“From Darkness Toward Light”*

Isaiah 9:2-7

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Meditation for Blue Christmas Service

12/19/21

² The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
    on them light has shined.
³ You have multiplied the nation,
    you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
    as with joy at the harvest,
    as people exult when dividing plunder.
⁴ For the yoke of their burden,
    and the bar across their shoulders,
    the rod of their oppressor,
    you have broken as on the day of Midian.
⁵ For all the boots of the tramping warriors
    and all the garments rolled in blood
    shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
⁶ For a child has been born for us,
    a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
    and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
⁷ His authority shall grow continually,
    and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
    He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
    from this time onward and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. (NRSV)

         On NC Hwy 221, south of the tiny community of Linville Falls, is an interesting natural feature called Linville Caverns. Like so many other caves in our region, it has stalagmites, stalactites, and a creek running with clear, cold water. Trout live in the waters of the creek. Having lived in that dark place for untold generations through untold eons, the trout are born blind. With their useless eyes, they swim in darkness just as surely as they swim in the water itself.

         Their “land of deep darkness” is a perpetual reality. Having never known anything else, they manage to move, feed, and procreate just fine without the aid of light. Indeed, should their eyes suddenly begin to work, they would probably become terrified and start swimming in frantically into each other, rocks, and the sandy bottom of the creek.

         To sighted human beings, darkness is often a metaphor for loss. It means the absence of joy, purpose, and hope. It conjures up images of evil, suffering, punishment, or death. For the ancient Israelites, darkness referred to the experiences of defeat and exile. It referred to the very real death associated with being separated from home, family, and familiar traditions.

         Many of the psalms of lament were written during exile. Psalm 137 is one such psalm of darkness. “By the rivers of Babylon,” sings the psalmist, “there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:1-4)

         When Isaiah speaks of the “people who walked in darkness,” it is of these very Israelites in exile, people whose individual lives and whose corporate life shared the same relentless grief, the same longing for hope and wholeness, the same desire for a return to the light.

         As Christmas approaches, the days get shorter and colder, and the nights longer and darker. During these days and nights, Christmas lights seem to grow on trees, houses, and fences. They are ubiquitous and bright, multi-colored and flashing. It’s as if they demand to be seen, and demand happiness. And for those of us who can’t summon happiness into our hearts or glorias into our throats, those lights create a bitter paradox: All that brightness only sends us into deeper darkness.

         I have to think that the writer of Psalm 137 had to feel something similar when he wrote his lament. I imagine him looking at his harp and remembering how much joy it had brought him and others, and how much power music has to lift spirits and open hearts. But when he looked at his instrument, once a source of vibrant light, he saw and felt only heaviness and despair.

         Here’s the thing though: There’s a difference between “people walk[ing] in darkness” and those blind-born trout in Linville Caverns. The difference is that the sightless trout have no memory of light, while the Israelites maintained clear memories of light and sight, of gratitude and hope. Memories of their holy belovedness. And those memories of light, memories that came to them through the ancient stories of Moses, Hannah, Ruth, David, and others, created tiny flickers of light that empowered their laments. I think that makes lamentation a gift because, at its heart, it’s an expression of one’s faith that a present, painful situation isn’t of God’s making. It’s a refusal to accept darkness as some kind of final, permanent state. Lamentation does take suffering seriously, and at the same time it declares that new light is coming because human beings are, and all of the Creation is, now and always, beloved by God. And it seems to me that darkness can have meaning because we have known and experienced light. And light—that is to say joy, peace, and hope—are God’s will for all of us.

         John confirms this when he speaks of Jesus as the one through whom light itself came into being in the universe. “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:3-5)

         The darkness is real. Too often darkness even becomes a way of life for some of us. And yet we know it is darkness because we have experienced the light. We remember the light. The message of Christmas is that no matter what darkness comes, no matter how long it lasts, it does not have the last word. Light—God’s Light—will prevail.

Friends, God has not given us useless eyes. In both our heads and our hearts, God has given us eyes made for opening to the light, welcoming the light, both the light of day and the Incarnate Light, the Christ, who is coming into the world.

*I prepared this meditation for our “Blue Christmas” service. A health issue prevented me from sharing it, but the pastor who filled in for me read it. A Blue Christmas service is designed to provide comfort for those for whom Christmas is a more difficult than joyous occasion. If that is true for you, may God’s peace be real to you, now or sometime soon. AH

“Christmas: A Paradox of Love”*

Luke 1:46b-55

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Advent 4 – 12/19/21

Before reading today’s passage, let’s remember the context in which these words are spoken.

         A teenaged Mary learns that she will soon become the mother of a remarkable child. As the scene of the Annunciation closes, we hear Mary say, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

         Most of us have been taught—and not without good reason—to hear Mary’s words as her humble surrender to God. When honest, we might also hear a young woman’s terrified submission to the demands of yet another male in a thoroughly patriarchal culture. In that case, Mary’s “Here I am” may sound like the gasping breath one takes before being thrown into cold water.

         In no way do I want to diminish anyone’s appreciation of this part of the Christmas story. It’s just that our world and Mary’s world are profoundly different from each other. Maybe that lack of understanding makes it inevitable that we romanticize the story of the Annunciation and gloss over the breath-taking scandal inherent in it.

         Think about it. The way Luke tells the story, Mary is a runaway teen. She leaves home, in haste, apparently alone, and goes to see an older relative, Elizabeth. Rather than the actions of a girl who is excited and grateful, Mary’s actions seem like those of a girl who feels overwhelmed, and not simply by an unplanned pregnancy, but by a pregnancy that has been imposed on her. She needs a loving, understanding, and non-condemning, feminine presence in her life.

         In Judea, Mary falls into Elizabeth’s wise and welcoming arms. And remember, Elizabeth is experiencing her own remarkable, late-in-life pregnancy. Because of that, she represents the fertility goddesses of an era that predates Abraham. Long before the patriarchy that characterizes first-century Rome, feminine images of God were the norm. God mothered humanity into spiritual awareness and healing.

         When Mary arrives at Elizabeth’s home, the Old Mother in Elizabeth awakens. With body, mind, and spirit fluttering to life, Elizabeth sings a song of thanksgiving. Then she utters a blessing on Mary. Only now, at this moment of mystical approval through Elizabeth, does Mary accept Gabriel’s announcement as good news. And her heart sings:

^46b “My soul magnifies the Lord,

⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

                  ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor

                           on the lowliness of his servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will 

call me blessed;

⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done

great things for me,

                           and holy is his name.

⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him

         from generation to generation.

⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 

⁵²He has brought down the powerful

from their thrones,

                  and lifted up the lowly;

⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things,

         and sent the rich away empty.

⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel,

in remembrance of his mercy,

⁵⁵according to the promise

he made to our ancestors,

to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”  (Luke 146b-55)

          One can almost see Elizabeth as she listens to Mary. Folding her old, thin-skinned hands in her lap, she wrinkles her brow and casts an embarrassed gaze to the floor. When Mary finishes, Elizabeth looks at the young woman with a tight-lipped, bless-your-heart smile.

         Mary’s song, you see, dives into territory reserved for men like Elijah and Elisha, Jeremiah and Isaiah. Mary’s song is full-blown prophecy. And such prophecy sounds out of place on the lips of a teenaged girl. But Mary has experienced transforming visitations, first from the angel, the in Elizabeth’s words. Everywhere Mary goes, God meets her there. From morning to evening, shore to shore, Heaven to Sheol, God is there for her and for the one being knitted together in her womb. Making peace with all of this, Mary embraces Gabriel’s announcement and Elizabeth’s blessing.

         As she accepts the gift, Mary speaks with clarity and authority. And like the child within her, that authority comes as a gift of grace. It comes through Mary’s willful struggle with and her willing acceptance of her call. Mary’s prophetic authority arrives in the midst of paradox.

         So it is with virtually all things spiritual. Scripture is full of paradoxical proclamations: The last shall be first and the first shall be last…Whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all…God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise [and] what is weak in the world to shame the strong. Mary’s prophecy is all about the paradox of faith. It’s all about God’s ongoing work to displace violent power with transforming meekness. It’s all about God’s work to reveal the dingy gloom of shiny things that we think we own, but which almost always end up owning us.

         Paradox is about God’s aggravating truth that only when human beings learn to die do we begin to live.

         Paradox lies at the heart of all prophecy, because virtually all prophecy says, in one way or another, that things are not what they seem. Prophetic truth declares that eternal reality is being revealed in the transient, material stuff of the Creation. Fundamentalist theism and fundamentalist a-theism cannot tolerate all the gray space of paradox. They demand that all things be exactly as they seem. Maybe that’s what allows these fraternal twins—fundamentalist theism and fundamentalist a-theism—to traffic so freely in fear and hate. When one is certain that others are wrong, one will justify almost anything to protect the very things Mary sings about: pride, power, and wealth.

         Christmas, which cannot be divorced from Easter, declares the paradox of love. Christmas and Easter declare, with earth-shaking gentleness, the enduring mystery of grace. There is no such thing as earning or escaping the love of God. At Christmas, the true wealth and wisdom of the ages is born to a poor, uneducated, teenaged girl.

Well-to-do, First-World Christians have tried to undo the scandalous paradox of Christmas by connecting it to Black Friday instead of Good Friday. In doing so, we have managed to flip the paradox in our favor. We have allowed Christmas celebrations to ignore, or even to include the material wealth and the violent power that God comes not to safeguard, but to judge. Still, even when we corrupt our observations of Christmas, Christmas itself remains, well, immaculate. As Mary’s prophecy reminds us, Christmas still delivers God’s commitment to justice for all Creation.

         Here is the paradox of Love: Just as something in Mary must die before she lives into the new life stirring within her, we, too, are called to embrace, over and over, Christ’s life-renewing death. And we embrace that death by receiving with grace all that giving has to offer.

         Christmas is not under the trees in our homes. It’s under those trees out there, and in those wide-open spaces. It’s in classrooms and cubicles. It’s in alleys, and hollers, and barns.

I do wish a Merry Christmas to you. And even more so, I wish to all the world a Merry Christmas through you.

*This is the sermon I had prepared for Advent 4, 2021. Because of a health issue, I didn’t get to preach it. I’m sharing it anyway. AH

Dear Friends,

          To most people reading this, December means Advent and Christmas. Some also have birthdays, wedding anniversaries, or graduations in December. And for some, December holds sad memories, as well. Even with everything else that does or can happen in December, the last month of the year is still a time to prepare for (Advent) and celebrate (Christmas) the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

         Over the centuries, the Church has pounded away at one message above all others: Jesus “saves us from our sins.” While I don’t argue that, I do think that over-emphasis on an individualistic, reward-and-punishment interpretation of the Gospel can obscure—and even deny—its fundamental and profoundly transforming (i.e. saving) message: Salvation and wholeness for each of us means salvation and wholeness for ALL of us.

         If and when the message of the Gospel is used to close doors, hearts, and futures, we have learned nothing. More to the point, we have been unfaithful to all that God comes to say and do for the Creation through Jesus.

         In the third verse of the beloved Advent hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,”we sing these words:

O come, Desire of nations, bind

All peoples in one heart and mind;

Bid envy, strife, and discord cease;

Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.

         “Envy, strife, and discord” tear at human community and at the earth herself. And as the “Desire of Nations,” Jesus draws us together. He creates the order of community out of the fear-splintered chaos of individualism and tribalism.

         We do experience and share “Heaven’s peace” of being “one [in] heart and mind,” and that does not happen by trying to make all people think just alike. It happens through all people learning to see, appreciate and to love the Christ in ourselves and in one another. 

         In 1985, the PC(USA) adopted a document written in 1977 and entitled A Declaration of Faith. The document was not added to our Book of Confessions, but was accepted as a “reliable aid” for the church’s preaching and teaching. That document includes this powerful passage:

         The diversity in the early church caused tension and conflict.  Yet the Spirit bound them into one body, enriched by their differences.  We know that the same Spirit gives us a unity we cannot create or destroy.

         The Spirit moves among us not to end diversity or compel uniformity, but to overcome divisiveness and bitterness.

         The Spirit leads us to struggle against the lines of race and class, the ambitions of competing parties, the loyalties to individuals and traditions that divide us.

         The Spirit impels us to make the unity of Christians visible to a divided world, and assures us that we shall be one. (A Declaration of Faith, Chapter 5, lines 70-87)

         There has never been a time when human beings did not experience dislocating division and fear. And our time is no different. It’s just our time. So, it is our responsibility.

         As Jonesborough Presbyterian Church, we are but one very small part of the Church Universal. We are, effectively, about 160 people strong. And we are as diverse as the culture around us. While that often challenges and strains us, it’s also one of the most important strengths of our congregation. The differences among us may cause us to disagree at times, and to disagree passionately, but we are still called and equipped to do amazing things. Realm of Christ things. Christmasthings. We continue to seek know, love and serve God, to make music, tell our stories, and to laugh—even if from safe distances or on Zoom. And we do these things both in spite of our diversity and in the midst of it.

         When we come together in fearless honesty about whom we trust and whom we follow, we come together as one body, bound by the Holy Spirit, revealing to the world what it looks like to be a place of Advent and Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter.

         It is never easy, but it is always holy.

                                    A Blessed Christmas to You All,

                                                      Allen

“New Clothes for Christmas”

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

12/5/21 – Advent 2

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,

to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and release to the prisoners;
² to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

and the day of vengeance of our God;

 to comfort all who mourn;
³ to provide for those who mourn in Zion—

to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.
⁴ They shall build up the ancient ruins,

they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,

the devastations of many generations.

⁸For I the Lord love justice,

I hate robbery and wrongdoing; 
I will faithfully give them their recompense,

and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
⁹ Their descendants shall be known among the nations,

and their offspring among the peoples;
all who see them shall acknowledge

that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.

¹⁰ I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,

my whole being shall exult in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,

he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,

as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,

and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

¹¹ For as the earth brings forth its shoots,

and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,

so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise

to spring up before all the nations.  (NRSV)

         According to Luke, when Jesus is asked to preach for the first time at the synagogue in Nazareth, he opens the scroll of Isaiah and reads the first verse-and-a-half of Isaiah 61, God’s magnificent promise of deliverance and renewal. Jesus follows the reading with a sermon that Luke sums up in one sentence: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:16-30)

         At first, the people stand in awe of Jesus. The hometown boy seems to have made good for sure. Things change quickly, though, when Jesus interprets Isaiah’s words. He recalls that two of God’s most memorable prophets, Elijah and Elisha, tended to a Gentile widow and a Gentile leper before tending to Jews. In this memory, Jesus exposes that which is most utterly true about God: When the Spirit of the Lord moves, the initial beneficiaries are not necessarily those who consider themselves blessed and favored, but rather those who are most vulnerable. God acts first on behalf of the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed. Regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or even religion, these are the ones whose “descendants shall be known among the nations.” These are the ones whom the world will acknowledge as “a people whom the Lord has blessed.”

I hear Jesus saying that to the extent that Israel continues to remember that she was called out of bondage, not privilege, and to the extent that Israel continues to embody God’s concern for the powerless and the marginalized of the world, she maintains her role as God’s chosen witness. However, when Israel falls into bed with power, wealth, and violence, she allies herself with injustice and abandons her identity and her calling.

Now, let’s remember, while Israel does refer to a specific people and place, even more does Israel refer to those who intentionally “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.” (Micah 6:8)

         The same is true for the church. When we commit ourselves to the way of the Christ, by following Jesus as Lord as passionately as we proclaim him Savior, we are his body. When we fall short of that calling, we compromise and weaken our body-of-Christ identity. We become tribal and shallow. We quit looking for the image of God in ourselves and each other, and we become obsessed with demanding “proof” of salvation by uttering prescribed religious phrases.

When we settle for a spirituality of rewards-and-punishments, our definition of beloved and called gets reduced to selfish concerns about who has earned what after death. We become impatient with the mysteries of grace. And we completely miss out on the joyful holiness of living as ones who, as God says to Abram, are blessed so that we might be a blessing. (Genesis 12:2)

         If the four gospels are accurate, it would seem that the leadership of first-century Judaism had abandoned Israel’s unique identity and calling. But let’s be gracious with them. Let’s acknowledge that living as Jews in first-century Rome was no picnic. As a whole, Israel was an oppressed people, and they desperately craved deliverance. They looked for God’s long-awaited messiah, and because of their situation, they looked for a military leader to deliver them from Rome. This was particularly true among the Pharisees who were also desperate to keep Jewish identity pure—free from all Gentile influence.

Returning to Jesus’ first sermon in Nazareth: The theology of those who hear Jesus would have been shaped by the Pharisees’ teachings, so they’re offended when he reminds them of times when blessedness extended beyond the confines of Israel. Turning from friendly to fiendish, they herd the Good Shepherd toward a nearby cliff intending to throw him off it.

After slipping through their fingers, Jesus, instead of wilting and fading away, commits his life to fulfilling the gloriously disruptive prophecy of Isaiah 61. And he will not wear the fancy, gold-fringed robe of a Pharisee. As one who loves the Lord who loves justice, Jesus wears a very different wardrobe. He wraps himself in “the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit,” because God has clothed him with “the garments of salvation…[and] the robe of righteousness.”

         Given these images from Isaiah, whose prophecy Christians connect to Jesus and his Christ-revealing life, there’s little wonder that new clothes tend to be popular Christmas gifts. And if the clothing we give and receive actually reminds us of being clothed in Christ—a teacher of love and doer of justice—new clothes are entirely appropriate.

         Clothing has a long history as a metaphor for the spiritual life. The psalmist speaks even of God being “clothed with honor and wrapped in light as with a garment.” (Psalm 104:1b-2a) One of my favorite passages to read at weddings comes from Colossians 3: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience…forgive each other…And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…And be thankful.” (Colossians 3:12-15)

         Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, peace, gratitude—these are the bridegroom’s garlands and the bride’s jewels. They are Isaiah’s garments of salvation. And such garments assume relationship with the Creation as well as the Creator. Our Christmas clothing is outerwear, not underwear, because salvation is our visible life, life in relationship with and for others. This does not mean that we try to encumber ourselves and others with some kind of homogenous, mind-numbing uniform. It means that we wear our Christmas hearts on our sleeve.

         Jesus declares the same thing when he says to his disciples, “I give you a new commandment…Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this [love] everyone will know that you are my disciples.” (John 13:34-35)

         Agape love is the fabric of the garments of salvation. To mix in the rest of Isaiah’s metaphors, love is the eternal and irresistible energy God uses to grow the fragrant and healing gardens of faith. When our lives embody the agape love and the redeeming justice of the Christ, we do more than talk about and wait for salvation. We experience it. We share it. To engage our faith actively and boldly is precisely what it means to wait upon the Lord. And isn’t that what Advent is all about?

         The promise of Christmas is this: When we gratefully offer ourselves to others, the Spirit of the Lord comes upon us. And even through the likes of you and me, the very heart of God may be revealed and fulfilled.

         Advent is the season of getting dressed for the arrival of the bridegroom. The table before us is our dressing room, our place of deliverance, renewal, and transformation.

And everyone is welcome here.

“The Reign of the Christ and the Missional Church”

John 18:33-38a

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Reign of Christ Sunday

11/21/21

³³ Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

³⁴Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”

³⁵ Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?”

³⁶Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

³⁷ Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?”

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

³⁸ Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” (NRSV)

         Pontius Pilate. Some see him as a kind of tragic/comic figure, hustling anxiously back and forth, wavering between the rabid crowd outside and the calm, inscrutable Jesus inside. This Pilate might actually prefer to let Jesus go.

         Others see him as just another scheming, egomaniacal autocrat who manipulates people and their fears in order to get what he wants while making the masses think that they are getting what they want.

         Because of John’s consistent view of what he calls “the world” and how it operates, the latter possibility seems more likely in the fourth gospel. Whatever the case, John makes it clear that the Roman governor is outmatched. It reminds me of Matthew’s gospel when Jesus advises his disciples to enter the world with the wisdom of serpents and the innocence of doves. (Matthew 10:16) And that seems to be the Jesus that John presents before Pilate.

         Why do your people want you dead? Pilate asks. Are you some kind of king?

         If you say so, says Jesus.  

         That’s like Moses standing at the burning bush and asking for some name to drop when he confronts Pharaoh. And Yahweh just says, Tell them that I AM WHO I AM sent you.

         I can imagine Moses saying, Gee, thanks. That’s really gonna spook the old boy, isn’t it?

         When Pilate asks a direct question, the Johannine Jesus—who, throughout his ministry, echoes God’s words to Moses saying: I am the good shepherd, I am the bread of life, I am the vine, I am the way, the truth, and the life—gets all cagey and mysterious. How does that help him further the work of his “kingdom”?

         The very idea of kingdom creates problems. When hearing the word king, iconic images come to mind—over-the-top displays of power and wealth. Castles, feasts, and garish robes. And these things were defended not just by armies but by the principle of the divine right of kings. And if a king held office by God’s decree and with God’s blessing, he could do no wrong. When funded by fear—especially religious fear—power can turn large groups of people into flocks of violent sheep, sheep who seem to think they’re independent-minded guard dogs or something. That’s one reason many Christians today avoid the term “kingdom of God,” preferring instead terms like the Realm of God, or the Household of God, or the Kindom of God (because we’re all kinfolk in the family of God).

         The words king and kingdom would have threatened Pilate. And he would know what to do with any challengers to the Roman government. He just doesn’t seem to know what to do with Jesus who leads his followers according to a very different drumbeat—the drumbeat of God’s eternal truth, a truth that does not bow to fear, or power, or money. And while the Pilates and the Caesars of the world canwreak havoc, they cannot, finally, control or defeat God’s truth, which is Alpha and Omega truth, original and ultimate truth—the truth of love over selfishness, grace over competition, compassion over apathy, justice over exploitation, forgiveness over vengeance.

         That’s probably why Pilate says, “What is truth,” then leaves before Jesus can answer. Pilate seems to know that if he tries to argue with Jesus on the nature of truth, he has no answer for love. Any leader who is guided by love, any leader who has the strength to lead with a heart for the people whom he or she governs will have far greater influence than one who leads by threat of violence.

Overcoming humankind’s addiction to violence is one of the great projects of any community committed to God’s truth. I think that’s why Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world,” because if it were, he says, “my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over…”

         The realm of the Christ cannot be established and maintained through the means of worldly kingdoms—through sword and shield, rifle and bomb, pride and fear, dollars and ownership. And trying to force Jesus’ realm on anyone almost always destroys their desire to enter it. One enters the here-and-now realm of God by intentionally living for the well-being of neighbor and earth.

         Reign-of-Christ living is a day-to-day thing. We can live in love for God’s Creation one minute and cast stones the next. That’s the challenge and the beauty of the Christ’s realm: It’s not subject to our whims or even our acknowledgment. And we constantly slip in and out of it. Even when we have been out of it for some time, it’s always as close as our next act of compassion or justice toward another, or someone’s similar kindness toward us.

         Jesus concludes his earthly ministry in the same place he begins it—with a proclamation of and an invitation to the kingdom of God. Remember, after his baptism and trials in the wilderness, Jesus reappears preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”

         Turn, says God’s Christ. Turn and see your neighbor and the earth through my eyes, the eyes of fear-shattering love, and you will live a new life, because you will inhabit this world from an altogether different realm.

Learning to live in the Realm of Christ is our mission.

         In the early chapters of his book, A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren offers a critique of every mode of Christianity that accommodates itself to Caesar. The first chapter is entitled “Why I Am Missional.” And in this chapter, McLaren builds his understanding of “missional” around a bit of wisdom shared with him by a mentor he doesn’t name. That person told McLaren that “in a pluralistic world, a religion is valued based on the benefit it brings to its nonadherents.”¹

         Think of Abram. God calls him to a missional life saying, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you…so that you will be a blessing…” (Gen 12:1-3)

         Inasmuch as God’s creatures, wherever and whoever we are, strive to live as blessings upon the rest of Creation, we inhabit and reveal the Household of God. This is what it means for us to live under the Reign of Christ.

         There’s an irony here: While we do not find our true home in any worldlykingdom, finding our home in God’s kingdom does indeed happen in this world. It happens in everyday relationships when we choose to live as blessings.

         This Thursday we celebrate Thanksgiving. Giving thanks is only half of recognizing and receiving God’s blessings. The other half of full-fledged gratitude is sharing the benefits of God’s goodness with the rest of God’s good Creation.

         As a missional church, we are called live for the sake of others and the earth. And when we live this way, we do, in truth, live under the gracious, trustworthy, eternal Reign of Christ.

¹A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 2004, p. 121.

“Endings and Beginnings”

Mark 13:1-8

Alen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/14/21

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” ² Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

³ When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ⁴ “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?”

⁵ Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. ⁶ Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. ⁷ When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. ⁸ For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” (NRSV)

         Mark and Luke both preface Jesus’ teaching about the destruction of the temple with the story of the widow’s two-cent offering to the temple. That juxtaposition creates a disconnect. In one breath Jesus commends a widow for her financial sacrifice, and in the next he says that the temple’s days are numbered. So, wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for Jesus to have told the woman, Ma’am, keep your money; you need it more than the temple does?

         Shortly after Jesus reveals the news about the fall of the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew come to Jesus in private and ask when all of this will happen. And Jesus opens up about would-be messiahs, about wars, about tensions and military posturing between nations, and about earthquakes and famines.

         Such predictions don’t seem all that insightful, do they? When has the world ever been turmoil-free? And doomsayers thrive on predictions of utter and final destruction. This seems especially true for Christian doomsayers—and shouldn’t Christian doomsayer be an oxymoron for Resurrection people? If I were to preach doomsday theology, I would be projecting onto God my own faithless fears and judgments. For some twisted reason, though, doomsday preaching is extremely profitable.

         But I digress; besides Jesus has a surprise in store. After all of his dire warnings, he turns to his disciples and says, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

         While that phrase sits in a grim shadow, it sits there as a kind of glowing coal, and Jesus represents the ruach, the pneuma. His words and actions become the very Breath of God on that smoldering, two-cent ember of hope.

         What gives a poor widow and God’s despised Messiah the faith to give their all to an institution and a Creation that appear on the verge of collapse? To embrace and embody the trust that God can craft beginnings out of endings takes a fresh awakening to God’s redeeming presence which is already at work in the world. Through its own fear, greed, and love of violence, humankind brings countless endings on itself, and it takes a Resurrection mindset to grasp that the God of nevertheless-grace can transform those endings into raw materials for new hope and unimagined peace.

         It can be a fearsome task to face these endings. And while fear usually feels like a sure thing, it’s only the sterile delivery room of religious certainty, of “reasonable” despair, and of every self-serving idolatry. As the opposite of fear, faith is the stable of trust, that compost-rich barn in which God is birthing the New Creation.

         Jesus demonstrates unyielding trust in God. And it seems to me that he trusts God to be a verb, not some static, bearded, white-robed noun. I think we get the truest sense of God when we behold God as the very energy behind, before, and within all things. I get that from First John who writes, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1John 4:16) God is the very activity of abiding love, the activity of creation and re-creation at work in the universe. God is the flow of the river, the rush of the wind, the hot gurgling of the volcano, the heave of the laugh, the fall of the tear, and the joyous interplay and fertile cooperation among religions.

         In his essay, “Another Turn of the Crank,” Wendell Berry writes, “I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe,” says Berry, “that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation…with God.”

         As Love, God allows even the most revered institutions to crumble like sand castles at high tide. And they fall because their familiar and comfortable ways, as constructive as they may have been, now do more to conceal than to reveal God’s new and emerging work.

         And there’s the rub: Revelation. Bringing to light. The story of Jesus’ foretelling the destruction of the temple appears in a section of Mark which scholars call The Little Apocalypse. And while apocalyptic literature may have been hijacked by doomsayers and other fear-mongers, it was never intended to announce God’s retribution or some furious Armageddon. Apocalyptic literature is all about revealing the wholeness of God which comes, necessarily and usually primarily, through justice. Mishpat, the principle Hebrew word for justice, refers to bringing fairness, equity, and wholeness to those who have been ignored and exploited by those who hold privilege and power. Because every human being bears the image of God, mishpat means recognizing the full humanity of those who have been marginalized and abused. It also means caring for the entire Creation the way we care for our church buildings because the earth itself is the first incarnation of the Creator and the original holy text. (Romans 1:20)

         Recently, I watched some old interviews with (the now former) Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Along with Nelson Mandela and others, Tutu helped to bring mishpat to South Africa. And the first step of bringing God’s holy justice was bringing an end to the openly and violently racist system of Apartheid. The process of ending something as horrific as institutional racism requires apocalyptic speech and action, speech and action that reveals prejudice, resentment, and hate as destructive because it is antithetical to God—who is love. And when the Apartheid stones had fallen, things got even more deeply apocalyptic for both black and white South Africans.

         Instead of taking advantage of the situation, Tutu led all of South Africa in a process of restoration. Through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, black victims and white perpetrators of Apartheid injustice were given the chance to tell their stories—to reveal the afflictions suffered and the suffering inflicted. While the process was painful, and, perhaps, not altogether perfect, it gave that nation its best chance to discover new beginnings after old arrangements had come to an end.

         One of the most remarkable things Tutu said to black South Africans, especially to those who craved vengeance, was that when people dehumanize others, they inevitably, and perhaps just as thoroughly, dehumanize themselves. Be kind to the whites, said Tutu. They need you to rediscover their humanity.¹

         Showing compassion to those who so recently had showed none would be a hard pill to swallow, yet such is the justice of God’s eternal Christ, the justice that seeks restoration not revenge, the justice that announces the birth pangs of something new even amid the lamentations of loss. Through such stubborn mishpat Resurrection happens, and fresh revelations of God’s holy realm begin to appear.

         May we have the gracious vision and wisdom to discern in all that seems to be ending, signs of God’s ongoing re-creation.

And may we have the faith, hope, and love to participate in that re-creation by committing ourselves, as Christ’s body, to working for the kind of apocalyptic justice Jesus makes possible through his life, death, resurrection, and ongoing return in and for the world that God so loves.

¹A quick search on YouTube will connect you to many wonderful interviews with and speeches by Desmond Tutu. The particular quotation footnoted here can be heard in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV2LURTu3eQ

“Prophetic Stewardship”

Luke 21:1-4

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/7/21

He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; ² he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. ³ He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; ⁴ for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.” (NRSV)

         I don’t relish preaching stewardship sermons. Like most pastors, I know that not everyone makes a formal pledge, and those who do usually prefer to pledge the same way that Jesus urges us to pray: In private. That’s not the way of Christian stewardship, though. What we do today is a defining, and sometimes a defiant act of communal and sacramental faith.

One significant role model for us is a nameless widow who makes a four-verse appearance in Luke, and the same in Mark. As a widow in first century Jerusalem, this woman’s presence in the temple stirs the air about as much as a falling leaf. But she floats into the clutter and ruckus of Passover, and whispers her two-cent blessing­—barely a trifle against the temple’s budget.

Giving out of abundance is one thing, but giving out of poverty can be a prophetic act. I say “can be” because of how often wealthy televangelists take money from lonely people who can’t afford to give it, and then use that money to fund lavish lifestyles. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about giving that expresses a purer sense of gratitude, and a humbler trust in God who says, “my word…shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose.” (Isaiah 55:11)

         Faithful temple leaders would commit significant resources to caring for people just like that widow. Over time, though, the religious community had developed a predatory appetite for wealth. Its leaders colluded with violent power to protect their hold on material privilege. So instead of caring for those who were at risk, they used their considerable influence to make people feel both vulnerable and beholden. Like many Christian leaders today, they wielded an angry and vengeful god in order to protect a status quo rather than truly proclaiming and demonstrating God’s love and justice.

         Another unmistakably Lukan attribute in this story is that the one whom the community is supposed to shelter and care for becomes the one who teaches the teachers about true gratitude and generosity. Jesus makes an enduring example of a woman who gives all she has to a broken institution.

         Look at this widow, says Jesus. She gives all she has to the temple in spite of its failures. She offers all she has not because of the community’s faithfulness to God, but because of God’s faithfulness to humankind.

         I hear Jesus saying that while the widow may give out of the scarcity of her pocketbook, even more does she give out of the abundance of her faith, hope, and love. Through some uncommon grace, she sees the presence of holiness in the Creation, and in spite of human failures, she can give to the temple because she has not given up on God.

         Another compelling thing about this story is that Jesus sees his own life reflected in the widow’s actions. Her gift to the temple anticipates Jesus’ gift to the creation.¹ You, and I, and the Church can all be as selfish, power-hungry, and hurtful to one another as the temple leadership was to first century Jews. Nevertheless, for them and for us—a broken and beloved humanity—Jesus drops the two cents of his life into the offering plate of time. For his gracious efforts, his people arrest and execute him. They—We—abandon him. Nevertheless, Jesus empties himself in love for us and in praise of God. His one human life, among countless billions in human history, is a two-cent act of prophetic stewardship.

         Jesus and the widow invite us to pledge our own lives to that same prophetic adventure. To follow them is to live a nevertheless faith because yes, there’s much about us and our church that’s broken; nevertheless, we live and give in such a way as to declare our trust that God is present and at work even now redeeming and renewing the Creation. And isn’t that what Jesus refers to when he says, “Blessed are the poor”?

         For years, Jonesborough Presbyterian has supported Sunset Gap through our alternative gift fair, and since that ministry is not local, it’s probably the one with which we’re least familiar. So, last Wednesday, six members of our missions team traveled to Cosby, TN to visit Sunset Gap.

         Built in 1924 as a school and community center, Sunset Gap now focuses its efforts on serving the people of Cocke County, a county in the grip of widespread and persistent poverty.

Sunset Gap’s property straddles the Cocke and Sevier County lines, and when you stand on the high front porch of the main building, and look straight ahead, you look into Sevier County, where the road climbs up from a wooded hollow and curves to the right at the Sunset Gap’s front door. From that same porch, when you look left, you look into Cocke County. And right there, at Sunset Gap, the well-maintained Sevier County road gives way to Cocke County’s unmarked, pot-holed asphalt that rumbles and crunches through a landscape that looks like it should be many miles and border-crossings away from the consumeristic carnivals of Dollywood and Gatlinburg—which are only 15 minutes away.

         Sunset Gap is no longer a school, but it remains a PC(USA)-affiliated community center where—two cents at a time—food, clothes, school supplies, diapers, showers, laughter, and tears are shared with people living on the cusp of destitution.

         The people helped by the other ministries we support through the gift fair face similar challenges. And through September and October, you all gave nearly $6000 to help these neighbors. That’s fantastic! Thank you!

Against the unyielding need of the world, or even our region, $6000 may seem like two cents, but when we give, we give to God, who blesses, stretches, and adds other two-cent offerings from other givers. And God continues to ask us to remember and help those who cannot help themselves. And because they matter, every two cents matters.

         It reminds me of what Bob Hall from Family Promise said of your ongoing support: “It’s no small thing.” He said it twice. “Really. It’s no small thing.” Whether large or small, gifts given according to one’s ability to give, gifts given in faith, hope, and love, are no small thing. They make a difference far beyond the imagining of the giver.

         During stewardship season, the Session is not asking anyone to respond to all that’s right with Jonesborough Presbyterian Church, or to react against all that’s not so right about it. We’re trying to encourage all of us to live prophetic lives, lives that proclaim and demonstrate the holy nevertheless of faith.

         Whatever you pledge for the coming year, may you pledge in bold faith, prophetic hope, and generous love, to the broken people next to you, to the broken church around you, and to the faithful God within us all.

¹Pete Peery, Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Vol. 4, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. “Homiletical Perspective,” pp.  285-289.

“The Eastering of Job”

Job 42:2-10

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/24/21

         To begin our third and final look at Job, let’s remember that Job is a man of means. He has lots of livestock, lots of money.

         The storyteller also implies that Job’s excess is a sign of God’s favor. So, as ancient as this story is, chapter 1 of the Book of Job presents a god similar to that of today’s prosperity gospel. And such deities prove all-too-human. What else but pride would permit even a god to do something so un-Godly as to accept Satan’s dare to test Job?

The story vividly illustrates the way that humankind creates all manner of gods in our own image. And for 37 chapters the characters in Job continue to assume this human-imaged god. Then, in Chapter 38, something catastrophically glorious happens. As Forrest Gump says when the hurricane hits his shrimp boat, “God showed up.”

“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

‘Gird up your loins…I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Who determined its measurements—surely you know!

‘Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place…Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?

‘Have the gates of death been revealed to you…? What is the way to the place where the light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth? Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion?

‘Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God, and wander about for lack of food?’” (Selected verses from Job 38)

Do you see what the story does? It exposes that impressionable, weak-spirited, small-g god of chapter 1 as an absurdity, and it introduces Yahweh, the Creator, the eternal and capital-G God.

Now, Job is still suffering, still feeling broken and defeated, but he’s also enlightened and newly hopeful. He realizes that the god whom he has blamed and to whom he’s been complaining is decidedly not the God who will redeem him. Both humbled and emboldened, Job opens himself up to Yahweh.

Listen for God’s Word:

² “I know that you can do all things,

and that no purpose of yours

can be thwarted.

³ ‘Who is this that hides counsel

without knowledge?’

Therefore I have uttered

what I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me,

which I did not know.

⁴ ‘Hear, and I will speak;

I will question you, and you declare to me.’
⁵ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

but now my eye sees you;
⁶ therefore I despise myself,

and repent in dust and ashes.”

⁷ After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. ⁸ Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done.”

⁹ So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the Lord had told them; and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.

¹⁰ And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. (Job 42:1-10 NRSV)

         Now I know, Job says to God. You can be and do as you please. You will not be hindered.

Job realizes that all of his furious ranting against God rose from an understanding of God based solely on rumors.

         “But now my eye sees you,” says Job. “Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

Having desired death, Job has now experienced a death. And while this death does not release him from life and its bitterness, it does give him a new lease on life through a whole new kind of faith. He dies the death that all human beings must die in the process of living into more authentic images and mature understandings of God.

         Job’s new theological understanding is a kind of resurrection experience. And once Job staggers out of his tomb, God puts that new faith to work. Just like Jesus forgiving his disciples for their betrayals and denials, Job finds he must forgive andintercede for the friends who abandoned him in his suffering.

         To experience resurrection here-and-now, we forsake all of our small, vengeful, Protestant-work-ethic gods. To live an Eastered life is to live sacramentally—forgiving the unforgivable, loving the unlovable, working for justice, and recognizing God’s holy presence in the midst of the mundane. This is to have our “fortunes” restored.

         Job may have some material fortune restored, as well, and a freshly-Eastered Job handles his new wealth very differently. Job 42:15 reads: “In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers.” This detail may seem trivial, but Job’s radically new generosity reveals the effects of his awareness of a holiness and a wholeness in the Creation that a chapter 1 god cannot offer. Surrounded by and saturated with Yahweh—the God who acts within yet exists beyond human comprehension—Job subverts sacrosanct tradition and makes his daughters equal to his sons. This scandal foreshadows Jesus healing on the sabbath, talking alone with a Samaritan woman, and “eating with tax collectors and sinners.”

         In its straight and narrow confines, self-serving theologies always try to distort God into something friendly to any status quo that supports privilege and ignores injustice and suffering. For instance, we do know, don’t we, that the phrase God helps those who help themselves is not biblical? Indeed, it’s antithetical to biblical witness. That god dies a slow but memorable and transformational death in the pages of Job—and on the cross.

         Both Job and Jesus live and die in ways that proclaim a God who helps those who cannot help themselves. Their stories reveal that true knowledge of God includes the embrace of suffering as well as happiness. And both stories reveal that blessings—material and spiritual—are only truly blessings when they are shared in humble and generous gratitude and when they become acts of justice and peacemaking.

That’s especially true when they are shared with people who do not “deserve” them—like Job’s prayers for his friends and like Jesus’ life itself. And don’t such things define grace?

         Richard Rohr is fond of saying that Jesus comes not to change God’s mind about us, but to change our minds about God. It seems to me that Job’s story has that same mission. It has become, for me, a kind of CliffsNotes version of how individuals and faith communities progress from Santa Claus and fairy godmother images of God to images that inspire awe, humility, hope, and action—images that inspire us to participate in God’s resurrecting presence in this beautiful if all-too-broken world.

         I usually cringe when I see pithy little sayings that churches post on yard signs. In my opinion, too many of them express theological positions worthy only of the god of the first chapter of Job. Recently, though, I saw one that said very simply, “The struggle is real. So is God.”

         If Jonesborough Presbyterian is a vibrant, relevant faith community, it’s not because of good staffing and programming. Those things can help, of course, but the real difference occurs when we choose, individually and corporately, to acknowledge and enter the suffering of the people next to us in the pew, at the grocery store, the post office, the ball game, the coffee shop…

Job and Jesus both tell us that God is Eastering the Creation toward justice through the ways of love and the means of grace. Through many deaths and resurrections, God is transforming us into a people of gratitude and generosity in and for a world which sits among ashes, crying out for deliverance.

Now, while we can’t do the delivering, we can offer our hands, our feet, our voices, and our prayers to God who speaks, acts, and loves through us.

So even now, whether through us or in spite of us, God is Eastering the Creation and making all things new.

“A Bitter Intimacy”

Job 23:1-9, 16-17

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/17/21

         Last week we began looking at Job. And because much happens between the first and the twenty-third chapters, let’s review a little. 

         Job is a man of wealth and renown. He’s also hospitable and generous. His ten children seem a little spoiled by privilege, but all in all, life is exceptionally good for Job.

         Then God brags on Job to Satan—twice. And twice, Satan challenges God to make things difficult on Job so God can see what happens when humans face suffering.

         You do it, says God. Just don’t kill him.

         In less than two chapters, Job has lost everything except one irate wife. “Curse God, and die!” she says. But Job, while wishing himself dead, curses only the night of his conception and the day of his birth.

Then we meet Job’s three “friends,” Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, all of whom say basically the same thing: Job, you have to be guilty of something. Confess it, and move on.

Throughout these conversations, Job maintains his innocence. And in chapter 19, he explodes in defiance saying, “I know that my Redeemer lives.”

Handel uses those words in the Easter portion of The Messiah, but while he uses them to proclaim the risen Christ, Job is declaring that he has a vindicator, someone who will help him get justice against God who has so uselessly and unjustly abused him. “[My Redeemer] will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been…destroyed,” says Job, “then in my flesh I shall see God.”

Hearing that, Eliphaz scolds Job saying, “Is not your wickedness great? There is no end to your iniquities.”

In today’s text, an indignant Job says:

²“Today also my complaint is bitter;

[God’s] hand is heavy despite my groaning.

³Oh, that I knew where I might find [God],

that I might come even to his dwelling!

⁴I would lay my case before him,

and fill my mouth with arguments.

⁵I would learn what [God] would answer me,

and understand what he would say to me.

⁶Would [God] contend with me in the greatness of his power?

No; but he would give heed to me.

⁷There an upright person could reason with him,

and I should be acquitted forever by my judge. 

⁸“If I go forward, [God] is not there;

or backward, I cannot perceive him;

⁹on the left he hides,

and I cannot behold him;

I turn to the right,

but I cannot see him. 

¹⁶God has made my heart faint;

the Almighty has terrified me;

¹⁷If only I could vanish in darkness,

and thick darkness would cover my face!”

(Job 23:1-9, 16-17  NRSV)

Job wishes he could “vanish in darkness.” He also knows that he can’t. One thing that Job is acknowledging is that human suffering happens within the context of intimacy with God. Sometimes it’s a rather bitter intimacy, but intimacy, nonetheless. And if we can’t share our deepest anger, fear, and hurt with those with whom we are most intimate, do we really love them? Do we really trust them? What or whom are we trying to protect if we offer to God nothing but laundered and starched formality?

When people seem to be angry with God, and uncomfortable with feeling that way, I always refer them to three particular psalms of lament. In these psalms, the poets do more than give voice to their pain or their community’s pain. They call God out and demand action. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” cries Psalm 22. In Psalm 44, the psalmist accuses God of abandonment saying, “You have rejected us and abased us…You have sold your people for a trifle…[and] made us…a laughingstock…” Psalm 88 ends in utter despair: “You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me; my companions are in complete darkness.”

         I think we need to feel free to express to God our hearts’ rawest and most bitter intimacies. Sometimes lament is the most honest prayer we can pray and our most sincere affirmation of faith. Lament takes seriously our faith that God creates the world and declares it good, even when good is not what we’re experiencing. The bitter intimacy of lament calls on God to show up and to redeem our suffering.

         Job’s tortured laments do all of these things. They also declare his innocence. Elie Wiesel says that Job’s “innocence troubled him, left him in the dark.” Had Job felt guilty, “his guilt might [have given] the experience…meaning. [Job] demanded…an answer that would show him unequivocally that [humankind] is not a toy…Job turned against God to find and confront [God]. He defied [God] to come closer to Him.”¹

         “Moreover,” says Wiesel, “Job needed God because he felt abandoned by…his wife [and] his friends,” all of whom projected their own resentment toward and fear of God onto Job, even as he suffered.­²

         Wiesel is saying that Job’s angry laments declare his faith that his suffering, and that human suffering in general, is not God’s will. And it’s very often through our most passionate, unfiltered protests that we draw closest to God who, as James Finley says, “protects us from nothing [and] sustains us in all things.”³

         One challenge for us is that we tend to recognize God’s sustaining faithfulness most fully in retrospect. The writer of Psalm 23, for example, would have nothing hopeful to say without having already traversed the “valley of the shadow of death.” He can “fear no evil” only by having already faced some kind of fearsome malice. And perhaps only someone who survived something like the Nazi Holocaust—someone like Elie Weisel—can write an honest commentary on the Book of Job.

         We live in our own worrisome times. And it’s often easier to act like Job’s wife or one of his “friends” and lash out in judgment at each other. As followers of Jesus, though, our calling is to claim the gifts of our suffering and to enter the bitter intimacy of the world’s lament. When we lend our voices, hands, and feet to the Creation’s suffering, we help reveal the reconciling and resurrecting love of God.

         And remember: Healthy lament always begins with our own intimate struggles with God. When people of faith do not feel free to be bitterly honest with God, we will almost certainly, like Job’s wife and friends, project onto others our bitterness toward God. And misdirected bitterness can cause any of us to judge and even condemn people who need and deserve compassion.

If the story of Job does nothing else, it invites us into the deepest, darkest, most faith-threatening pain in our lives and in the world. And it dares us, in the midst of that pain, to draw near to God—who, quite frankly, has nothing in common with that irresponsible, anthropomorphic deity who turns Job over to Satan.

          It’s interesting. Job wishes he could “vanish in darkness.” His lament has a counterpoint in the poet’s grateful affirmation when he says, in Psalm 139, “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you.”

I think Job’s story helps to create space for us to prepare for and to meet the God being revealed in Jesus—the Christ.

The One who comes to us as one of us.

The One who suffers with us.

The God who, ultimately, transforms all suffering, all “darkness,” into redeeming and life-sustaining light.

¹Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends, Random House, NY, 1976, p. 198.

²Ibid., p. 199.

³https://cac.org/suffering-week-2-summary-2018-10-27/

“It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere”

Matthew 20:1-16 

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/3/21

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. ² After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.

³ When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; ⁴ and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.

⁵ When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same.

⁶ And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’

⁷ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’

He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

⁸ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’

⁹ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. ¹⁰ Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. ¹¹ And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, ¹² saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’

¹³ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? ¹⁴ Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. ¹⁵ Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ ¹⁶ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (NRSV)

         The longer I sloshed around in this story, the more it became a kind of chattering brook. Then the brook became a river, and the deeper I waded into the river, the more urgently the flow tugged at my whole being. Then it became almost a flood, a force pulling me deeper and pushing me further. Anything I might have expected, anything I might have fished for in that river began to rise and converge into an insistent cataract of holy purpose. And at least for me, it became a call to ever-deepening transformation—personally, spiritually, vocationally.

         As a Christian, I’m committed to the intentional community called the church. And as a pastor, I have a very personal stake in the well-being of the organization. It’s in my own best interests to maintain the integrity of the institution as well as its message.

Problems arise, though, when church leaders, both professionals and lay people, allow that personal stake to become the guiding influence. It leads us to work to maintain the church rather than to serve God. Now, pastors know that if the church falls apart, so do our careers. No more salary, or benefits, or self-actualization. Pastors and lay leaders alike also know that if the church falls apart, certain very comfortable arrangements of authority could disintegrate and leave us feeling powerless.

         At some point, almost all institutions—governments, corporations, universities, congregations, denominations, and religions in general—face the temptation to exist simply to survive. When infected by selfishness, institutions focus on maintaining the arrangements that benefit those who hold authority. And when that happens, the institution exits for its own sake. As such, it becomes little more than a ravenous beast who aligns itself with worldly power and consumes far more in resources than it produces in benefit for others.

Think of the tobacco and the fossil fuel industries that knowingly market products which, in the big picture, diminish the lives of its customers and which, in the process, stress local communities and the global environment. Such institutions make healthcare much more expensive, but since it’s all about money, and since money is all about power, the status quo continues unhindered.

And since I’ve never asked if my investments or the investments of any church I’ve ever served are benefitting financially from such institutions, I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth here. That makes me part of the problem. 

         Pharaoh, Jezebel, Caesar, the Pharisees—all of these are biblical metaphors for political, economic, and religious institutions infected with individualistic greed, fear, and denial.

Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus—all of these reformers and transformers are, in some way, products of their institutions, yet as enlightened, inside agitators, they become gifts of God for the people of God, whether God’s people understand and welcome them or not.

Through the prophetic words and actions of these human gifts, God reveals God’s presence in, with, and for the creation. The trouble with the most faithful prophets is that they seem, at first, to represent far more in the way of threat than hope. They call institutions into question and call people to live lives transformed by new depths of perception of and trust in things like loving and being loved, offering and receiving compassion, and sharing—for the well-being of all—the God-given, material and spiritual abundance of the Creation.

As prophet and agitator, Jesus tells the parable of the laborers in the vineyard to challenge the greed and individualism of his own day and to reveal the deeply communal nature of the realm of God

         The kingdom of heaven, he says, is like a landowner who chooses to give as generously to workers who labor for one hour as he does to those who labor all day.

         This scandalizing parable challenges everything that we’ve been taught lies at the foundation of our institutions. It dares to reveal that God’s true prophets are known by their connection to an autonomous and gratuitous Generosity that gauges individual worth on the basis that every person is a God-imaged human being, and not on his or her relative productivity.

‘That’s irresponsible!’ we say. ‘If such reckless open-handedness were to become standard, it would ruin everything. Everyone would show up at 5:00pm expecting a day’s wage for an hour’s work!’

         There may be truth in that. So, how else might institutions adopt more gratuitously generous practices? Offer a minimum wage that is at least a living wage? Offer longer maternity leave? Offer paternity leave? Offer more vacation time? While some economic arguments against these kinds of measures may have institution-maintaining merit, Jesus’ parable clearly lays the foundation for biblical advocacy of such generosity.

I can’t impact many decisions in institutions beyond the small community of this congregation; but, as the saying goes, “It’s always five o’clock somewhere.” It’s always time for you, for me, for us to express our faith in God by living more generously than we might think is warranted or healthy.

Five o’clock urgency has been on us for the last two years of pandemic. In my opinion, wearing the mask when you’re inside and around others, getting the vaccine, continuing to be careful about physical distancing are not threats to “individual liberty.” They’re simple acts of generosity.

Five o’clock urgency cries out in the form of Afghan refugees seeking safety and new beginnings.

Five o’clock urgency is, every day, sending people in search of help at food pantries, soup kitchens, and homeless shelters throughout the world.

It’s five o’clock all over God’s creation. And institutions that exist for their own sake will simply dismiss each critical moment with anemic “thoughts and prayers.” Unless they discern some clear financial reward or political advantage for taking positive action, institutions that exist for their own sake will do nothing.

We are all of us, in some way, part of those institutions. As followers of Jesus in a season of five o’clock struggle, it’s always time to act as enlightened prophets, as inside agitators. It’s always time for us to enter the rising river and to offer gratuitous generosity on behalf of a suffering Creation. As the physical violence and the violent rhetoric continually remind us, participating God’s realm of undeserved kindness can be perceived as weakness. Then again, it can also be the difference between life and death for many people. And I firmly believe that, in the long run, no weapon will ever make any person or community safer than gratuitously generous practices of faith, hope, love.

Jesus’ parable says that the kingdom of heaven is not manifest in some new world order imposed by some powerful institution. His followers manifest the kingdom of heaven in their daily willingness to actively engage and witness to Jesus’ alternative way of life—a life marked by a generosity so profound that few institutions (including, sadly enough, the church) dare to participate in it.

As we come to this table on World Communion Sunday, we proclaim yet again (Even if we don’t know how to enjoy it fully!) the boundless, and the perfect and perfecting love of God.

So, all of you, come to the table. Enter the rising river, and embrace the overwhelming generosity of God’s Christ.