“Don’t Worry?!”

Psalm 104 (Selected Verses) and Matthew 6:25-34

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

5/14/23

Let my whole being bless the Lord!
    Lord my God, how fantastic you are!
    You are clothed in glory and grandeur!
² You wear light like a robe;
    you open the skies like a curtain.
³ You build your lofty house on the waters;
    you make the clouds your chariot,
    going around on the wings of the wind.

¹⁰ You put gushing springs into dry riverbeds.
    They flow between the mountains,
¹¹         providing water for every wild animal—
        the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
¹² Overhead, the birds in the sky make their home,
    chirping loudly in the trees.
¹³ From your lofty house, you water the mountains.
    The earth is filled full by the fruit of what you’ve done.
¹⁴ You make grass grow for cattle;
    you make plants for human farming
        in order to get food from the ground,
¹⁵         and wine, which cheers people’s hearts,
        along with oil, which makes the face shine,
        and bread, which sustains the human heart.
¹⁶ The Lord’s trees are well watered—
    the cedars of Lebanon, which God planted,
¹⁷     where the birds make their nests,
    where the stork has a home in the cypresses.

³¹ Let the Lord’s glory last forever!
    Let the Lord rejoice in all he has made!

(Psalm 104 [selected verses] – CEB)

²⁵ “Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? 

²⁷ “Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? ²⁸ And why do you worry about clothes? Notice how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. ²⁹ But I say to you that even Solomon in all of his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, won’t God do much more for you, you people of weak faith?

³¹ “Therefore, don’t worry and say, ‘What are we going to eat?’ or ‘What are we going to drink?’ or ‘What are we going to wear?’³² Gentiles long for all these things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ Instead, desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore, stop worrying about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:25-34 – CEB)

Last week, we heard John’s Jesus telling the disciples not to let the world rattle them. This week, we’re listening to Matthew’s Jesus say a similar thing, but to a very different audience in a very different context.

Back in John, Jesus tries to assure his disciples at the very end of his ministry. In Matthew, Jesus is giving his sermon on the mount to the crowds right at the beginning of that ministry.

In John, Jesus has just told his disciples a lot of disturbing stuff about what’s going to happen in the next few days. In Matthew, Jesus has just told the crowds what makes for true blessedness. Then, he basically re-writes key points in the law by saying, for instance, You’ve been taught to love your friends and hate your enemies. And I say, love and pray for even those enemies. Only that will bless you both.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus isn’t preparing his listeners for his absence. He’s preparing them for living a life that doesn’t look like the grasping and fearful lives of those who are privileged and powerful. Those who have more than their share almost inevitably end up, like the hideous Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, worshiping and guarding their possessions because they’re terrified of losing any part of them. Instead, Jesus is preparing the people for a simple life of gratitude, generosity, and joy. And while that’s wonderful, the simple life requires trust—and lots of it. And the kind of trust that leads to and nurtures faith in the goodness and grace of God, begins with a basic awareness of God at work in the Creation.

Look at the birds, says Jesus. Look at the lilies of the field and the grass. They don’t worry!

One can imagine that Jesus read or heard Psalm 104 just before saying these things. That ancient hymn praises God for the gift of the Creation and for God’s faithfulness in sustaining and delighting in all that God has made.

 While most of us can appreciate these earthy images, we’ve also seen how, during drought, flowers pale, bow toward the dry earth, and die. We’ve seen how quickly lack of water can turn grass into fuel for devastating wildfires. We’re also seeing now how much more frequent all of that becomes as our climate deteriorates from humanity’s lack of faithful stewardship.

As for the birds of the air, I’ll say this: We don’t have a cat anymore, but when we did, during nesting season, we had to keep our sweet kitty in the basement so he didn’t kill every fledgling in the neighborhood and leave the carnage scattered in our driveway. All of that is to say, unless you’re drought-resistant, or occupy a higher link on the food chain, Jesus’ advice not to worry may ring hollow.

         Parents who live in poverty and struggle to feed their children can’t imagine a place or a time when worry is not part of their reality. Those who suffer abuse or violence of one kind or another may never return to a place of un-worried peace. Many soldiers who survived the dehumanizing brutality of war, and even more of the innocent people who watched loved ones suffer, die, and then get dismissed as “collateral damage” often sneer at the very idea of God. And who can blame them?

         So sure, consider the lilies, the grass, and the birds. Lilies and grass may face threats to their well-being. But they don’t worry. Birds can be stressed, but do they really know fear as human beings do? Jesus’ audience are people who constantly confront the merciless manipulations of the emperors and his minions, all of whom are willing to abuse and kill to maintain their power.

For us, these are days of relentless worry and fear. Wars and rumors of warsare always with us. In recent years, an exclusive and violent hyper-nationalism has found traction in our nation, and around the world—even among many who call themselves Christian. Inflation and the threat of recession keep us on edge. Politicians, TV networks, advertisers, and anyone else who has something to gain or lose will exploit the anxiety and distrust in our culture to achieve their selfish ends.

         And let’s be honest. As an institution, the Church has always used fear to help keep itself awash in money and influence. Indeed, many within the Christian family have done as much to keep people terrified of and bound to a vengeful God and a bloodied Jesus than all the Mother Teresas and Martin Luther Kings have done to reveal the compassionate, liberating, and fearless Christ.

Under the influence of fear, evangelism gets reduced to, basically, Believe as you are told, or go to hell. Now, vote this way, put your paycheck in the basket, and don’t worry about anything. God will provide.

         Because of this kind of abusive theology, more and more people who used to be involved in the church are leaving it. They’re tired of being associated with such worrisome speech and behavior.

         Worry does not have to define us, though. Anxiety and fear are not the last words. Jesus’ assurance that God can be trusted to respond to the needs of the Creation means that, in the end, love wins, and God’s shalom will prevail.

You and I, we’re more than flora and fauna. And while, as Jesus says, every tomorrow holds worry of its own, we are, nonetheless, God-imaged creatures with creative consciousness, and a spirited unconscious, as well. Through these gifts, we can do wonderful things, deeply spiritual things—holy things. We can imagine, dream, create, and love.

Our call as the church, then, is to model an alternative way of living in a world racked with worry and enmity. Our call is to trust God, and through that trust, to seek, find, and share God’s realm of grace which permeates every here and every now in which we live.

“Road, Truth, and Life”

Psalm 130 and John 14:1-11

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

5-7-23

I cry out to you from the depths, Lord—
² my Lord, listen to my voice!
    Let your ears pay close attention to my request for mercy!
³ If you kept track of sins, Lord—
    my Lord, who would stand a chance?
⁴ But forgiveness is with you—
    that’s why you are honored.

⁵ I hope, Lord.
My whole being hopes,
    and I wait for God’s promise.
⁶ My whole being waits for my Lord—
    more than the night watch waits for morning;
    yes, more than the night watch waits for morning!

⁷ Israel, wait for the Lord!
    Because faithful love is with the Lord;
    because great redemption is with our God!
⁸ He is the one who will redeem Israel
    from all its sin.

(Psalm 130 – CEB)

^1-4 “Don’t let this rattle you. You trust God, don’t you? Trust me. There is plenty of room for you in my Father’s home. If that weren’t so, would I have told you that I’m on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I’m on my way to get your room ready, I’ll come back and get you so you can live where I live. And you already know the road I’m taking.”

⁵ Thomas said, “Master, we have no idea where you’re going. How do you expect us to know the road?”

^6-7 Jesus said, “I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him. You’ve even seen him!”

⁸ Philip said, “Master, show us the Father; then we’ll be content.”

^9-10 “You’ve been with me all this time, Philip, and you still don’t understand? To see me is to see the Father. So how can you ask, ‘Where is the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you aren’t mere words. I don’t just make them up on my own. The Father who resides in me crafts each word into a divine act.

¹¹ “Believe me: I am in my Father and my Father is in me. If you can’t believe that, believe what you see—these works. (John 14:1-11 – The Message)

         On Wednesday afternoon I looked at my phone and saw that I’d missed a call from someone in my church. So, I tapped the missed-call notice and rang him back. Instead of hearing some customary greeting, I heard, “Nothing’s wrong! Don’t worry. Everything’s alright.” So, I immediately thought, “Oh no. What happened?” As it turned out, everything was okay. We just had some food pantry details to tend to.

Still, when someone says, Don’t worry, or Don’t let this rattle you, or Don’t let your hearts be troubled, isn’t it human nature to start worrying, because isn’t what we hear, Don’t worry, but…?

         When Jesus says, “Don’t let this rattle you,” but I mean, “You trust God, don’t you?” he does nothing to ease the disciples’ already-significant apprehension. Let’s remember, Jesus says this right on the heels of having washed the disciples’ feet, of having announced his betrayal, of having told the disciples that he’s about to leave, of having told them to keep loving each other no matter what, and, finally, of predicting Peter’s denial. So, when Jesus says, “Don’t let this rattle you,” it’s kind of like telling a child whose dog just died, Don’t be sad. That ship has sailed.

         John 14 is a staple of Christian funerals—times when many people are, indeed, rattled and hungry for words of comfort. And even though we, as Christians, speak of a life to come, there’s an undeniable finality to death. As much gratitude and joy as memories can evoke, the person who has died has left this life forever. They’ve left our lives forever.

         Most of us have heard stories of near death experiences. Some of us may have read books like Heaven Is for Real or Proof of Heaven. Let’s be honest, though. None of that is concrete proof of anything except our very real and understandable desire for there to be something more. Now, I’m not denying that there is more. I’m merely saying that no one really knows what lies beyond death. Faith, not knowledge, is the basis for our claim to a life to come. So, to reiterate at funerals what Jesus says in John 14 becomes part of our faithful lament in the face of death. And what Jesus says to his disciples throughout the pastoral discourse of John 13-17 is about far more than life after death.

         Jesus is saying that beyond the life represented by Caesar and empire, beyond the life of material wealth and military domination to which many Jewish leaders have accommodated themselves, especially the Sadducees, there lies a place of spacious love, a place of deep unity with Jesus and with the Father. And when Jesus tells the disciples that they know the way, he’s trying to tell them something profoundly hopeful and life-transforming.

Speaking for the group, Thomas says, Jesus, we don’t know where you’re going. So how can we know how to get there?

         “I am the Road,” says Jesus, “also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me.”

         This is one of those passages that gets distorted into a warning. If you want to go to heaven, you must believe that Jesus is the only way to get there. And any theology which proclaims that kind of static certainty tends to get wielded like a weapon rather than offered as an invitation into grace. The thing about gospel grace, though, is that it requires much more of us than doctrinal purity, because it’s about more than getting to heaven when we die. It’s about living in holy union with God here and now as well as in the life to come.

         “If you really knew me,” says Jesus, “you would know my Father as well…[and] you do know him.” Jesus pleads with his disciples to recognize that following him and participating in his ministry means, ultimately, loving each other as God loves us. For me, if there’s a bottom line, that’s it. Through self-emptying love for others, anyone can experience the Road that doesn’t just lead to life, but which is, in Truth, Life itself, because to love as Jesus loves is to be with him. And because the Son and the Father are so intimately one, to be with one is to be with the other. If that’s the case, how can one experience union with God apart from Christ? Jesus comes to reveal that pre-existent truth, not to make it happen. God’s spacious realm is already something in which humankind lives, moves, and has its being.

Another challenging reality is that it’s terribly easy, like the Sadducees, to settle for a world where a rattled and fearful existence seems not only rational and responsible, but the only real possibility. In that world, though, people just give up and fall asleep behind contrived certainties that provide fertile ground for holding prejudices, casting judgments, building walls, amassing weapons, and reducing a storied and deeply transforming spiritual tradition into an inert doctrine that both religious and political leaders can use to control the masses and ensure their loyalty. That’s exactly what happened when, in the fourth century, Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. The emperor’s goal was political stability, not faithful discipleship.

Some within the first-century Jewish community expected and desperately wanted Jesus to be that kind of Messiah. And one can imagine their weariness of Rome. One can also imagine that, as Jews, many of them were tired of their story being one endless string of exiles. From Pharaoh, to all the various Nebuchadnezzars and Caesars, God’s people had known continual defeat and outside control. Why wouldn’t they want someone who could and would play hardball with tyrants?

Well, when we truly, as Jesus says, trust God, when we truly, as Jesus says, believe him, or at least believe that his works reveal the presence and will of God, then we can begin to understand that all the violent means of empire, and all the repressive certainties of imperial religion are roads that lead not to life, but to one dead end after another.

In claiming to be “the Road…the Truth…[and] the Life,” Jesus invites everyone who hears his story to immerse themselves in it, to live it. For in that immersion, we begin to recognize that Jesus truly is one with the Father—the Creator and Source of all that is genuinely loving and lasting. Jesus’ own trust and belief are evident in the ways he lives in the here-and-now, in the ways he loves those who seem unlovable, in the ways he cares for those who seem beyond help, in the ways he embraces all of life, and in the ways he includes all things—joys and sufferings—and transforms them into signs of God’s ever-present realm of grace.

Wherever Creator-Redeemer-Sustainer unity is evident, wherever death is giving way to life, wherever reconciling grace and love are at work, wherever people choose peace, inclusion, and forgiveness over whatever easy but violent alternatives are available, there Christ is present and forever will be.

May that be our reality, and the reality of this congregation today, tomorrow, and always.

“Witness in the Wilderness”

Isaiah 51:1-6 and Revelation 21:1-4

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

4/23/23

Listen to me,
    you who look for righteousness,
    you who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were cut
    and to the quarry where you were dug.
² Look to Abraham your ancestor,
    and to Sarah, who gave you birth.
They were alone when I called them,
    but I blessed them and made them many.
³ The Lord will comfort Zion;
    he will comfort all her ruins.
He will make her desert like Eden
    and her wilderness like the Lord’s garden.
Happiness and joy will be found in her—
    thanks and the sound of singing.

⁴ Pay attention to me, my people;
    listen to me, my nation,
        for teaching will go out from me,
        my justice, as a light to the nations.
⁵     I will quickly bring my victory.
My salvation is on its way,
    and my arm will judge the peoples.
    The coastlands hope for me;
    they wait for my judgment. 
⁶ Look up to the heavens,
        and gaze at the earth beneath.
    The heavens will disappear like smoke,
    the earth will wear out like clothing,
    and its inhabitants will die like gnats.
But my salvation will endure forever,
    and my righteousness will be unbroken.

(Isaiah 51:1-6 — CEB)

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ² I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. ³ I heard a loud voice from the throne say, “Look! God’s dwelling is here with humankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his peoples. God himself will be with them as their God. ⁴ He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1-4 — CEB)

         Isaiah’s audience are the Israelites exiled in Babylon. After thirty-nine chapters mostly dedicated to itemizing Israel’s sins, Isaiah 40-55, or Second Isaiah, contains the prophecy of Israel’s release. And this section begins with those memorable words: “Comfort, comfort my people.”

Through the prophet, God says, Your current situation is going to change. You’re going home! To those stuck in Babylon, Isaiah’s words probably sound like wishful thinking, or maybe some religious zealot seeking attention. And, since almost all the Israelites in Babylon had, by the time of their release, been born into exile, one can also imagine the prospect of deliverance feeling unsettling to many people. They would be leaving the only home they knew. And isn’t it a human thing often to prefer the wilderness we know rather than the wilderness we don’t?

         Like a gardener preparing depleted soil, the prophet has to prepare the people’s weary hearts. He has to remind them who they are, whose they are, and what home really is.

In today’s text, Isaiah says, “Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry where you were dug.” Like stars and planets hewn from one colossal and purposed explosion of spirited matter, so, too, were the Israelites chipped from the same ancestral quarry.

Isaiah’s image of being quarried and cut isn’t random. Between the first verse of chapter 40 and today’s text in chapter 51, the prophet spends a good deal of time disparaging the idols of Babylon.

Idols are sculpted images created by craftsmen, says Isaiah. And what good are they to people who have been created in the image of God?

You are the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, he says. You are among those counted when Abraham looked up at the heavens and God told him, Count the stars if you can, and trust that your descendants will be as plentiful as the stars in a clear night sky.

God’s promise to Abraham occurs while he and Sarah are in the midst of their own wilderness. They’re homeless, childless, and aging. Yet they trust that God is leading them to a place rich with new beginnings, family, and belonging. They trust that God is leading them home.

Experiences of exile and exodus—the dis-orientation of wilderness—are endemic to the life of faith, because they’re endemic to human existence. There’s just no such thing as a human life without wilderness. And when we’re wandering in some wilderness, the prophets challenge us also to imagine ourselves in a place where God is about to reveal something new.

“Pay attention to me,” God says to Israel. There will be comfort in your ruins.“[I] will make your desert like Eden and [your] wilderness like the Lord’s garden.” Everything you see will, eventually, disappear, says God, but my love for you, my presence with you, and my making-things-right for all Creation will never end.

John declares a similar promise in Revelation 21 when he speaks of “a new heaven and a new earth.” Just as God promised a family and a home to Abraham and to Sarah, and just as God promised deliverance to the Israelites exiled in Babylon, so does God promise “a new heaven and a new earth” to early Christians who are trying to follow Jesus while living in the wilderness of Caesar’s relentless brutality. 

We dare not gloss over that reality. Too many people die in the wilderness. And maybe that’s why Isaiah brings up Abraham and Sarah. Sometimes wilderness is as far as even the great ones get. Neither Abraham nor Moses really crosses the finish line. Abraham, The Father of Many, has only one child with Sarah, his co-recipient of God’s promise. And Moses dies before reaching the land to which he is leading the Hebrews.

Christa Tippett hosts a podcast entitled On Being, and recently, she interviewed Christian preacher and teacher Barbara Brown Taylor. During the conversation, the topic of wilderness came up, and Tippett asked Taylor about the role of wilderness in the human condition. Taylor responded saying that one benefit of a wilderness experience is that “your ego will get a major thump. I think of wilderness,” she said, “as where you get a feel for your true size.”^*

In the whole that conversation, I heard Taylor saying that wilderness is where we remember, through shared suffering, that we are created by a Creator who is best understood as relationship. And we are most authentically God’s people when we recognize our need for one another, our need for fellow travelers in the wilderness. In that recognition, each of us confronts our incompleteness apart from the community. And while that can thump an individual’s ego, it also reminds us that we’re always part of a larger community and a larger story.

I think Isaiah wants the people in Babylon to remember that God has created flourishing gardens out of wilderness wastelands before. The prophet wants the people to dig deep into the quarry of their collective memory and recall that while God seldom prevents suffering, God never abandons the people in their sufferings. Isaiah seems to want the people to say, Hey, we’ve been here before. All will be well because God is faithful.

The “true size” of an individual and of a faith community is never determined by any status or privilege, but by the extent to which we embrace our blessedness, even in the wilderness, and offer ourselves as a blessing. Thus does God say, “They were alone when I called them, but I blessed them and made them many…Happiness and joy will be found in her—thanks and the sound of singing.”

         Suffering in community with others, and living as a source of “happiness and joy”—isn’t this the call of a community that follows Jesus? Isn’t this John’s “new heaven and…new earth”?

To be a faithful and biblically-grounded community does not mean that we bind ourselves to a static set of beliefs and insist that others do the same. To be a faithful and biblically-grounded community means that we live as a people of humility and joy, people possessed by a passion for God’s justice, that is for mercy, kindness, peace, equity, and welcome for all whom God loves.

So, whatever wilderness may look and feel like right now for each of us, and for all of us together, isn’t it faithful to both Isaiah and Jesus to open ourselves to our wilderness experience as people who need each other, and who are fellow travelers in a much deeper and wider narrative?

And isn’t it radically faithful to God, and faithfully subversive to all the Babylons and Romes of the world to say, We’ve been here before? Wilderness never gets the last word. Even now, God, who is faithful, is birthing a new Creation. And even if we don’t get to see it ourselves, we will not give in to hopelessness.

By loving as we are loved, by living gratefully, generously, and justly, we will inhabit, here and now, God’s new heaven and new earth.

^*All references to the On Being conversation between Tippett and Taylor can be found here: https://onbeing.org/programs/barbara-brown-taylor-this-hunger-for-holiness/#transcript

“A New Creation”

Matthew 28:1-15a

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Easter Sunday 2023

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the tomb. ² Look, there was a great earthquake, for an angel from the Lord came down from heaven. Coming to the stone, he rolled it away and sat on it. ³ Now his face was like lightning and his clothes as white as snow. ⁴ The guards were so terrified of him that they shook with fear and became like dead men.

⁵ But the angel said to the women, “Don’t be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. ⁶ He isn’t here, because he’s been raised from the dead, just as he said. Come, see the place where they laid him. ⁷Now hurry, go and tell his disciples, ‘He’s been raised from the dead. He’s going on ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there.’ I’ve given the message to you.”

⁸ With great fear and excitement, they hurried away from the tomb and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹But Jesus met them and greeted them. They came and grabbed his feet and worshipped him. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell my brothers that I am going into Galilee. They will see me there.”

¹¹ Now as the women were on their way, some of the guards came into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. ¹² They met with the elders and decided to give a large sum of money to the soldiers. ¹³ They told them, “Say that Jesus’ disciples came at night and stole his body while you were sleeping. ¹⁴ And if the governor hears about this, we will take care of it with him so you will have nothing to worry about.”

¹⁵ So the soldiers took the money and did as they were told. (Matthew 28:1-15a – CEB)

         Twice in Matthew’s telling of the Easter story we hear this instruction: Don’t be afraid. Go to Galilee. You’ll see Jesus there.

Matthew continues the story of the disciples’ encounters with the resurrected Jesus. For today, though, let’s linger in this moment of wonder.

         Both the angel and Jesus say, Don’t be afraid. What might they expect the women to fear? Maybe they realize that new experiences often involve, for human beings, a certain degree of anxiety and sometimes outright fear. Even things of which we are fully aware can frighten us—especially when we know they can harm us or people we love.

It seems to me that another thing making fear so, well, fearful, is that the things we fear usually lie beyond our control—even when they claim to represent something helpful, healing, or hopeful. And Resurrection is one of those terrifying wonders.

Resurrection is intimately and eternally tied to Incarnation. As such, it’s more than merely a do-over. Resurrection is a beginning that recapitulates the Creation—the event through which that creative, relationship-seeking energy and purpose we call God uttered the universe into being. That means that Resurrection starts with more than a momentary interruption of some progression or status quo. Resurrection follows a death, a termination. What was is no more, and will never be, again. Nonetheless, that death sparks a re-creation, something completely new and different, yet intimately and eternally tied to the thing that precedes it.

Attempts to describe Resurrection always fall flat. That’s one reason that images and metaphors are so important to Easter. And laying aside that irrelevant bunny, we’ll use the monarch butterfly as an example. In its first existence, the larva stage, a monarch is a fat, yellow, black, and white-striped caterpillar crawling about on slow, sticky feet. It inches its way along milkweed stalks and eats its way through as many leaves as it can stomach. As a caterpillar, it probably travels no more than a total of a few yards before it attaches itself to something stable, curls up, and within a few hours, sloughs off its skin and finds itself cocooned inside an emerald green chrysalis flecked with iridescent yellow spots. This is the pupa stage.

If all goes well, in a couple of weeks a radically new creation emerges—the adult butterfly with a lean body, long, soft hair along its back, and antennae that are, essentially, two slender noses. From that body spreads a pair of delicate golden wings fringed with black and accented with white spots. After some weeks of gathering nectar, the monarch flies not a matter of feet or yards, but some two thousand miles on its crepe paper wings.

The metamorphosis takes the creature from portly, cumbersome worm to magnificent, continent-crossing butterfly. And it doesn’t happen without a kind of death, without the complete surrender of one form to another.

If a caterpillar’s brain could imagine that it would trade in its surface-gripping feet for gravity-defying wings, it might lift up a prayer saying Please, take this cup from me. This is terrifying!

And maybe God’s answer would be something like, I understand. But listen, while you can’t imagine your next life right now, trust me, it’s going to be worth it. Don’t be afraid.

Now, back to the Mary Magdalene and the disciples.

After hearing that the world has changed beyond all experience and expectation, we receive the next instruction. Go to Galilee. Some 100 miles north of Jerusalem, the region of Galilee carries deep historical and symbolic significance.

Nazareth, the place of Jesus’ birth, is in Galilee. The Sea of Galilee, along whose shore Jesus called his first disciples, is the eastern boundary of Galilee. Capernaum, where Jesus preached his first sermon, is in Galilee. So, Galilee represents a place of beginnings.

         Now, on Easter morning, when the angels and then Jesus tell the women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, the instruction isn’t to return to the way things were. The instruction is simply to go back where it all started, because a whole new way of being in the world awaits them. And while that way of being will be entirely new, it awaits them in the person of the same person that all of them had loved, followed, and watched die just 36 hours earlier. And since that time, everything has changed—forever. A New Creation has begun.

         For us, post-resurrection Galilee can be pretty much anywhere. And wherever it is, to get there, something must die, metaphorically anyway. And whatever it may be, we have to let go of it. Letting go is the path toward the New Creation of Resurrection.

         Much has been said and is being said about the “decline” of the Church. And something is definitely happening. It seems to me, though, that a healthy and hopeful way to look at our changed and changing situation is to imagine the Church, as the body of Christ, experiencing, globally, a season of moving from one stage of being toward a whole new creation. Something even more beautiful. Something with wings, perhaps.

Still, it’s scary. The Church that most of us in this room grew up with, love, treasure, and continue to embrace and to nurture, could very well be entering a kind of pupa stage. That would mean sloughing off familiar skin, familiar practices and arrangements, and preparing for ways of being and doing church that we have never experienced, nor really imagined. And yet, such a transformation might just help us to follow more faithfully a resurrected Christ.

Easter invites us to imagine ourselves—individually and communally—as part of a continual and a sacred process of creation, death, and re-creation. God did not establish a static order, but an organism, something that lives, moves, has being and purpose, and that is always in the process of becoming.

Resurrection is part of that process. Resurrection gives us wings on which we transcend our slow-footed fear and selfishness. Resurrection gives us the strength and courage we need to embrace the new vision and the new possibilities that come with being a New Creation.

Resurrection empowers us to release old hurts and the thirst for vengeance, and to forgive that old nemesis.

It empowers us to forgive old institutions, their smallness, their self-absorption, and their archaic prejudices against people whom God made different but no less beautiful and holy.

Resurrection empowers us to see the world around us as God’s presence with us, and God’s provision for us—something to steward with gratitude and generosity because none of us survive without this earth. And when we see the earth through the eyes of transformed creatures, we recognize that there is, in fact, enough for everyone because we recognize our need in our neighbor’s need, and we work to make sure that all have enough.

Resurrection sends us to Galilee to open our minds, our hearts, and our hands to the new thing God is doing in us and through us.

What new thing is God doing in you?

Where is your Galilee?

“Resurrection Relationship”

John 20:1-18

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

April 9, 2023

Easter Sunrise Service

Early in the morning of the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. ² She ran to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they’ve put him.”

³ Peter and the other disciple left to go to the tomb. ⁴ They were running together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and was the first to arrive at the tomb. ⁵ Bending down to take a look, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he didn’t go in. ⁶ Following him, Simon Peter entered the tomb and saw the linen cloths lying there. ⁷ He also saw the face cloth that had been on Jesus’ head. It wasn’t with the other clothes but was folded up in its own place. ⁸ Then the other disciple, the one who arrived at the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹ They didn’t yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. ¹⁰ Then the disciples returned to the place where they were staying.

¹¹ Mary stood outside near the tomb, crying. As she cried, she bent down to look into the tomb. ¹² She saw two angels dressed in white, seated where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the foot.¹³ The angels asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

She replied, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve put him.” ¹⁴ As soon as she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t know it was Jesus.

¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she replied, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabbouni” (which means Teacher).

¹⁷ Jesus said to her, “Don’t hold on to me, for I haven’t yet gone up to my Father. Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, ‘I’m going up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

¹⁸ Mary Magdalene left and announced to the disciples, “I’ve seen the Lord.” Then she told them what he said to her. (John 20:1-18 — CEB)

         Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the disciple whom Jesus loved are overcome with emotion. They’re trying to believe something that defies comprehension. On that Sunday morning, as they stand next to that empty tomb, what appears to be the case lies beyond anything any of them can conceive. Indeed, the disciple whom Jesus loved doesn’t believe it until he actually sets foot in the tomb and sees for himself, lying on the ground, the grave coverings and the face cloth that had swaddled Jesus since the previous Friday evening.

         Now, John is known for his use of irony. And there’s a deep irony in this scene. However, most of us have heard the Easter story enough times that we get so caught up in the outcome and miss the irony. What Mary Magdelene, Peter, and the disciple whom Jesus loved are struggling to believe, what they’re trying to come to grips with in the first fifteen verses of John 20, is not that Jesus has been resurrected, but that his body has been stolen.

And what a trauma that would be! Who would do such a thing? How could they do it? Physically, spiritually, emotionally, morally, how could anyone steal a body?

In the minds of the three who discover the empty tomb, grave robbery is the only thing that makes sense, because while it may be unbelievable that someone would do such a thing, it’s not actually beyond belief that it could be done. So, when the disciple whom Jesus loved steps into the tomb and sees for himself the absence of a body, John says he “believed.” What the disciple believes, though, is only what Mary Magdalene said—someone has taken Jesus’ body.

         The first witness of that first Easter morning was one of insult to injury. Jesus had been crucified, buried, and stolen. Even when Mary looks back into the tomb and sees the angels, and hears them ask why she’s crying, she doesn’t even imagine resurrection. Why would she? Even when Jesus asks Mary the same question that the angels ask, she remains blinded by her perfectly rational belief in a morally unbelievable prospect. It’s not until Mary hears who she thinks is the “gardener” call her by name that she recognizes Jesus. And that’s when the real work of believing begins—when the relationship is inexplicably restored.

         When it comes to believing and not believing certain things, human beings often take whatever road requires less investment or risk. And generally speaking, the greater the mystery surrounding something, the greater the risk in believing it, thus making it easier not to believe. And in certain cases, not believing something is the wiser path.

I refuse to believe doomsday predictions and conspiracy theories because things like that create in their believers the kind of fear that breeds suspicion, enmity, and an ever-deepening reliance on violence, intimidation, and manipulation. And it’s generally true that destructive beliefs create destructive agents.

         There’s a different belief-disbelief dynamic at work in the fourth gospel. In John, belief refers to one’s embrace of the presence and power of the mystery that, in Christ, God is doing something so remarkable as to defy explanation. And it’s not just that God is doing something so remarkable as to be inexplicable. Like Resurrection itself, God IS Something inexplicable. And that Something is initiated by love. That Something is sustained by love. That Something is, finally, love itself. This creative and re-creative love is alive—permanently alive—in the Creation. And that love, embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, cannot be entombed by human selfishness.

         As we said earlier, it’s when Jesus speaks Mary’s name that she finally recognizes Jesus and begins to imagine that something greater than foul play is afoot. When she resumes relationship with Jesus, she begins to believe something even more unbelievable than body snatching.

         Maybe that’s why Thomas figures so prominently in John. He refuses to believe until he sees and touches Jesus—that is to say, until he, himself, resumes relationship with Jesus.

One thing to remember about Resurrection, is that it’s not the same as resuscitation. When Lazarus was raised, he was resuscitated, not resurrected. His body, being merely restored, would die again. As John suggests in more than one place, the resurrection of Jesus was the raising from one state of being to another. “Don’t hold on to me,” Jesus tells Mary. This whole resurrection thing, it’s a process. And it’s not over. And that night, when Jesus appears to the disciples, John takes care to say that he does so through closed and locked doors where the disciples are hiding from the religious leadership. So, whatever the disciples experience, it isn’t relationship with Jesus as they had known him. Nonetheless, in some way, relationship with him is restored. He’s more than a memory. They encounter him.

         Maybe the spiritual belief to which we are called is a matter of facing all the unbelievable and yet all-too-real stuff our world throws at us every day, then listening for and encountering the Christ in the midst of it. And isn’t that our calling as the church? To bear witness to the risen Christ here and now by being ones through whom Jesus restores relationship with the world? That is Resurrection life—a life of peace-making engagement, courageous hope, restorative justice, unprejudiced compassion, and enduring love. It’s a life of Christ-centered relationship with all people and all things. And in those relationships, we encounter and share Jesus himself.

In our family and friends, he is with us.

In our adversaries, he is with us.

In those who annoy us, he is with us.

In believers and non-believers, he is with us.

In creatures both beautiful and frightening, he is with us.

In the faithful passing of the seasons, he is with us.

In our beginnings and endings, he is with us.

In all things, Jesus is alive.

He is alive as the love we give and receive.

He is alive as the compassion we share.

He is alive as justice, mercy, kindness, and joy.

Jesus is alive! For he is risen!

He is risen, indeed!

“Risk and Revelation”

Luke 23:1-5, 13-25

Allen Huff

Preached at Bethel Christian Church

Jonesborough, TN

Maundy Thursday, 2023

The whole assembly got up and led Jesus to Pilate and ² began to accuse him. They said, “We have found this man misleading our people, opposing the payment of taxes to Caesar, and claiming that he is the Christ, a king.”

³ Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

Jesus replied, “That’s what you say.”

⁴ Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no legal basis for action against this man.”

⁵ But they objected strenuously, saying, “He agitates the people with his teaching throughout Judea—starting from Galilee all the way here.”

¹³ Then Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers, and the people. ¹⁴ He said to them, “You brought this man before me as one who was misleading the people. I have questioned him in your presence and found nothing in this man’s conduct that provides a legal basis for the charges you have brought against him.¹⁵ Neither did Herod, because Herod returned him to us. He’s done nothing that deserves death. ¹⁶ Therefore, I’ll have him whipped, then let him go.” 

¹⁸ But with one voice they shouted, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us.” (¹⁹ Barabbas had been thrown into prison because of a riot that had occurred in the city, and for murder.)

²⁰ Pilate addressed them again because he wanted to release Jesus.

²¹ They kept shouting out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

²² For the third time, Pilate said to them, “Why? What wrong has he done? I’ve found no legal basis for the death penalty in his case. Therefore, I will have him whipped, then let him go.”

²³ But they were adamant, shouting their demand that Jesus be crucified. Their voices won out. ²⁴ Pilate issued his decision to grant their request. ²⁵ He released the one they asked for, who had been thrown into prison because of a riot and murder. But he handed Jesus over to their will. (CEB)

         In Luke’s gospel, Pilate says it three times: I find no reason to execute this man.

         Now, that’s remarkable. Not only can Pilate find no threat in Jesus, but according to all gospel accounts, he actually makes the effort to look.

         Not a great deal is known about Pontius Pilate, except that during his ten-year term as procurator of Judea, he developed a reputation for taking pathological delight in persecuting and executing as many Jews as possible, and all in Caesar’s name. In fact, one of the things we do know about Pilate is that he so flagrantly bullied and baited the Jews, that in the year 36 or 37, Caesar not only fired him but exiled him.¹ Who knows? Maybe even Caesar or one of his advisors realized that trying to maintain law and order through bigoted violence would eventually destroy their society.

         Still, by the time of Jesus’ trial, Pilate has brutally executed countless would-be messiahs, and most of them without benefit of trial. So, it would be most uncharacteristic of him to argue on behalf of yet another Jew claiming to be, or accused of being, the long-awaited Messiah.

         Why, then, why do all four canonical gospels portray Pilate as somewhat vexed over what to do with Jesus? The most familiar answers to that question are summed up in Jesus’ comment to Pilate in John 19: “You would have no authority over me if it had not been given to you from above.” (John 19:11a)

         Rome has nothing on God, says Jesus. Your empire may intimidate, torture, and kill. You may cause irreparable damage to bodies and minds. And you may flatter yourselves saying, ‘See how quickly the Jews abandon their God and put their faith in sword and spear like the rest of us.’

         But, says Jesus, the future does not belong to power and wealth. It belongs to love.

         I hear both Jesus and the gospel writers saying that on Friday, God is at work revealing to all with eyes to see and ears to hear that human violence cannot redeem, nor can it, ultimately, hinder love. God is not some human construct who can become so overwhelmed with anger and resentment as to lose the will and power to be God—that is, to be love.

         The entire life and witness of Jesus reveals that God cannot be rendered so impotent as to be forced to resort to violent revenge as a means of grace. Friday, then, is not about trying to satisfy, with innocent blood, some tender-egoed deity. It’s about the Creator fully entering humanity’s inhumanity in vulnerable, self-emptying love.

         Friday is about God breaking into our brokenness to reveal the futility of our addiction to the brutal ways and means on which principalities and powers depend.

         Friday is Good because it reveals to us that God transcends our fear.

         Friday is Good because it reveals to us that nothing at all can separate us from the love not just of God, but from the love that is God.

         Holy Week is a time to confess that we are much quicker to trust power and wealth than God. We’re also quick to credit God with our idolatry of those things. Sure, God desires our well-being, but in our sin, we choose to mistake all of our creation-diminishing and neighbor-starving excesses for holy blessing. And we’re just as quick to condemn and expel anyone who threatens our comfortable certainties with words of transforming truth.

         That’s why Jesus utters his memorable lament: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” (Matthew 23:37a)

         For two thousand years, many who have called themselves followers of Jesus have turned the gospel accounts of Friday into sanction for persecuting the Jews. But it seems to me that these stories are reminding us that, most often, it is from within the family of faith that the deepest faithlessness arises.

         Think of the ways that Christians have been silent or even complicit in the face of sins such as human slavery, systemic racism, genocide, war, poverty, and the exploitation of the earth.

         Holy Week reminds us that there is no them to blame or condemn.         Holy Week reminds us that it is our own rabid shouts of judgment that send Jesus to the cross.

         Most importantly, Holy Week reminds us that God does not need violence or call for innocent blood. All gods who must kill in order to have their capacity to love restored are nothing more than gods—‚small-g gods, all-too-human idols.

         Remember the words of Isaiah: “Idol-makers are all as nothing, their playthings do no good.” (Isaiah 44:9a,)

         No, I don’t believe that we can pin Friday’s cruelty on an angry God. We make that demand. So, it’s in truly radical grace that Jesus embodies a life of the kind of peace-making love that humankind, which craves militant messiahs, cannot abide. Jesus goes willingly into Friday. He bears through and bears up to reveal to us, to reveal for us, that humanity’s blind craving for violence will never satisfy the Creator or redeem the Creation.

         In Jesus, the Christ, God takes the horrific risk of the cross to expose the vanity of our self-worshiping, neighbor-crushing, and creation-abusing sin.

         And then, to deliver us from all of that, God follows the slow-burn agony of Friday with the radiant, glorifying, and gracious revelation of Sunday.

¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontius_Pilate and http://www.biography.com/people/pontius-pilate-9440686#awesm=~oBLiedyoqLi1fo

“The Christ, the Woman, and the Well”

John 4:5-42

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

3/12/23

⁵ He came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, which was near the land Jacob had given to his son Joseph.⁶ Jacob’s well was there. Jesus was tired from his journey, so he sat down at the well. It was about noon.

⁷ A Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.” ⁸ His disciples had gone into the city to buy him some food.

⁹ The Samaritan woman asked, “Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (Jews and Samaritans didn’t associate with each other.)

¹⁰ Jesus responded, “If you recognized God’s gift and who is saying to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would be asking him and he would give you living water.”

¹¹ The woman said to him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water? ¹² You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave this well to us, and he drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.”

¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty and will never need to come here to draw water!”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Go, get your husband, and come back here.”

¹⁷ The woman replied, “I don’t have a husband.”

“You are right to say, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus answered. ¹⁸ “You’ve had five husbands, and the man you are with now isn’t your husband. You’ve spoken the truth.”

¹⁹ The woman said, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.²⁰ Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you and your people say that it is necessary to worship in Jerusalem.”

²¹ Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you and your people will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You and your people worship what you don’t know; we worship what we know because salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But the time is coming—and is here!—when true worshippers will worship in spirit and truth. The Father looks for those who worship him this way. ²⁴ God is spirit, and it is necessary to worship God in spirit and truth.”

²⁵ The woman said, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one who is called the Christ. When he comes, he will teach everything to us.”

²⁶ Jesus said to her, “I Am—the one who speaks with you.”^[a]

²⁷ Just then, Jesus’ disciples arrived and were shocked that he was talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”²⁸ The woman put down her water jar and went into the city. She said to the people, ²⁹ “Come and see a man who has told me everything I’ve done! Could this man be the Christ?” ³⁰ They left the city and were on their way to see Jesus.

³¹ In the meantime the disciples spoke to Jesus, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”

³² Jesus said to them, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”

³³ The disciples asked each other, “Has someone brought him food?”

³⁴ Jesus said to them, “I am fed by doing the will of the one who sent me and by completing his work. ³⁵ Don’t you have a saying, ‘Four more months and then it’s time for harvest’? Look, I tell you: open your eyes and notice that the fields are already ripe for the harvest. ³⁶ Those who harvest are receiving their pay and gathering fruit for eternal life so that those who sow and those who harvest can celebrate together. ³⁷ This is a true saying, that one sows and another harvests. ³⁸ I have sent you to harvest what you didn’t work hard for; others worked hard, and you will share in their hard work.”

³⁹ Many Samaritans in that city believed in Jesus because of the woman’s word when she testified, “He told me everything I’ve ever done.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹ Many more believed because of his word, ⁴² and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you said, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this one is truly the savior of the world.” (John 4:4-42 — CEB)

         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.

         This second story begins with Jesus making his way through Samaria as he travels from Jerusalem north to Galilee. As the narrative unfolds, we encounter a series of juxtapositions that are 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 conversation with Jesus. Jesus initiates the encounter with the Samaritan woman in a public place under the noonday sun.

         Nicodemus is either afraid or unable to free his mind from the restraints of a religious system that is, for him, as absolute as it is familiar. The Samaritan woman opens her mind and her 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 herself and within her whole community.¹

         One purpose of this story—and of every story in the fourth gospel—is to illustrate John’s most memorable declaration: “For God so loved the world, that [God] gave [God’s] only son…not to condemn the world,” but to redeem it.

         Let’s also remember that while Jews and Samaritans share a Hebrew heritage, they hold each other in contempt. Jerusalem Jews in particular consider Samaritan Jews deserving of no better treatment than Gentiles and lepers. It’s a sad relationship, and one that has ancient and contemporary parallels in all manner of human prejudice and fear. Into that disaffection, John declares that God’s gift to the world is the Son, the Christ, the Word-Made-Flesh.

         I don’t know about you, but the message I’ve heard over the years, and the message I used to preach, declares that 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. Over time, though, I have begun to see God, Jesus and his ministry, and the cross in new light—the light of what we reformed Presbyterians call irresistible grace. And the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman helps to reveal the way that light illumines all things.

         Many have noticed and highlighted Jesus’ redeeming love for the woman. The assumption behind much of that teaching is that she’s a “sinner,” but neither Jesus nor 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 thestory—the ancient story of the Hebrews which includes the drama of Jacob and Esau, fraternal twins who experience a deep and painful alienation from each other. Their alienation lasts many years and is healed only when the brothers have grown old enough and wise enough to understand that the world is big enough for both of them—and then some.

That same family is now two first-century nations so deeply wounded and so profoundly alienated from the other, that the two factions barely recognize each other as human. At Jacob’s well, the family now begins to reunite in the persons of Jesus and this very articulate and intrepid woman—who also represent the entire world, all that is beloved yet broken, all that is hurting yet holy.

The encounter shows us that God’s sharing of the Son transcends Friday’s atrocity. The cross doesn’t mollify some angry, human-imaged deity. The cross exposes the bloodlust of a humanity that has given itself over to the selfishness, violence, and the fury of broken systems that exist for their own sakes. In contrast: The gift announced in John 3:16 is the Word who comes to all the world and lives among us, as one of us (John 1:14), for our sake.

“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.”

This reunion reminds us of the reunion of Jacob and Esau at the Jabbok River. It also 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 and re-unifying all things.

The world remains a place of brokenness and alienation. Like-minded individuals seem intent on circling their wagons and drawing the covers of darkness over themselves by finding reasons to fear, judge, despise, and even injure people who aren’t like them. And virtually everyone participates in the brokenness, even if only as passive beneficiaries of inequitable and unjust systems.

But the gospel also says that we live in a world that has been loved from the beginning and will be “so loved” forever. So, we witness to a gathering place in our midst, a well of “living water,” “full of grace and truth.” We can’t restrict the flow of this well, nor can we hinder his love, at least not for long. 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 everyone.

That’s good news in an era of drought. That’s good news in a culture which seems to thrive on division, and on fear of the other. A widening aisle between left and right has each side hurling insults and spiteful judgments at “enemies” on the other side. Sometimes that comes as personal attacks on news networks. Sometimes it poses as comedy on late-night TV. Very often we encounter it in the echo chambers of social media and closed communities. None of these are wells of Living Water; they are pits of despair. And to the extent that we wallow in the pits, we condemn rather than love our neighbors, and we tear at the body of Christ himself.

We will always have differing opinions about challenges and how to address them. As Jesus followers, though, let’s keep his words in mind: “I am fed by doing the will of the one who sent me.” The will of God is to gather at the well—to gather with and to welcome all people, regardless of their politics, or race, or age, or gender, or sexual orientation, or nationality, or even religion. And I know that even saying that can cause anxiety. And yet, because “God so loved [and continues to love] the world,” our call is to gather, to receive, to celebrate, and to share God’s love.

May we claim our Belovedness.

And may we live as fountains of the love with which we are loved.

¹Karoline M. Lewis, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 2, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, pp. 93-97.

“Lead Us Not into Temptation”

Psalm 32 and Matthew 4:1-11

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

2/26/23

¹ Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
    whose sin is covered.
² Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity
    and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

³ While I kept silent, my body wasted away
    through my groaning all day long.
⁴ For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
    my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

⁵ Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
    and I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
    and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

⁶ Therefore let all who are faithful
    offer prayer to you;
at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters
    shall not reach them.
⁷ You are a hiding place for me;
    you preserve me from trouble;
    you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.

⁸ I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go;
    I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
⁹ Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
    whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle,
    else it will not stay near you.

¹⁰ Many are the torments of the wicked,
    but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.
¹¹ Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous,
    and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

(Psalm 32 – NRSV)

The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert, so that the devil could test him. ² After Jesus had gone without eating for 40 days and nights, he was very hungry. ³ Then the devil came to him and said, “If you are God’s Son, tell these stones to turn into bread.”

⁴ Jesus answered, “The Scriptures say:

‘No one can live only on food.
People need every word
    that God has spoken.’”

⁵ Next, the devil took Jesus into the holy city to the highest part of the temple. ⁶ The devil said, “If you are God’s Son, jump off. The Scriptures say:

‘God will give his angels
    orders about you.
They will catch you
    in their arms,
and you won’t hurt
    your feet on the stones.’”

⁷ Jesus answered, “The Scriptures also say, ‘Don’t try to test the Lord your God!’”

⁸ Finally, the devil took Jesus up on a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms on earth and their power. ⁹ The devil said to him, “I will give all this to you, if you will bow down and worship me.”

¹⁰ Jesus answered, “Go away Satan! The Scriptures say:

‘Worship the Lord your God

and serve only him.’”

¹¹ Then the devil left Jesus, and angels came to help him. (Matthew 4:1-11 – CEB)

         The gospel lesson for the first Sunday of Lent is always the story of Jesus’ temptation. The narratives of Jesus’ birth and baptism lead to this moment of testing, clarity, and commitment. It’s a watershed moment in which Jesus faces possibilities which must be, in some way, real for him if his life has the meaning and the agency of grace we proclaim. I mean, if Jesus is fully human, even if he’s fully whatever else, doesn’t he have to wrestle with the possibility of exploiting his gifts for personal gain?

I say have to because temptation exists as an inescapable reality for everyone walking spiritual paths. Indeed, the first line of the story declares that “the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert” to be tempted. While that may sound more mean-spirited than Holy Spirited, our Christian journey is fraught with decisions of whether to remain true to a Christlike ethic of love or to abandon it for paths that might appear, on the surface, to be safer, surer, and more rewarding. But those seductive and thoroughly selfish ways depend on the vices of greed, manipulation, and violent power—the very things Jesus wrestles with in the wilderness.

If you’re hungry, says the Tempter, turn rocks into bread.

And Jesus says, in effect: Look, Old Scratch, you’re not even human. You don’t understand that there’s more to our lives than eating. More than getting and owning. God understands that, though. And God has given us this earth which can bless all life with the abundance of enough.

It seems to me that when humans get greedy and confuse excess with blessing, we create the problem of scarcity. That makes scarcity more than an economic precept. It’s a creation of selfishness, fear, and idolatry.

In Exodus 16, the Israelites learn that lesson in their own wilderness. When God tells them not to hoard manna, they give into the temptation to try anyway. And they discover, overnight, that stockpiled manna becomes foul, worm-infested, inedible. It’s God whom we trust, not the “bread from heaven” itself.

Then jump from the top of the temple, says the Father of Lies. If people see you do something like that, forget feeding them bread. You’ll have them eating out of your hand! They’ll believe and do anything you say!

And Jesus says. I’m the one being tested, not God.

Ok, says the Adversary, and he whisks Jesus up to a high mountain peak from which they can see the whole world. Then he says, Look out there. Everything and everyone you see—all of it can be yours, if you just follow me. If you just commit your life to me. Put your faith and your trust in me, Jesus, and you can rule the world!

“Go away Satan!” says Jesus. When God takes people up mountains, it’s not to inflate them into domination but to humble them into service. That goes for me, too. I didn’t come to rule the world. I came to heal it, to restore it. I came to love the entire Creation and to teach it how to be alive and loving. God is alive and loving in the created order, and I will not exploit or undermine the God-revealing holiness within me or anyone else.

With that, the Tempter leaves, and God’s angels, in whatever form, come and tend to Jesus.

You know, in the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “lead us not into temptation.” And none of us want to be tempted, at least not by things about which we feel ashamed and against which we feel defenseless. Temptation is part of being human, though; and, as we’ve acknowledged, it’s integral to our spiritual formation. We never know what we’re capable of, what our true spiritual gifts are, until we learn to face and overcome temptation.

Let’s go back to the benediction I used last week. To close the service, I read from the Brian McLaren book our group just finished discussing. The excerpt was a list of virtues of love, and with each virtue, McLaren includes challenges we face in learning to love as we are loved. Those challenges are, basically, temptations—temptations to avoid, deny, or withhold love. And each temptation is as real as the breath in our lungs right now. I won’t rehash the whole list, but it included the realities that:

“[We] can’t learn to love people without being around actual people—including people who infuriate, exasperate, annoy… reject, and hurt [us], thus tempting [us] not to love them.

“[We] can’t learn the patience that love requires without experiencing delay and disappointment.

“[We] can’t learn the generosity that love requires outside the presence of heartbreaking and unquenchable need.

“[We] can’t learn the endurance that love requires without experiencing unrelenting seduction to give up.”^*

         Giving into temptation can do all kinds of damage to ourselves, others, and the earth. If we don’t acknowledge temptation, though, and if we don’t allow ourselves to face it, as Jesus does, what will we learn about ourselves and about faithfulness? How will we grow as Jesus followers?

I’m not going to assume to rewrite the Lord’s Prayer, but when I pray it, and when I get to the line about not leading us into temptation, I think I’ll start adding, God, thank you for my temptations. Lead me through them into deeper faithfulness.

         Temptations can be our allies in faith. The things that tempt us the most can reveal hungers and thirsts within us that only God can satisfy. So, where we’re tempted to abide violence as a justifiable means to ends, maybe God is telling us that we’re capable of trusting the more demanding ways of forgiveness and grace.

Where we’re tempted to succumb to prejudices based on race, ethnicity, political or religious affiliations, God may be inviting us to face the ways we judge ourselves, and then to begin forgiving and loving ourselves more fully and gratefully so that we can extend that love to others.

Where we face temptations of lust, perhaps God is revealing in us a capacity for the deeper and more passionate intimacies of prayer and unity with God and with the Creation.

When temptations get the best of us, God doesn’t stand back, shaking an angry finger and saying, You miserable sinner! God holds us ever more closely saying, Hey, listen! I know it’s tempting to chase after easy and feel-good fixes. But I’m right here, struggling with you. This is how you discover your best self. And I’m with you to help you learn to use all that energy, courage, creativity, reason, and passion to discover the fullness of my image within you.

You are my Beloved, says God. And you haven’t even scratched the surface of your potential for loving yourself, others, and me.

Believe it or not, says God, when you let me help you die to yourself and rise to Christ, temptation can become a door to resurrection.

*Brian McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian. Convergent, New York, 2016. pp. 184-185.

“A Transfiguring Conversation”

A Readers’ Theater

Exodus 24:12-18 and Matthew 17:1-9

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

2/29/23

¹³ So Moses and his assistant Joshua got up, and Moses went up God’s mountain. ¹⁴ Moses had said to the elders, “Wait for us here until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur will be here with you. Whoever has a legal dispute may go to them.”

¹⁵ Then Moses went up the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. ¹⁶ The Lord’s glorious presence settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from the cloud. ¹⁷ To the Israelites, the Lord’s glorious presence looked like a blazing fire on top of the mountain. ¹⁸ Moses entered the cloud and went up the mountain. Moses stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. (Exodus 24:13-18 – NRSV)

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. ² And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light. ³ Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.

⁴ Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will set up three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

⁵ While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, the Beloved: with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

⁶ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. ⁷ But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” ⁸ And when they raised their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

⁹ As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” (Matthew 17:1-9 – NRSV)

         When our Sunday school class worked with the story of the Transfiguration, we wondered what Jesus, Moses, and Elijah might have been talking about when Peter, James, and John saw them standing together. While we can’t know what they were discussing, I did think, “Well, it could be fun to imagine that conversation.” The following skit was the result.

—–

Jesus: So, we meet again.

Moses: Again? Weren’t we just together a moment ago?

Jesus: Sort of. But time gets weird when you’re alive in God’s fullness.

Elijah: Man! First you all yank me out of living without dying, and now you yank me out of really living without being born. No disrespect, but can you make up your mind?

Jesus: Your human experience was kind of unique, Elijah.

Elijah: Yeah. It was a whirlwind. No pun intended. Hey, Jesus, those guys cowering over there. Are they with you?

Jesus: Yeah. Those are three of my twelve disciples.

Elijah: Well, they look a little weak-kneed. Can’t you find better followers than that?

Jesus: Oh, they’re not so bad. They can get a little excitable, and a little thick-headed, but they’re good people. And they’ll get better.

Moses: Tell me about it. And Jesus has only twelve half-wits to worry about. I had a whole nation of them! There were times I wanted to grab that bunch whiners and ring…

Jesus: Bless their hearts?

Moses: Yeah. Sure. Bless their hearts.

Elijah: So, Jesus, why’d you bring us here anyway?

Jesus: Honestly, things are about to get rough, and I decided I could use a little company from folks who might understand. It’s going to be bad in ways even you guys didn’t have to experience.

Moses: Why? What’s going on?

Jesus: Well, do you guys remember what happened when you went up on mountain tops?

Moses: Like when God gave me the ten suggestions?

Jesus: We still call them commandments, you know.

Moses: Oh, don’t give me that, Jesus! Just a little while ago you went through a lot of the laws God gave me and said, “You have heard it said” in the law, “but I say to you,” and in one sermon you rewrote what took me a lifetime of hard work to get across to people who just wanted to eat and be comfortable!

Elijah: Yeah! And what’s with this whole love your enemies business? On Mt. Carmel, I thought y’all wanted me to shame those prophets of Baal. That’s why I took a sword to the whole lot of them.

Jesus: Wow. Maybe I should have invited other folks today. Maybe Jonah, or Micah, or Daniel. Folks for whom lessons on humility might have stuck.

Elijah: Sorry, Jesus. Maybe there’s just something about being on the earth, again. Everywhere I look, there’s so much potential in the midst of all this chaos, and I want to do something about it.

Moses: I hear you, Elijah. We’ve seen, felt, and tasted God’s wholeness, and when we’re in that state, we view the world with God’s eyes. We see beneath the trouble to the original goodness and holiness underneath. But as soon as I set foot on this mountain, I, too, felt an urge to try to control things—like I did when I made water come out of that rock. God really didn’t like that.

Elijah: Yeah, I guess I was kind of out of control while seeking to control all those prophets of Baal. Out of that bunch, God could have had a lot of new followers and leaders, but pride consumed me like that fire consumed all that wet wood. What a waste. Again, Jesus, I’m sorry.

Jesus: It really is true for both of you: Once a prophet, always a prophet. And that’s why you’re here. You see what others fail to see. You’ll say what others fear to say. You remember beyond what was to what’s now possible in God’s grace. And you both know that nothing in this life is easy. Nothing at all.

PAUSE

Moses: So, back to you, Jesus. You say life’s about to get hard?

Elijah: Moses, it sounds like death is about to get hard for him.

Jesus: It’s going to be the worst, you know. Really the worst.

PAUSE

Elijah: And how can I help? What do I even know about death?

Moses: Yeah, Elijah, you missed out on one of the most humbling and holy of human experiences. No one wants to die, but a life on earth without death is hardly a life at all.

Jesus: True enough, Moses. And the same is just as true, maybe even more so, for a life without suffering.

Elijah: Why is that true, Jesus?

Jesus: That’s everyone’s question, isn’t it? If there is a God, and if God is good, why do people suffer?

Elijah: Well look, pretend I’m one of those three guys over there. What would you say to them?

Jesus: Ok. Let’s try something. In about two thousand years, someone is going to write this: “The capacity to endure and suffer­—generously, without bitterness, without revenge, without fail—[is] absolutely essential.”¹ He’ll say that “The way of love, then, is the way of annoyance, frustration…need, conflict…and exhaustion.”² Finally, he’ll say, “This difficult way, this way of love and suffering, this way of Christ is unavoidably the way of the cross.”³

Elijah: The way of the what?!

Moses: You mean…you’re going to…THEY’RE going to…What?!

Jesus: Now you sound like my disciple Peter. Listen, very soon, the people are going to have, from now on, an image in their minds—an image for their minds—of God’s own heart, broken open in love for them and for all things.

Moses: How can something as unfair as that be “absolutely essential”?!

Jesus: Think about it, Moses. Who would you have been without Pharaoh? Elijah, who would you have been without Jezebel? Think of all you accomplished in the face of opposition, and through your own suffering. People still remember the stories of your faithfulness. And they keep finding strength and hope in them. Look, there will always be people who cause suffering, because there will always be people who think they shouldn’t haveto suffer, so they try to avoid it. And that’s not possible. In fact, the only way that makes it feel like someone can avoid suffering is by causing suffering for others. Still, there will always be people like you. People who endure and overcome. People who trust that, even in suffering, God is present, and that on the other side of suffering lie unity, wholeness, and hope.

Elijah: Jesus, those guys over there—who, by the way, are beginning to look at us—how are they going to understand all this?

Jesus: They’re not. At least not yet. I’m going to tell them to keep quiet about all this. They’re not going to understand until—and here’s the kicker—until God plucks me from death like God plucked you, Elijah, from your own life. And that can’t happen until the people think that they ended my life on their terms. Believe me, I wish it could happen another way. And I’m not through asking about that. But it looks like the world will have to have some kind of example of true suffering. Not suffering endured while creating suffering—like when people go to war. The point of war is to make as much suffering for everyone as possible until one side suffers so much it can’t cause suffering for the other side anymore. And that’s not a matter of winners and losers. Everyone loses. And I can’t stand that. The point of holy suffering is to expose the futility of violence, of vengeance, of hate. And the point my suffering is to reaffirm the holiness of life…all life.

PAUSE

Moses: But Jesus? A cross? Really?

Jesus: Yeah. A cross.

Moses: And I thought I had it rough. Forty years in the desert leading a bunch of whiners.

Elijah: You sure you can’t just get God to whisk you up in blazing chariot? Stage that in Jerusalem in front of the temple and people will talk about it forever, won’t they?

Jesus: I was sorely tempted to try that. But that avoids the whole suffering thing, doesn’t it? Everyone is always thinking that God is angry and wants revenge against human sin. But this will not be about changing God’s mind or God’s heart about the people. It’ll be about changing the people’s minds and hearts about God.⁴

Moses: Well, Jesus, I think maybe you’re making peace with this. You’re positively glowing right now. Kind of like I did when I was with God on Mt. Sinai.

Elijah: Yeah. I’m seeing that, too. And I think your guys over there see it, as well. They look a little scared, though.

Moses: Jesus, were we supposed to do this kind of thing, too? Did we let you down by not dying on a cross or something?

Jesus: No, no. Not at all. You were still under the old system of sacrifice. That was all the people could handle at the time. But after what the Creator, the Sustainer and I do, people will see that altars and sacrifices are things of the past—at least I hope and pray they do. Micah saw this coming when he said, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God?” That’s what I’m trying to do. And that’s what I want my followers to do—forever.

Elijah: Is that even realistic? Will anyone get it? Will anyone do it?

Jesus: Some will. And over time, some will become many. And many will become even more.

Moses: You seem to feel pretty confident about this, Jesus.

Jesus: Well, it’s all about love, isn’t it? And love is like candlelight. Share the flame, and there’s more for everyone. More light, more warmth, more hope.

Elijah: I guess this means we’ll see you again soon enough.

Jesus: You will, yes. And if people really become my disciples, loving as I love them, there will be even more of me than there is now.

Moses: May it be so.

Elijah: May it be so.

Jesus: Amen.

¹Brian McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian. Convergent, New York, 2016. p 183.

²Ibid., p 185.

³Ibid., p 185

⁴Ibid., p 187 (Here McLaren is paraphrasing Fr. Richard Rohr.)

“Seasoned and Enlightened”

Isaiah 58:1-9a and Matthew 5:13-20

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

2/5/23

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.
² Yet 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 want God on their side. 
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.
⁴ 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.
⁵ Is 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?

⁶ Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
⁷ Is 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?
⁸ Then 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.
⁹ Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
    you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.”

(Isaiah 58:1-9 – NRSV)

         Prompted by Brian McLaren’s book The Great Spiritual Migration, our Monday night group is having energetic, challenging, and often cathartic conversations. We’re talking about what it has meant, and what it’s now beginning to mean to follow Jesus in this world generally, and, particularly, in a society experiencing the turmoil of cultural ferment.¹

McLaren starts by addressing the Church’s centuries-long slide into an institution built more on rigid doctrine about Jesus than on an empowering invitation to follow Jesus. McLaren asks his readers to consider a theological and spiritual “migration” from a religion that has become tolerant of certainty, safety, and even injustice toward a “movement” of following Jesus in his ways of radical and open-ended grace.

Now, I am deeply grateful for and committed to our religious tradition. I see great work and potential in this congregation—in you. I see great work and potential in our denomination and in our ecumenical and interfaith efforts. I also feel like I am mostly realistic about the church’s limitations and failures. Still, I think McLaren asks compelling questions: Did Jesus come to found a religion, or to begin a movement? Didn’t he come to set the Creation on a trajectory of proactive love through which all things draw closer together, and, thus, closer to God? Isn’t union with God, here and now as well as in the life to come, our ultimate goal? And doesn’t that goal require movement—a movement that involves constant openness to God and to what God is doing in the world, through love, to draw all things closer to God’s Self?

Last Sunday, we read Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes—the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Today we’ll read the next eight verses of that famous sermon. Here, Jesus calls us to a movement of love, compassion, and justice—a movement toward Jesus’ actions which are all-too-easily anesthetized into talking points when the faith community replaces kinship with creeds, prayer with programs, and mission with maintenance.

I’m going to read from The Message because, to me, this version seems to capture the spirit of Jesus’ call to his expansive and enduring movement of grace.

¹³ “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.

^14-16 “Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.

^17-18 “Don’t suppose for a minute that I have come to demolish the Scriptures—either God’s Law or the Prophets. I’m not here to demolish but to complete. I am going to put it all together, pull it all together in a vast panorama. God’s Law is more real and lasting than the stars in the sky and the ground at your feet. Long after stars burn out and earth wears out, God’s Law will be alive and working.

^19-20 “Trivialize even the smallest item in God’s Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom. Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in the matters of right living, you won’t know the first thing about entering the kingdom. (Matthew 5:13-20 — The Message)

A literal translation from the Greek won’t render the text as we just heard it. Eugene Peterson, though, a now-deceased Presbyterian pastor and scholar, worked for years, seeking input from his peers, to paraphrase scripture in a way that sought faithfulness to the spirit of the ancient texts.

Consider the opening line of today’s reading: “Let me tell you why you are here.” While that statement is not in the Greek text, it’s not just Peterson trying to be hip. It’s holistically faithful to the story. In it, Jesus is saying, Look, you’ve been taught many things about God, about your neighbors, and yourselves. And while I don’t want you to forget any of that, in following me, you’ll discover that what you’ve learned has barely scratched the surface. It helped to prepare you for this moment; and I’m going to take you much further than the Law can. We’re going start an adventure where only grace dares to go.

Then Jesus calls his followers salt and light. Salt enhances the flavor of food. That is to say, salt is used not for its own sake but for the sake of the vegetables, or the meat, or the bread dough to which it is added. So, what Jesus wants to avoid isn’t salt simply losing its taste, but the problem of salt losing its capacity to bring out “the God-flavors of this earth.”

As salt, followers of Jesus look for and enhance the “flavors” of holiness that God has infused into all people and all things. To lose one’s saltiness, then, is to lose not only awareness of all that God has created, but to lose reverence for and relationship with the holiness within God’s Creation.

         Jesus uses the metaphor of light in a similar way. “You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.”

While we can look at a star or a light bulb and see its brightness, looking atlight can do more harm than good. Light is not meant to be seen but to be that by which we see ourselves, our neighbors, mountains, bluebirds, starfish. In the NRSV, Jesus calls his followers “the light of the world.” As light, we are ones by whose bright love the image of God is seen and known within us and around us.

The last verse of today’s reading suggests that the Pharisees have lost their saltiness and their brightness. No longer looking for relationship, and no longer expecting holiness, they focus on rules and doctrine, on sin and sacrificial atonement, on who’s in and who’s out. And while those tactics can keep people afraid and compliant, they create and depend on an image of God that is angry, vengeful, and violent. So, thank God Jesus announces a fresh and ongoingmigration.

When Jesus says, “God is not a secret…We’re going public with this,” he’s calling us to live our individual and corporate lives from the new point of view of grace. While we may still struggle with all of the same anxieties and fears, Jesus empowers us to live in those struggles as salt in a casserole or as light in basement. He calls us, as salt and light, to recognize and evoke the holiness, the possibility, and the joy in the world—even in the realities of blandness, darkness, and chaos, because even there, God is actively present. And God’s presence is, far more often than not, manifest through limited, imperfect human beings just like us.

         When I was 24 years old, two years married, a seminary drop-out, and green as a January daffodil, I backed into teaching middle school. The first months almost did me in. I didn’t know the material, but the kids knew me. They saw, and some of them exploited, my rattled nerves and my desperate need to be liked.

         Two of my faculty colleagues, Mr. Buie and Ms. Benton, saw those same things, I’m sure. And, yet, they saw something more. In addition to being a teacher, Mr. Buie was a pastor and a farmer. He knew people, seasons, and patience. Ms. Benton, having been recently widowed, had a newly-unvarnished and yet good-humored understanding of what was important and what was fluff. Those two veteran teachers never tried to tell me who I was. They never tried to meddle or make decisions for me. They befriended me, encouraged me, challenged me, supported me, celebrated with me.

Whether they knew it or not, Mr. Buie and Ms. Benton were salt and light to me. Seasoned and enlightened, they taught me to recognize my own worth and to claim it as a gift from God. And that allowed me to start becoming, slowly, salt and light for my students.

Now, all of that was something I realized in hindsight more than in the moment. And isn’t that how God seasons and enlightens us? Isn’t that how God uses us to bring out “the God-flavors…[and] the God-colors in the world”? Through relationship, struggle, and blessed surprise?

¹All references to Brian McLaren come from his book: The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian. Convergent, New York, 2016.