ ⁵ And they went.

“Again around noon and then at three in the afternoon, he did the same thing. ⁶ Around five in the afternoon he went and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you just standing around here doing nothing all day long?’

⁷ “‘Because nobody has hired us,’ they replied.

“He responded, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

⁸ “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the workers and give them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and moving on finally to the first.’ ⁹ When those who were hired at five in the afternoon came, each one received a denarion.¹⁰ Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more. But each of them also received a denarion. ¹¹ When they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, ¹² ‘These who were hired last worked one hour, and they received the same pay as we did even though we had to work the whole day in the hot sun.’

¹³ “But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I did you no wrong. Didn’t I agree to pay you a denarion? ¹⁴ Take what belongs to you and go. I want to give to this one who was hired last the same as I give to you. ¹⁵ Don’t I have the right to do what I want with what belongs to me? Or are you resentful because I’m generous?’

¹⁶ So those who are last will be first. And those who are first will be last.”                 (Matthew 20:1-16 – CEB)

In Genesis, God tells Abram, “I will make of you a great nation and will bless you…[and] all the families of the earth will be blessed because of you.” (Genesis 12:2a, 3b)

Unlike other nations, though, this new, blessed to be a blessing nation will linger through the ages not because of glorious cities and powerful armies. This nation-within-the-nations identifies itself by doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. (Micah 6:8) Israel’s defining characteristics derive from her signature innovation—monotheism. The people proclaim Yahweh, the Holy Onewho creates, sustains, and redeems, all things, everywhere.

         In the experience of the Exodus, and in the giving of the law, we see only the preliminary markings of Israel’s foundation. While under construction, the Hebrews learn to trust and follow God—no matter where they are, no matter their joys or sufferings. And when the people do suffer, God sends prophets to call them back to the ways of hesed—the ways of steadfast love. To be restored, say the prophets, care for those who cannot care for themselves. Work for and demand justice from the powerful and the privileged. Embody humility, hospitality, gratitude, and generosity.

Faithfulness to God becomes complicated, though. And many generations into Israel’s existence, when she is still barely a toddler, God, through Isaiah, says, I understand how difficult this is for you, so remember, “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my” thoughts and ways higher than yours. (Isaiah 55:9)

When Jesus shows up, he reminds us that God’s creation of the new community continues to be a work in progress. With one disruptive teaching after another, Jesus pushes the spiritual, social, economic, and political ethics of hesed to a whole new level. And he reveals that God is, frankly, not entirely fair. And yet it’s God’s lack of fairness that reveals God’s unfathomable grace.

In the parable of the workers in the vineyard, those who worked only the last hour receive the same pay as those who worked all day. And like the Hebrews grumbling in the wilderness, those who worked all day grumble at the vineyard owner’s scandalous generosity. When confronted with pure grace, a heart driven by ego and narrow dualism will protest saying, That’s not fair!

A preaching professor in seminary began a sermon one time by saying he had some bad news and some good news. The bad news was that God isn’t fair. The good news was that God isn’t fair.

         It seems to me that the grumbling of the workers sums up human sin. Human beings have always been obsessed with measuring the value of others over against the value we place on ourselves or our groups. And while it is harmful to under-value ourselves, God compels us to accept as equals even those people, whoever they are. And this can perplex the dual mind with its black-white, us-them mentality. Indeed, it can become as offensive as the Hebrews’ suggestion that one God, their God, created and watches over the whole world.

All around that world today, people cry out in anguish, desperate to be recognized as fully human. And their cries are often met with the grumblings of those who don’t understand, and who feel threatened by calls for equality and action for justice.

I feel the anger and grief of those whose humanity has been ignored and attacked. And as a follower of Jesus, I try to stand in solidarity with them because they are children of God who bear God’s image. I am no more valuable than someone languishing in the slums of Baltimore or Bangladesh, or locked up in prison. And when I act as if my life matters more than theirs, I’m a worker grumbling at the end of the day because I don’t want to imagine them as equals before God. And when I’m honest, I have to admit that because of the skin, family, and culture into which I was born, I received more than a day’s wage before I even showed up! So, when I grumble, my own condemnation lies in my grumbling. When I grumble, I reject the grace of God who does not need my permission to love and to value all that God has created. That’s when God says to me, Allen, “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with what belongs to me? Or are you resentful because I’m generous?”

Now—I also feel angry and grieved when cries for equality and justice turn violent. Violence redeems nothing. That’s the very point of the cross in the Christian faith. The Church has too-often claimed that God was so perplexed and offended by human sin that if there were to be heaven at all, there had to be hell to pay. Someone had to die. So, God sacrificed Jesus to satisfy God’s fury and to restore God’s ability to love.

As I’ve said many times: Any god who requires violence to be restored to wholeness is a golden calf, an idol made in our image. The cross does not reveal God’s wrath in the face of human sin. The cross reveals human frailty when it meets the height, and depth, and breadth of God’s grace. God did not demand Jesus’ death. We did. We killed Jesus because he was just too good to be true.

Jesus loves beyond the boundaries set by tradition. He offers a full day’s wage to last-hour hires. And yet, because God’s grace has no end, even our brutal violence against God Incarnate, does not condemn us forever. Friday is not the last word. Sunday is. Sunday is also the first word of new beginnings. Sunday lays new foundations. New promises. New hope.

 “If I were to name the Christian religion,” says Richard Rohr, “I would probably call it ‘The Way of the Wound.’ Jesus agrees to be the Wounded One, and…we…come to God not through our strength but through our weakness.”¹

The parable of the workers in the vineyard proclaims God’s incomprehensible grace. And in doing so, it exposes human weakness. It exposes our self-consuming appetite to see ourselves as superior to others. And even that is grace because before grace saves us, it scandalizes us into wakefulness.

Before grace can make a difference in our lives, we have to admit our aversion to grace. We confess our religious devotion to things like materialism, individualism, and retribution. And we must acknowledge the various Christ-denying supremacies of race, status, and culture to which that religion leads. When we surrender to the scandal of grace, we begin to recognize and celebrate God’s Sunday love for all people and all Creation.

I love all of you, says Jesus. There is no black or white, rich or poor, male or female. So, receive my love. Receive it for the sake of others as well as for your own sake. It comes to you by grace alone.

And when latecomers receive what you have received, celebrate with them. For you, as a nation-within-the-nations, are a sign of God’s household of grace.

And when you just can’t comprehend God’s grace, says Jesus, share it. The best way to understand that there is enough for everyone is by giving something away—especially to those who don’t seem to deserve it­.

¹https://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/49CA59C9E571AF9C2540EF23F30FEDED/A2AE94689C106E613D3F7F9A22A6E02E

“To Forgive as We Are Forgiven”

Psalm 103:1-14 and Matthew 18:21-35

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/17/23

Let my whole being bless the Lord!
    Let everything inside me bless his holy name!
² Let my whole being bless the Lord
    and never forget all his good deeds:
³     how God forgives all your sins,
    heals all your sickness,
⁴     saves your life from the pit,
    crowns you with faithful love and compassion,
⁵     and satisfies you with plenty of good things
        so that your youth is made fresh like an eagle’s.

⁶ The Lord works righteousness;
    does justice for all who are oppressed.
⁷ God made his ways known to Moses;
    made his deeds known to the Israelites.
⁸ The Lord is compassionate and merciful,
    very patient, and full of faithful love.
⁹ God won’t always play the judge;
    he won’t be angry forever.
¹⁰ He doesn’t deal with us according to our sin
    or repay us according to our wrongdoing,
¹¹     because as high as heaven is above the earth,
    that’s how large God’s faithful love is for those who honor him.
¹² As far as east is from west—
    that’s how far God has removed our sin from us.
¹³ Like a parent feels compassion for their children—
    that’s how the Lord feels compassion for those who honor him.
¹⁴ Because God knows how we’re made,
    God remembers we’re just dust.

(Psalm 103:1-14 – CEB)

²¹ Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Should I forgive as many as seven times?”

²² Jesus said, “Not just seven times, but rather as many as seventy-seven times. ²³ Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. ²⁴ When he began to settle accounts, they brought to him a servant who owed him ten thousand bags of gold. ²⁵ Because the servant didn’t have enough to pay it back, the master ordered that he should be sold, along with his wife and children and everything he had, and that the proceeds should be used as payment. ²⁶ But the servant fell down, kneeled before him, and said, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’ ²⁷ The master had compassion on that servant, released him, and forgave the loan.

²⁸ “When that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred coins. He grabbed him around the throat and said, ‘Pay me back what you owe me.’

²⁹ “Then his fellow servant fell down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’ ³⁰ But he refused. Instead, he threw him into prison until he paid back his debt.

³¹ “When his fellow servants saw what happened, they were deeply offended. They came and told their master all that happened. ³² His master called the first servant and said, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you appealed to me. ³³ Shouldn’t you also have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ ³⁴ His master was furious and handed him over to the guard responsible for punishing prisoners, until he had paid the whole debt.

³⁵ “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you if you don’t forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

(Matthew 18:21-35 – CEB)

         Peter is always pushing boundaries, always trying to wedge his will into Jesus’ teachings. In today’s passage, he wants some clarification on this whole business of forgiveness. How often should we forgive? he asks. As many as seven times?

         No, says Jesus, not seven times, but seventy-seven times, or—according to some translations—seventy times seven. Even with my fourth-grade aptitude in math, I know that equals 490.

One has to imagine Peter standing there in disbelief saying, What?! Forgive that lying, cheating, good-for-nothing four-hundred-ninety times?!

Forgiving the same person nearly five hundred times seems like too much to ask, doesn’t it? Besides, when does extending that much grace make you a doormat or even an enabler?

Into that moment of mystified resentment Jesus launches into the distressing parable of the unforgiving servant. It’s distressing because Jesus uses hyperbole to jar his listeners into re-imagining the role of faith in the world.

God’s household, says Jesus, is like a servant who owes his master 10,000 bags of gold. Where the Common English Bible uses “bags of gold,” the NRSV uses “talents.” And while there’s no consensus on what that figure equals in contemporary terms, a conservative appraisal suggests that 10,000 talents represent more than a hundred thousand years of a laborer’s wages. So, when Jesus tells his story and asks his hearers to imagine a servant asking for a little more time to come up with the money, he’s not being playful. He’s being preposterous. It’s impossible for a servant to pay off a debt of more than 3 billion dollars. This is Jesus’ way of saying that this story is about more than money.

Jesus is also gently chiding Peter for trying to keep accounts. To keep track of how many times who forgives whom is to avoid forgiveness, or to use it as some kind of leverage over other people. It’s like saying: Don’t forget, I forgave you when you were unkind to me, or failed to have my back, or to thank me. So, you owe me!

If that’s how Peter understands forgiveness, then neither seven times, nor seventy-seven times, nor four-hundred-ninety times will ever be enough, because he is keeping score. He will always be the servant who begs for mercy but refuses to grant it.

There’s a cliché we’re all probably familiar with: Forgive-and-forget. Forgive-and-forget works for spilled milk, or for an oversight by your bridge partner, or for buying mint chocolate chip ice cream instead of the butter pecan your spouse asked for.

Forgive-and-forget does not, however, apply to matters that cause genuine harm and suffering. Even true forgiveness does not forget intentional betrayal or injury. Indeed, true forgiveness remembers what caused the suffering. True forgiveness looks the offender in the eye and says, What happened should not have happened. It caused me great suffering, and neither you nor I will forget it. Nor should we. While our relationship will be different from now on because of what happened, we have been through it together. So, I choose not allow that moment, nor its memory, to limit my joy or to control my future. I will not allow it to reduce me to something less than I am in Christ. Will you walk with me through this death-shadowed valley and into new light and new life?

Forgiveness is not fulfilled by simply declaring forgiveness any more than a marriage is fulfilled by saying “I do.” To forgive is to ask the other person to join us on a journey toward new relationship and new wholeness. That person may not come with us. They may not even acknowledge a need to be forgiven. And when that’s the case, forgiveness becomes that much harder, and that much more important. To withhold forgiveness until it is earned, or to use it as a self-aggrandizing gesture, is to keep score. And that means we’re not settling debts; we’re racking them up.

The same is true when we find ourselves needing to confess to someone else and to ask their forgiveness. In confession, we acknowledge to another that our decisions and actions have caused suffering. That person may not be ready to forgive, but just as we can begin the journey of forgiving another, we can also begin the journey of being forgiven.

Whether forgiving or being forgiven, when humbly offered, the act of forgiveness releases us from the toxic burdens of resentment and vengeance. It banishes the demons of judgment. So, whether given or received, forgiveness is nothing less than the way of resurrection.

Because forgiveness is a way of life that requires practice, and because it’s a cross to bear, maybe it’s helpful to try learn to forgive ourselves first, to confess our own selfish judgments and fears, and to offer grace to ourselves. To forgive as we are forgiven is to love as we are loved.

I think Jesus refers to self-forgiveness when he speaks of forgiving “from the heart.” Our unforgiven selves can’t be truly grateful for the grace God shows to us, nor can we share that grace with others.

It seems to me, then, that in Jesus’ parable, the so-called master doesn’t represent God—in fact, not at all. He represents forgiveness itself. When shared, forgiveness has the power to set us free from crushing imbalance. It has the power to give us new life. And when withheld, it has the power to burden us, to imprison us in the bitterness and hopelessness of score-keeping.

Having said that, forgiveness does not allow wrong-doing to continue just because we have found the strength to forgive. While Jesus forgives unilaterally and completely, he does not ignore or excuse actions that require forgiveness. The whole point of the Incarnation is that, in Jesus, God enters a world of resentment and retribution to demonstrate love and to do justice because allowing us to continue living and acting destructively is neither loving nor just.

There’s one dynamic in today’s parable that never gets attention. What happens to the relationship between the unforgiving servant and those who report his un-forgiveness? While their actions help to end one person’s injustice, they also deliver that person into a place where he will never again experience forgiveness. Can such relationships be redeemed?

         The parable may have a preposterous set-up, but that unanswered question is real and relevant. How can we address our own unresolved issues of confession, repentance, and forgiveness? Where will we find the strength and grace to forgive as we are forgiven? How will we live the parables of our own lives so that we witness faithfully to the restorative love and justice of God in Christ?

As followers of Jesus, our demonstration of love and our work for justice begins in our own hearts where we forgive ourselves. Then, it moves out to our own families and communities where we forgive each other.

And from there, we move even further, with our hands and feet, hearts and tongues, eyes and ears—all in grateful witness to God’s redeeming love and restorative justice in and for all Creation.

“Here I Am! Who Am I?”

Exodus 3:1-15

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/10/23

         In the book of Exodus, Pharaoh is more than one particular Egyptian ruler. Like Jezebel, Herod, and Caesar, he’s a metaphor for every proud autocrat obsessed with himself and with power. When feeling personally and politically threatened, Pharaoh gives an order to kill all new-born, Hebrew males.

During this holocaust, Pharaoh’s daughter goes to the river to bathe. She finds a Hebrew baby boy in a basket floating in the reeds. In an act of grace that mirrors God’s adoption of the Hebrew people in the first place, she embraces this vulnerable baby and claims him as her own. Then she finds a Hebrew nursemaid who “just happens” to be the baby’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter doesn’t know about this relationship, but Moses’ mother, his sister, and we do. Working through three women, God’s subversive love works against Pharaoh to create a bond between the child and his true identity.

One can imagine that growing up in Pharaoh’s home, Moses feels increasing tension between who he appears to be and who he feels like. Eventually, he claims and commits himself to a particular identity. When witnessing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, Moses picks up a brick and kills the Egyptian.

         After that, the Egyptians want Moses dead, and the Hebrews want nothing to do with him. So, Moses flees to the Midianite wilderness, and there he rescues some women from some thugs who are trying to run the women away from a watering hole. This good deed lands Moses in the good graces of the women’s father, a landowner named Jethro. And the grateful Jethro offers one of his daughters to Moses as a wife. Married, familied, and employed, Moses’ life finally has purpose and stability.

         Then, years later:

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ²There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. ³Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.”

⁴When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!”

And [Moses] said, “Here I am.”

⁵Then [God] said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

⁶[God] said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

⁷Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ⁹The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

¹¹But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

¹²[God] said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”

¹³But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”

¹⁴God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’’’

¹⁵God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.” (NRSV)

In the conversation, God says, Moses, I have seen my people’s misery…I have heard their cries…I feel their sufferings…I will deliver them.

Then God says, Moses, You go to Egypt. You face Pharaoh. You deliver my people.

At first, Moses had said, “Here I am!” Now, overwhelmed, he asks, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?”

         Who am I? Whether that’s modesty or fear, I have to imagine Moses asking that question as one who has struggled all his life with identity and belonging. He was born a Hebrew slave, raised as a privileged Egyptian, escaped as a murderer. And now he’s living as an ordinary husband, father, son-in-law, and shepherd.

         “Here I am!” Who am I?

         It’s powerfully instructive that when Moses asks what he should say when the Hebrews ask who sent him, God says, Tell them, I AM WHO I AM sent you. While that may seem like an unsatisfying answer, as people of God, our understanding of the essential being of God—the is-ness of God—shapes who we are.

If we believe God is legalistic and vengeful, we will be legalistic and vengeful.

If we believe God is creative and loving, we will be creative and loving.

If we believe God is jealous and exclusive, we will be jealous and exclusive.

If we believe God advocates for the poor and the oppressed, we will advocate for the poor and the oppressed.

If we believe God requires violence and suffering to be “satisfied,” we will commit violence and inflict suffering trying to please God.

If we believe God redeems human suffering by entering it, we will enter the lives of those who suffer and help to bear their burdens.

As people of faith, our understanding of who God is has everything to do with our understanding of who we are. And God knows our essential being, as well. God knows who Moses is. God knows that Moses does not tolerate injustice, and he shows no hesitation in confronting it. God trusts Moses to act on behalf of those who are exploited. Without even having a term for it yet, Moses already sees and lives toward God’s “promised land.” And isn’t that the very nature of faith? Living into a future we cannot see, while trusting that God is already holding us within it?

“And this shall be the sign…that it is I who sent you,” says God, “when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”

That declaration is as dangerous as it is hopeful. It’s dangerous because it can easily be twisted into the horrific, Machiavellian fallacy of ends justifying means. From the wider witness of scripture, we learn that means and ends are intimately intertwined. The journey is the gift, so, the means of the journey are essential to the outcome, even when it includes wandering the wilderness. To know God’s deliverance means to live each moment as if God’s promises were already fulfilled—even when fulfillment is so obviously incomplete.

For Christians, every Sunday is an Easter celebration. We declare that God creates new life out of death, new hope out of despair, a new future out of a past riddled with pain and bitterness. And every journey from death to resurrection involves some kind of Exodus which begins with a call to which we often say, Here I am, and then, Wait, who am I to do that? Saying Yes to God’s call means saying Yes to some kind of death on the way to new life.

Think again about Moses: To lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, it takes someone who is familiar with the house of Israel and the house of Pharaoh, and who is sufficiently distant from both.

It takes someone who has already journeyed through all manner of adversity.

It takes someone who’s had a transforming experience of God.

It takes someone who has died to his ego enough to say, I am going to need help. And it takes that kind of death to learn to trust a challenging call from I AM WHO I AM.

So, at God’s call, Moses dies a revitalizing death so that he, and his brother, Aaron, might lead a protracted, two-person protest march against the systemic evils of Pharaoh’s Egypt. And as is always—eventually—the case in human societies, when Pharaoh refuses to humble himself, to listen, and to do justice, his own people suffer the most.

One of the liturgical terms for the Lord’s Supper is The Feast of Victory; and the elements of this feast are symbols associated with Friday, the day of apparent defeat. The bread and the cup remind us that God is not satisfied by Jesus’ death. Only human-imaged idols demand revenge. Friday is what we give God to work with. And God, being I AM WHO I AM from beginning to end, redeems Friday. On Friday, the immutable energy of love and restorative justice we call God transforms Jesus into another bush that burns without being consumed.

On Sunday, God declares that a new deliverance has begun.

On Sunday God announces, and calls us to share, that Pharaoh-defying, Creation-transforming promise called Resurrection.

“A New Point of View”

Micah 6:6-8 and 2 Corinthians 5:14-21

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/3/23

With what should I approach the Lord
        and bow down before God on high?
Should I come before him with entirely burned offerings,
        with year-old calves?
⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
        with many torrents of oil?
Should I give my oldest child for my crime;
        the fruit of my body for the sin of my spirit?
⁸ He has told you, human one, what is good and
        what the Lord requires from you:
            to do justice, embrace faithful love,

and walk humbly with your God.

(Micah 6:6-8 – CEB)

¹⁴ The love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: one died for the sake of all; therefore, all died. ¹⁵ He died for the sake of all so that those who are alive should live not for themselves but for the one who died for them and was raised.

¹⁶ So then, from this point on we won’t recognize people by human standards. Even though we used to know Christ by human standards, that isn’t how we know him now. ¹⁷ So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!

¹⁸ All of these new things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and who gave us the ministry of reconciliation. ¹⁹ In other words, God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, by not counting people’s sins against them. He has trusted us with this message of reconciliation.

²⁰ So we are ambassadors who represent Christ. God is negotiating with you through us. We beg you as Christ’s representatives, “Be reconciled to God!” ²¹ God caused the one who didn’t know sin to be sin for our sake so that through him we could become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:14-21 – CEB)

         The young Corinthian church is up to its neck in conflict. When Paul isn’t there, who has authority to teach faithful Christian understanding? In that bustling, multicultural seaport, what constitutes faithful Christian practice and witness?

In his letters, Paul reminds the Corinthians that, through Christ, God is reconciling an alienated world to God’s own Self. Indeed, the Incarnation of Christ bears dramatic witness to God’s intent to restore humankind to the grateful and generous living that makes a person truly human.

Paul defines truly human as having “the mind of Christ,” that is, living in continual awareness of the presence of the Divine. When we reconnect with our true humanity, with our true selves, the Spirit awakens us and restores our sight. And then, Paul says, we no longer regard anyone according to false or selfish “human standards.” As new creations, we become expressions of God’s reconciling grace.

         As cozy as that sounds, transformation is difficult business. Holiness and reconciling grace flash and rumble in our lives when the warm front of God’s love meets the cold air of our false selves. And in this perfect storm, the imperfect world tends to crucify those who choose reconciliation over pride, compassion over power, and love over fear.

Even when it’s between just two individuals, reconciliation helps to restore balance to all creation. Over the centuries, though, the Church has usually tried to restore balance the way nations do—through force and the imposition of absolutes. Just make everyone look alike and think alike, and we’ll all get along. And in Jesus’ name, the Church has endorsed and even participated in unspeakable inhumanity against human beings and the earth in order to make people, communities, and even geographies fit into the dogmas of those holding dominance.

         Brian McLaren says that one of Christianity’s great failures has been to reduce faith to systematic theologies. So, what began as a holy path, a way to live God’s new point of view, has been locked inside gated communities of rigid ideology. And why? Why do we respond more readily to wall-building fear than to bridge-building grace? 

         It seems to me that we all harbor both obvious and hidden wounds. When those wounds are not acknowledged honestly and dealt with graciously, they emerge as bitterness, as judgment, as scapegoating violence against people we don’t like.

Grounded in the old points of view of suspicion and competition, we say things like: Look out for Number One! God helps those who help themselves! And doesn’t that point of view destroy any desire for reconciliation?

         Paradoxically, when we find the strength and the will to face our own sinfulness and woundedness, we begin to find the strength and the will to follow paths of holiness and reconciliation. So, making peace with others begins by making peace with ourselves, and peacemaking requires the hard spiritual work of honest self-examination. Through reflection, we rummage around in those dark corners where we hide all the things that frighten and embarrass us. We acknowledge them, confess them, and offer them to God. Such work paves the way for self-forgiveness. And to forgive ourselves is to receive God’s grace.

We “accept being accepted—for no reason…whatsoever!” says Richard Rohr. “This is the key that unlocks everything in me, for others, and toward God. So much so that we call it ‘salvation’!”¹ This transformation is not required for becoming disciples. It’s the goal of discipleship. And the deeper we go within ourselves, the more we encounter God’s grace calling us out of ourselves and into the world with this new, and re-newing point of view. Isn’t this what Jesus means when he calls us to take up the cross and follow him?

Over the last 15-20 years, there’s been a well-documented rise in hate groups in our nation—new assemblies, new members, new visibility, and all for very old and very malicious points of view. In the midst of those rising numbers, however, a few stories leak out around the edges, stories of people who are leaving those groups, leaving the violent ways, and the purity codes of the dangerously misguided religion and nationalism of the far right.

There’s a consistent feature in the accounts of people leaving communities which are committed to white supremacy. Even while thriving on their hate, these folks encountered other people—and often the very people at whom they aimed their fear, their fists, and their weapons—people who, transcending their own trepidation and any desire for vengeance, chose to show compassion to those whose lives were consumed by ignorance and hatred.

That is grace. And it embodies God’s new point of view. Gracious love is fierce enough to see through the scars of broken homes and abuse, to see through the bald heads, swastika tattoos, Confederate battle flags, even to see past the mini arsenals individuals carry around on their shoulders and hips. For many who leave the hate groups, there would be no healing without someone showing them grace because grace was exactly what was missing in their lives in the first place.

God’s grace attends to those who suffer and to those who cause suffering. And for those who call themselves Christian, and who know that evil isn’t easily overcome, our work of reconciliation means claiming our prophetic voice and calling out the evils behind the suffering. And that begins with confessing our own prejudice, our own intolerance, our own pride. Only when we see brokenness in ourselves can we call it out in others with compassion. And if we’re the Church, we must follow Jesus in doing this, lest we—like Pharaoh, Jezebel, and Caesar—become so self-obsessed that we not only tolerate evil, we try to spin it as virtue.

Christ’s new point of view is one of gracious invitation, justice, and reconciliation. And we’re not always faithful stewards of that point of view. That’s why we confess our individual and systemic sinfulness each Sunday morning. And through confession, forgiveness, and forgiving-ness, we are the body of Christ. We’re “new creations.” The old is passing away because the new has begun. And “the love of Christ” inspires and guides us on our journey.

         Christ’s table is set with his reconciling feast. As you participate in this meal, look within yourself at the new person and the new point of view God is creating. And look at those around you with the new eyes of that new creation. Taste and see that God is good, and present in all people, races, and lands.

         And may this bread and this cup nourish the image of Christ within all of us, so that we may, as Paul says, “become the righteousness of God.”

¹Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. The Crossroad Publishing Company, NY, 2009. p. 141.

“An Appeal for Wholeness”

Psalm 133 and Romans 12:1-8

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/27/23

Look at how good and pleasing it is
    when families live together as one!
²It is like expensive oil poured over the head,
    running down onto the beard—
        Aaron’s beard!—
    which extended over the collar of his robes.
³It is like the dew on Mount Hermon
    streaming down onto the mountains of Zion,
    because it is there that the Lord

has commanded the blessing:
        everlasting life.

(Psalm 133 – CEB)

So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate priestly service. ² Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.

³ Because of the grace that God gave me, I can say to each one of you: don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought to think. Instead, be reasonable since God has measured out a portion of faith to each one of you. ⁴ We have many parts in one body, but the parts don’t all have the same function. ⁵ In the same way, though there are many of us, we are one body in Christ, and individually we belong to each other. ⁶ We have different gifts that are consistent with God’s grace that has been given to us. If your gift is prophecy, you should prophesy in proportion to your faith. ⁷ If your gift is service, devote yourself to serving. If your gift is teaching, devote yourself to teaching. ⁸ If your gift is encouragement, devote yourself to encouraging. The one giving should do it with no strings attached. The leader should lead with passion. The one showing mercy should be cheerful. (Romans 12:1-8 – CEB)

         Paul wrote his letter to the Romans about 57CE. Inside the city at the heart of the first century’s largest and most powerful empire, the young church seemed to have felt small and insignificant. And yet they also seem to have felt a disproportionate burden of scrutiny.

         Nero, the emperor during Paul’s ministry, was known for a fearsome capacity for political tyranny and self-indulgence. Of the few ancient historians who left details about Nero, all but one say that the emperor himself ordered the Great Fire that destroyed two thirds of Rome in 64CE¹. And some of those historians suggest that he did so in order to clear space for building projects that would glorify himself. Nero, however, quickly blamed the Christians for the fire, and thus began the practice of persecuting people who proclaimed the realm of God’s love and professed faith in Jesus rather worshiping the emperor and his empire.

         While Paul’s letter was written before the fire, Roman culture was still characterized by violence. For both sport and crime-prevention, criminals were crucified or fed to wild animals who had been intentionally starved. The powerful and the poor alike were entertained by human beings fighting to the death in the Colosseum. Any culture which thrives on public execution, slavery, lynching, or oppression of the poor and powerless inevitably treats human bodies like injured livestock.

         Let’s put ourselves in the place of the Roman Christians. How might we react when Paul says, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice…to God,” and that doing so constitutes our “appropriate priestly service”? That’s kind of like wealthy people saying to parents of starving children, Well, at least your kids aren’t overweight.

         Then Paul begins to clarify himself. “Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world,” he says. And he’s saying not to mistake the temporary securities of military dominance and the material pleasures of wealth for God’s blessing. In the long run, those things tend to do more harm than good. They turn our trust and hope away from God and from God’s providence. They turn us toward detached individualism, toward personal comfort and status, things that are almost always gained and maintained at the expense of others.

The Caesars of the world, and those who worship them, cannot have excess without depriving someone of basic human needs. And to accept that disparity as the way of things is to “conform to the patterns of this world.” It is to decide that some people’s bodies, minds, and spirits are inherently less worthy. And one simply cannot conform to that worldly ideology and follow Jesus.

So, Paul says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you can figure out what God’s will is.” Overcoming the temptation to devalue other people or the Creation for one’s own benefit requires a transformation of mind and heart. And while transformation is a gift of grace and something we cannot make happen, we can make room for it.

The Message version of scripture renders Paul’s room-making words this way: “Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what [God] does for us, not by what we are and what we do for [God].”

         Deepening this call to humility and service, Paul uses the image of a single human body to illustrate the diversity necessary for wholeness in human communities. He reminds his readers that just like heads, shoulders, knees, and toes everyone has their own unique purposes and gifts, and that all of them are necessary. And think about it, if a narcissistic Nero did burn his own city for personal gain, doesn’t that illustrate exactly what it means to cut off your nose to spite your face?

         Human idolatry and arrogance—which might be defined as the gluttony of individualistic heads, shoulders, knees, and toes—is all-too-evident these days. And I’m not claiming high ground here. When I’m in a cozy room with like-minded people, especially when things aren’t going our way, I give in and conform to the world. And when shackled by self-righteousness and resentment, I can’t discern the will of God. I can’t hear wisdom in the words of scripture. I can’t see the humanity I share with those with whom I disagree. I don’t hold them in authentic prayer. Because my mind is no longer transformed, I can’t filter out the toxic anger within and around me so that I feel something of the universal pain underneath it all. And doesn’t that just make me part of the problem?

Now, I’m not saying that we should be so tolerant that we ignore the actions and attitudes that contribute to injustice and create human suffering. To do that would be to forsake those who are oppressed—which is to forsake Jesus himself. I’m saying that to participate in God’s transforming work in the world, we begin by looking for the God-imaged holiness in ourselves, in one another, and in the Creation. Then, like Jesus, we can recognize, name, and celebrate the gifts of those around us because none of us are complete without all that God has created, called good, and is, even now, redeeming.

And all this hard stuff just gets harder, because, out of this generous, beautiful, God-given diversity within the body of Christ, we’re also called to demonstrate onevoice of love for God through love of neighbor.

         Discerning the will of God—something for which we pray every time we utter the Lord’s Prayer—is a life-long process of learning, unlearning, and relearning. It’s a process of dying to self and rising to Christ. And in that process, we seek and nurture challenging relationships with people who are suffering and with people whose understanding of the world seems at odds with our own. When we think of ourselves, as Paul says, “more highly that [we] ought to think,” we cannot see the humanity or the holiness in others. And so, we dismiss not just the poor and the oppressed, but those who exploit them, those who just don’t care about them, and maybe even those who advocate for them differently that we do. And who can participate in God’s transforming realm of love through antipathy or apathy? Doesn’t it require empathy, feeling and embracing the pain and the joy of others?

         Love God with all you have and with all you are, says Jesus. Love your neighbors empowered by the awareness that to love them is the loving thing to do for your own self as well as for them. And so that you can do all that, he says, take up your cross and follow me.

Jesus calls us toward lives of compassion and understanding, lives in which we will claim our gifts and share them, lives in which we can recognize all the heads, shoulders, knees, and toes around us as neighbors, as brothers and sisters without whom we cannot be fully human or fully alive. 

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero

“Crumbs Are Enough”

Psalm 67 and Matthew 15:21-28

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/20/23

Let God grant us grace and bless us;
    let God make his face shine on us,
²so that your way becomes known on earth,
    so that your salvation becomes known

among all the nations.

³Let the people thank you, God!
    Let all the people thank you!
⁴Let the people celebrate
        and shout with joy
        because you judge the nations fairly
        and guide all nations on the earth.
⁵Let the people thank you, God!
    Let all the people thank you!

⁶The earth has yielded its harvest.
    God blesses us—our God blesses us!
⁷Let God continue to bless us;
    let the far ends of the earth honor him.

(Psalm 67 – CEB)

²¹ From there, Jesus went to the regions of Tyre and Sidon. ²² A Canaanite woman from those territories came out and shouted, “Show me mercy, Son of David. My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession.” ²³ But he didn’t respond to her at all.

His disciples came and urged him, “Send her away; she keeps shouting out after us.”

²⁴ Jesus replied, “I’ve been sent only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel.”

²⁵ But she knelt before him and said, “Lord, help me.”

²⁶ He replied, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to dogs.”

²⁷ She said, “Yes, Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall off their masters’ table.”

²⁸ Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith. It will be just as you wish.” And right then her daughter was healed. (Matthew 15:21-28 – CEB)

         I wish I could gloss over the fact that Jesus refers to a Canaanite woman and her ethnic kin as dogs. That comment is particularly baffling in light of the teaching that immediately precedes this encounter.

In a dispute that started with some Pharisees complaining that Jesus’ disciples fail to wash their hands before meals, Jesus says that it’s not what goes into a person that matters. Rather, what comes out of the mouth reveals the heart. So, what’s in Jesus’ heart when he speaks to this woman in such offensive terms?

Over the centuries, the most common defense of Jesus says that he didn’t really mean what he said. Already knowing how the woman would respond, he choreographed a teachable moment with spiritually-principled compassion and a touch of good-natured teasing.

         That argument asks us to accept that God Incarnate looked at this woman and called her a dog in order to make the point that her faith was strong. And he said that to her to tell us that if our faith is equally strong, our children will be healthy. Our bank accounts will be full. Our nation will prevail. And everyone will get along at Thanksgiving dinner.

Through two millennia of the Christian faith, this passage has been used to justify judgment of and disdain for those who are poor, or whose ethnicity or gender is deemed inferior, or whose sexuality is deemed dangerous, or whose religion is considered wrong. And since Jesus said it, then it must be okay to treat “those people” like some neighborhood cur.

If that sounds harsh, just remember the arguments the Church has made—thatwe have made—in defense of atrocities like the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, segregation, lynching, the Holocaust. And think about the arguments the Church continues to make in defense of humankind’s appetite for excessive wealth, and our wasteful use of resources to develop and maintain enough weaponry to destroy this planet several times over.

         And it’s not just as disciples of Jesus, but as the very Body of Christ himself that the Church has doggedly mistreated the very people on whom Jesus focused during his ministry.

While the Church does lots of wonderful things, it sometimes feels like we allow this one, brief instance, when Jesus acts more like a disciple than a Savior, to define us.

         Come on, Preacher! Ease up a little! We’re already beat down. Here we are in the dog days of summer. Covid’s making a comeback. Much of our society is spiraling. Storms, fires, and floods are killing people, destroying forests, property, and peace of mind. It’s like someone we love is sick. Where is God in all this? Where’s our hope and our confidence? Quit tearing us down!

         Does anyone feel that way? Well, what if I just said that “it’s not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs”? How would you respond if I said that we don’t matter because Jesus came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? And let’s face it, you and I, we’re Gentiles. If I said that, would you keep coming to worship?

         The Canaanite woman keeps coming—hounding Jesus for her daughter’s sake. She knows that this Galilean Jew knows, or that he will at least remember, that she matters and her daughter matters, because Gentile lives matter.

         Maybe one of the many reasons the Church is in decline is that contemporary disciples have been experiencing a continual contraction of faith, a regression. It’s like the Church is becoming less and less like the Body of the resurrected Christ and more and more like the disciples before Good Friday. 

Russell Moore, a former leader within the Southern Baptist Convention, and now the editor of Christianity Today, recently said that numerous evangelical pastors have told him that members of their congregations have begun challenging them after their sermons. The parishioners want to know where the preachers got those “liberal talking points,” points like, Blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor, turn the other cheek, love and pray for your enemy.

“‘I’m literally quoting Jesus,’” say the pastors.

Unmoved, these “followers of Jesus” respond saying, That doesn’t work anymore. It’s weak.

“When we get to [that] point,” says Russell Moore, “we’re in a crisis.”¹

         In their own crisis, trying to project bigotry as authority and strength, the disciples say, Go away, Canaanite woman. There’s not enough of Jesus for us and for you.

         Brush me off like a crumb from your beard, she says, but crumbs are enough. A crumb from Jesus can restore my daughter.

         Even this deep into Jesus’ ministry, the disciples still have to learn to accept the truth that, as Paul will say, “God chose what the world considers foolish to shame the wise…what the world considers weak to shame the strong…[and] what the world considers low-class and low-life—what is considered to be nothing—to reduce what is considered something to nothing. So no human being can brag in God’s presence.” (1Corinthians 1:27-29) And while Jesus’ response does take an inexplicable detour, he finally demonstrates to everyone who follows him that this woman and her daughter are children of God as fully as any priest, Pharisee, or ordinary Jew. As individuals and as a population, Canaanites deserve to be seen, heard, welcomed, valued, respected, and protected exactly the same as anyone from Bethlehem, Nazareth, or Jerusalem.

When the Church proclaims faith in Jesus and still treats certain people as less-than-worthy, when it withholds the holy gift of welcome from strangers, and the transforming gift of advocacy from people who are oppressed, it declares that it has given up on God’s mercy and grace. It has given up on Resurrection! When people live selfishly and fearfully, crumbs are never enough. Selfishness and fear provoke us to hoard and guard what we have and to grasp for more.

Brothers and Sisters, in the power of the Holy Spirit, God has raised Jesus! And his resurrection empowers us for embracing an entirely new understanding of abundance. If the tiniest seed and the smallest measure of yeast are enough to reveal God’s realm, then crumbs are all we need to follow Jesus and to live as his Body—as his hands, and feet, and heart in and for the world.

Seeing the agony of the Father and the Son foreshadowed in the agony of a Canaanite mother and her daughter, Jesus lives generously and loves fearlessly for them, and for all of us. He sees that we are all one, and his own hunger is for humankind to live in unity and wholeness. He hungers for us to see ourselves in the faces, in the sufferings, in the joys, in the potential, and in the beauty of every human being and of the Earth itself.

As we begin to see and to celebrate our oneness, we begin to see that God, in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is healing us, crumb by crumb, and making us whole.

¹https://newrepublic.com/post/174950/christianity-today-editor-evangelicals-call-jesus-liberal-weak