“Too Big for a Tiny House”

Mark 9:2-8

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

2/23/20

 

²Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, ³and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. ⁴And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

⁵Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” ⁶He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

⁷Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

⁸Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. (NRSV)

        Up on a mountain, standing before a transfigured Jesus, Peter is thrown into a kind of spiritual confusion. Overwhelmed by the brilliance and holiness of Jesus, together with Moses and Elijah, the disciple offers to do something which, knowing Peter, is not surprising. Knowing Jesus, though, it’s absurd.

        “Rabbi,” he says, I like being here. Let’s just stay, and I’ll build each of us a tiny house.

        The story of the Transfiguration illustrates one of the fundamental tensions in the Church—the tension between the call to be Jesus’ body in and for the world and the temptation to stuff him inside comprehensible structures and constraints.

        When we read the stories of Jesus, we’re introduced to a man who constantly goes out of his way to call people to follow him in witnessing to love and creating purpose in a world rocked by isolation, sorrow, and fear. He relentlessly challenges his disciples to follow him in contemplative living—that is, a life in which the lines between prayer and service are all but erased.

        Contemplative living was the guiding ethos of the early church, but within a few centuries, the Church lost sight of that. In the fourth century, Theodosius I made Christianity the imperial religion and, therefore, virtually synonymous with the state. And while Christians were no longer persecuted as they once were, church leaders began to teach that loyal citizenship of the realm, intellectual consent to prescribed dogma, and feeding the church coffers were more important in following Jesus than loving God, loving neighbor, and caring for the earth. The purpose of documents like the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds was to create a strict uniformity in the Church, and it wasn’t even for the Church’s sake. The creeds were written to create a monolithic population not to serve God so much as to stabilize the empire by making everyone as homogenous as possible. Discipleship of someone as humble, love-driven, and neighbor-focused as Jesus of Nazareth became a creed that could be recited in a single, deep breath.

        From the collusion of Jewish leadership with Rome in the first century, to the corrupt papacy of medieval Europe, to the restrictive and violent fundamentalism not just of Christianity but of all religions in today’s highly combustible world, tiny house theology has sought status and security by bedding down with the ways and means of empires.

        How humble, how awe-struck, how compassionate, how prophetic does one need to be if one’s god fits neatly inside these individualistic, square-cornered, reap-what-you-sow value systems? Tiny house theology became orthodoxy in Christianity because it’s comfortable, but it sparks more impassioned conversation around carpet care than missions. It shapes a passive, go-to-heaven-when-I-die ethos rather than a grateful, servant-hearted involvement with the kingdom of God on earth. It allows congregations to look monochromatic in a Kodachrome Creation. Tiny house theology is, in part, why many people, especially younger generations, are fleeing what they see as a contentious, exclusive, self-serving, and irrelevant institution.

        One of my own weekly struggles with tiny house theology is choosing hymns. So much of the doctrine in our hymnody proclaims a god who actually became powerless to love the Creation, and had to be made able to love us again through the brutal and bloody death of an innocent scapegoat. And when that’s the god we worship, it’s no wonder we treat each other the ways we often do. Many hymns also have us fluttering our eyes at a diaphanous Jesus who waits to welcome us into the “Sweet By and By.” While logical, rational, and kind of cozy, these gods engulf us in the smallnesses of retributive justice and superficial piety.

        Now, I am aware that we live in a chaotic and frightening world. And we call this place a “sanctuary.”

        We come here seeking peace and reassurance.

        We come here to be reminded that we’re not alone in the universe.

        We come here to celebrate that timeless Spirit we call God who loves us, redeems our suffering, and gives meaning to life.

        We gather to hear the music, the words, and the silence that grounds us in God’s good Creation and releases us from the crushing gravity of life in a broken world.

        We come here to share each other’s awe, and wonder, and love of God, and to be sent forth renewed and empowered for grateful and joyful service.

        Here, in this sanctuary, in the company of Jesus and a “great cloud of witnesses,” (Hebrews 12:1) God’s voice affirms our faith, saying, Yes! “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

        That’s why we’re here: To listen to Jesus. And Jesus says, Follow me. Not: Follow protocols.

        He says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35) Not: Sit here in pious compliance for an hour, then go joke about beating the Baptists to the buffet.

        Jesus says, When you care for those who are naked, hungry, thirsty, sick, and imprisoned, you are caring for me. (Matthew 25:40) Not: When you look right, act right, and don’t rock the boat, you make me proud.

        He also says, “In my Father’s house are many mansions…” (John 14:2) Not: Build yourself a tiny house.

        Jonesborough Presbyterian has about a hundred and eighty people on its roll. Anywhere from ninety to a hundred and ten people are here on a normal Sunday. While we are not, thank God, a megachurch, and while there’s always room for more, we don’t do God or ourselves any favors by dismissing Jonesborough Presbyterian as some quaint, “little church.” We’ are a mission outpost in the worldwide Body of Christ! We don’t exist for our own sake. And as Presbyterians, we’re not a tiny house denomination. We’re part of a diverse, connectional, relational community. What any one Presbyterian church does is done on behalf of the wider church. That’s why the PC(USA) doesn’t send out “missionaries.” We send out “mission co-workers,” men, women, and families whose work around the globe is our work, too. God hasn’t called you and me to labor in Haiti, Brazil, Malawi, Iraq, or Bangladesh, but we are co-workers with those whom God has spoken to, called, and sent down those other sides of the mountain. We’re stationed here, but we’re part of a vibrant, planetary body reaching out anywhere and everywhere that God’s beautiful and beloved Creation cries out for help.

        By the same token, those of us who don’t personally participate in Family Promise, or the shawl ministry, or the food pantry, or Loaves and Fishes, or the DRC are still present through other members of this congregation who do.

        At the Transfiguration, God, for whom a tiny house is a subatomic particle, calls us to “Listen to [Jesus].”

        Listen to him! And he will open you to the suffering around you and move you to speak and act so that you become an instrument of God’s redemption and peace.

        Listen to him! And you will find him in the midst of your own suffering and struggle.

        Listen to him! And your very life will reveal your ministry to you.

        Listen to him! says God.

        And Jesus says, “Follow me.”

“Christ or Mascot?”

1Corinthians 3:1-9

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

2/16/20

 

After all the introductory niceties, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians gets right to the point: “¹¹It has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you,” he writes. “¹²What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’ ¹³Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1Cor. 1:11-13)

I’m just riffing here, but maybe the Corinthians, as ancient Greeks, were so used to having a smorgasbord of gods to choose from, that every time things got difficult, they went looking for something more satisfying on the buffet. Paul was good, and some people stuck with him. But Apollos was smart and a great orator. And Cephas; that’s Peter’s Greek name. He was intense, and to the sophisticated folks of Corinth, he may have been something of novelty, relatable in a blue-collar, beer-drinking kind of way. Even Jesus seemed to be just another choice on the menu.

Lovingly distressed, Paul calls the Corinthians out for having grown so divided that they no longer experience, much less represent the body of Christ. Then again, the apostle does understand. “²⁶Consider your own call,” he says. “Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. ²⁷But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; ²⁸God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.” (1Cor. 1:26-28)

Paul challenges the Corinthians to understand that while the gospel may sound a bit ridiculous at first, it takes a deep, mature, and long-practiced spirituality of contemplation and service to embody it. And in the thirteenth chapter of this same letter, Paul writes one of his most insightful and memorable passages, the passage that ends with these words: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three: and the greatest of these is love.” (1Cor. 13:13)

In our own day, Richard Rohr echoes that truth saying that we can never truly know God. We can only love God. And that’s all God asks.¹ Paul urges the Corinthians to recognize that while they may be on the way to the beginnings of an inkling of that truth, they need to mature quite a bit further into agape love before it becomes their truth.

 

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)

 

You all are messed up, say Paul, because your sippy cups are empty and your diapers are full. The church is not about you, or me, or Apollos. We’re all servants, co-workers on God’s farm. I planted and Apollos watered because a crop needs people to do both of those things. But when seeds go into the earth, they’re dead. The new life they receive and the growth they experience is a miracle only God can do.

        Jealousy and quarreling, says Paul, are signs of a community made up of individuals who live in constant fear that their familiar ways of thinking and being in the world will be questioned or contradicted. That fear launches a series of wrong turns. They turn away from love. They turn their energies of cooperation and trust into suspicion, judgment, and even aggression toward those who represent emerging viewpoints. And these reactions turn communities from havens of harmony into nurseries of resentment and conflict.

Let’s remember that Paul used to persecute Christians. He turned his Pharisaic fears into suspicion, judgment, and deadly aggression toward followers of Jesus. And now he nurtures and leads them as a Christian servant. Paul himself died, was buried, and given new life by God, in Christ. So, he has unique authority to say that when followers of Jesus look for hope and redemption in anything besides God’s Christ, they are seeking comfort in mascots.

Human cultures offer mascots by the thousands. Whether it’s a celebrity, a political affiliation, a theological absolute, a sport or team or athlete, a screened-in distraction, a substance to ingest or inject, or some means by which to impose our will on others, there is a pantheon of mascots and idols just waiting to be bought, sold, and coddled. We can claim to love them, but they cannot love us back. They can only seduce us. Love for a mascot is nothing more than addiction.

As immeasurably different as the first and twenty-first centuries are, much about human relationships remains the same. The Corinthians’ competing loyalties to Paul, Apollos, Peter, and God knows what else mirror the divisions we experience in our contemporary jealousies and quarrels. Human beings have always been driven by their obsessions with power and security. And through the eons human cultures have consistently relied on brutality and intimidation to achieve those ends. Since Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313CE, the Church has fully participated in devotion to worldly mascots. And since misappropriated love is just another name for fear, the history of the Church has always included not only division, but destruction of things God creates and loves. As members of that Church, we must be able to confess that we have participated in and benefited from the Church’s fear-driven jealousies, quarrels, and power-grabs.

“Power is of two kinds,” said Gandhi. “One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective than [power] derived from fear of punishment.”³

Gandhi wasn’t Christian, but there’s a mystic harmony between his words and 1Corinthians 13, Paul’s “love chapter.” I hear a similar harmony expressed today, again by Father Rohr when he speaks of the Universal Christ², which is the embodied love of God in and for the world, a love that is not so small and petty a thing that it depends on our childish jealousies and quarrels to decide for whom and even through whom God can be at work.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to be boldly different from while remaining lovingly engaged in the world around us. We’re called to be servants who have a “common purpose” even when we get sideways on details. Our common purpose as laborers in “God’s field” and on “God’s building,” is to receive and share the eternal love of the one who created and redeems us. We’re called to be a community of yeast, a ferment in the world according to Jesus’ ways of mercy, justice, and peace. We experience unity not by having all the same opinions, but by holding the inevitable tensions of living in community with love, which is “patient [and] kind…[which] is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude…[which] does not insist on its own way…[which] is not irritable or resentful…[which] bears…believes…hopes…and endures all things.” (1Cor. 13:4-7)

God, grant us the strength and the maturity of faith to live in love, to live humbly, honestly, and compassionately with one another, so that our life together witnesses to our shared conviction that we do, in all things and at all times, belong to and serve only you. Amen.

 

¹https://cac.org/know-god-love-god-2018-01-19/

²Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe. Convergent Books, 2019.

³https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/78373-power-is-of-two-kinds-one-is-obtained-by-the

 

“Salt, Light, and Love”

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Matthew 5:13-20

2/9/20

 

¹³“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

¹⁴“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.¹⁶In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

¹⁷“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (NRSV)

       Most scholars agree that Matthew wrote his version of the gospel in the years just prior to the destruction of the temple in 70CE. And he wrote specifically for the Jewish community. To understand Matthew’s purposes and approach, a reader needs to understand at least a little about the burdens that first-century Jews had carried for centuries.

        When the exiles returned from Babylon in 516BCE, they found Jerusalem laboring under Persian rule. In the fourth century BCE, Alexander the Great conquered Judea. That led to a couple of centuries of Greek control. After more than four hundred years of repression, Jerusalem finally enjoyed an eighty-year run of relative autonomy under the Hasmoneans. Then, in 63BCE, Jerusalem fell to Rome.

        For the Jewish community, this painful history produced a persistent existential stress that created tremendous tension among those who had been told that they were God’s chosen people. So, by Jesus’ day, the unmolested glory of which the prophets had spoken since the days of Abraham was real only in dreams and poetry.

        Reflecting on today’s passage, Edwin Van Driel says that first-century Judaism lay awash in factions of competing opinions about how to live in relationship within the faith community and in relationship with Rome. The Sadducees opted for full cooperation. Survive by being good citizens of the realm. The Zealots, a rebel group, actively sought to take up weapons and fight Rome. The Pharisees were divided. Some sympathized with the Zealots, and others chose to sequester themselves in what Dr. Van Driel calls “the ghetto,” a Jewish sect in and around Jerusalem that tried to cut itself off from all outside influences and keep its Jewish identity as pure as possible.¹ These divisions and competing loyalties defined the political/religious climate throughout the Jewish world.

        Into this turmoil, Jesus shows up saying to all Jews, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…Blessed are those who mourn…Blessed are the meek…the merciful…the peacemakers…[and] those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.”

        “You,” says Jesus to the descendants of Abraham and David, “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.”

        While salt may lose its saltiness, and light may be hidden, Jesus affirms that the people to whom he speaks, regardless of how spicy or bland, bright or dim they may feel, are salt and light. They have God-given gifts. They have a story of suffering and redemption, a sacramental community, and a love-driven hope. Israel is called to enrich all of Creation with these gifts. That is what it means to be chosen and blessed by God.

        From reading and studying Jesus’ life and teachings, it seems clear to me that chosen-ness and blessedness have nothing to do with being individuals or nations that enjoy more health, wealth, and power than anyone else. Our own culture’s sense of entitlement to excess is a symptom of the theological fallacies of the prosperity gospel which preaches that worldly advantages prove God’s favor, and that one may justify virtually any means to ensure those so-called “blessings.” The problem with the prosperity gospel is that it simply cannot be harmonized with Jesus. From his Sermon on the Mount to all that follows, Jesus declares that the faith community’s proper relationship with political, economic, and social forces is one of loving and engaged prophecy. All too often the Church trades its prophetic relationship with the powers for one of symbiosis or laissez faire. All too often the Church sells its soul to the devil and climbs into bed with greed, vengeance, and violence.

        But that’s just such a thoroughly human thing to do, isn’t it? It’s so human to want to feel secure in and of ourselves. That’s the very point of Jesus’ own temptation. Even he struggles with the seductions of acquiring and controlling. So, when he preaches his challenging gospel of grace, we can trust that he knows what he’s asking of us. He may not let up on us, but he is always understanding and forgiving because he knows how hard it is to follow him. Doesn’t he even say that it’s like taking up a Roman cross?

        So, we can understand that when the Jewish people hear Jesus say that they are spiritual seasoning and illuminating hope for the world, he is complicating their already complicated life. They live in an environment in which politics and religion are all knotted up. According to Dr. Van Driel, here’s the fundamental issue: For the Jewish community, exile is not something of the past. Because it has lasted, in one way or another, for the last six hundred years, the people expect a military/political messiah.² Indeed, few will be satisfied with anything less. They expect God’s kingdom to be a geopolitical reality, something they will have to achieve through great effort and at great cost. They expect another Moses, a charismatic leader who is faithful to the law, but this time one who is also brave, fierce, and victorious in battle.

        The new Moses Matthew presents is an uncredentialled Galilean rabbi declaring that God’s kingdom is a completely different kind of reality. The kingdom of God, says Jesus, isn’t a state built on military might and political domination. It’s a real, here-and-now gift, something God is already doing. And as an alternative community-within-the-community, it is being, and has always been revealed through people whose love for God and neighbor shines boldly in a hurting world, people who season their surroundings with mercy for the poor, justice for the voiceless, kindness for the enemy, and forgiveness for all.

        The teachings of Jesus do heal and redeem, but before they do that, they defy and disrupt. To Jews in the first century and Christians in the twenty-first century, Jesus is saying that God is doing a brand-new thing that requires an entirely new way of imagining God and of living faithfully as the people of God. At the same time, he affirms the law in its foundational simplicity—Love God. Love neighbor. To love as we are loved by God means to lay down our selfish fears and idolatries and to weigh every decision we make against the example of God’s love for us and for the Creation as that love is revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. That is to fulfill every letter and every stroke of a letter of the law.

        That is to live the life of blessedness,

        …the life of salt and light.

        …the life of ones whose “righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.”

        …the life of grateful and generous inhabitants of God’s kingdom.

 

¹Edwin Chr. Van Driel, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, pp. 333-337.

²Ibid.

 

 

Comfort of a Creed

w/m Allen Huff

©2020

 

Adam went to church most every Sunday

To thank his lucky stars for God above,

God helps those who help themselves, he heard the preacher say.

Now let’s sing a song of happiness and love.

 

In the parking lot a ragged man approached him.

Can you spare a buck for a piece of bread?

Adam stared right past the man disgusted.

I’ve got no change, so I’ll pray for you instead.

 

Chorus:

Oh, but all of us are hungry until all of us are fed.

Love is more than thoughts and prayers; it’s everything we share.

And compassion is the greatest gift to neighbor and to self.

We’re all in this together; if we share heaven, we share hell.

 

That night within a dream a thin hand beckoned,

Hollow eyes searched only to be seen.

To the sound of his own groaning Adam wakened.

In ceaseless tears he poured out all his grief.

 

He killed the fatted calf for familiar faces,

He gave to those deserving of a gift.

But when came the beggar dirty or the wino wasted,

He closed his heart and mind and clinched his fist. (Chorus)

 

Bridge:

In the morning at the mirror, Adam looked into his face.

He saw hunger in his own eyes and loneliness in his gaze.

He knew he’d starved himself when he denied his neighbor’s need,

And traded true religion for the comfort of a creed. (Chorus)

“A Pattern for Living”

Matthew 5:1-12

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

2/2/20

 

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. ²Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

³“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

⁴“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

⁵“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

⁶“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

⁷“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

⁸“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

⁹“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

¹⁰“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

¹¹“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

¹²Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (NRSV)

 

As statements of identity and purpose, the Ten Commandments get lots of attention. They’re simple and decisive. Do this. Don’t do that. They set clear standards for the Hebrew community, and several commandments apply universally. Honoring elders and categorically denouncing murder, theft, adultery, envy, and self-serving deceit are healthy for any culture.

That simplicity also becomes a weakness. Absolutes create a sense of certainty that always gets distorted into permission to make judgments God alone can make. When that happens, the Creator becomes small enough to fit inside the understanding of a creature. That reduces God to a god, thus breaking the first two commandments.

To me, public postings of the Ten Commandments can reflect a smug self-righteousness. When anchored in stone on courthouse walls, they declare a kind of divine right for judges and jurors. And judicial proceedings, whether civil or ecclesiastical, wander into dangerous territory when human participants feel entitled to such authority.

To be honest, I even wince when the Ten Commandments appear on church lawns. They can suggest to passers-by and would-be visitors, If you come here, expect grace to have limits.

Sure, we all make evaluations, judgments even. So, given the virtual impossibility of pure objectivity when faced with the reality not simply of evil and suffering, but of diversity in the world, how can we move toward something higher and more gracious?

In Matthew 5, Jesus utters one of the most memorable teachings found in any religion or philosophy. Strikingly different from the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes lay out a geography, a path along which spiritual travelers may learn to experience, trust, and follow God. And instead of imagining God as some enormous guy conducting surveillance from the clouds to see “who’s naughty and nice,” these eight statements reveal an indwelling God whom we know through our love for the Creation, not in our thoughts about God. As the Eternal Initiative for being itself, God desires for the Creation have always been blessing and holiness. Love and creativity, justice and righteousness—these and other gifts continually pour forth from God.

In their book The Way of Blessedness, Marjorie Thompson and Stephen Bryant say that the Beatitudes offer us “a way of life [and] a pattern of commitments”¹ by which we deliberately enter and experience human existence as participation in God’s eternal outpouring of blessing and holiness.

A couple of general observations about the Beatitudes:

First, it’s illuminating that Jesus doesn’t say, Blessed are those who keep the Ten Commandments. When viewing the world as ultimately governed by legalism and retributive justice, a person may still claim to be blessed, but that person almost always ties blessing to worldly possessions, advantages, and victories. Such things do have appeal, but the Beatitudes ask and offer something far deeper.

The Beatitudes, say Thompson and Bryant, “direct us to attitudes of mind and habits of heart that [shape] our actual way of being in the world.”² So, the second observation: When read as Thompson and Bryant suggest, the Beatitudes are not individual proverbs. They describe an ongoing trajectory of spiritual development through increasingly challenging and transforming stages of experience, practice, and understanding. (Open a Bible to Mt. 5:1-12)

The journey of blessedness begins with poverty of spirit—with the acknowledgement that we are incomplete creatures who need the Creator. While this does involve confession of our human sinfulness, it also involves claiming the eternal image of God within us. In the tension between our confession and the assurance of God’s redeeming grace, we feel our alienation from something innate and fundamental to us.

We then lament that separation. Spiritual mourning can reduce us to despair that cries out, What’s the point? The point of our grief, though, is to open us to the rest of the Creation, which shares our alienation. In Psalm 8, the poet looks at the entire universe and asks, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God.” Then he joyfully declares humankind’s ordination as steward of all that God has created. Grateful reunion with all that has God-given being empowers us to live that courageous and generous blessing called meekness.

Hardly wilting violets, the meek claim and proclaim the unfailing strength of God’s love. When Martin Luther King, now an archetype of meekness, declared freedom for “all God’s children,” one could hear in his voice the hunger and thirst to share earth-inheriting righteousness with all things.

Righteousness blesses us with the understanding that vengeance, greed, fear, and violence empty us of our God-purposed existence. The reminder that God loves and desires fullness for all things turns us outward. When we recognize that we’re all in this together, only mercy can lead us further down the path of blessedness.

Mercy sears our minds and purifies our hearts. It cleanses us of self-righteousness. Mercy asks us to seek the well-being of others with the same passion with which we seek our own well-being. And we see God only when the Christ in us sees and embraces the Christ in others and in the earth.

Through God’s eyes, we see that all things are created to live in relationship to rather than in competition with each other. The Beatitudes, then, challenge us to think long and hard about our choices, and this stretches our first-world mindsets. For example, if my pension fund includes corporations that profit from war, human exploitation, and environmental abuse, am I really living a life of blessedness? Honestly, I avoid the question, so what does that say about my willingness even to experience poverty of spirit? How, then, am I following Jesus in working toward peace? And isn’t that the fundamental call of every disciple, every church?

At the pinnacle of blessedness, God’s saints speak truth to power and find themselves blessed with the strength to endure the subsequent intimidations and attacks. And those reactions are a sure and certain burden for disciples, because nothing threatens the holders of power and privilege like those who choose to live according to Jesus’ Beatitudes.

Here comes a turn: When disciples, having been faithful to God, find themselves under duress, they discover spiritual poverty all over again. While the process repeats, each passage through strengthens them for ever-deepening lives of blessedness.

Earlier, I expressed ambivalence about public postings of the Ten Commandments. Well, what could it mean if a church posted the Beatitudes on its lawn? It could be just another empty act of conspicuous piety. Then again, it could mean that the people of that congregation truly understand what it costs them, how it blesses them, and how it blesses the Creation for people of faith to participate in God’s continuous outpouring of grace.

Sign or no sign, may we commit ourselves to living as ones who are, like Abraham and Sarah, blessed to be a blessing to themselves and to all the world.

 

¹Marjorie J. Thompson and Stephen D. Bryant, The Way of Blessedness, Upper Room Books, 2003. p. 19. This book is one in the spiritual transformation series, Companions in Christ.

²Ibid. p. 19.

“Taking Up a New Life”

Matthew 4:12-23

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/26/20

 

¹²Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. ¹³He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, ¹⁴so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: ¹⁵“Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— ¹⁶the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

¹⁷From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

¹⁸As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. ¹⁹And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

²⁰Immediately they left their nets and followed him. ²¹As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. ²²Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

²³Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. (NRSV)

 

I’ve always struggled with the story of the call of the first disciples. It’s just feels too neat and tidy. Think about it: Simon, Andrew, James, and John aren’t sport fishermen. They’re not old men on a boat dock with more beer than bait. They’re meat fishermen. They’re businessmen on whom their families depend.

Like farmers, fishermen have developed a particularly close relationship with the natural world, with the forces of nature. They read the wind, the skies, the movement of the water, the changes of the seasons. In their bones, they feel the rise and fall of barometric pressure. They know how it affects the fish, where in the lake they’ll go, how deep they’ll be. Fishermen have to be able to build, or at least repair their boats and their nets. Their lives and livelihoods depend on attention to detail and fierce determination in the face of drought, flood, and those potentially life-altering storms that can sweep in from out of the blue on the Sea of Galilee.

The notion of such pragmatic, willful, independent-minded fishermen “immediately” dropping everything to follow a stranger who appears out of nowhere seems far-fetched to me.

Then again, as the unique embodiment of God, Jesus is himself a force of nature. So, maybe it makes sense to imagine Jesus’ presence as something the fishermen feel, something they respond to the way they respond to the unseen changes of pressure. As part of the Creative Mystery that is God, Jesus sweeps in like an unexpected storm, and the fishermen can’t ignore him.

When Jesus says Follow me, his words seem to hit the two sets of brothers like a header—a gust that comes at a sailboat from the opposite direction of the wind that’s currently pushing the boat forward. The fishermen, then, have to adjust course, or else drop sail and row back home. What they can’t do is to try to fight Jesus. He’s more than a storm, more than ripples on the surface above a school of fish. He can’t be read that easily. The fishermen will also learn that Jesus is more than a boat. They will never steer him in a direction they want to go.

To follow Jesus, Peter and his fellow fishermen have to give themselves over to this brand-new, life-altering presence, this unexpected phenomenon that lies beyond their control. To move in a new direction, they’ll have to take up a whole new way of life.

While considering that, let’s remember that Jesus himself has already done a similar thing. In the previous chapter of Matthew, John baptizes Jesus, and after the baptism, a voice declares to all with ears to hear that Jesus is God’s beloved and most pleasing son. As soon as Jesus begins sailing forward on this magnificent wind of holy purpose, a header sweeps in and throws Jesus into turmoil.

In the wilderness, he realizes that:

He could use his unique identity and gifts for his own benefit.

He could live a life of self-serving privilege.

He could manipulate people with celebrity status.

He could rule the world through violent power.

Jesus resists the temptations to do as most people—and as every nation—would do in that situation. Then, right after the abstract visions of his temptation, things get concrete and personal. Jesus’ cousin, John, is imprisoned for doing what prophets and prophetic communities do: He has spoken truth to power. In challenging Herod, John publicly interjected the ethics of his spirituality into the political life of Jerusalem.

John’s imprisonment is another header in Jesus’ sail. And when it hits, Jesus rows back home to Galilee. To me, this return feels like a spiritual retreat, a time during which Jesus steps back to contemplate how the fundamental force of God’s nature—the wind, the breath, the Spirit—is shaping the direction of his own journey. According to Matthew, Jesus begins to live the life of one who has taken his baptism seriously. He lives the life of what Donald Messer called a political mystic, someone who, grounded in faith, hope, and love, engages everything about the Creation. As a practicing and faithful Jew in the prophetic tradition, Jesus’ life is one of mishpat and tzedakah, the foundational Hebrew concepts of justice and righteousness. And wherever mishpat and tzedakah are compromised, whether in the faith community or beyond, Jesus gets involved, and he calls his followers to join him. The disciples have to learn that lesson, and they don’t learn it willingly, or quickly, or completely.

Peter seems to be everyone’s favorite disciple, and probably because he’s the disciple about whom we know the most. We watch his journey begin with his seaside call. And it becomes a very human journey, a journey of eagerness and evasion, a journey of loyalty and betrayal. We’re all in the same storm-rocked boat with Peter, trying to live into a new way of life, a Jesus way-of-life, a life that is both humble and bold, fiercely honest and fearlessly compassionate, constantly prayerful and continually engaged with God’s beloved world on behalf of all that is vulnerable, taken for granted, and exploited.

Our call as Christians and as a Christian community is to take up that new life, the life of disciples who are neither ashamed, nor afraid, nor perfect. As disciples of Jesus, we are always in the presence of the one who calls us, teaches us, empowers us, guides us, and redeems us.

And the goal of the life of discipleship isn’t “going to heaven when we die.” The other side of death is the realm of the one who is more gracious than our minds even want to imagine.

The goal of the life of discipleship is the kingdom-revealing, world-altering witness of love, gratitude, and generosity, the witness of mishpat and tzedakah, we leave behind.

“Come and See“

John 1:43-51

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/19/20

⁴³The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.”

⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. ⁴⁵Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”

⁴⁶Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”

⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?”

Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

⁴⁹Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

⁵⁰Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.”

⁵¹And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” (NRSV)

        Tony was a member of my first congregation in Mebane, NC. He was a gentle and soft-spoken fellow—a great outdoorsman who especially loved fishing. When the stripers were running in Jordan Lake near Chapel Hill, Tony would go to work with his boat in tow. At quitting time he’d drive down to the lake and catch fifteen or twenty big fish.

       The next Sunday Tony would tell me about it and invite me to come with him. If possible, I’d meet him at the plant where he worked and throw my stuff in his truck. We’d drive down to the lake and launch his boat. Tony would set two lines to troll way off the back of the boat and two downriggers to run deep beneath it. Then he’d turn on the fish-finder, and we’d chug slowly around the lake, watching, waiting, talking, and eating junk food while the sun shattered into glitter on the surface and ripples lapped lazily on the bottom of the boat.

        In all the times I went fishing with Tony, I caught one fish. Every other time that a downrigger popped up—which was exactly two times—I hauled in a three-pound hunk of waterlogged wood! To make things worse, when Tony took me along, even he caught nothing. Then, three days later, he’d go back by himself and catch more fish.

       I don’t know why my fishing luck has been mostly bad luck, but I do know this: When Tony invited me to go to the lake with him, he went out of his way to share with me an activity in which he found joy. By including me in his bliss, he bore witness to the excitement and the peace of fishing. There’s the rub. Fishing was the only guarantee; catching was merely a possibility.

        I don’t know, maybe God just wants me to enjoy the Creation with nothing more than a camera in hand. And that’s fine…when I’m not fishing.

       We’re currently in the liturgical season of Epiphany, a word which means “revelation.” Fred Craddock said that “Revelation is never open and obvious to everyone, regardless of their current state of interest or belief. There is always about [revelation] a kind of radiant obscurity, a concealing that requires faith to grasp the revealing.”

       “There is always a kind of radiant obscurity” to the revealing of holiness. Maybe it’s sort of like dropping a hook into a lake, or a river, or the ocean and knowing that whether or not a fish strikes, there are fish in that water. The radiance is in the simple gratitude of being where fish are.

        It seems appropriate that the first disciples Jesus calls are fishermen. Who better to have a sense of the holiness of the possibility of encountering holiness than fishermen who have been caught by the excitement of the possibility of the excitement of catching? (How’s that for radiant obscurity?)

       In today’s story, Philip utters the Johannine invitation to Nathanael: “Come and see.” Jesus spoke those words earlier to John and his disciples. Appearing in several places throughout the fourth Gospel, “Come and see” are words of witness. They’re a call to the possibility of encountering the radiant obscurity of God’s presence. And while witness to God is tied intimately to God’s revelation, the two are distinct. Witness, the casting of lines and nets, is our work. Revelation, the opening of the heart, is the work of the Holy Spirit. Through our witness of faithfully doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God, we can create situations and conditions in which we and others become open to recognizing the ongoing revelatory work of God.

       There are times, however, when, consumed by challenges, fears, and the inevitable uncertainties of faith, we experience God as something more obscure than radiant.

       A uniquely sophisticated gospel-writer, John introduces us to individuals that the synoptics do not. And he uses these folks with creative intention. In John, just as the Son is always deflecting attention toward the Father, these characters represent entities beyond themselves. Nathanael is a good example.

       In John’s imaginative hands, Nathanael represents all of Israel, past and present. Crouched beneath a fig tree, Nathanael reminds us of Adam and Eve trying to hide their nakedness after having eaten the forbidden fruit, or Peter hiding behind his certainty that his messianic expectations and God’s Messiah will match perfectly. Our human selfishness makes continual Come and Seeinvitations necessary.

       Beneath that fig tree, Nathanael is no more hidden from Jesus than Adam and Eve are hidden from God. And Jesus not only sees Nathanael, he sees in him “an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” That is a moment of revelation that witnesses like you and me can’t create on our own. Seeing Nathanael through the eyes of love, through the depth-finder of grace, Jesus isn’t dissuaded by Nathanael’s sarcastic question, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Jesus sees straight into the holiness of the image of God within Nathanael. Affirmed and loved, Nathanael dives into an overt profession of faith. His confession happens much quicker than Peter’s confession. Even Jesus seems surprised.

       You’re on board already? Hang onto your hat, says Jesus, you haven’t seen anything yet.

       In verse 51, John switches the pronoun “you” from the singular to the plural. At this point, John’s Jesus is addressing not just Nathanael, but all of us, and the image Jesus uses recalls Jacob’s dream at Bethel.

       In that story in Genesis, Jacob—the scoundrel who will, after wrestling with God at the River Jabbok, be named Israel—sleeps with a rock for a pillow. During a dream, he sees that God has chosen him for holy things. Through Jacob and his family, all the earth will be blessed. Jacob’s life, imperfect as it is, becomes a Come and See life, a life of witness to the revelation of God.

        Jesus calls Nathanael, and us, to the same witness—a witness to God’s vision which sees more than the future. God’s vision sees the glorious possibilities of today by seeing through the selfishness of the Adam, Eve, Jacob, and Nathanael within us. The Christ, however, who is also within us, is the fish beneath the surface of the lake. The Christ within us and within the Creation around us is our glimpse of the Kingdom’s radiant obscurity.

       We are called, then, to live a new life, a life of witness and vision. A Come and See life. We live that life at the lively and tension-wrought threshold where the Creation and the Kingdom meet. We’re like fishermen living on the shore where the heights of the firmament and the depths of the waters meet. It’s a place of joyful witness because it’s a place of relentless possibility, profound risk, and eternal hope.

       It’s not for me to make promises, but does anyone want to go fishing?

“Humility: The Source of True Justice”

Isaiah 42:1-9

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/12/20

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,

     my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

I have put my spirit upon him;

     he will bring forth justice to the nations.

²He will not cry or lift up his voice,

     or make it heard in the street;

³a bruised reed he will not break,

     and a dimly burning wick

          he will not quench;

     he will faithfully bring forth justice.

⁴He will not grow faint or be crushed

     until he has established justice in the earth;

     and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

⁵Thus says God, the Lord,

     who created the heavens and stretched them out,

     who spread out the earth and what comes from it,

     who gives breath to the people upon it

          and spirit to those who walk in it:

⁶I am the Lord,

     I have called you in righteousness,

     I have taken you by the hand and kept you;

     I have given you as a covenant to the people,

         a light to the nations,

⁷to open the eyes that are blind,

     to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,

     from the prison those who sit in darkness.

⁸I am the Lord, that is my name;

     my glory I give to no other,

          nor my praise to idols.

⁹See, the former things have come to pass,

     and new things I now declare;

          before they spring forth, I tell you of them. (NRSV)

       Isaiah 40 begins what is almost universally recognized as “Second Isaiah.” And it opens with words that are commonly read and, thanks to George Frederic Handel, sung during Advent: “Comfort, O comfort my people.” The prophet proclaims these words to a community that has been defeated, humiliated, and scattered by Babylon.

        A homiletics professor named Richard Ward says that Second Isaiah enters the scene “to stand with the people in the space where a center used to be.”¹ He comes to refocus Israel, to lead them toward a God-drenched memory so that they may envision a future of renewed hope and renewing purpose. According to Second Isaiah, the center is Yahweh, and only in Yahweh can Israel rediscover her identity as the people through whom God has chosen to reveal righteousness and to do justice in the Creation.

        While prophecy can be hard enough to proclaim, it’s almost always harder to receive. And when that prophecy offers hope to a people broken and demoralized by the injustices of others, a prophet struggles to find willing listeners, especially when that prophet, like Second Isaiah, is trying to declare God’s justice. The exiles may have considered this prophecy suspect because it proclaimed that holy justice would come through the work of one who “will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; [one who will not break] a bruised reed [or quench] a dimly burning wick.”

        It seems to me, and unfortunately so in my opinion, that fewer and fewer people expect or want humility in their leaders. Exiles who have been vanquished and disgraced are not looking for a meek and mild deliverer. And when people who are used to privilege and authority feel their dominance threatened, they’re not eager for leaders who appear accepting and generous. When people are either in chains or in charge, they often want a justice that looks more like hostile revenge or self-righteous supremacy than anything associated with humility.

        Into a world addicted to hostility and self-righteousness, God sends a prophet to say, “Here is my servant…I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.” And the nations will know this servant by his humility—by his quiet voice and gentle ways.

        Who is the servant? Biblical scholars have wrangled over this question for millennia. Is it King Cyrus of Persia who eventually vanquished Babylon and allowed the Israelites to return to Jerusalem? Is it Israel herself? Is it Jesus of Nazareth, as Matthew 12 claims by quoting Isaiah 42? A contemporary scholar named Paul Hanson suggests another angle on the question. Instead of associating the servant with a particular person or community, Hanson says that Second Isaiah is challenging his audience to reflect “on the nature of the response demanded of those who have received a call from God.”² We’re all The Servant, he says.

        In the opening verses of today’s reading, Second Isaiah says, “Here is my servant.” Then, the prophet changes the pronoun: Here are you.⁴ “I have called you…I have taken you by the hand…I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon…” God calls all of us to live as servants who “faithfully bring forth justice,” and who do so humbly, non-violently, and without calling undue attention to ourselves.

        The justice to which Second Isaiah refers is not retributive justice because God’s justice cannot be imposed through punishment or payback. Having to do with invitation rather than obligation, it can’t be forced in any way. God’s justice is grace, so it’s a gift. Over the generations, some have connected the embodied grace described in Second Isaiah to the humble and Creation-altering ministry of Jesus so closely as to call the book of Isaiah “The Fifth Gospel.”³ (Calling it the first might seem more appropriate, though.)

        As Christians, we do see Jesus’ ministry following the spiritual ethic laid out by Second Isaiah. And now Jesus calls and empowers us to continue the work of humble, servant-hearted prophecy in and for the Creation. The trouble is that we live in very loud, scream-on-the-street-corner times when bruised reeds are exploited and cast aside, when dimly burning wicks are snuffed out and forgotten. In these times, loudness and brutality are not only tolerated, they’re encouraged, even praised. In all times, however, the call of a true servant is to speak kind and edifying words, to help and to heal those who have been damaged by this world and its relentless selfishness and violence.

        How do we do that? Especially as privileged people, how do we re-center ourselves so that we can hear and then desire to speak truth and grace into the midst of cruelty, arrogance, fear, and most difficult of all, into self-serving religion that regards the temporal privileges of power as divine blessing?

        The first four verses of today’s reading constitute the first of a series of four passages known as the “Servant Songs.”⁵ They’re intended as liturgical resources for a community in exile. They’re songs to be sung as centering prayer, as ways to remember an identity and to equip worshipers for prophetic action. “Songs,” says Richard Ward, “express the hopes and aspirations of social movements for renewal and liberation. It is difficult to think of a movement that does not sing itself into transformation. The pulse and rhythms of a song in performance arise out of the spirit of the movement, but they also give it stability and inspiration.”⁶

       It’s easy to understand why songs like “We Shall Overcome,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “This Land Is Your Land” have become anthems of awareness. Groups rallying against all odds have used them to proclaim that true justice and lasting peace come not through preparedness to injure and dominate others but through a humble yet fierce willingness to engage, share, and to heal and be healed.

       To affirm our faith this morning, we’re going to use a simple, fourteen-word verse from the epistle of James (4:10): Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. Youth groups and churches have been singing these words for decades as a centering prayer. Now, remember, while our voices do the singing, the words are scripture. So, they are God’s word to us. Each of us individually and all of us together are the thyself of whom we sing.

        Let’s also remember that the lifting up by God is not a promotion to worldly glory and privilege. It is God calling us to a new and renewing life, the humble and humbling life of servants in, with, and for all that God has created and all that God loves.

 

¹Richard F. Ward, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p. 219.

²Stephen A. Paulsell, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p. 220.

³Jennifer Powell McNutt, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p. 220.

⁴Ibid.

⁵Isaiah 42:1-4, 49:1-6, 50:4-7, and 52:13-53:12

⁶Ward, p. 221.

 

“Christmas Jubilee”

Luke 2:1-20

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Christmas Eve, 2019

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ²This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³All went to their own towns to be registered. ⁴Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. ⁵He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.⁶While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. ⁷And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

⁸In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

¹⁰But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: ¹¹to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹²This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”

¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ¹⁴“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” 

¹⁵When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”

¹⁶So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. ¹⁷When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; ¹⁸and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. ¹⁹But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. (NRSV)

         Luke’s infancy narrative is a familiar story, and a great story, if a bit of a mess. Luke’s details are a little suspect. His particular confluence of imperial and local leaders at the time of Jesus’ birth don’t agree with those of Josephus and other first-century historians. And while the Romans apparently had a fondness for census-taking, there’s no evidence to corroborate Luke’s account of a census requiring everyone to return to ancestral homes.¹

       We can let such things bother us. Or, we can remember that Luke, like all gospel-writers, is telling a faith story, not writing history. Luke understands that faith stories are situated within a much deeper and wider Story which is always populated with real people in real socio-political contexts.

       This wider Story is God’s Grand Narrative, and it’s layered deeply and concurrently throughout past, present, and future. Each of the gospels, then, is more complex than one man’s record of another man’s life. They’re creative utterances—collaborations of individuals, communities, the Creation, and God. So, I like to think of this account of Jesus’ nativity as something that finds Luke. And when Luke finds his place within it, the Story tells itself through Luke’s openness to it, his passion for it, and his generosity with it.

       Because of all this, Luke takes interest in the timeless and history-saturating truth of that deeper and wider Story over the accuracy of details. Now, Luke doesn’t fabricate characters, so his use of real people seems to acknowledge that we all come and go. We succeed and fail, live and die. But The Story is a different matter. It’s continuous, and it says stunning things like: “Let there be light…Say to them I AM has sent me to you…What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God?” It also says, “you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family.” (Genesis 1:3, Exodus 3:14, Micah 6:8, Leviticus 25:10)

       I think that in Luke’s telling of the birth of Jesus, we hear God announce not just a year of jubilee. We hear God announce universal Jubilee. For Christians, Jesus is a kind of fulcrum in history. With his birth, the time—the Kairos—has come for everyone and everything to return to its “family,” its origin. Isaiah calls Jubilee “the year of the Lord’s favor” (Isaiah 61:2), and only in Luke’s gospel do we hear those words on Jesus’ lips. He speaks them when he reads from the scroll of Isaiah, and he does this when he himself has come home to Nazareth. Theologically speaking, to come home is to return to a primordial, archetypal source, an eternal identity.

        Christmas Eve is one of my favorite days of the year. For many of us, it’s a time when we return home. Many of us have treasured traditions that include things like a hike or some other outing, candlelight worship with communion, sharing a meal with family and friends. For me, Christmas Eve has become a time of uncanny wholeness and belonging. The mystic at-home-ness of this day reminds me of words from Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. Out on a cold parapet, Hamlet’s friend Marcellus says:

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long.

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad.

The nights are wholesome. Then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallowed and so gracious is that time.²

       One need not be in their own hometown to experience the “wholesome…hallowed and…gracious” Kairos of Christmas Eve. Luke illuminates the point of home when he says that Joseph goes home to Bethlehem, which may or may not have been the town of his birth and childhood. He goes there because, according to Luke, Joseph traces his roots back to King David.

       In the context of the deeper and wider Story, home has less to do with some geographic location than it does with our truest identity. Home has to do with belonging at the most primordial depth and the most unrealized height of who we are in God. To return home for God’s Jubilee is to return to our true and eternal Self from which, by grace, none of us can be forever alienated.

       John understands that kind of home. The opening of his gospel is brief and dense, but I consider it consistent with Luke’s nativity story. In the beginning was the Word, says John, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him…[And] what has come into being in him [is] life. (John 1:1-3a, 3c-4a)

       Being is itself home for the one whose birth into human existence we celebrate tonight. The lives we live are expressions of that same life. So, Beingitself, Life itself is home for us, regardless of where we lay down our sweet heads. To me, this means that home, real and everlasting home, can always be found anywhere in the Creation.

       In many Christian churches, the words spoken over the Lord’s Supper build a fence around Christ’s table. I used to speak those exclusive and life-diminishing words. I no longer do that, because I can no longer demand that anyone say or do something to secure a place at a table from which, I believe, we have all ultimately come. And while this is the Easter table, a table of remembrance and redemption, it’s also the table of Christmas Jubilee, a table of mystery and reunion.

       All of you are welcome at this table. So, I invite you to come, and I pray that you will feel here the welcome of the home from which we have all come, to which we all return, and which, at Christmas, comes to us.

 

¹Lewis Donelson, Feasting on the Word, John Knox Press, 2008, pp,117-118.

²William Shakespeare, “Hamlet,” Act 1, Scene 1, lines 157-163.

“Salvation: The Family Business”

Matthew 1:18-25

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

12/22/19

 

¹⁸Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. ²⁰But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

²²All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ²³“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.

 ²⁴When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, ²⁵but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus. (NRSV)

 

 

       Over the millennia, few things have dominated the minds of human beings like power and sex. We’re always obsessed with one and fixated on the other. Deuteronomy 22 records a law stating that a woman who marries and fails to prove her virginity must be stoned to death. This biblical law is a perfect example of how intimately we have coupled sex with power, and how we have attributed unspeakable brutality to the will of God.

        I wouldn’t even know how to look for reliable data to estimate how many girls in ancient societies have been murdered by their communities—specifically, by their faith communities— because they were, or were simply accused of having been sexually active before marriage. Since pregnancy counts as lack of proof of virginity, imagine the terror that Mary, a first-century teenager, must feel as she considers the news that her body is going to demonstrate the undeniable changes that will give religious leaders the de facto right to subject her to a violent, painful, and public death. Imagine the despair she must feel knowing that she is powerless to fend off the judgments of the powerful.

       In a dream, an angel appears to Joseph, Mary’s fiancé, and says, Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife. Take full responsibility for her child. Name him; call him Jesus. He’s going to be a remarkable man, one who will save his people from their sins.

       Joseph listens, and for the sake of a son the story says he has nothing to do with, he enfolds Mary’s life into his life. And in so doing, he defies the judgments of power and the stigma of shame. Joseph’s actions save Mary, but not from her sins. He saves her from the sins of the ones whom the angel calls Jesus’ “people.” At God’s direction, Joseph salvages Mary, and therefore Jesus, from the indignant judgments and the violent outbursts of a male-dominated culture that abused women, children, and outcasts simply because it could.

       Who knows if Joseph and Mary ever told their story to Jesus just like Matthew tells it to us? It seems to me, though, that Jesus knew or at least suspected something. Under the influence of nothing more than the deeply subjective authority of a dream, Joseph defies the arrangements that allow, in the name of God, some to prosper and others to suffer. In taking responsibility for Mary and the baby she carries, Joseph not only swallows his pride, he does the kind of thing that we often associate with young adults in our on day. He deliberately flouts long-standing tradition. He throws out the window the institutional practices that older generations take for granted. But he doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. As upsetting as Joseph’s actions might be to powerful and privileged people, they reveal the kind of inspirational character that helped to shape Jesus’ own character.

        For the most part, Christian tradition forgets Joseph, but salvation seems to be the family business. Jesus emulates Joseph when he takes up the mantle of God’s iconoclastic Christ—the one who comes in the name of the Lord to turn the world upside down with messages of universal welcome, unmerited grace, and non-violent redemption.

        You know, for all the positive work done in grateful, generous, and humble love, the Church’s history in missions is still tarnished with considerable embarrassment, even shame for us. Think about it: When missionaries went and told some remote tribe that Jesus saves them from their sins, how many missionaries would have been ready for a moment when the people to whom they preached, people who had watched invaders seize their ancestral lands, desecrate their holy sites, and violate their women and girls turned and said, Ok, but will he save us from YOUR sins?

        Jesus does more than simply forgive sins. He saves from sin, and he does so by dismantling the arrangements that addict us to privilege, power, and violence. And the privileged, powerful, and violent seldom want to be saved because they’ve chosen—we’ve chosen—to regard worldly advantage as divine blessing, even when maintaining advantage causes relentless human suffering and degradation of soil, water, air, and climate.

        In recent weeks, I’ve heard increasing concern from members of this congregation about the lack of young people in our church. While I’m grateful to hear this conversation, I also feel some uneasiness. I’ve read a little bit about what makes a congregation youth- and young adult-friendly, and I have to wonder if we’re ready for that. Preparedness doesn’t have to do with PowerPoints and praise music. Our mission will have to go full-on Joseph in the world. Some of our familiar ways of being and doing will have to go the way of 8-track tapes and phonebooks. We’ll have to recognize and confess the sins we’ve committed and are committing, then repent and live a new life. We’ll have to step out in faith and make room for the new thing God is doing.

        Rachel Held Evans was a gifted Christian writer and speaker who, very tragically, died earlier this year at the tender age of 37. In her brief adult life, she influenced many individuals and congregations with her bold-yet-humble honesty about her own experience growing up in an evangelical household, leaving the church, then returning as one who loved Jesus, loved the Bible, loved Christian community, and who was fearless in challenging the institution’s death grip on the way we’ve always done it. Having said that, Evans let us know, too, that many of the ancient traditions are things that young people value and want—sacraments, spiritual depth, real faith community, and, in the manner of Jesus, social justice. It’s just that so many people, young and otherwise, find contemporary churches more in love with their own buildings and habits than with Jesus and with those whom Jesus loved and served, the poor and the forgotten—those who desperately need saving from the sins of the powerful, the privileged, and the so-called righteous.

        This morning’s worship isn’t the time to explore specifics about how we might become more engaged with and relevant to younger generations. That’s the session’s responsibility, and we’ll start trying to do that in the new year. Still, the example of Joseph can be a guiding light for us. How will we recognize that life is pregnant with possibilities we can’t have imagined, possibilities that may even seem not only uncomfortable, but down right illegitimate? And what will we need to let go of so that we might take responsibility for the new thing God is revealing to us, and bringing into the world?

        However we answer those questions, we can be confident that as long as that new thing challenges us to love more deeply, to welcome strangers more graciously, and to treat each other with greater kindness than we see and hear around us right now, then God is surely in the midst of it. That transforming new thing is a fresh revelation of, a fresh fulfillment of, a fresh Incarnation of God’s eternal Christ, who is, even now, saving us.

“Preparing for the Visit”

John 14:26-27

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

12/8/19

²⁶But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. ²⁷Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. (NRSV)

For many of us, this passage feels out of place during Advent. Indeed, most of us are used to hearing it during Holy Week, the final days of Lent. Let’s remember, though, that Advent and Lent have much in common. Cosmetically, they share purple or blue as the liturgical color. More significantly, they’re both seasons of reflection and preparation, times to look deep within our individual selves and our corporate self to imagine how we might receive and enter the mysteries of Incarnation and Resurrection so that they restore and reorient the totality of our hearts, minds, bodies, and relationships.

During Lent, we tend to focus on our brokenness and our need for repentance. During Advent, in our culture anyway, we tend to focus less on “spiritual things” and more on getting stuff, eating food, wearing bright clothes, and singing happy and familiar songs. While Christians are as guilty as anyone else in helping to secularize Christmas into a shallow-water frenzy of consumption and indulgence, all those happy songs, bright lights, and the artificial smiles of advertisement actors receiving lottery cards as the most treasured of all gifts, push the idea that everyone must feel happy at this time of year. More damaging than the pressure simply to feel happy is the expectation to find fulfillment and satisfaction in receiving things that can only be acquired with money or credit.

I know I’m beating the proverbial dead horse. And while the admonition to celebrate Christmas through less consumeristic means is always warranted, I bring it up today to remind us that the sense of obligation to feel joyful and grateful in the season of joy and gratitude is enough to throw some of us into tailspins of depression, alienation, and cynicism.

Now, I’m not trying to throw a wet blanket on anyone. Far from it. I’m trying to invite us into a posture of readiness to receive and celebrate the peace and the wholeness that God offers through Incarnation and Resurrection. Many of us have been taught that the primary purpose of the Christian faith is personal, individual, and postmortem. It’s about my salvation, about getting to heaven when I die. Christmas and Easter are about so much more than an evacuation plan for anxious sinners. Incarnation and Resurrection call us to new ways of living in community in this world, and that means recognizing the holiness in the Creation as revealed through all that we share and have in common as human beings, through our corporate as well as our individual joys and sorrows, pleasures and pain. And this new way of life includes intentional, purposeful, and ongoing empathy with and compassion for one another.

When pastors visit with parishioners in a home, hospital, rehab center, or nursing home, they spend the bulk of their time simply being present with a person or a family. They chat about the little things. They catch up with everyone there. When appropriate and given permission, they delve into the deep and difficult issues of human frailty and brokenness, of grief, illness, and regret. At the end of these visits, pastors offer prayers for strength, comfort, peace, and wholeness.

Pastoral visits, which are usually made in the midst of some degree of suffering, are meant to be sacred time, even sacramental, so more than the memory of the visit remains. In those face-to-face, incarnate interactions, and through the shared intimacy of prayer, we trust that God is truly, graciously, and immediately present. What lingers, then, is a renewed sense of the Holy Spirit’s abiding and vibrant presence.

When we know that someone is coming to visit us in the midst of some struggle we’re experiencing, don’t we get ready for that visit? If they’re coming to our home, we usually prepare the space in which to meet. We prepare to offer coffee, tea, or water. We prepare ourselves to talk about something in particular—or not to talk about it. We carefully consider the implications of sharing things that may affect that relationship or other relationships. Because those preparations are crucial, I never make cold calls to people’s homes.

Pastors need pastors, too; so, I recently started seeing a spiritual director. Spiritual directors are not therapists—or palm readers. They’re simply people who have prepared themselves to be spiritually present to others. They have been trained in and practiced the art of listening with compassion and responding with honesty and love. I drive over to Mars Hill for these visits, and before I go, I think about what I want to share, what I need to let go of, things on which I need feedback. And when I drive home, I always have more to think about, more to process than when I went. That’s how sacred time works. It doesn’t leave us unchanged. And, ideally, it leaves us feeling reconnected to God, to self, to other human beings, and to the very earth itself. On the way home, I really do look at everything differently—myself, those around me, the traffic, the trees, the mountains, the sky, all of it.

In Advent we prepare ourselves for the Incarnation: God’s pastoral visit to a world that is broken, hurting, angry, suspicious, and in danger each day of becoming ever more hopeless, divided, and violent. Our focus on appearances and parties as preparation can be fun. Just as often, however, those things distract us from the sacred time of Christmas, and we miss its holiness.

In the Gospel of John, as Jesus prepares to leave his disciples, he prepares them to live in the midst of the same kind of peace that pastors want parishioners to feel after a visit. “Peace I leave with you,” he says. “My peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives.” Jesus gives the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift that lingers and continues to bring peace and wholeness to followers who are about to feel more broken and abandoned than they ever imagined when they chose to make the bold claim that they were indeed following God’s long-awaited Christ.

In an ideal world, all Christmas gifts would somehow mirror and proclaim the peace and wholeness promised by God not only in Jesus’ birth, but in his ongoing arrival and return.

For those of us who are hurting today, those of us who do not feel the joy of this season, know that you are not alone. And it’s okay to grieve, to doubt, to weep.

For those of us who feel the energy and joy of the approach of Christmas, may we be as responsive to those who suffer as God in Christ is responsive to a world suffering from fear, loss, alienation, and despair.

May the God of peace and wholeness be with each of you, with all of us, and with this entire broken, suffering, beautiful, resilient, Spirit-marinated Creation.

Amen.

*This sermon was preached during a “Blue Christmas” service which was held during regular 11:00am worship.