I Love, Therefore I Am (Sermon)
“I Love, Therefore I Am”
Psalm 116
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
4/26/20
1I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice
and my supplications.
2Because he inclined his ear to me,
therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
3The snares of death encompassed me;
the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;
I suffered distress and anguish.
4Then I called on the name of the Lord:
“O Lord, I pray, save my life!”
5Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;
our God is merciful.
6The Lord protects the simple;
when I was brought low, he saved me.
7Return, O my soul, to your rest,
for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
8For you have delivered my soul from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling.
9I walk before the Lord in the land of the living.
10I kept my faith, even when I said,
“I am greatly afflicted”;
11I said in my consternation,
“Everyone is a liar.”
12What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me?
13I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord,
14I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people.
15Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones.
16O Lord, I am your servant;
I am your servant, the child of your serving girl.
You have loosed my bonds.
17I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice
and call on the name of the Lord.
18I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people,
19in the courts of the house of the Lord,
in your midst, O Jerusalem.
Praise the Lord! (NRSV)
Psalms 113-118 constitute the Hallel, a grouping of psalms that, for countless generations has been recited verbatim on high and holy days during the Jewish year. The Hallel is a liturgical remembrance of Israel’s story from exile, through the Exodus, and into their new life of faith.
Psalm 116 is interesting in that it presents a personal testimony to the faithfulness of God in the midst of a communal celebration. It illustrates how one person’s life experience and the experience of the faith community as a whole mirror each other. It declares that the sufferings and the joys of all of us cannot be separated from the sufferings and the joys of each of us.
The psalm is written in what scholars call a chiastic structure, which means that the first half of the psalm contains specific elements that move stanza-by-stanza to a middle, then those same elements pivot and are repeated in reverse order.1 So, the psalm ends where it begins, and vice-versa. It moves from praise and thanksgiving, through the encompassing snares of death and the tearful bitterness of affliction, back to praise and thanksgiving.
Lying at the very heart of the psalm is gratitude for God’s faithfulness, righteousness, and mercy through all seasons of life. And there’s nothing in the psalm to indicate the worthiness of the one cared for and redeemed. There’s only the fact of God’s proactive presence. In light of this grace, the psalmist stands in receptive awe of all that God has done and is capable of doing. Guided by gratitude, the psalmist can face anything, gladness or suffering, because he trusts God.
Psalm 116 defies superficiality regarding gratitude. When the psalmist says that he will “pay his vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people,” he intends much more than marking a box on some religious to-do list. For the psalmist in particular, and spiritually speaking in general, gratitude is more than uttering the words Thank you. Gratitude that never ventures beyond speech atrophies into entitlement. The spiritual discipline of gratitude reveals an abiding posture of heart and mind. Gratitude is the source of the creature’s capacity and desire to live generously in the Creation as a humble response of love for and in praise of the Creator.
Now, while the challenges the psalmist faces are not specified, they’re not theoretical, either:
He has experienced the grip of distress and affliction.
When he lost faith in his fellow human beings, he called “everyone…a liar.”
He has not only feared for his life, he has witnessed the deaths of ones that both he and God loved. His lament, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones,” oozes with the poignancy of one who has seen death first hand and has felt helpless in the face of it.
The psalm declares the confident hope of one who has learned to live in the great Nonetheless that is faith. And his testimony becomes our call to join him in that great Nonetheless. We, too, live in a distressing, afflicted world in which goodness often gets choked to death by selfishness, and brutality, and, just as often, by trite religiosity that baits us by confusing material excess and destructive power with God’s blessing.
Familiar translations of Psalm 116 may even permit such confusion. Biblical scholar Alice Hunt notes that while many translations of this text begin with “I love the Lord, because he has heard by voice,” that translation requires making “the Lord” a direct object for “I love.” Dr. Hunt says that a more literal translation of the Hebrew would be I love because the Lord has heard my voice.2 Without limiting the object of the psalmist’s love to “the Lord,” the psalm opens up, doesn’t it? I love. And I love because I serve a God of not only responsive but proactive engagement in my life and in the life of the Creation—a God of grace. If I am made in the image of God, and if God is love, then loving makes me who I am.
Loving doesn’t make us deserving of God’s grace. Merit and grace are mutually exclusive. To love does signify our holy humanity, though. And for us, as Christians, to love as Jesus loves us, declares our faith. To love as Jesus loves is to be fully human and fully alive. Even when surrounded by “the snares of death,” when enduring “distress and anguish,” when “stumbling” and weeping, when “afflicted” and distrustful—to love, Nonetheless, is to live in the confidence that God hears our voice, and continues to incline God’s ear to us.
We’re in the midst of a global pandemic. Covid-19 now shapes virtually everything we say, do, and think. As of this morning, I know of no member of Jonesborough Presbyterian who has the virus. I do know that family members of members have had it and are, I am grateful to say, recovering. I also know that a woman in my wife’s home church in GA did die from it. We all feel distress, anguish, and the snares of death surrounding us. And how we love in this moment defines us. How we love today will determine our living in the future.
Last week, David Brooks wrote an opinion piece entitled “Pandemics Kill Compassion, Too,” and subtitled, “You May Not Like Who You’re About to Become.”2 In that article he gives a brief synopsis of a number of pandemics throughout history. The ominous trend during these experiences was a general disintegration of the bonds holding societies together. When the world reminded us of how little we control, even in our own lives, many human beings responded in the most un-loving ways. There were mad scrambles to scapegoat and even persecute those who suffered.
Things are no different now. Yesterday morning, I was heartbroken to see a picture of someone at a rally in Nashville—someone hiding his face behind a mask and a pair of those huge, aviator sunglasses—holding a cardboard sign that said, “Sacrifice the Weak.”4
There will always be people who choose selfishness and fear, people who propagate attitudes that are fundamentally antithetical to what Jesus taught, indeed, antithetical to what people of grateful faith proclaim, regardless of their spiritual tradition. We do not have to live that way. We do not have to give up on love and capitulate to despair.
Now more than ever is God calling us to live as signs of gratitude and hope in and for God’s beloved Creation. And through the promise of Resurrection, we can sing with the psalmist:
I love because the Lord heard my cries.
Because God has delivered me from the bonds of selfishness and fear, I will love gratefully by living compassionately.
I will love by reaching out in generous response.
Because Jesus loves, I love.
Because he is, I am.
1Alice W. Hunt, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 2. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY. Pp. 407-411.
2Ibid.
3https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/opinion/pandemic-coronavirus-compassion.html
4https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sacrifice-the-weak-sign-real/
Easter Happens Where Life Happens (Sermon)
“Easter Happens Where Life Happens”
Matthew 28:1-10
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
Easter 2020
After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men.
5But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.”
8So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.
9Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” (NRSV)
Because of Covid-19, most of you are hunkered down in your homes this Easter morning. Next to seeing you all in person, the thing I miss the most today is the outdoor sunrise service. In my opinion, there is no more appropriate place to worship, especially on Easter, than outside on a vibrant, spring morning, beneath the natural light of the heavens, whether they’re shimmering with that pale, silky blue that heralds a clear day, or hanging low and gray, heavy with the promise of rain.
I love the sound of a multitude of human voices singing Alleluias, but if there exists purer joy than a chorus of mockingbirds, robins, cardinals, wrens, and finches, I have yet to hear it.
Outside, there are no doors to be locked, no pews to claim as one’s own. Our feet rest on the earth herself. Our faces feel the chilly bite of unfiltered air. When that air carries pollen from flowers and fruit trees, it may irritate eyes and noses, but it also bears a sweet perfume that cannot be bought. Such is grace.
Inside church buildings, we tiptoe carefully back and forth across fixed aisles. We walk with stiff reverence through hallways and doorways, because it’s “God’s house.” (How can cathedrals of forest, hill, and coastline be anything other than God’s house? And how did we ever imagine God being too holy for our gladness and humor?)
Outside, we travel far more open pathways. We wind our way from city to town, from field to hearth, from mountain top to seashore at the beckoning of beauty, at the demands of danger, by the necessities of appetite and season, and by the inspiration of our dreams.
Now, I am truly grateful for church buildings. Still, when they become more sacred that the God we worship, when they separate us from neighbor and earth, they become idols. Inside them we tend to control our experiences of and our intimacy with God like we control a thermostat. Outside, though, Mystery, in all its feral liberty, slips up on us, and surprises us.
On the first Easter morning, “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary” creep to the tomb at daybreak to hold each other in their grief. As they stand there, feet wet with dew, the sky splashed with orange and purple, the usually-solid, trustworthy earth begins to tremble. If their own knees get weak, if their own stomachs turn, if they drop whatever they’re carrying, they at least remain conscious, unlike the Roman guards who collapse to the ground in lifeless heaps. The women then see something that has come from God, something with a presence and a voice. It tells them that Jesus is alive and they will see him in Galilee. Gathering their baggage and their wits, the women head north.
“Suddenly,” says Matthew, “Jesus met them.”
He stands in their path. He invades their bewilderment. He interrupts their early morning walk along a dusty road redolent with manure and crammed with Passover travelers chattering on about the ungodly profits of the moneychangers and the uncertain outlook on sheep futures.
The women see Jesus’s face, his body, his wounds. They hear his voice. They touch his feet. They smell, well, God only knows what they smell.
The risen Christ invades our paths much more organically and memorably when we’re in our natural habitats for one simple reason—out there is where we live. So, for all the benefits and joys of church buildings, if what we do within their walls fails to connect with who we are and what we do beyond them, we may never recognize the risen Jesus as anything more than some theological precept about which to argue, or worse, some convenient tool for controlling others. That’s what Emperor Constantine saw in Jesus. And the seismic upheaval the Church now feels is one symptom of the necessary process of death and resurrection as we sober up from our 1700-year bender as the world’s most powerful, state-sponsored religion.
Because Easter is a major movement in God’s opus of Incarnation, we have to make peace with the fact that dis-orientation always precedes re-orientation. Friday always precedes Sunday. We have to learn to remain awake and alert to God’s presence and voice in the midst of the earth-quaking disruptions that inevitably occur in our bodies, in our minds, in our relationships, and in the ever-fluid world around us.
If who we are and what we do in church buildings fails to connect with who we are and what we do beyond them, then our sanctuaries are empty tombs, and we’re just armed guards lying on the ground, anesthetized by fear when the earth shifts and God speaks.
Easter can be a stumbling block for the Church because our proclamation is not only unprovable, it’s indescribable.
But it is livable! Easter happens where life happens.
According to Matthew, Sunday’s empty tomb is not the place of Easter witness. Galilee is. Both the angel and Jesus say that resurrection experiences will happen where Jesus’ work began, along the rocky shores of the lake, where crowds gather, where fishermen sit in their wooden boats, beneath bright blue skies and a hot Palestinian sun, mending, with calloused hands, nets made of flax and linen.
As much a verb as a noun, Easter is more effectively demonstrated than declared. It breaks through in those moments and in those seasons when the earth quakes, and our knees buckle, and nothing makes sense anymore—at least not until we return fully to our bodies and see, feel, taste, smell, and hear the world in all its glorious beauty and imperfection.
It seems to me that Easter is not about believing the unbelievable. It’s about living a fullness and a wholeness that we can’t create for ourselves. It’s about trusting that for all the brokenness handed down to us and all the brokenness we so willfully cause and permit, God’s love and forgiveness have the power to renew and restore all things. Easter meets us, sometimes suddenly and vividly, as when we hold a newborn or hear a loved one say, “I forgive you.” (How could anyone deserve such gifts?)
Sometimes it’s more subtle, an awareness that dawns on us, reveals itself over time, as when we age into a gratitude that borders on tearful for something as ordinary as birdsong, or when we realize that, finally, we not only can, or even want to, but we have forgiven that old adversary. (What spiritual tectonic plates shifted and awakened in us these new perceptions of and propensities for grace?)
Easter experiences don’t “prove” what the Bible and our theologies proclaim. Easter experiences confront us, “suddenly,” in routine, day-to-day moments when our fear and pride dissolve and our lives are drenched with a newness we did not create and cannot earn. So, to the extent that our decent, orderly, and carefully-scripted worship services prepare us to go outside, to go to Galilee (wherever that might be for each of us), and be surprised by Jesus, our time spent in sanctuaries is time well-spent.
Even though we’re locked down at home because of some pandemic looming at our doorsteps like the tenth plague on Egypt, we live miraculous lives. God is always Eastering us toward new understandings of human existence, new capacities for compassion, and new horizons of grace.
May you live today and all days with grateful and generous abandon. And know that even now God is revealing the life-transforming gift of Resurrection to you and through you.
A New Passover (Maundy Thursday Sermon)
“A New Passover”
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
Maundy Thursday 2020
Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper 3Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.
6He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
7Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
8Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”
9Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”
10Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” 11For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
12After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? 13You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. 14So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.16Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
31When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.33Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ 34I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (NRSV)
After leading the escape from Egypt, Moses reflected on the harrowing, but transforming, experience he and the Hebrews had just survived. Most of Exodus 15 is Moses’ song of triumph, and it begins this way: “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. 2The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation…3The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name.” (Exodus 15:1-2a, 3)
The memory of the Exodus shaped the working image of God for the ancient Hebrews. They looked at God as a divine warrior who would reach down from “above” to protect God’s chosen people. The mystifying defeat of Pharaoh and his army created Israel’s defining narrative and its foundational expectations of how God’s steadfast love and faithfulness work in the world on behalf of those whom God loves.
For thousands of generations the Jewish community has observed Passover, the ritual remembrance and reenactment of the tenth and decisive plague that finally compelled Pharaoh to release the Hebrews. And when first-century Jews prepared for Passover, they had a new Pharaoh to deal with. His name was Caesar, and Caesar was about to have the opportunity to learn a lesson that he, like Pharaoh, Jezebel, and Nebuchadnezzar before him, would, ultimately, fail to learn.
Leaders of nations—and not infrequently, leaders of religions—tend to fail to learn what God’s prophets have to teach, because God’s language is one of humility and love. God’s ethic is one of peacemaking, justice, and compassionate service. As Paul says, the Christian faith itself is foolishness to the wise and weakness to the strong. It’s little wonder, then, that Jesus’s messianic ministry met an end that the world would consider as humiliating as Pharaoh’s defeat by a bunch of slaves. Who were led by a stuttering murderer no less!
Leaders aren’t the only ones who struggle with the ways of God. Followers have a hard time, as well. When Jesus’s disciples decide that he is indeed the Messiah, what they don’t do is concede their expectations that the Messiah will act according to the age-old image of God established by Moses’ interpretation of the escape from Egypt. From Peter to Judas, all the disciples anticipate from Jesus something he will not deliver. In truth, Jesus does the unimaginable opposite. He, as Messiah, stoops down and washes the disciples’ feet. Aware of their bewilderment, Jesus tries to help ease the shock.
You don’t understand what’s going on right now, and that’s okay. Just receive this blessing from me and know that one day it will all make sense.
Flummoxed to the point of anger, Peter says, “You will never wash my feet.”
The task of foot-washing was relegated to the lowest of slaves. To have said that foot-washing was beneath the dignity of God’s Messiah would have been like saying that Roman occupation of Jerusalem was an inconvenience. Jesus’ act of humble service shattered all the norms. It shifted every paradigm and archetype. And when Peter protested, Jesus said, If I don’t wash your feet, you are choosing to have no part in me.
Do you see what kind of moment Jesus creates for Peter? I mean no disrespect to our Jewish brothers and sisters, but for Christians, when Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, he institutes a kind of new Passover. Instead of the blood of sacrificed lambs smeared on the lintels of doors, the mark of inclusion in the community of Jesus is water, applied humbly and lovingly to his followers’ feet by the Lamb of God himself. When we put ourselves in that room with the disciples, we can feel Jesus’ new Passover still challenging us to live differently than we have been taught, even by the Church, which, on the whole, still prefers a warrior god. More than a saintly image, though, Jesus’ example of humble service is the Church’s urgent calling.
One detail in this story can get overlooked: Even Judas receives the gift of foot-washing. Jesus does not abandon the one who will betray him. This act of unmitigated grace announces and embodies the very heart of God and bears witness to the eternal oneness between Jesus of Nazareth and God.
Long before Peter, Judas, Caiaphas, and Pilate, the psalmist sang of the grace that reflects the all-too-wonderful and loving knowledge God has of us:
4Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
5You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
8If I ascend to heaven,
you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol,
you are there.
11If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”
12even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you. (From Psalm 139)
The juxtaposition of darkness and light is a central theme in John’s gospel, and when laying the ancient psalm against John’s witness to Jesus, we encounter the almost unnerving depth of God’s forgiving love. This irrevocable love awaits us wherever we are. Even in our faithlessness and treachery, God’s Christ washes our feet, claiming us as beloved children of a New Passover of grace, and bestowing on us a message of oneness with God to share with all Creation. Come what may, then, be it faithfulness, denial, or outright betrayal, God is already sharing in our glad celebrations and our grief-stricken regrets, because, as the psalmist says, “even the darkness is not dark to [God],” and as John says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:5)
Jesus leaves his disciples with a new commandment: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” For John, this mutual love is not only the light; it is the very source and substance of the belief about which John’s Jesus speaks. To love as we are loved, to feed as we are fed, to house and clothe others as we are housed and clothed, to speak for those who have no voice, all of this is to believe. It would be so much easier if belief were simply our mouths saying Yes to precepts and doctrines, but for Jesus, belief is discipleship, and discipleship is love—expectation-shattering, neighbor-welcoming, earth-treasuring, mystery-embracing, rule-bending, death-defying, and preemptively-forgiving love.
May you experience God’s New Passover in Christ. And may you accept how deeply and perfectly you are loved, so that you may go forth and, to the very best of your ability on any given day, love with the love of Jesus—God’s eternal Word Made Flesh.
An Unwelcome Triumph (Sermon)
“An Unwelcome Triumph”
Matthew 21: 1-11
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
Palm Sunday 2020
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.”
4This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, 5“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
6The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; 7they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.
8A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
10When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?”
11The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”( NRSV)
If we jump straight into Matthew 21, the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem feels abrupt. So let’s back up and remember the events immediately prior to the scene of Jesus riding a donkey into the City of David.
In Matthew 20, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. Along the journey he teaches the crowds, and his teachings often push the limits of tradition and tolerance. Case in point: the disturbing parable of the laborers in the vineyard. The story disturbs because it proclaims a depth of grace and generosity that offends both ancient and modern minds. The laborers who worked the least receive the same wages as those who worked all day.
Who among us wouldn’t feel cheated if we’d been among those hired at daybreak? And who among us wouldn’t have said so? Jesus concludes the parable by reiterating his haunting phrase: “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Mt. 20:16)
After proclaiming his death and resurrection for the third time, Jesus receives a selfish request from the mother of James and John. She wants Jesus to promise that her sons will receive special treatment in the age to come. And Jesus responds with a variation of his first-will-be-last teaching: “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave.” (Mt. 20:26b-27)
In the last story in chapter 20, Jesus and his followers pass through Jericho, the last town of any note before reaching Jerusalem. Jericho represents Israel’s brutal history, specifically, her conviction that the commandment, Do not kill, doesn’t apply when it comes to seizing and holding worldly power. When the Hebrews, led by Joshua, took Jericho, they killed everything, “both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.” (Joshua 6:21) It seems to me that when mired in juvenile stages of virtually any religious tradition, people honestly believe that sacrificial slaughter pleases and pacifies God.
As Jesus and the crowds leave Jericho for Jerusalem, two blind men cry out for help. Twice they address Jesus with the Messianic titles Lord and Son of David. “Moved with compassion,” Jesus heals them, and they follow him.
We might call the moment when Jesus leaves Jericho the Triumphal Exit. Coming immediately before the Triumphal Entry, it parallels Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem in that both scenes Jesus is hailed as the promised deliverer. It’s just that in Jericho, blindness gives way to sight for a few, and in Jerusalem, sight becomes blindness for everyone.
There’s another interesting contrast. The road between Jericho and Jerusalem was known for being particularly dangerous. Whenever possible, one traveled it in groups. And for the time being, Jesus had a crowd to help keep him safe from robbers and ruffians. The road Jesus traveled after entering Jerusalem was also dangerous. After an auspicious beginning, though, Jesus ended up traveling alone.
In ancient Rome, the exclamation “Hosanna” was used during nationalistic celebrations. It means help, or save. When the crowds celebrating Jesus cried Hosanna, their shouts were charged with religious zeal but in service to political purposes. They expected the long-awaited Lord and Son of David to muster a mighty army and do to Rome what the ancient Hebrews did to Jericho. They were ready to follow that Messiah. But while Joshua and Jesus shared a name, Jesus had an entirely different vision. And when he didn’t deliver on the crowds’ expectations, we learn that no one, not even God Incarnate, is beyond the tip of the spear held by those who are bound to worldly desires and violent means.
Whatever triumph Jesus accomplishes in the world, it has nothing to do with storing up wealth (as the vineyard workers wanted), nor with privilege and status (as the mother of James and John wanted), nor with swords, armies, and nations dominating neighbors (as Israel wanted—and as pretty much all nations still want and feel entitled to).
There’s no triumphalism to Jesus’ triumphal entry. His victory is the defeat of human hearts blinded by exile, people who are almost willingly captive to all that separates us from God, and to me that means separated from the holiness in our own individual being, the holiness in human community, and the holiness of the Creation as a whole.
“The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,” sings the psalmist, “the world, and those who live in it.” (Ps. 24:1) In spite of all the brokenness in the world, everyone and everything that is created by God reflects God and holds something of God’s holiness in its very existence, including fickle disciples, spiteful Pharisees, desperate blind men, adolescent crowds, the mother of James and John in her maternal conceit, Pilate in his arrogant fear, Roman soldiers in their sadistic ignorance, you and me in all our comfortable, twenty-first century distance from the kind of suffering and turmoil that first-century followers of Jesus must have known.
Jesus rides into Jerusalem, but in the most humble and humbling of ways. And he continues to clip-clop into our lives to reveal an unwelcome triumph, namely that God’s genius is not in any decisive defeat of all enemies and suffering, but in the transformation God creates by entering our chaos, breathing new life into our deepest failings and hurts and redeeming them, renewing us through them.
We all want to see an end to the coronavirus. And while many people, whether because of Covid-19 or something else, will not live see that end, most of us on this planet will see it. And as we speak, the eternal Christ is riding into our midst on the humble and humbling back of our neighbors’ need. He challenges our traditions and tolerance. His unwelcome triumph gives us the opportunity to experience realities to which our previous days of relative comfort blinded us. I feel him using this opportunity to reveal our interdependence as citizens of earth, not only our need for neighbors and neighborliness but our holy capacityto give and receive blessedness. And while many people suffer from an arrested economy, there are already signs that the environment is already healing from the effects of human exploitation. Perhaps the earth craves the chance to prove its will and ability to regenerate and renew.
Like those long-ago disciples, crowds, Pharisees, and Romans, today’s Church doesn’t really want to learn Jesus’ lessons on redemption. Nonetheless, for the love of all that is holy in all things, Jesus again walks the dangerous Jericho road that leads to Jerusalem, and the dangerous Via Dolorosa, the Road of Suffering, that leads to the cross—all of which leads to Easter. We experience his triumph in the defeat of our selfishness, fear, and pride. For in that defeat, he opens our eyes to the new hope of restored relationship with God and with all that God has created and loves.
May you celebrate Jesus’ arrival in your life and in our midst.
And may we all discover that in our gracious defeat we receive God’s lasting deliverance.
Help: A Prayer for Difficult Times (Sermon)
“Help: A Prayer for Difficult Times”
Matthew 6:5-13
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
3/29/20
5“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.6But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9“Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.10Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.11Give us this day our daily bread. 12And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. (NRSV)
If prayer is something in which we have some measure of faith, then when we tell folks that we’ve been praying for them, most of us usually mean it, because we like to know that others are praying for us, too. It can comfort and strengthen us to think about someone intentionally connecting to the positive, creative energy within themselves and offering it to God on our behalf.
Having said that, just what do we mean when we say that we will pray for someone or something? Cutting to the chase, are we really trying to bend God’s will to ours? Do we honestly think we can do that? Do we honestly want to be able to do that? Do we want to worship and serve a creator who has a “mind” that is merely a projection of a creature’s mind? A mind that is finite, malleable, prone to fear, and when the going gets tough, quick to blame others, grab for power and certainty, and to stockpile dried beans and toilet paper?
If I advise us to be careful about approaching prayer as nothing more than a laundry list of individual wants, virtually all of you will say that you know better than that. And you do. We all do. But prayer as a kind of shopping excursion is still something of a default for many people. It reminds me of the 1970’s comedian, Flip Wilson, who once said in a sketch, “I’m gonna pray now. Anyone want anything?”
Jesus also faced shallow perceptions of prayer. When he cautions his hearers not to emulate the Pharisees’ prayers, he says that they use prayer as a kind of spectator sport. They dress in finery and pray loudly in public places. Just as conspicuous generosity tends to mask a sad and lonely poverty, conspicuous piety often camouflages desperate doubt, guilt, or fear.
The prayer Jesus teaches his disciples to pray is simple and straightforward. It begins with praise and thanksgiving. It asks for only the most basic needs of humanity: forgiveness and the ability to forgive; humility to rely on help in times of temptation and struggle; and daily bread, which means more than merely bread, but not more than the necessary food, clothing, and shelter.
On top of all that, the Lord’s Prayer is not individualistic grasping. “Give us this day our daily bread.” The prayer asks us to pray in community, for the community. Jesus also encourages solitude for prayer, and our solitude is for the sake of the wider good. In the spiritual realm, nothing is ever about ourselves alone. Indeed, we are all in this together.
So, given the example of the Lord’s Prayer, and given our call to be in prayerful communion with God, other human beings, and the earth, how do we approach the discipline of prayer, which is supposed to be a life-giving gift, at time when life feels diminished and we feel isolated? Where do we even begin?
Eight years ago, Anne Lamott wrote a book in which she says that the three most important prayers are Help, Thanks, and Wow. One can begin with any of those prayers, of course, but Lamott begins her book with Help. Help, she says, “is the first great prayer. I don’t ask God to do this or that…or for specific outcomes.” Then she adds, “Well, okay. Maybe a little…[but] There are no words for the broken hearts of people losing people, so I ask God…to respond to them with graciousness and encouragement enough for the day…Please help Joe survive Evelyn’s dementia. Please help this town bounce back. Please help those parents come through, please help those kids come through…
“In prayer I see the suffering bathed in light…I see God’s light permeate them, soak into them, guide their feet. I want to tell God what to do…But that wouldn’t work. So I pray for people who are hurting, that they will be filled with air and light. Air and light heal…We don’t have to figure out how all this works…It’s enough to know it does.”1
Help is a great place to start. At its core, Help is a prayer of humility. To ask for Help is to acknowledge that we need something outside ourselves, whether it’s inspiration, wisdom, money, or an extra pair of hands to pull the ox out of the ditch. And for some of us, Help is a difficult thing to say. For some, it’s even a four-letter word. A joke that has endured the advent of GPS is that men get lost more than women because so few of us will stop and ask for directions. But Help is one of the most honest and necessary prayers we can pray.
Centering prayer is a discipline that does not seek answers or make requests. It’s a practice of letting go of all thoughts that cloud mind and spirit so that we can draw close to God. Teachers of this discipline encourage pray-ers to utter a single word or a very simple phrase as a focal point. Help is a great word to say over and over as we turn loose of all our anxieties and wants and give ourselves over to the presence of the One from whom all blessings flow—holiness, daily bread, forgiveness, deliverance, and the kingdom itself.
“When we call out for help,” says Brian McLaren, “we are bound more powerfully to God through our needs and weakness[es], our unfulfilled hopes and dreams, and our anxieties and problems than we ever could have been through our joys, successes, and strengths alone…So when we’re suffering from anxiety, we can begin by simply holding the word help before God, letting that one word bring focus to the chaos of our racing thoughts. Once we feel that our mind has dropped out of the frantic zone and into a spirit of connection with God, we can let the general word help go and in its place hold more specific words that name what we need…[words like] guidance…patience…courage…wisdom, or peace.
“Along with our anxieties and hurts, we also bring our disappointments to God. If anxieties focus on what might happen, and hurts focus on what has happened, disappointments focus on what has not happened…This is especially important because many of us, if we don’t bring our disappointment to God, will blame our disappointment on God, thus alienating ourselves from our best hope of comfort and strength.”2
As a prayer, Help opens a door that is always available to us, but the door knob is down by the threshold. To reach it, we have to get on our knees. We’re all on our knees right now. We’re all at a humbling and unfamiliar place. The threat isn’t visible. There’s no one to blame or intimidate. There is nothing to buy, borrow, or beg for that will give us what a season of sheltering-in-place can. And we all need Help to endure that season.
As “the creation waits in eager longing,” says Paul, we also “wait…for the redemption of our bodies.” And when we can’t find the words to pray for ourselves and others, the “Spirit intercedes in sighs too deep for words.” (Rom. 8:18-30)
The Creation’s current suffering will not end next week, or the week after that. In this meantime, we stay home, and pray the best we can. And we remember, Help is in our midst even now.
1Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, Riverhead Books, 2012. Pp. 15-16.
Solidarity in Suffering (Sermon)
“Solidarity in Suffering”
Luke 24:44-53
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
3/22/20
44Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.”
45Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
50Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53and they were continually in the temple blessing God. (NRSV)
This morning, instead of wading just one more step through the river of Lent, we’re going to rock hop to Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter, then leap to the ascension. We’re going there because the ascension, like the crucifixion, begins a period of waiting. Each time Jesus leaves, his departure prepares the way for a completely new form of presence, with new dimensions and new mystery.
During Holy Week each year, I try to imagine the feelings of abandonment and loss that the disciples must have felt on Friday and Saturday. And I imagine them bearing both a heavy shame for having deserted Jesus, and a smoldering anger at having felt deserted by him and by God. If Jesus were really the promised and long-awaited Messiah, how could this have happened?
The disciples were hardly the first or the last to find themselves dismayed by a perfect storm of furious grief. And like all of us, their grief was uniquely theirs. They had to figure out how to live in the midst of and then to live through an acute disruption of life. And while Easter did change things for them, it was probably more disrupting than Jesus’ death itself. What does life mean when we find our lives reconfigured by something as unnerving as the proclamation of resurrection? Then, after walking in and out of the disciples’ lives in some form after the resurrection, Jesus leaves again.
One way to look at Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension is to see them as five movements of one opus, The Incarnation: God’s all-in presence with and commitment to the Creation. Jesus’ ministry and death reveal that where any part of the Creation suffers, God is in the midst of it, transforming that suffering into something new and renewing beyond our imagining. Our desires and our culture—even our “religious” culture—try to tell us that happiness, health, and wealth are how we know God loves us. But the gospel shows us that God’s love becomes most real and powerful when we follow Jesus into the suffering around us and participate in God’s transforming work of resurrection.
It seems counterintuitive, but shared suffering leads to the holiest of places. Eons ago, Isaiah spoke of the transformative nature of suffering: “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity…and by his bruises we are healed.” (Is. 53:3a, 5c)
Last week, Richard Rohr wrote: “For God to reach us, we have to allow suffering to wound us. Now is no time for an academic solidarity with the world. Real solidarity needs to be felt and suffered. That’s the [true] meaning of the word “suffer” – to allow someone else’s pain to influence us in a real way. We need to move beyond our own personal feelings and take in the whole.”1
Our current global crisis calls us to remember that in God’s Creation, we are one—one people, one humanity, one world. One whole. The suffering of one is the suffering of all, and to share suffering is to begin to heal it. To share suffering is to participate in God’s solidarity with all things through Jesus.
When Jesus leaves the disciples that second time, it is for good—and I hope you hear the double entendre in for good. His departure means that while his physical presence is gone for good, he unleashes a new presence for the good of the Creation. The risen and ascended Jesus is our energy, our hope, our joy, our purpose, our love. He is the eternal Spirit that empowers us to live in our own here-and-now realities sharing, as Paul says, “the mind of Christ.” (1Cor. 2:16)
Through the opus of the Incarnation, God declares love for and solidarity with the entire world. The ascension, then, represents the gateway to Pentecost—the revelation of the mind of the Christ which is eternally present in, with, and for all things. Jesus calls his followers into the world not to end suffering, but to enter it, to stand with those who suffer and to offer a cup of cold water, a loaf of bread, ears for listening, arms for embracing, eyes for weeping, and hearts for holding all that brokenness.
In a commentary last week, David Brooks talked about the importance of establishing that kind of solidarity with one another during our uniquely trying time. This experience has made him distinguish “between social connection and social solidarity. Social connection,” he says, is about empathy and kindness, which is always important, but “Social solidarity is more tenacious. It’s an active commitment to the common good.”
“[Solidarity] starts with a belief in the infinite dignity of each human person but sees people embedded in webs of mutual obligation—to one another and to all creation.
“Solidarity is not a feeling; it’s an active virtue. It is out of solidarity, and not normal utilitarian logic, that…a soldier “risk[s] his life dragging the body of his…comrade from battle to be returned home. It’s out of solidarity that health care workers stay on their feet amid terror and fatigue. Some things you do not for yourself or another but for the common whole.
“It will require a tenacious solidarity from all of us to endure the months ahead. We’ll be stir-crazy, bored, desperate for normal human contact. But we’ll have to stay home for the common good. It’s an odd kind of heroism this crisis calls for. Those also serve who endure and wait.”2
Each gospel records different last words of Jesus, and in Luke, those last words are, “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
The disciples don’t yet understand that Jesus’ absence is making way for Pentecost’s new kind of presence. But they will understand. And they will continue not only to follow Jesus, but to walk with him in ministries of solidarity all the days of their lives.
Most of us are physically absent from one another right now, and that absence is an act of holy solidarity. As we name the suffering within us and enter the suffering around us (from appropriate distances!) the ascended and still-incarnate Christ resides faithfully in our midst, deepening our love for each other, and strengthening us to endure days of anxiety and alienation.
In that same article, David Brooks raises a hopeful question. “I wonder if there will be an enduring shift in consciousness after all this. All those tribal us-them stories don’t seem quite as germane right now. The most relevant unit of society at the moment is the entire human family.”3 So, we endure for our sake, for the sake of people next-door, and for the sake of all whom God loves, from Jonesborough, to Washington County, to Washington state, to Italy, to China.
It’s become the mantra, the cliché, the hashtag, and it is the Truth: We’re all in this together. And God’s Christ is right here with us.
May his presence be real to you.
May his presence be real through you.
May he bring all of us his peace.
2https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/opinion/coronavirus-isolation.html
3Ibid.
Night and Day (Sermon)
“Night and Day”
John 4:1-42
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
3/15/20
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” 2—although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3he left Judea and started back to Galilee.
4But he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)
The Samaritan Woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”
The woman answered him, “I have no husband.”
Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”
The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”
Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
27Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”
28Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”
30They left the city and were on their way to him.
31Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”
33So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?”
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41And many more believed because of his word. 42They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” (NRSV)
Last week, we listened in on the nocturnal conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. This week, in the very next chapter, we watch and listen as Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well.
The story begins with Jesus making his way through the unfriendly territory of Samaria as he travels from Jerusalem north to Galilee. As it unfolds, the narrative creates a contrast to the previous one that is both stark and completely deliberate.
Nicodemus is named. The woman is not.
Nicodemus is male. The woman is…well…not.
Nicodemus is an influential leader among the Jews in Jerusalem. The woman is an outcast among the outcasts in Samaria.
Nicodemus sneaks in under the cover of darkness to initiate a visit with Jesus. Jesus initiates the encounter with the Samaritan woman, in a public place, in the full light of the noonday sun.
Nicodemus is either afraid or unable to free his mind from the restraints of a religious system that is, for him, not only familiar but absolute. The Samaritan woman opens her mind and her entire life to possibilities that would appear to be unimaginable for her.
Nicodemus is a clueless conversation partner who fades out with his incredulous question: “How can these things be?”
The Samaritan woman demonstrates theological understanding and spiritual boldness in her conversation with Jesus. Then, she becomes an active witness whose testimony unleashes faith and joy within her and within her whole community.1
These stories create a study in night-and-day juxtapositions. One purpose of the story of Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman is to illustrate one of the most memorable declarations in John’s gospel: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son…”
Now, let’s remember: While they share Hebrew heritage and history, Jerusalem Jews and Samaritans hold each other in contempt. Jerusalem Jews in particular consider Samaritans deserving of no better treatment than Gentiles and lepers. It’s a sad relationship, and one that has parallels in all manner of human prejudice and fear, both ancient and contemporary. Into that disaffection, John declares that the Father’s gift to the world is the presence of the Son. God gives the Christ, the Word enfleshed, to the entire Creation.
I don’t know about you, but the message that I’ve gotten over the years, and the message I used to preached, connects the giving of the Son almost exclusively to the cross. The Father gives up the Son, sacrifices the Son, as the only way to restore God’s desire and ability to love the Creation and to deal graciously with it. As I’ve said before, I can no longer preach that point of view in good faith because I consider any god who requires a violent human death to be restored to a capacity for love is just that a god. Not God. And it seems to me that the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman reveals the true nature of the Son as God’s unique and saving gift to us.
When Jesus enters Samaritan territory, he instigates the conversation with the woman. We call that initiative grace. Many preachers and teachers have spoken of Jesus’ redeeming love for the woman. The assumption behind much of that instruction is that she’s a “sinner,” but one is hard pressed to pinpoint where Jesus or John clearly identifies the woman’s sin. Jesus simply states the facts: The woman has had five husbands and is now living with someone who isn’t her husband. John doesn’t elaborate on that, and Jesus doesn’t condemn her of anything. At Jacob’s well, the two begin to talk, to share their stories, and to share the story.
The ancient story of the Hebrews includes the drama of Jacob and Esau, twin brothers who experienced a deep and painful alienation from each other. That alienation lasted many years and was healed only when the brothers had grown old enough and wise enough to understand that the world was big enough for both of them, and then some, so big, in fact, that God alone can comprehend it and love it adequately.
That same family is now two first-century nations so deeply wounded by the world, and each side so profoundly alienated from the other, that the two factions barely recognize each other as human. The family now reunites in the persons of Jesus and a very smart, articulate, intrepid woman. Meeting at Jacob’s well, they represent the entire world, all that is beloved yet broken, and all that is holy and healing.
The encounter shows us that God’s giving of the Son transcends Friday’s atrocity. Friday doesn’t mollify an angry God. Friday exposes the bloodlust of a humanity that has given itself over to the selfish and fearful fury of broken systems that live for their own sakes rather than for the sake of neighbor and earth. In contrast: The gift announced in John 3:16 is the enfleshed Word who comes to all the world and lives among us. (John 1:14)
“Come and see a man who has told me everything I have ever done!” says the woman to her neighbors. And “when the Samaritans came to [Jesus], they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days.” Invited and received, Jesus accepts the hospitality of the despised Samaritans with loving gratitude and generosity. This reunion reminds us of the reunion of Jacob and Esau. It shows us how God continually gives to the world the Son, the unquenchable “light that shines in the darkness,” (John 1:5) and who is even now transforming all things from night to day.
We live in a broken and alienated world. Like-minded groups seem intent on drawing the covers of darkness over themselves and others by finding reasons to fear, judge, despise, and even injure people who aren’t like them. And I don’t know anyone who doesn’t participate in the brokenness, even if only as passive beneficiaries of systems of inequity and injustice.
But the gospel says that we also live in a world that has been beloved from the beginning and will be so loved forever. And there is a gathering place in our midst, a well of living water who is given to us and who abides with us, full of grace and truth. We don’t restrict his movements or hinder his love. Our tradition calls him Jesus, the Christ, but we do not own the well. We only witness to it, for in the well of God’s timeless, universal Christ, there is water enough for all whom God loves.
If the coronavirus outbreak holds even one positive thing for the world, it’s a reminder that we are, all of us—Jew and Gentile, male and female, black and white, rich and poor, resident and refugee—one human family on this planet. We are far more deeply connected and interdependent than many of us want to admit. Our insane scrambles to stockpile hand sanitizer and toilet paper for ourselves attests to how far we’re willing to go to separate ourselves one from another. In the midst of our reactionary fears, today’s text reminds us that our daunting task is simply to come to the Well, to drink the living water of the Christ, to receive his satisfying and renewing light, and to learn to see one another as he sees us—as ones who are eternally beloved by God.
May you claim your Belovedness.
And may you live as fountains of the love with which you are loved.
1Karoline M. Lewis, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 2, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, pp. 93-97.
From Provocative Feast to Proactive Fast (Sermon)
“From Provocative Feast to Proactive Fast
Isaiah 58:1-12
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
3/1/20
Isaiah was a prophet during the first Babylonian exile which occurred between 738-701BCE. Speaking to the dispossessed Hebrews, Isaiah let them know—in rather ruthless terms—that their unfaithfulness had much to do with their plight. Israel fell apart by ignoring justice for the poor, and by not simply tolerating but encouraging selfishness and greed in their leaders. “How the faithful city has become a whore!” cries Isaiah. “She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her— but now murderers…Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves…They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them.” (Isaiah 1:21-23)
What the people allowed in their “princes” reflected what they wanted for themselves. “Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, children who deal corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord…The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint.” (Isaiah, 1:4, 5b)
According to Isaiah, the problem is the corporate sin of the nation, the forgetfulness of the community, the conscious pursuit by religious and political leaders for control and comfort rather than for loving God and neighbor by doing justice, practicing righteousness, and living grateful and generous lives. According to Isaiah, these problems begin with worship that placates rather than provokes, rituals that anesthetize rather than energize. The prophet, then, calls the leaders of the faith community to the daring work of proclaiming and demonstrating God’s disruptive but rebuilding, repairing, and restoring love:
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
3“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
4Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
5Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?
6Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
9Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help,
and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
10if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
11The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
12Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in. (NRSV)
When the people fasted, prayed, and humbled themselves with sackcloth and ashes, they were trying to convince God to do beneficial things specifically for them. Like the Pharisees on the street corners in Jesus’ day, Isaiah’s audience was seeking to prove themselves worthy of God’s special favor by making their religiosity as overt, pretentious, and self-referential as possible. “Look,” says Isaiah, “you serve your own interest on your fast day.”
“During Isaiah’s time,” says homiletics professor Brett Younger, Jewish worship “was standing room only. No one missed a service…They sang psalms…said prayers and gave offerings. What they did not do,” says Younger, “was let worship trouble their consciences…They did not want to make connections between their worship and their neighbors.”1So God told Isaiah to “Shout out, do not hold back!” Call the people on their hypocrisy. They’re acting “as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness,” but they “fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.”
Isaiah taught that the purpose of worship and all the feasts and rituals involved is to prepare worshipers for the fast of prophetic living. “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, [and] to let the oppressed go free…? Is it not to…” feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, and be lovingly present to everyone? Regardless of where we stand on an issue, loving presence is something all of us need to practice more intentionally these days!
When you live faithfully, says God, you’re light on a hill; you’re a healing spring. When you live faithfully, “your ancient ruins will be rebuilt [and] you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”
According to Isaiah, true worship compels people to enter into the God-fast: a life of proactive engagement in and on behalf of the community, especially the poor and the forgotten. Theology professor Carol Dempsey says, “Fasting was a means of freeing one’s self to receive the gifts of God, which were always intended for the common good.”2 Progressing from feast to fast is synonymous with going from worship to service.
In her book, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, Rachel Held Evans told the story of Sara Miles, a journalist who had been raised in an atheistic household, and who, one day, without forethought, “wandered into [a church in San Francisco] and ate a piece of bread, and took a sip of wine.”3 Sara had never been baptized, never read the Bible, never prayed the Lord’s Prayer, and, being gay, never felt welcomed in any faith tradition, especially merit-based Christianity. But that day she walked through an open door, found an open communion table, and received the invitation: Take and eat.
“‘And then something outrageous and terrifying happened,’ [said Sara]. ‘Jesus happened to me.’ [I] felt dizzy, overwhelmed, charged with life [and] filled…‘I couldn’t reconcile the experience with anything I knew or had been told…But neither could I go away: For some inexplicable reason, I wanted that bread again. I wanted it all the next day after my first communion, and the next week, and the next. It was a sensation as urgent as physical hunger, pulling me back to the table.”4
What I find provocative about Sara’s story is not simply that she found Jesus at the table, but what Jesus then demanded of her.
“‘Holy communion knocked me upside down and forced me to deal with the impossible reality of God…Then, as conversion continued, relentlessly challenging my assumptions about religion and politics and meaning, God forced me to deal with all kinds of other people…I wound up not in what church people like to call “a community of believers”—which tends to be code for “a like-minded club,”—but in something huger and wilder than I had ever expected: the suffering, fractious, and unboundaried body of Christ.’”5
Experiencing welcome at Christ’s table of grace, Sara Miles discovered what filled her, because she discovered, at last, her true hunger for justice and her true thirst for righteousness. She then connected those cravings to the emptiness all around her. She founded and now directs “The Food Pantry” at the Episcopal church that welcomed her.
Rather than comfortable and passive satisfaction, the point of worship and ritual is to be provoked and sent out into the proactive fast of daily discipleship. Worship led Sara Miles to her God-chosen fast: Feeding the hungry, challenging the systems that allow and create disparity, and sharing her new faith as a writer and speaker.
Salvation is a word we associated with the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. And that’s entirely appropriate, especially when we understand that salvation means more than some individualistic, post-mortem reward for having said the sinner’s prayer. Because God intends our worship to benefit the common good, salvation means, above all else, being delivered from the sins of fear and selfishness so that we may love and serve God by loving neighbor and caring for all Creation.
As you come to the table today, this first Sunday of Lent, I challenge you to offer the bread and the cup to each other saying, out loud, not holding back: The bread of life. The cup of salvation. As you give and receive these gifts, participate actively in declaring the provocative good news that shackles are being broken, yokes are being removed, fear is being transformed into love.
May this ritual release all of us and send us into a broken and often perilous world as ones through whom the light of God shines and springs of faithful water flow. For in and through Christ, our Host, that is who we are.
1Brett Younger, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, pp. 315-319.
2Carol J. Dempsey, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, pp. 315-319.
3Rachel Held Evans. Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church. Nelson Books, 2015. Pp. 146-149. (RHE is quoting from Sara Miles’ book Take This Bread.)
4Ibid.
5Ibid.
Jabbok in the Foothills 