“The Currency of Grace”

Matthew 22:15-22

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/18/20

¹⁵Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.¹⁶So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. ¹⁷Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

¹⁸But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? ¹⁹Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius.

²⁰Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”

²¹They answered, “The emperor’s.”

Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

²²When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.  (NRSV)

         The Pharisees have set a trap for Jesus, and they send underlings to do their dirty work. Maybe they think that Jesus is more likely to fall into the trap that way. Maybe he’ll wag his tongue a little more loosely with servants than he would with the guys wearing long robes decorated with tassels and fringes. So, the hapless minions approach Jesus and ask, Should we, the people of Israel, the chosen ones of God, who is King of the Universe, pay taxes to Caesar?

Dealing with messengers rather than the senders of the message, Jesus turns the encounter into a teachable moment. Speaking sharply yet with love for God and neighbor—even these neighbors—he makes a subtle but crucial distinction between those things which claim to bind us by worldly obligation and those things to which we bind ourselves in gratitude and love.

You frauds, says Jesus, show me a coin that Rome will accept as tax payment. They bring him a denarius, and Jesus says,“Whose head is this, and whose title?” The answer to both questions is the same: Caesar’s.

When citizens of Rome see the face and utter the name of Caesar, they know that they’re expected to regard the emperor as a god. Even the Jewish people are obliged to speak the name of Caesar with the kind of reverence reserved for the name so holy and unique in the universe that to speak it is to diminish it. Thus, did God’s people speak around Yahweh’s name, saying things like Jehovah, Adonai, or simply the LORD.

I imagine Jesus holding up that tiny coin and twisting it so that it catches and reflects the light of the sun. Then he says, in effect, Sure. Give this thing to Caesar. It’s his, and it has a lot in common with his deity. It’s nothing but an idol—a thin piece of metal, in and of itself devoid of value, and a source of more problems than solutions because to want and to own such things inevitably makes people treat each other like objects, like adversaries to overcome rather than neighbors to love.

With that, Jesus clears himself. If he yields to Caesar’s tax laws, he can’t be arrested for treason. Then, raising the stakes, Jesus says, Give Caesar his due, and “give…to God the things that are God’s.”

All those empty praises the messengers heaped on Jesus bear witness to reality. Jesus is truly sincere, truthful, and unmoved by flattery because he doesn’t get his worth from human affirmation or from some other outside source—like money. Money has value only when it’s backed up by something external to itself like gold, silver, or a nation’s economy. Jesus, and all who trust and follow him, know that human worth comes from the indwelling of God’s eternal presence. The image of God shines through them, through you and me, as a light from within. By grace alone, the beauty, creativity, and holiness of God are inherent in all that God has made. And because these gifts both permeate and transcend the whole Creation, we are free to value the earth and all that lives in it as sacred and ablaze with the presence of the Creator.

Whether they agree with Jesus or not, the messengers know that Jesus has spoken the truth. So, they leave him alone.

Caesar does have the political power to make taxation a matter of legal obligation. He can enforce that law with punishment for those who forget to pay or who try to evade the law. However, he has the authority to do so only as long as the coins with his name and face engraved upon them have value within and beyond the empire. Jesus juxtaposes that obligatory relationship with an alternative. Reaching into the realm of gift, gratitude, and response, Jesus’ authority challenges us to trade in the currency of God’s eternal grace. In the economy of Jesus, we exchange the God-faced coins of faith, hope, and love rather than the legal tender of selfishness and greed.

  The Stewardship and Finance Ministry Team has been working to change the way we manage congregational investments. Last Monday the ministry team met with the second of two representatives whom the committee is interviewing as prospective financial advisors. This particular person asked an extremely important question. He asked what kind of ministry goals we have in mind for our investments. I’m embarrassed to say that we had no good answer for that question, and much of that is on me. If a church’s leadership has no clear plan for the financial resources that people have given so freely and generously, then we’re just hoarding them. And to justify that, we call it a “safety net.”

When our Sunday school class worked with this passage last week, someone asked another good question: How big does a congregation’s safety net have to be before it becomes a buried talent? That person was referring to the parable of the talents recorded in Matthew 25 and Luke 19. In that parable, one servant buries his talent rather than using it for some purpose that furthers the interests of the man who entrusted his wealth to servants while he goes on a journey.

As a church, the obligation of taxation doesn’t apply to our income. However, if all we do with our investments is accumulate them—by taking advantage of laws that allow us not “to give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s”—then are we really giving to God “the things that are God’s”? In the coming months, discerning how to unearth and offer our talents will become a principal focus for the session.

The struggles of a community almost always mirror the struggles of the individuals within it, especially those in leadership. And we’re a congregation of primarily retired persons, people who were raised in a very different era and culture than we live in now, people who live on investments, and who recognize that their time is dwindling. And while investments are important, the God-created resource of time holds indescribable value because it is, for everyone, a gift that is both non-renewable and non-transferable.

Giving to God that which is God’s is about living gratefully, joyfully, and generously in the moment but with an eye always trained toward the future on behalf of generations yet to come. Because the present moment is saturated with the fearful and insatiable appetites of all manner of Caesars, it swarms with overwhelming human need, need created by relentless injustice and profound grief. When we as individuals and as a Christian community face that omnipresent need, our charge is to see Jesus’ own need—Jesus own face—manifested in the needs and the faces of “the least of these.” Responding to that need through loving word and servant-hearted deed is giving “to God the things that are God’s.” And while we do give from storehouses of dwindling time, unique talents and interests, and limited financial resources, God receives these God-given gifts, blesses them, and transforms our collective, mustard-seed offerings into a great hedgerow of abundance.

Three weeks from today we will consecrate the pledges we make to God through this congregation. As we think about what we will give—without obligation or entrapment—may each of us remember two things:

First, what we give and what we keep is God’s already.

And second, as followers of Jesus, we are dealing in the currency of grace, which, through the power of Resurrection, is non-taxable because it is inexhaustibly transferable and eternally renewable.

“A Common Purpose”

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/11/20

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. ²I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, ³for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? ⁴For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?

⁵What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. ⁶I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. ⁷So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. ⁸The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. ⁹For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building. (NRSV)

      So, for some reason!^*, I’ve had babies on my mind. Because of that, I feel some cognitive dissonance when Paul uses “infants” as an image of derision. Still, I have to understand his deep frustration with the Corinthians who are caught up in a cycle of petty “jealousy and quarreling.”

After planting a church, you see, Paul turns much of a new congregation’s nurture over to someone else while he moves on. During a visit to Ephesus, Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew whom Luke describes as a teacher of great eloquence, keen understanding of scripture, and “burning enthusiasm” had learned about Jesus through Priscilla and Aquilla. (Acts 18:24-28) Paul entrusts this gifted new disciple with leadership of the Corinthian church. And now, divided loyalties are causing a rift in the congregation. Some have so closely identified with Paul and others with Apollos that they no longer identify with God who had created all of them, and whom Jesus had revealed in a unique wholeness.

Calling the Corinthians to the carpet for their childishness, Paul says, You all still need to be nursed and bottle fed. You’re not ready for real food. You’re not ready for a meal you have to chew on carefully, savor gratefully, and share intentionally. You just want your bellies tighter than a tick on a bloodhound!

The Corinthian Christians’ hunger is a desire for power. One side thinks Paul offers the best chance to gain and hold authority, while the other side puts all its eggs in Apollos’ basket. Maybe one reason Paul is so frustrated is that he knows how that will play out. He knows that when the winds of change blow, human loyalties tend to shift, because people motivated by greed and fear will go wherever they think the milk will flow the easiest, and where they will get the most for themselves.

Playing authority figures against each other is a ploy as old as humankind itself. So, when Dad says No, the child pouts and walks away. Then he puts on a smile and says, Mom? Dad said I should ask you if we could get a puppy.

While that’s nothing more than childish manipulation, it’s also calculated espionage! Ben and Mercedes have done a good bit of rafting through the technical waters of the Nolichucky Gorge. Maybe some of the lessons they learned there will equip them for navigating the even trickier waters of Porter’s wily charms as he grows and encounters personal desires that pit his will against that of his parents. And there’s the rub: Their will. A shared will. Paul calls it the “common purpose.”

As Porter’s parents plant the field and water the crops of their offspring, they, like all parents, will need to find ways to commit themselves—lovingly, firmly, and, when necessary, sacrificially—to the “common purpose” of their son’s well-being. In parenting that may be a set of things more than any single thing. For Paul, however, when he writes to the Corinthians, he refers to a very specific common purpose: Faithfulness to “God who gives the growth.” Faithfulness is the purpose of the new faith community.

         Matthew’s gospel is known for drawing parallels between Jesus and Moses. It seems to me, though, that Paul has more in common with Moses than Jesus does. Paul is trying to help establish the new community, and he doesn’t have four gospels to study and to teach. He doesn’t have a narrative record of all that the first apostles said, did, and experienced. He doesn’t have an anthology of pastoral letters that have been accepted as inspired and authoritative, letters reflecting theologically on the life and ministry of Jesus, letters written to guide intentional communities based on faithfulness to God by following Jesus.

What Paul does have is an oral tradition. He has random and subjectively-remembered stories recalling Jesus’ remarkable presence. Paul also has his own transformative experience, including a kind of burning-bush encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. He has the memory of receiving care he didn’t deserve from a stranger named Ananias. Paul’s whole journey from sight-to-blindness-to-new vision has filled him with the conviction that Jesus is alive and present through the power of the Holy Spirit. Those experiences have kindled in Paul a new passion; he wants to live in faithfulness to God by helping to create a new, Christ-centered community, and to help lead that community into its own identity and place in the world. And it’s just inevitable that such a job will often feel like raising fussy, greedy children.

I think Moses could easily relate to Paul’s frustrations of trying to lead people in faithfulness to God while the people’s appetite for comfort and control sends them chasing after whatever seems to offer the best deal and the easiest meal. When a “common purpose” is reduced to everyone seeking their own best interests, “jealousy and quarreling” are only the beginning. Bitterness and chaos will soon follow because the people will be driven by an economics of scarcity rather than faith in God’s abundance. There will also be entire groups who will not simply be left behind in the pursuit of self-interest; they will be forbidden to seek their own well-being. Think of serfs in medieval Europe, African slaves in America’s antebellum south, and women around the world and throughout history.

Faithful commitment to a “common purpose” is always complicated. A common purpose requires the whole community to focus itself on a particular goal, both in the moment and for the future. That purpose also requires that each individual in the community claim and develop his or her or their own particular gifts. It requires that they be given room to process their own journeys of discovery, joy, and pain, and then to offer their unique perspectives to help broaden the community’s identity and deepen its mission. That’s why Paul will, more than once, compare the church to a body with many parts, all of which are integral to the common purpose of faithfulness to God through love of neighbor and earth.

         The common purpose to which Paul refers challenges us to celebrate both individuality and community. And there will always be tension between those two. The trick is to avoid entering that tension as competitors looking to defeat opponents, or selfish children looking to play a zero-sum game. One sign of authentic maturity is the ability, indeed the commitment, to understand tension as integral to any creative process. Tension is a central element of the Christian life, says Richard Rohr who defines “hope…[as] an ability to hold creative tensions.”¹

         So, to live the Christian hope means learning to trust that all our human efforts, as vitally important as they are, are simply acts of planting, watering, and nurturing. “God [gives] the growth,” says Paul. Growth, life, existence itself, these are mysteries God does. And as people of faith, we celebrate them, call attention to them, wonder at them, give thanks for them, and steward them. In things like music, poetry, medicine, engineering, and parenting, we even participate in them as co-creators through Christ; but we are not God. We witness to God and serve God when we speak and act gratefully, lovingly, humbly, and with a commitment toward justice and wholeness for all people and for this one and only one planet on which we all depend.

Indeed, we are merely the field. God is the infinite array of purposeful relationships and mysteries within the earth that make the field fertile.

May your life be as rich as a God-cultivated field. And may your most precious gift to the Creation be your love for the Creator.

^*Very early on the morning of this sermon, October 11, 2020, my wife and I became grandparents for the first time.

¹Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York. 2011. P. 158. The complete paragraph is worth quoting: “In short, good leaders must have a certain capacity for non-polarity thinking and full-access knowing (prayer), a tolerance for ambiguity (faith), an ability to hold creative tensions (hope), and an ability to care (love) beyond their own personal advantage.”

“Water-Logged Rocks”

Exodus 17:1-7

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/27/20

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. ²The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.”

Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?”

³But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?”

⁴So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

⁵The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. ⁶I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.”

Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. ⁷He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”  (NRSV)

         This summer, like most summers, had a few long dry spells. During each one, my gardener wife would stand over her rows of tomatoes, beans, okra, and squash and say, “We really need some rain.” Then she’d go turn the handle on the spigot, pick up the hose, and start watering her garden.

I suppose that getting water from the faux brick-on-concrete block foundation of a house isn’t any easier than Moses whacking a rock with a stick; it’s just a lot less dramatic. Then again, when you think about the whole process of drawing dirty water from the Nolichucky River, pumping it all the way to Jonesborough, purifying it, and delivering it into our homes day and night at the mere twist of a handle—well, if that’s not exactly a miracle, it’s certainly a wonder. And as long as a person pays her utility bills, she can trust that process to receive a God-given resource that every living thing requires for its existence.

It seems to me that trust is the fundamental issue facing the parched and anxious Israelites as they languish in the wilderness. And as much as we can sympathize with the Hebrews, their accusation that Moses is trying to kill them reveals their faithlessness. And since faithlessness is really nothing more than forgetfulness, let’s remember the context of this story.

The incident at Rephidim occurs right after God has parted the seas, turned bitter water into sweet water, and provided both manna and quail for the people. Though they have experienced God’s faithfulness in multiple situations, they still haven’t reached a place of trust. Because of their limited experience, God remains, primarily, a liturgical utterance—The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The people know of God, but they have yet to know God. They have yet to love and trust God.

          When our Sunday school discussed this passage, one person observed that the Israelites seem to be following Moses rather than God. So, they’re defined by their ongoing dependence on a fellow creature rather than their relationship with the Creator. So, while sweet water, manna, and quail are great, it takes a while for a few strokes of good luck to become a faith-building trend. It takes even longer to recognize the divine presence behind Moses’ leadership. And it takes longer still to trust that, whether Moses is present or not, God is, was, and will always be present in the life of the people.

That’s part of our faith struggle—learning to hear professions of faith not as wishful thinking but as the expressions of hearts at peace, hearts who trust that come what may, great joy or deep anxiety, God is present in the moment redeeming suffering, creating purpose, and calling us to lives of humble service and confident witness. This kind of trust-wrought wisdom is inherent in every authentic spirituality.

In discussing leadership in his book The Naked Now, Richard Rohr says that “wisdom is ‘the art of the possible.’ The key question is no longer ‘How can I problem-solve now, and get this off of my plate?’ It is ‘How can this situation achieve good for the largest number and for the next generations?’”¹

The Exodus is one long problematic situation for the Israelites. And as the leader, Moses often wants simply to get problems off of his plate so he can move on to the promised land God has told him about and about which he has told the Hebrews. And they will eventually find that land—more or less. As with all temporal nations, it will be a territory they never truly own because they take it by force and hold it only until a stronger people take it from them by force. And on it goes. And so, Israel’s faith will wax and wane depending on the number and magnitude of the problems on their plate at any given time.

As God’s Nation-Within-The-Nations, Israel often wearies of and abandons the call to help lead God’s good creation in the ways of justice, righteousness, compassion, and trust. And perhaps TRUST, more than any particular geographical location, is itself the Promised Land.

         Out there in the wilderness, bereft of trust and water, the Israelites lose sight of what has happened and what can happen. They’ve forgotten the Red Sea, the sweet water, the manna, and the quail. They’ve forgotten that God is with them in their thirst, and that God, whose providence can be trusted, is already on the other side of their need.

         For 21^st century Christians, who are accustomed to tap water, relating to this story means placing ourselves in it, and not just as Israelites. There’s room for us inside every element of the story.

         Like Moses, we are leaders charged with the burden of wisdom, with the work of discovering what is possible in our own wilderness and acting in faith to lead others simply by living the radical new vision called the household of God, a vision in which the schisms that pit us against each other become celebrations of our different gifts, and the sand castles of meritocracy give way to communities of grace built on the solid foundation of mutual human respect and love, and on bathing in God’s delight in all that God has made.

         We can see ourselves in Moses’ staff, something that Moses never uses as a magic wand for his own benefit, but which, at God’s command becomes both a symbol of and a conduit for the power of God touching the earth on behalf of people in need. That helps us understand why the staff is an essential image in Psalm 23, doesn’t it?

         As rock and water, we can bear witness to God as both an anchor of identity and the flow of life and liveliness, as both safe harbor and open-ended journey. As water-logged rocks, we encounter and embody a life-giving paradox—the concrete mystery of God’s incarnate presence in and for the world.

         Perhaps most importantly, as thirst itself, we live as ones who trust that our deepest desires are God’s own longings to be in relationship with us. “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in you,” wrote St Augustine. “I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you,” prayed Thomas Merton.

         When we, as Christ’s body, join our voices in cries for justice and peace, we participate in the world’s thirst. And while we must participate in those thirsty cries, we can’t stop there. When protest becomes an end in itself, we reduce it to quarreling and testing. The faith community has more constructive roles to play. Like Moses, we intercede and advocate. We raise our staff and strike the jagged rocks of resentment, fear, and bigotry. We allow ourselves to be broken open so that through us the living water of Christ becomes a healing flow of humble welcome, truth-telling, and re-orienting relationship. We lead in acts of reconciliation, in demonstrations of confession, repentance, reparation, and resurrection.

         Ours is a crucial, pivotal time, and as people of thirst-conscious compassion, as leadership staff in Christ’s new community of grace, as rocks saturated with living water, God calls us into a drought-weary world to speak and act with the love that casts out fear, the love that bears…believes…hopes…and endures all things, the love that never ends.

May we trust that love, whose name is Yahweh. And may we help bring water to a parched and anxious world.

¹Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. The Crossroad Publishing Company, NY, 2009. P. 158.

“Crumbs Are Enough”

Matthew 15:21-28

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/16/20

²¹Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon.²²Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”

²³But he did not answer her at all.

And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.”

²⁴He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

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

²⁶He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

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

²⁸Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.  (NRSV)

         I don’t have a good answer for the obvious question. While first century Jews did regard Canaanite people with prejudice and contempt, I can neither explain why nor gloss over the fact that Jesus himself refers to a Canaanite woman and her ethnic kin as dogs.

Jesus’ comment is particularly baffling in light of the teaching that comes immediately prior to this encounter. A dispute with some Pharisees over hand-washing before meals led Jesus to rebuke them for paying only lip service to God. When cautioned by his disciples for angering people who had the power to make his life miserable, Jesus says that it’s not what goes into a person that defiles. What comes out of the mouth—the words, the attitudes, the bigotry, the meanness—these things corrupt because they reveal the heart. So, what’s in Jesus’ heart when he so rudely dismisses a woman crying out for help?

Over the centuries, Christians of all stripes have sprung into damage-control mode when hearing this text. According to the most common defense, Jesus didn’t really mean what it sounds like he said. He was just testing the woman. He knew how she would respond just like he knew how he would respond. So, while Jesus may appear prejudiced, the whole scene was a carefully-planned teachable moment that Jesus choreographed with spiritually-principled compassion and just a touch of good-natured teasing.

         That line of reasoning 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 did it 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. Anyone who expects that to be the nature of God and of the Christian faith will likely be disappointed into atheism by suppertime. That Pollyanna god exists only on the Hallmark Channel.

Through two millennia of the Christian faith, far too many disciples have also taken Jesus’ words as tacit justification to judge and disdain those who are poor, or whose ethnicity or gender is deemed inferior, or whose sexuality is deemed dangerous, or whose religion or politics are wrong. And it’s okay to treat “those people” like some neighborhood cur.

If that sounds harsh, just remember the arguments the Church made in defense of things like the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, race-based segregation, the Holocaust. And think about the arguments the Church continues to make in defense of humankind’s appetite for excessive wealth and our profligate use of irreplaceable resources to develop and maintain enough weaponry to destroy this planet several times over.

         And remember this, too: It’s not just as disciples of Jesus, but as the very Body of Christ himself that the Church has been doggedly mistreating people for two thousand years. But didn’t Jesus focus his ministry on those very people? On those in the deepest need? On those who are oppressed and forgotten?

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

         Come on, Preacher! Show us a little mercy! We’re beat down enough as it is. Here we are in the dog days of summer, and from Covid-wrought isolation, to social unrest, to bitter rhetoric in the public square that’s turning us against each other, it’s like…well, it’s like someone we love with all our hearts—someone like our own child—is sick, like she’s tormented by a demon. Where is God in all this? Where is Jesus? Where is our hope, our peace, our purpose? Help us!

         Does anyone feel that way? If so, how might you respond if I said that “it’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw 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 face it, you and I, we’re Gentiles? If I said that, would you keep coming to worship?

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

         The woman and Jesus know that. Jesus’ disciples have to learn it. Having tried to bar the door and keep this “inferior” person away, they are now the ones on the hot seat in this story. And while Jesus’ response is inexplicably slow in coming, he nonetheless says to those who follow him that this woman and her daughter are, utterly and irrevocably, as much children of God as any Pharisee, Sadducee, priest, or ordinary Jewish person back home. Individually and systemically, Canaanites deserve to be seen, heard, welcomed, valued, respected, and protected exactly the same as anyone from Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capernaum, or Jerusalem.

         It’s cliché to say, but the Church really is in decline. Maybe one reason is that contemporary disciples are and have been experiencing a dangerous contraction of faith, a regression. It’s like the Church is becoming less and less the Body of the resurrected Christ and more and more like the disciples before the terrifying experience of Friday and the transforming revelation of Sunday. And before Easter, the disciples were a self-centered bunch, weren’t they? They argued about who was first and greatest. They tried to shield Jesus from children and blind men, because they just knew, that eventually, he was going to raise a flag in one hand, a sword in the other, and lead the house of Israel in triumph, once and for all, over every principality and power. And as long as that was the goal, the disciples were never going to get enough.

         Go away, Canaanite woman, they say. There’s not enough of Jesus for us and for you.

         Into the disciples’ fearful bigotry, an outcast, a Canaanite, and a woman at that, broke the door down to say, Brush me off like a crumb if you want to, but crumbs are enough. A crumb from Jesus can restore my daughter.

         When the Church proclaims the resurrection of Jesus and still treats certain people as less-than-worthy, when we withhold the holy gifts of welcome and advocacy from people who are lonely and oppressed, we only prove that we have given up on resurrection. When people live selfishly and fearfully, crumbs are never enough. We will always hoard what we have and grasp for more.

Brothers and Sisters, Jesus has been raised from dead! In the presence of the Holy Spirit, he is alive! And his resurrection empowers us for living an entirely new life than the life that even Jesus’ disciples lived while they followed him in person throughout Judea, Galilee, and into the Canaanite neighborhoods of Tyre and Sidon. If the tiniest seed and the smallest measure of yeast are enough to reveal the kingdom of God, then crumbs are all we need, and not just for being disciples, but for living as Jesus’ Body, his hands, and feet, and heart in and for the world.

Jesus sees the agony of the Father and the Son in the agony of a Canaanite mother and her daughter. His own earthly life will end violently because of his radical love for people just like them. And yet he lives and loves, fearlessly, for them, for you, for me, for all of us—because Jesus already sees it. He sees that we are all one. And his hunger, which is satisfied one crumb at a time, is for humankind to live in unity and wholeness. His hunger is for us to see ourselves in the faces, in the sufferings, in the joys, in the potential, in the breathtaking beauty of every human being and of the earth itself.

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

“Stepping Out of the Boat”

Matthew 14:22-33

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/9/20

 

 

²Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. ²³And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, ²⁴but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them.²⁵And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea.²⁶But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear.

²⁷But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

²⁸Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” 

⁹He said, “Come.”

So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. ³⁰But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!”

³¹Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

³²When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. ³³And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” (NRSV)

 

         It’s been a demanding few days for Jesus. John the Baptist has been executed by Herod. When Jesus tries to find some solitude to grieve and rejuvenate, crowds of sick and lonely people hound him for attention. And always aware of God’s call, Jesus tends to the crowd with compassion and generosity.

         Afterward, Jesus sends his disciples off in a boat to the other side of the lake. Go on, he says. I’ll catch up with you.

         With the disciples on their way, Jesus turns and dismisses the crowd. Then, utterly spent, Jesus trudges up a mountain to pray—alone at last.

         In biblical literature, going “up a mountain” is an image of consciously placing oneself in the presence of holiness. Matthew wants us to imagine Jesus as the second Moses, climbing a mountain to commune directly with God.

         As Jesus prays, his disciples out in the boat are hanging on for dear life in one of the Sea of Galilee’s notorious storms. Also in biblical literature, when someone’s in a boat on a body of water there’s more going on than meets the eye. And a storm on the water recalls the primordial chaos of Genesis. So, while the situation is dangerous, and even dire, it’s also life-giving. When the storm subsides, the world may be brand new, but the voyage to newness is terrifying. For the disciples, the howling wind was bad enough, but when they see a figure they believe to be a ghost walking on the water, they become truly terrified.

         Don’t be afraid, says Jesus. It’s just me.

         When Peter sees Jesus walking across the watery chaos as calmly as he might sit on a mountain top, the disciple—more reckless than truly fearless—says to Jesus, “Command” me to join you on the water!

         “Come,” says Jesus. And stepping out of the boat, Peter’s okay for a moment. Then he looks around at that churning, storm-wrinkled sea. As yet, the impulsive disciple’s faith is no more buoyant than water wings on a cinder block. Peter begins to sink, and Jesus reaches out and returns him to the boat.

         Isn’t that just like Jesus? He offers comfort, peace, and capacities for courageous discipleship; and yet, when Jesus brings his prophetic fullness to bear, we’re more likely to feel as if he has ripped that comfort, peace, and courage away from us.

         I think western Christianity has, in many ways and for many generations, distorted the gospel and misled its people by perpetuating the prosperity gospel’s false claim that true blessing means material wealth and physical comfort. Doesn’t scripture reveal, consistently, that it’s when the waves are up and the chips are down that we grow the most in the ways of faithful, hopeful, loving, and bold discipleship?

         Years ago, Clifton Kirkpatrick, a former stated clerk of the PC(USA), wrote of attending an ecumenical gathering, and among the speakers was a man named Ernest Campbell, the former pastor of Riverside Presbyterian Church in New York City. In his remarks, Dr. Campbell made this challenging and unforgettable statement: “The reason that we seem to lack faith in our time is that we are not doing anything that requires it.”¹

         Those words hit me in the chest every time. The chaotic tempests upon which we sail are both external circumstances and internal struggles. Both can rock our boats and terrify us, and in the midst of them, Jesus issues his prophetic commands: Do not be afraid. Come. Get out of the boat. Do something that will require you to use your faith!

         Last month our nation lost Representative John Lewis, a man known as the “Conscience of Congress.” Mr. Lewis’ public service began with stepping out of the boat and onto the chaotic waters of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s and ‘60’s. One thing that gave John Lewis’ activism such credibility was his Christian commitment. He even compared the movement to worship: “On some occasions,” he said, “it was just like being in church [or] at a prayer meeting. We would sing songs, in Mississippi, in Alabama, in Georgia, in little churches: ‘I’m going to do what the Spirit said do. If the Spirit said sit in, if the Spirit said march…if the Spirit said picket—‘I’m going to do what the Spirit said do.’”²

         In particular, Lewis was influenced by Martin Luther King’s emphasis on nonviolence as the most Christlike and effective means of lasting change. In a 2004 interview, Lewis said, “At a very early stage of the movement, I accepted the teaching of Jesus, the way of love, the way of nonviolence, the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation.”

         Lewis was arrested often, and beaten repeatedly—usually by white men who would sit piously in church pews the next Sunday morning. In Selma, AL, Lewis was, literally, beaten nearly to death. During all of it, he kept his focus. He kept his eyes on Jesus. When asked how he managed to do that, how he managed not to drown in the depths of despair and vengeance, John Lewis said, “hate is too heavy a burden to bear. I don’t want to go down that road. I’ve seen too much hate, seen too much violence. And I know love is a better way.”

         Looking back, though, Lewis did wonder how the nonviolent marchers managed to keep their heads above water in the face of such intentionally vicious cruelty and against such odds. “How did we do what we did?” he wondered. “How did we succeed? We didn’t have a Web site. We didn’t have a cellular telephone. But I felt when we were sitting in at those lunch counter stools, or going on the Freedom Ride, or marching from Selma to Montgomery, there was a power and a force. God Almighty was there with us.”

         Peter would have to step out in faith and begin to sink more than once before he would consistently act in ways that required him to depend on his faith. Eventually he did, though. Eventually he was not just a rock at the bottom of the lake, but the Rock on which Jesus built his church.

         To step out of the boat is to follow Jesus. It’s to entrust our lives to God Almighty who is always with us. To step out of the boat is to add our voices to God’s response to cries for welcome, justice, and true peace for all whom God loves.

         Clinging our boats may feel safer than following Jesus. Our fears may feel like more trustworthy guides than God’s Spirit. Nonetheless, Jesus continues to call us.

         What is Jesus asking us to do­—each of us and all of us together—that requiresus to use our faith?

 

¹Clifton Kirkpatrick, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 3. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. Westminster John Knox Press, 2011. pp. 334, 336.

²This and all subsequent references to John Lewis come from: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2004/01/16/january-16-2004-john-lewis/1791/

Bright Wonder

         One ordinary Tuesday afternoon, as I worked in my home study, my wife, Marianne, called me. She all but sang into the phone that she’d forgotten that she’d won a coveted place in the lottery to see the synchronous firefly display at Rocky Fork, the Tennessee state park near our home in Jonesborough.

         “It’s tonight! Did you remember?” she asked.

         “Well, no,” I said, squirming at the interruption.

         “But you can still go, can’t you?”

         “Um. Well. When?”

         “We have to be in Flag Pond by 7:50pm,” she said.

         Flag Pond, TN.

         That night.

         Yay.

         I went full Eeyore on her. “Okay,” I said. “I guess I can go.”

         “I’m going to call Ben and Elizabeth, and see if they’ll join us. We can have as many as five people in the car!”

         Ben and Elizabeth, our adult children, live nearby, but scheduling us into their lives takes time, and we didn’t have enough of that to wear them down into a “yes.”

         Good luck with that, I thought.

         The upshot of all this was that I was going to have to stop writing, eating peanuts, and (when stuck on a sentence) watching old SNL skits on YouTube in order to walk the dog and throw together some kind of snack supper for us, because there was no way Marianne was going to be home in time to help. Then, since it usually happens this way, I was going to have to hustle her out the door so we wouldn’t be late and miss the shuttle that would take us out to the state park which closes at dusk each evening.

         Call me clairvoyant, but when we got into the car, by ourselves, at 7:20, to make a 45-minute trip in 30 minutes, Marianne looked at me and said, “Speed if you have to.”

         “You should call the number on the reservation form,” I said. “Tell them we’re on the way.”

         “Good idea,” she said.

         When I heard her leaving a message, I said to myself, Crap. We’re screwed. No one’s going to get that message.

         Fortunately, there was only one really slow car on the narrow, winding road to Erwin, and it turned off toward Greeneville. So I started flirting with a speeding ticket, again.

         “I’m so excited,” Marianne said. “We get to see the fireflies!”

         We can see lightning bugs from our porch any freakin’ night! I said. To myself. The things we do for love, I guess. And I did enjoy driving like a teenaged moonshiner without my wife telling me to slow down. In fact, she said, “This is fun.”

         We should be late to something you want to do more often.

         The directions told us to look for an asphalt parking lot somewhere in the 1500’s on Hwy. 352, Flag Pond, TN. When we got off of Hwy. 19W and onto 352, the numbers were in the 4200’s, and going up.

         “Why are the numbers getting bigger?” Marianne asked. “We’re supposed to find 1500. We’re going the wrong way!”

         “We can’t be going the wrong way,” I Eeyored. “352 started right back there. There has to be some kind of break. The 1500’s have to be this way.”

         “But…how?!”

         Damned if I know!

         Yanked from a calm evening at home, flying through curves at expensive-ticket speeds, certain that we’d missed the shuttle, my whole demeanor sucked oxygen from the air and light from the sky. I was a human black hole.

         If we have to turn around and go home, I’m going to enjoy making her miserable the entire evening.

         We passed the entrance to Rocky Fork State Park and still no 1500’s in sight. Less than a quarter mile beyond the turn-off to the park, Hwy. 352 turns right and heads up the mountain and into North Carolina while the Old Asheville Highway runs straight through downtown Flag Pond, TN. In the southwest corner of the intersection, in an asphalt parking lot, we saw a white passenger van next to one of those white canopy tents that vendors set up at festivals to sell homemade trinkets, melting brownies, and bars of goat’s milk soap.

         “That’s got to be it!” said Marianne.

         I pulled up to the tent as the van, packed full of firefly watchers, pulled away. We were relieved to see a number of other people standing around and waiting for the next shuttle. Marianne got out of the car to let the people sitting in folding chairs behind a folding table know that we were legitimate lottery winners.

         After parking the car, I stuffed my camera, tripod, and a bottle of water in my backpack and joined Marianne at the tent. The tent people knew each other and were laughing and talking loudly about people they knew, but the rest of us didn’t. I always find that insufferable, and that night found it especially so. I wandered toward a tall, wooden sign filled with rules about watching fireflies.

         Seriously? Rules for watching fireflies?

         No pets.

         No bug spray.

         No flashlights or cameras without red filters.

         What’s a red filter? And how does it help take pictures of lightning bugs? I moped back to the car and put my camera and tripod away. At least my pack was lighter.

         Back at the tent, a man with a girth so colossal he looked like he had swallowed a hay bale was pulling the cord on a Honda generator.

         “You trying that again?” asked the lady who had signed us in.

         “Thought I would,” said the man.

         The generator sputtered to life and another large, colorful wooden sign lit up with electric fireflies. The man stood in front of the sign with a trying-not-to-be-too-proud grin on his face, arms spreading around his belly, and his hands in his pockets. Half of his hands, anyway. That’s all that reached after his arms spread around his belly.

         I walked up to the folding table laden with Friends of Rocky Fork bumper stickers, t-shirts, and membership applications. While appraising the offerings, I asked the woman behind the table what the rules meant by a “red filter.”

         “Oh, it’s just one of these,” she said holding up a 4-inch by 4-inch piece of red cellophane.

         “How can you take a picture through that?” I asked.

         “It’s just for your viewfinder,” she said. “To keep the artificial light at a minimum. Too much light will affect the fireflies.”

         “Oh,” I said, feeling a bit foolish.

         I took the cellophane, hustled back to the car, and retrieved my camera before the shuttle returned.

         Why didn’t I just ask about that at first?

         Winners of the firefly lottery get assigned to one of several nights of viewing, and our guides for the evening were two state park rangers, Jeff, slender as a sapling, and Carl, thick as an old oak. They were armed with Glocks, radios, electric lanterns covered with red filters, and genuine excitement at the chance to take another group into the woods until 11:00pm to watch fireflies do their mating dance.

         When everyone had been shuttled into the park, Jeff called us together and told us that we’d hike about a mile into the park.

         “We’ll cross the first little footbridge,” he said, “but we’ll stop before the second, bigger bridge. That’s just so we know where everyone is. When we get there, we should still be able to see, so wander around and find a comfortable place to park yourself. About 9:45 the fireflies will start the show, and by 10:00 they should be in full display. When they start, even a quick burst from a flashlight will throw them off for a cycle or two. So please keep your lights off unless you really need them.

         “I’ll lead us, and Carl will pull up the rear. So gather up whatever you’ve brought, and let’s go!”

—–

         Rocky Fork State Park is a 2000-acre quilt of dense, Appalachian cove forest in the steep, rocky folds of the Cherokee National Forest. The main trails at the park are old logging roads. The Friends of Rocky Fork group is cutting some new, single-track trails here and there, but we stayed on the rough and rutted road next to Rocky Fork Creek, which is just big enough for fishing.

         “I really need to come up here and fish this creek,” I said to Marianne as we walked.

         It’s been years since I’ve been fly-fishing. The fish in this creek wouldn’t be very big, but regardless of size, it’s hard to look away from any brook or brown trout. All those red and yellow dots on their mossy-green backs and silver flanks create bright constellations that speak to me of the first stirrings of Creation.

         Something in me began to glimmer.

         As we walked, I asked Jeff if a firefly’s light is bioluminescence similar to what I’d seen in foxfire or, once at Folly Beach, in ocean waves.

         “It’s bioluminescence,” he said, “but the reaction happens because of chemical called luciferin. Fireflies’ light is the only cold light.” Jeff raised his hand toward the darkening canopy of poplar, oak, and hickory. “On the planet.”

         I marveled at the thought of cold light.

—–

         When we reached a small clearing, the logging road bore to the right and began to climb. A narrower trail to the left stayed close to the creek, which was getting smaller the further we followed it.

         “The bridge is just up there to the left,” said Jeff pointing toward the narrow trail. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

         Marianne and I walked toward the bridge. Several of us, including Ranger Jeff, crossed the bridge. A few fireflies were beginning to light up down close to the ground, so I prepped my tripod and locked my camera in place on top of it. Not having done this kind of photography before, I struggled with the mechanics of taking pictures of moving objects in in little to no light.

         “How’s it going,” Jeff asked when he walked past me.

         “Not so good,” I said. “I’m kind of a novice, and I’m not sure how to go about this.”

         “What kind of camera do you have?” he asked.

         “Canon 70D.”

         “I have the same camera,” said Jeff. “Do you have it on auto or manual focus?”

         “Auto.”

         “You’ll need it on manual.” As I switched the lens to manual focus, Jeff took off his pack. “I’m going to throw a bright light out there for you a-ways to give you something to focus on.”

         He shined an unfiltered flashlight beam onto a tree limb thirty or forty feet in front of me. I focused on the limb, and he turned off the light.

         “Now, just adjust your shutter speed as the light dwindles.”

         “Cool. Thank you.”

         I set the timer to a two-second delay, the shutter speed for long exposures, and began to play with what little firefly action was already happening.

         My glimmer got a little brighter.

         Marianne had walked past the bridge a hundred yards or so. When she came back, real darkness was settling in, and she was giddy.

         “There’s a clearing up there, and they are really starting to flash!”

         A man named Dave, a Friends of Rocky Fork volunteer who comes all the way from Knoxville twice a week to work on trails, was there to help Jeff and Carl wrangle firefly watchers. He came to us from below the bridge and said, “Come down here! Around the corner it’s amazing!”

         I gathered my gear, turned on my red-filtered flashlight and eased back across the narrow footbridge. When I looked down the trail, I was looking into deep darkness, and for a moment, I didn’t breathe.

         The term “synchronous fireflies” had always made me imagine lightning bugs going on and off like Christmas tree lights in regular, monotonous intervals. I learned that in the mating ritual of this species of firefly, the males hover ten to twenty feet above the ground creating frenzies of brilliant yellow lights. At some point, responding to God-knows-what stimulus, they go dark. All of them. All at once. Poof. This gives the ladies down nearer the ground a chance to respond with their more subtle, coquettish glow. Then the guys get all excited again and – all at once – start flashing, Me! Me! Look at me!

         Around the edges of all that, a few smaller, pale blue lights came on, and stayed on for as much as ten seconds. These were blue ghost fireflies, and their light is ghostly, indeed. On photographs, their creeping blue lights create long, eerie streaks beneath the dazzling yellows above them. As we were walking out, a single blue ghost hovered toward me and landed on my shoulder. It stopped me in my tracks. A firefly’s adult lifespan is about two weeks, but I felt like I’d been touched by something ancient and sacred. How do the smallest of physical things evoke such deep and timeless wonder?

         As for the total firefly display: Imagine lying on your back in a field where neither light nor clouds dim the splendor of the night sky above you. Above you, the stars shimmer through the last of the day’s heat as it rises through the earth’s atmosphere. Now imagine that every so often those stars cease to shine. They go dark for a few seconds, and when they appear again, you see entirely new constellations flickering above you. Now imagine this happening over and over, and if you have never seen a synchronous firefly display, you’ll have some idea of the experience we were having that evening at Rocky Fork State Park.

         Having found my vantage point, I leveled my tripod, wrapped a red filter around my camera’s viewfinder, secured it with a rubber band, and draped my bandana over the little orange light that shines on the front of the camera during the two-second delay. I set the shutter speed at thirty seconds, aimed my camera blindly toward the hypnotizing flurry of lights.

         When there was nothing to see but fireflies, I noticed the depth of the darkness in that remote mountain hollow. With all other visual distractions dissolved, I smelled the rich aromas of leaves rotting beneath the trees and hard earth cooling underfoot. I heard the rhythmic pulse of crickets, and the gurgle of cold, clear water washing over smooth gray stones. In that numinous, purifying moment, all things converged into a single, otherworldly celebration. And the numbing darkness I had brought with me sloughed off, giving way to bright wonder.

*I wrote this piece about a year ago, and am just now posting it. If you enjoyed it, please share it! Thank you for reading, Allen.

“A Feast of Grace”

Matthew 14:13-21

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/2/20

¹³Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. ¹⁴When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.

¹⁵When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”

¹⁶Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

¹⁷They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”

¹⁸And he said, “Bring them here to me.”

¹⁹Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. ²⁰And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. ²¹And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. (NRSV)

         “Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.”

         What Jesus heard was that his cousin, John the Baptist, had been beheaded by Herod. When Herod had openly taken a shine to his brother’s wife, Herodias, John did what prophets do. Speaking truth to power, he confronted Herod. And it cost John his life.

         One might think John reckless for challenging a tyrant like Herod, but real prophets aren’t palm-readers making predictions. They are spiritually-grounded, visionary realists possessed by sufficient moral clarity, fearlessness, and love of neighbor to call out communities—and especially people of influence and privilege within those communities—for their selfishness and faithlessness. Prophets like St. Francis of Assisi, Harriet Tubman, and Martin Luther King see how wrong-headedness and wrong-heartedness are hurting some people in the moment, and how, in time, they will destroy many more.

         This made me wonder: Why doesn’t Jesus do the same? Why doesn’t he call out Herod for executing John—a revenge killing which isn’t called murder only because the state did it? Instead of declaring John’s death “unlawful,” Jesus scurries off “to a deserted place by himself.”

         Maybe Jesus goes away to pray because, before he says anything, he has to grieve the death of someone he loved.

         Maybe Jesus knows that if he confronts Herod, Herod would just kill him, and Jesus’ time has not yet come.

         Maybe Jesus retreats to the wilderness to wrestle again with the temptation to do something dramatic, something to humiliate and defeat Herod. And that’s the very sort of thing old Beelzebub tried to get Jesus to do earlier—to impose his will on the world through manipulative and violent means. And Jesus knows that the kingdom of heaven does not and cannot arrive at the point of a spear. It is a gift revealed through expressions of compassion, forgiveness, and generosity.

         A great crowd follows Jesus to the “deserted place.” In that wilderness of grief and of human frailty, Jesus witnesses to the kingdom of heaven with compassion, forgiveness, and generosity. He cares for those who bring to him nothing but their need.

         The disciples show compassion and generosity for the crowd the best they know how. When it gets late, they say, Jesus, send them into the villages to buy food. They’re hungry, and we don’t have anything to give them.

         Yes, you do, says Jesus.

         Among them, the disciples have five loaves of bread and a couple of fish. They look at each other as if Jesus told a joke that wasn’t funny.

         Jesus asks for their pittance of food and seats the crowd. Holding the loaves and the fish, he looks to the heavens, thanks God for what there is, and it becomes enough.

         Some call it a physical miracle. If so, that’s pretty wonderful. If that’s the miracle, though, has Jesus only given in and done what he refused to do when the devil tempted him back in that first wilderness—turn stones into bread and astonish people with magic? Besides, when the people are hungry again in a few hours, then what?

         Some call it a miracle of transformed hearts. Jesus takes a leap of faith and shares what little he has trusting that his actions will inspire others to do the same, whether they are people who have little to offer or people whose wealth makes them tight-fisted and greedy. A miracle like that may seem less “satisfying” than something supernatural; but it may be more nourishing because it can create ripple effects that continue to feed hungry people.

         Or maybe this story, which is found in all four gospels, is not so much a report as it is a theological statement, a summation of the gospel itself: Jesus is Emmanuel, the incarnate expression of God’s abundant compassion, forgiveness, and generosity in and for the world. In Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, there is always enough.¹

         However one chooses to read this story, Jesus challenges all of us saying, “you give them something to eat.” The compassionate first-response to hungry, lost, broken people is not to try to “save” them. It’s not to pressure them to profess a specific belief system. The compassionate response to hungry people in deserted places is, like Jesus, to care for them and to feed them. This is especially true when, like Jesus after John’s death, we feel some sinister Herod nipping at our heels.

         The story of the feeding of the five thousand illustrates that, in the face of threats and challenges, to live lovingly, compassionately, and generously is itself a kind of “cure.” Caring for and feeding others connects us to God’s presence and abundance. To reach out in generous love and compassion is to feast at God’s great banquet.

         In contrast, to live fearfully and vengefully, to live as if we matter more than those around us, only increases our distance from God, from our neighbors, and from the earth. To live selfishly is to starve in the midst of God’s abundance.

         Many years ago, my wife and I attended a funeral at a church in a different denomination. As part of that service, the officiant led in the celebration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. And he made it clear that only members of that particular tradition were allowed at the table. In that house of worship, only those who had previously agreed to understand communion in a certain way were welcome.

         Going in, we knew that would be the case if communion were celebrated, but the actual experience unsettled us. We were practicing Christians and old friends of one member of the grieving family. And yet, while the “worthy” people lined up in the aisles, we had to keep our seats and watch. We were not allowed to receive the gift which God offers to all people through Christ.

         The service wasn’t about us, so we didn’t dwell on it. Still, God’s resurrection feast was intentionally withheld from many people at time when a community had gathered to mourn the death of a loved one. Instead of feeding the crowd, the minister fenced off Christ’s table and declared it private property.

         At Jonesborough Presbyterian we practice open communion. I try to make it clear that whenever this table is set, there is always room and there is always enough for everyone. Anyone can choose not to participate. That’s fine, but I want everyone to hear that the disciples who set this table have heard Jesus say to them, “They need not go away, you give them something to eat.”

         Whether out there in that “deserted place” with Jesus, or here in this sanctuary thousands of miles away and thousands of years later, there is enough. There will always be enough at Christ’s table, because this, his feast of grace, is set with generous helpings of God’s eternal love.

 

¹M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel According to Matthew,” The New Interpreter’s Bible. Abingdon Press, 1995. pp 325-326.

“Parable Life”

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/26/20

³¹He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; ³²it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

³³He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

⁴⁴“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

⁴⁵“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; ⁴⁶on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

⁴⁷“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; ⁴⁸when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. ⁴⁹So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous ⁵⁰and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

⁵¹“Have you understood all this?”

They answered, “Yes.”

⁵²And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”  (NRSV)

       Jesus teaches in parables because there are signs pointing to the kingdom of heaven all around us, in the most ordinary realities. The made-for-Sunday-school image of the kingdom as a mustard seed brings to mind children walking out of church with bright smiles and paper cups filled with an over-watered slurry of dark earth. Somewhere inside that mud lies a tiny seed, drowning, dying, just like Jesus said in a different parable.

       The only problem with most such scenarios is that the perfectly well-intentioned Sunday school teachers usually bring seeds for things like zinnias, pansies, tomatoes, or something else both normal and welcome in backyard gardens. To first-century farmers, though, mustard plants were invasive shrubs. To make Jesus’ point, the Sunday school teachers should send the kids home with kudzu or crabgrass to plant outside their windows.

       Matthew does something interesting here. The story immediately preceding today’s string of pithy kingdom parables is the parable of the wheat and the weeds. By juxtaposing the wheat-and-weeds and the mustard seed parables, Matthew asks us to think very carefully about what we write off as weeds. That mustard plant, so vexing for farmers, creates a home for birds which not only aid in the propogation of crops, but whose plumage and song render in us nourishing awareness, joy, and gratitude, attributes which become a kind of yeast that leavens us for fuller living. Thanks be to God for the weeds.

       Yeast is another odd image for the kingdom of heaven. Yeast is a fungus, a biochemical change agent. When added to flour and water, that fungus becomes part of the dough just as the bread becomes part of the body that eats it. And while too little yeast has no effect, too much yeast can cause food poisoning.

       As yeast, the kingdom of heaven is God’s subtle and mysterious presence working within us and through us. It seems to me that when those who follow any given religious tradition over-identify that tradition with temporalities like nations, partisan dogmas, or material wealth, we inevitably try to force upon others that which can only be offered. At that point, we no longer serve God, because we’re trying to be God. And that makes us a toxic presence rather a witness to grace.

       In the next two parables, Jesus compares God’s realm to material wealth. The one who finds “treasure hidden in a field” sells everything he has for the sake of a treasure that is not his, but that he works the system to acquire. While the man searching for fine pearls doesn’t do anything deceptive, the image is still one of grasping after material gain.

       Can we really compare the kingdom of heaven to something that engenders deception and reckless greed? Later in Matthew, when a rich young man says he wants eternal life, Jesus doesn’t tell him to sell everything he has to buy a greater fortune. He says, “go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor…then come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21) And only then, says Jesus, will you have “treasure in heaven.”

       That begs the question of how becoming poor, becoming one whom most societies regard as nothing more than a human weed or a thin slice of unleavened bread makes us rich in things that matter? Holy treasure, says Jesus, is discovered in letting go of all that we claim to have earned and deserve for the sake of that which can only be received as a gift. And isn’t that the nature of grace?

       “The kingdom of heaven is like a net,” says Jesus. Something submerged into the depths and hauled in to see what gifts lie beneath the surface. In this parable (which is simply a recasting of the parable of the wheat and the weeds!), the good fish are kept—which means that they will be gutted, skewered on a spit, cooked over an open fire, and eaten. And the bad will be thrown back into the water. That kind of tempts a person to question the benefits of righteousness, doesn’t it?

       Hold onto the image of the net. We’ll get back to it.

       All these parables invite us to see our lives as parables, as expressions of a life much bigger than our individual lives. And to live consciously as parables inevitably puts us at odds with proud individualism, at odds with the cultures and ideologies of the nations we love, and at odds with groups that give us identity, that can include the Church.

       In reflecting on today’s passage, one commentator asks: “What if a society resembles the empire of Rome much more closely than it does the empire of heaven, expressing in its policies and budget the values of social inequality and redemptive violence? Helping persons to adjust…[to] a sick society is not the work of the gospel.”¹

       Working with the image of the yeast, another commentator says that “‘if a person is well adjusted in a sick society, corrupting [as yeast does] is the only path to wholeness.’”² The point is that the church’s calling is to cultivate disciples who have more in common with weeds and yeast than celebrities and elected officials.

       Many of us feel deep concern over the church’s decline in contemporary culture. One can cast nets of blame into the waters and haul in all sorts of culprits, and the culprit most accountable is we, the Church, which is often more concerned with creating eye-catching gardens than places of welcome and belonging, baking bread that has more aroma than nourishment, accumulating wealth rather than sharing it, cozying up to power rather than advocating for the marginalized and oppressed, and especially with trying to decide for God who is “in” and who is “out” of God’s grace.

       On the positive side of the Church’s struggles, if we confess and conquer our addictions to entitlement and privilege, we can become the subversive weed Jesus plants in the creation, the pungent yeast the Spirit breathes with carefully-measured breaths into the nations. We can become the wide net God casts into the world not to make judgments, but simply to gather on behalf of God’s steadfast love.

       God’s realm is the new reality breaking through the earth itself, and through the actions and words of human parables living lives of compassion and non-violent justice for all. Like householders reaching into our storehouse of long-standing sacramental holiness, of ancient scriptural wisdom, and of ongoing spiritual experience, we continue to reveal God’s newness even in that which seems old, tired, and irrelevant.

       For nine years now, our Sunday school class has worked with lectionary passages. We study them in the simplest way: We read the passages three times using three translations, and each time we ask a different question. What word or phrase captures our attention or imagination? What is the Spirit calling us to be or to do individually? What is the Spirit calling our congregation to be or to do? Every single time, even when working with very familiar passages, we find something new and renewing in those ancient texts.

       Now that we’re meeting by Zoom on Wednesday nights and have an hour instead of thirty minutes, we find all the more of God’s blessed realm in the rich weediness of our lives, more yeast in the dough of our prayer, and more treasure in the fields of our communities as we get caught up in the nets of God’s unbounded grace, and sent out to live as parables, as signs of the presence of God’s holy realm.

Charge/Benediction:

In his book Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation, Frederick Buechner offers this memorable guidance for parable living: “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”³

 

¹Gary Peluso-Verdend, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 3. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. Westminster John Knox Press, 2011. p. 286&288.

²Ibid.

³From Frederick Buecher’s book, Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation. 1983, Harper/Collins. Quotation found at: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/158523-listen-to-your-life-see-it-for-the-fathomless-mystery

“A Bright Grace”

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/5/20

¹⁶“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ¹⁷‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’

¹⁸For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’;¹⁹the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

²⁵At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; ²⁶yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. ²⁷All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. ²⁸Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (NRSV)

         In Matthew 3, we meet John the Baptist, who is quite the paradox. First, he creeps out of the wilderness like some kind of beast. For clothing, he drapes camel’s skin around his body and cinches it with rawhide. He eats bugs right off the ground and honey he has robbed from wild bee hives. You can just see, stuck in amber crystals in his beard, bits of the gossamer wings and slender, bent legs of locusts. Then, all that feral mystique roars to life as John calls all the proper city folk from Jerusalem to prepare themselves for the kingdom of heaven by receiving a baptism of repentance. Without hesitation, the fierce prophet even scolds the powerful Pharisees and Sadducees calling them a “brood of vipers.”

         When Jesus shows up and presents himself for baptism, John recognizes Jesus’ unique holiness and authority, and says it would be more appropriate for him to be baptized by Jesus.

         Then, in Matthew 11, John’s fearless truth-telling has gotten him in trouble with Herod. While languishing in a Roman jail, John sends messengers to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” The image of an incarcerated John wondering whether Jesus is actually the one whom John had already declared him to be presents a strikingly different image of the confident, outspoken prophet we met earlier.

          After answering John with a cagey Yes, and after affirming John and his work, Jesus turns his attention to the crowds. Like John, he challenges them to do some honest self-examination.

         You all are like a bunch of bored, unimaginative mall rats, hollering at each other in the food court. We tried to get your attention, but bless your hearts, you don’t know what you want! John came offering structure and limits, and you passed him off as prude. The Son of Man himself shows up ready to dance like nobody’s watching, and you look down your noses at him as if you’d suddenly frozen up like a bunch of Presbyterians! The proof of what people genuinely believe and trust is in the pudding of their actions, and you all are finding every possible excuse to do nothing!

         Jesus is not advocating a shallow, self-serving works righteousness because salvation isn’t about who we are and what we do. It’s about who God is and what God does. That’s the whole point of grace.

         Having said that, following Jesus is, quite frankly, a lot of work. We follow him not to earn what has already been given, but to inhabit and proclaim God’s kingdom, which is the new way of life that the gift creates. And a kingdom life takes discipline; that’s why it’s called discipleship.

         Jesus acknowledges that discipleship is a formidable task, but he also says that it’s simple enough. It’s a life entrusted to compassion, justice, and joy. Children get it because they still have a broad sense of fairness, and they know what it’s like to entrust themselves to others. Jesus says that those who consider themselves “wise and intelligent” struggle because trust is something they’ve learned to give only to verified trustees. And in many, many cases, people who have been hurt by those they were supposed to be able to trust, simply cannot trust, anymore. That’s a tragic reality of the human condition, and those are not the “wise and intelligent” to whom Jesus refers. The “wise and intelligent” are those who have decided to trust themselves, their material advantage, and whatever they can quantify.

         I’m eternally grateful that I had trustworthy adults and authority figures in my youth. I also like to imagine that I have at least some semblance of wisdom and intelligence, so I can sympathize with feelings of suspicion and reticence. If God is real, and to be trusted, why do things that seem so ungodly happen? Why do people, “good” or “bad,” get cancer, Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Covid? Why are some children born with challenges they’ll never overcome? Why do some people with less pigment in their skin regard and treat people who have more pigment in their skin with less respect and generosity? Why do nations keep gorging themselves on valuable resources that they convert into means to destroy fellow human beings and the earth, and then claim that those means and that violence are signs of God’sfavor and blessing?

         It’s not hard to understand how people can decide that the idea of God is fiction, especially when considering the way religious people often use God to justify their own affluence and hostility.

And there’s the problem: Selfishness and brutality are the easy way. The life of faith takes hard work. It takes determination and conviction, imagination and creativity, patience and forgiveness. It takes all those gifts and characteristics Jesus names in the Beatitudes. (Mt. 5:1-12)

         Now, here’s another paradox: The same Jesus who says, Take up your cross and follow me;

         The same Jesus who says he comes not to bring peace but a sword;

         The same Jesus who says that to save our lives we must lose them;

         The same Jesus who says blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you on my account;

         The same Jesus whose own burdensome yoke makes him pray for God to let this cup pass;

         This same Jesus calls the work of discipleship an easy yoke and a light burden.

         While this dissonance can confuse us, reconciling the hard work of discipleship and the gift of grace doesn’t take fancy theological gymnastics. It’s a matter of perspective. The hard work of discipleship is our grateful response to God’s gracious initiative. We are called to love as Jesus loves us. And the life of love is something we practice imperfectly, but the longer and more intentionally we follow Jesus’ ways of compassion, forgiveness, and justice, his yoke fits more naturally and his burden causes less strain.

         “What Jesus offers is not freedom from work,” says homiletics professor Lance Pace, “but freedom from onerous labor.”¹ Pace describes the yoke of Jesus as work with purpose, “purpose that demands [our] all and summons forth [our] best. …work that is motivated by a passionate desire to see God’s kingdom realized.”²

         When John the Baptist asks if Jesus is “the one,” maybe he’s saying that if that’s the case, then he can trust that his incarceration will expose more than Herod’s transgressions. It will help to reveal the corrupt and systemically unjust ways of power when the powerful use it selfishly. And that yoke fits. That burden he can bear.

         Yesterday I re-read Martin Luther King, Jr’s. Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In this profoundly eloquent, prophetic, and love-wrought epistle, Dr. King calls religious leaders of all faith traditions to task for their reluctance to take on the yoke and the burden of solidarity with God’s love for all humankind, and especially for those who suffer discrimination and oppression. Toward the end of the letter, in the only light-hearted moment, King says that the nearly 7000-word missive may be a bit long. But, he says, “what else can one do when…alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?”

         From his prison cell, Dr. King doesn’t have to ask if Jesus is “the one who is to come.” He declares it with his life, his voice, and his hope. His work is not without suffering, but neither is it without transforming purpose. In his words, I hear Dr. King’s willful acceptance of the yoke and the burden of his kingdom-realizing vocation to speak the truth of the gospel, to act for justice, and to celebrate his faith that he does it all in the bright grace of God’s love.

¹Lance Pace, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 3. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. Westminster John Knox Press, 2011. p. 217.

²Ibid.

“Midwives of Hope”

Exodus 1:8-2:10

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

6/28/20

⁸Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. ⁹He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. ¹⁰Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.”

¹¹Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. ¹²But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. ¹³The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, ¹⁴and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

¹⁵The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ¹⁶“When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.”

¹⁷But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.

¹⁸So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?”

¹⁹The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.”

²⁰So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. ²¹And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. ²²Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.”

2Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman.²The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. ³When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. ⁴His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

⁵The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. ⁶When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him, “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said.

⁷Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?

”⁸Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.”

So the girl went and called the child’s mother.

⁹Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.”

So the woman took the child and nursed it. ¹⁰When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.” (NRSV)

         There’s a new Pharaoh in town, and he has amnesia. Or maybe he’s been poorly schooled in history. Or maybe he was cast upon the throne at an age too young for the responsibility. Or maybe he’s just willfully ignorant. Whatever the case, the new Pharaoh neither remembers nor appreciates Joseph, the Hebrew servant and former prisoner whose spiritual insight and practical wisdom delivered Egypt during economic catastrophe. To such a forgetful leader as Pharaoh, the future is a realm to be feared, conquered, and controlled—by any means—because it’s all about himself.

         I understand that fear. I also understand that it almost always breeds devastation. When caught up in selfishness and anxiety, individuals, groups and nations project their personal fears onto groups and cultures that represent the weaknesses or the failures we most despise in ourselves. So rich and poor, black and white, male and female, this religion and that religion, old generations and young ones all battle and blame each other. And when we do, we lose the obvious gifts, the gifts of the other and the wholeness they represent.

         Pharaoh chooses the Hebrews as the source of everything personally abhorrent and politically threatening. Having focused his fear on the Hebrews, he tries to solve his problem by forcing them into slavery.

         There are two very different kinds of fear in this story, and they continue to work side-by-side in our memory. They inform our present and shape our future.

         The first fear is Pharaoh’s fear. He’s afraid that the future really isn’t about him. In trying to maintain a future he’s terrified to lose—that is, a status quo beneficial to himself—the king tries to end something God started. When the Hebrews only grow stronger under duress, Pharaoh increases their workload and the brutality with which he drives them. Given permission to dehumanize the slaves, the Egyptians beat them like beasts, and kill them with labor and the whip.

         It’s crucial to note that when one group gives another group a story like that to remember, a story of oppression and deliverance from which to draw identity and purpose, the oppressed group will have an eternal well from which to draw strength. And they will, in time, overcome and thrive. The memory of being owned, enslaved, exploited, abused, and liberated lays the theological and existential groundwork for Hebrew poetry, prophecy, and hope. The memory of those shared experiences gives durable authority to the psalms, the lamentations, and the words of people like Samuel, David, and Isaiah.

         When facing the failure of his efforts to own that which belongs to God—namely, the Hebrews and the future—Pharaoh does what madmen and despots do: He tries to create even more fear and an even deeper and more violent disconnect between those with power and those without. To control the Hebrew population, Pharaoh calls for the mass murder of their newborn boys. And to add insult to injury, he calls on Hebrew midwives to serve as his angels of death.

         “But,” says the storyteller, “the midwives feared God.”

         Here is second kind of fear. Maybe we can call it liberating fear. In refusing to obey Pharaoh, the midwives defy the tangible and brutal Powers That Be. They choose instead to trust the inscrutable power that continues to create, that continues to bring forth the new life that they help to deliver into the world every day. Their bold stance of faith declares that God’s power to create and renew always outmaneuvers and outlasts Pharaoh’s power to assault and destroy.

         The fear of the midwives isn’t the anxiety and dread we typically associate with the word fear. Precisely the opposite, the fear of the midwives proclaims their complete faith in the presence and purposes of God. Remembering the past, rich with promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, these intrepid midwives risk their own lives to proclaim Israel’s hope. Think about it, they cannot hide their disobedience. Because of their subversive faith, Hebrew boys survive. And Pharaoh’s own daughter, who becomes an accidental midwife, will name one of them Moses.

         The world is rife with Pharaohs and Egypts. From east to west and north to south, anxiety and dread define much of humanity’s daily experience. And that’s especially true for those whose day-to-day experience includes poverty, abuse, and the constant threat of apathy, prejudice, and violence.

         The Pharaoh’s fear within us enslaves us to his anxiety and dread so that we become his unwitting but willing servants. Imagining that we’re being consistent with history, loyal to nations, and faithful to God, human beings build Pharaoh’s “supply cities.” We yield to and participate in all the brutal systems and means required to sustain them.

         Albert Einstein famously said that “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.” To me, that sounds like a first cousin to Paul’s admonition to the Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.” (Romans 12:2)

         It’s all-too-easy to make faith about conspicuous morality, about regurgitating “right” theology. As people of biblical faith, though, we are called to the new-minded, liberating fear of the midwives. To follow their example is just another way to follow Jesus in lives of bold, death-defying trust that God is not only real, but faithful, loving, and just to all people.

         In our lifetimes, we may not witness the final revealing of God’s fullness, but through our deliberate and daring faith, God equips us to help deliver into the world one new promise after another, even as Pharaoh demands that we kill them—for his benefit.

         Our personal interpretations of what’s going on around us today may differ. But I hear our text calling us always to ask if our responses to circumstances convey the self-serving fear that leads to suspicion, division, and, ultimately, to violence against others. Or do our lives proclaim the great nevertheless of faith, what the ancient prophets and poets called the “fear of God”?

         Do our words and actions declare our trust that God is the source of all that is good, loving, and hopeful in the world?

         Do we actively love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength?

         Do we seek to love all of our neighbors as if we were seeking truly to love ourselves?

         None of us can answer those questions affirmatively all the time, but when we can, we are midwives of hope in the world. We’re delivering that which every Pharaoh fears and would have us destroy. And we’re declaring our allegiance to God, who may always be trusted, and to whom the past, present, and future of all Creation always belongs.