Trust (Sermon)

“Trust”

Matthew 14:22-33

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/24/14

          Jesus has been feeling a lot of heat lately. It’s like he’s walking around with a bullseye on his back. He knows the Pharisees and Sadducees don’t care for him, but at least they know why. The Romans, the soldiers especially, are like guard dogs. They pace and bark, waiting to be turned loose. They don’t need a purpose – just a command.

          Not long before the story we just read, Jesus is in Nazareth. And even there his own neighbors reject him.

          “We know who your daddy is,” they say. “Don’t get all uppity with us, like you’re somebody!”

          And Jesus says, “Prophets always get the coldest shoulder from those who think they know them best.”

          What a loving way to express disappointment. Living as a person of faith, in any age, requires that kind of grace. It requires compassion, forgiveness, and humble trust in the one who calls us to faithfulness.

          Jesus’ cousin, John, seems to have struggled with the idea of grace-ful trust. It’s hard to tell whether he’s motivated by love and compassion or by anger and fear. He just throws one prophetic brick after another. Targeting everyone, all he manages to accomplish is to make himself a target. Finally, he throws a brick through the wrong window – Herod’s bedroom window. And now it’s too late to tell him that he has lost his mind, because Herod sees to it that John loses his head.

          Hearing this news, Jesus’ heart begins to sink. He wants to be alone and grieve. Slipping away in a boat, he finds a secluded place, but even there the crowds find him. When they do, Jesus feels their desperation, perhaps because he feels his own so acutely. So he reaches out to all of this drowning humanity. He tends to them, feeds them, and assures them of God’s presence.

          Afterward, he really must get away. First, he sends his disciples off on a little excursion.

          “We’re going to Gennesaret next,” he says. “You guys make a run across the lake and set things up for us.”

          Then Jesus pronounces a benediction on the crowd and sends them home. When the last straggler has wandered away, Jesus climbs the nearest mountain. In biblical literature mountains represent the ultimate “thin place,” the place where earth and sky meet, the place of communion between time and eternity, creation and Creator. On the mountain, an exhausted and beleaguered Jesus and his sinking heart reach for the restoring hand of solitude.

          Jesus and Matthew are teaching us an uncomfortable but life-giving truth. Jesus has just offered a tangible, immediate presence to the crowds. Yet his quest for seclusion says that very often, the most compelling assurance of God’s presence available to us in this life comes through an acute sense of God’s absence. To feel that storm surge at the pit of our being, that ache telling us that all is not right with the world – this is a kind of knowing. The mystics say that it wells up from an ancient memory of the great wholeness from which we come and toward which we live. They teach us to receive that ache as God’s call to enter a chaotic, complicated, and otherwise disappointing world with a word of healing and hope.

          This may smack of denial and foolishness to some, but we hear these things through a long and storied identity. Remember Elijah, for example. Fleeing from the claws of the wicked Jezebel, he hides in a cave. God’s word sniffs him out and asks, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

          The prophet’s response is pure sulk: “I’ve done everything right while everyone else has done it wrong! Now I’m all alone. And everyone wants me dead.”

          Elijah has sought solitude, but out of fear rather than trust. So, the word invites the miserable prophet to stand outside the mouth of the cave because God is about to pass by. Then come the rock-splitting winds, the earthquake, and the fire. And doomsdayers take note: God is not in any of this loud, sensational, terrifying stuff. That’s not the way God works.

          After the turmoil, Elijah finds himself all alone inside “a sound of sheer silence,” and only then does he know that Yahweh is near.

          “Lord, if it is you,” cries Peter over the loud, sensational, terrifying storm, “command me to come to you – on the water.”

          Let’s remember that to the first century mind and spirit, the deep water of a lake or the sea, symbolizes chaos, the dark mystery of evil. When Peter demands a command to step out of the boat onto the sea, he is asking Jesus to call him out of the cave and into the wind, earthquake, and fire. He is asking Jesus to call him into Pharaoh’s court to tell him to let the Hebrews go. He is asking Jesus to send him into Canaan, where the people are so huge he will feel like a grasshopper in both size and consequence. Peter is asking Jesus to call him into Jesus’ own footsteps where one thrives by faith alone.

          And Jesus says to Peter, “Well come on.”

          The next thing Peter knows, Jesus is hauling him through the waves like a drag net.

          “What happened, Peter?” says Jesus. “I thought you were thinking that you thought you could do this. You don’t follow me by thought alone. You have to learn to trust.”

          We are truly gifted creatures. As the psalmist says, we are

“fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:14) Our minds are capable of remarkable feats of memory and interpretation, of penetrating inquiry, and of heights and depths of creativity that are nothing short of holy. There comes a point, however, when all our critically necessary thinking has done all it can. Even when a theory can be further developed, or a work of art further refined, or a lesson plan more tightly structured, or a field more evenly plowed, there comes a moment when we have to trust, and to move forward in faith. At that moment we step out of Elijah’s cave, out of the disciples’ tiny boat, and we set foot on troubled water. Sink or swim, we must trust the One who calls us out.

          The life of faith is a life of trust. And while they are often considered opposites, faith and doubt are hardly mutually exclusive. As Frederick Buechner has so memorably written, “Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”¹

          All the disciples see Jesus, but Peter says, “Lord, if it is you.” Seeing may constitute believing, but believing often becomes an end in itself. Trust embraces all the doubt and dares to step forward into a future that lies beyond our sight, beyond our ability to create, and way beyond the surface tension of mere belief.

          All manner of waves are battering our boat: The unspeakably brutal death of James Foley, an ebola epidemic, the sweeping anxieties connected with events in places like Ferguson, MO, the continual loss of loved ones right here in our midst, change itself. We can huddle together in here screaming “Jesus Loves Me” so loud we never get quiet and alone enough to feel the hand and hear the voice of the one who loves.

          But he is calling. And he calls us not away from the storm, but into it, onto the very face of the deep. And he calls us there not to target ones whom we deem wrong with our spiteful judgments. He calls us there to target all creation with his compassion and grace, and to receive those healing gifts, as well.

          “Trust me,” he says. “And come.”

¹Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking A Theological ABC, Harper and Row Publishers, 1973. p. 20.

Daybreak in a Deer Stand (Essay)

          Even though the Dog Days of August continue to wield their humid heat and to ripen tomatoes on the vine, the magnificent exhale of autumn is not far away. For someone with roots in the rural south, fall means, among other things, a new deer season. While hardly an expert hunter, I am an opportunist when it comes to spending time on the old south Georgia farm into whose family I married almost thirty years ago. And as a happy omnivore, I make no apology for hands-on participation in bringing meat to the family table. Besides, there are few experiences to match the splendid and freely-given feast of daybreak.

          Even when excited about a hunt, I usually require second effort to roll out of a warm bed at 4:30am. Once up and layered in my hunting clothes, I tiptoe to the kitchen to grab a handful of breakfast bars and pour a cup of orange juice. (Coffee inevitably becomes a liability when an activity requires stillness and quiet.)

          The night before a hunt I take careful inventory of my gear and remove the trigger lock from my rifle. In the morning, all that remains is to gather and go, so I stow my equipment in the back seat of the old red S-10 pickup parked beneath the pecan tree in the back yard. During the 10-mile drive from my in-law’s house in town to the farm, I eat a breakfast bar and wash it down with the orange juice.

          I yawn – and shiver. Even in south GA, during late November and December, the pre-dawn temperature often dips below freezing.

          As the truck tires rumble over the coarse asphalt, I scan ahead and side to side, watching to the limits of the high beams for any movement in the dark, or for the turquoise glow of eyes bobbing on the roadside. Turning onto the fine sand of the farm road, the roar of tires gives way to the squeak of shock absorbers and the creak of the old truck’s chassis as we bounce our way through ruts and washes.

          There are several fine places to hunt on these 260 acres, but this morning I head for the “back stand” which is situated at the far end of a long, wide field in the southeast corner of the property. So I turn to the right off the lane and through a break in the old fencerow. About a hundred yards later, I turn left and conceal the truck in between two rows of young longleaf pines. They are not yet ten years old, but many of them stand 15 feet or taller.

          This is one of my favorite moments of the hunt, the moment when I silence the engine and extinguish the headlights. When all mechanical noise and artificial light disappear, darkness and silence approach as if on foot. Daylight wilderness can be silent, too, but silence is quieter in the company of darkness. When I step out of the truck, they press in like wild animals sizing up this strange creature who has entered their woods. Like a newborn, I accept their greeting and their terms with a kind of naked trust.

          After sliding my rifle from its case, I snap the loaded clip into the magazine well. When seated I’ll pull the bolt and chamber a round. After twisting into my bright orange vest, I sling my gun over one shoulder and my backpack over the other. Shoving my icy fingers into gloves, I begin the short hike to the stand.

          The air is cold and damp in my nose, but fragrant with the scent of pine and moist earth. I hear every breath I take, each footfall, every swish of clothing as if through an amplifier. Starshine provides enough light to see familiar landmarks, so I leave my flashlight off.

          I follow well-worn tire paths along the edge of the field and up a small rise. At the crest there stands a thinning cluster of old oak trees, privet hedge, and blackberry brambles with briars sharp as cats’ teeth. Wild plums used to grow here, too. What the years have done with them I don’t know. When there were quail to hunt on this farm, my father-in-law and I would usually find a covey in this thicket.

          Just past the clump of trees, I turn left. The field stretches out to my right. The back stand sits at the far end. I walk some 50-75 yards along the edge before turning down a row in the center of the field. Walking the middle, I avoid leaving my scent along the fencerows where deer might soon ease through the woods, skittish and wary in the wide open space. Reaching the end of the row, I look around and find the stand, a dark, rectangular shadow looming thirty feet to my left.

          My wife’s brother-in-law and his two sons built this perch. It is a free-standing structure wide and deep enough to accommodate two hunters comfortably. Nestled beneath the spreading limbs of two large live oaks, it is now part of the tree line that has grown up along the fencerow which runs north and south. The stand faces west, so the sun will rise behind me. A camouflaged tarp covers the front and the two sides. A bright blue tarp overhead helps to shed the cold dew or a light rain. The floor is about eight feet off the ground. Easing around to the back, I climb the wide ladder of two-by-sixes nailed to the supporting 4x4 posts. Settling in, I make more noise than I intend.

          The sandy field before me usually grows cotton or soybeans. This year, however, either by design or neglect, it has lain fallow. Its crop is a tangle of weeds: prickly cockleburs, brittle dog fennel, wispy shoots of nondescript field grasses, and all of it in various shades of winter-kill brown.

          As the new day begins to break, both darkness and silence creep away. They seem to burrow into the earth itself. In the emergent light, shapes that I am convinced are deer turn out to be clumps of weeds, or some shadowy break in between branches.

          Fresh light seeps through the planted pines behind me. First it comes in flat, misty angles that reach out to the little knoll on the far side of the field. As the sun rises, the angles of light grow steeper and brighter. When struck by sunlight, the silver frost begins to turn the weeds a deep, glistening brown. The change starts on the far side of the field and follows the shadows as they shorten. It’s like watching a brown tide creep toward me.

            While light spills across the land, the background music of the forest begins to play. Owls hoot and growl at each other as they begin a day of rest. In a whistling rush, ducks speed by just overhead. Squirrels scratch and chatter in the oaks behind me and in the dry leaves beneath me. And there is a kind of ancient, deep-time beauty in the dissonant honking of Canada geese as they ascend in widening circles from a nearby pond before winging their way to wherever it is they will go next.

          And the new day lives.

          I receive the awakening world as a gift. This daybreak is only the latest in a series of untold billions. It is nothing new. Yet to one who can neither cause nor prevent such wonder, it sparkles with newness. Witnessing and participating in this daily act of resurrection reveals the depth of my dependence upon the earth and a renewed hunger to be in relationship with it.

          The more I become aware of all the sunrises that life offers, the more humbly, gratefully, and eternally human I become.

8/18/14

The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like... (Sermon)

“The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like…”

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/17/14

          A pastor friend of mine recently posted an article characterizing churches that the author labels “ineffective.” According to the article, the telltale mark of an ineffective church is a conspicuous turn inward. Inward-focused churches tend to do things like wage “worship wars,” to spend an inordinately high percentage of budget on facilities, and to pour more energy into holding off change than into sharing the gospel.¹ When a congregation becomes entrenched in minutiae and power struggles for self-preservation, it loses its faith because it has lost – or maybe it has even sold – its soul.

          It is easy to say, “Well, that’s never going to be us.” But no congregation intends to become self-absorbed and ineffective. It is the kind of thing that sneaks up on a group of people. Like botulism, it enters inconspicuously enough, then burrows in to do its damage.

          In the first century, says commentator David Waugh, “leavening…was created by setting aside a portion of leftover bread to spoil…Not spoiled enough, it is worthless…Allowed to spoil too long, it not only ruins the bread but can result in food poisoning…Only a small portion,” says Waugh, “like a mustard seed – is needed to leaven flour.”²

          It can be difficult to trust that a small amount of something can make a difference. That is true whether we are asked to trust that some tiny act of love can do a world of good, or that some apparently innocuous act of selfishness or fear will ultimately destroy an entire body.

          More frequently than I like to admit, I wrestle with those doubts. It usually happens when I open the paper, or turn on the computer or the TV. And I don’t refer just to reports about war, and poverty, and such. Just as disheartening is how much time, energy, money, and creative passion get spent in pure consumerism and in cultural black holes like celebrity worship. When witnessing all the attention to and praise of famous people, to their ostentation and their extravagance, I often think, “Jesus doesn’t stand a chance, anymore. If only he would tweet!”

          I feel tiny and irrelevant in a world that will scream its head off when Miley Cyrus or Ryan Gosling walks onto a stage. For those who need a different reference, think Marilyn Monroe or Cary Grant. At that point all of Jesus’ talk about mustard seeds, yeast, and pearls begins to fade into cozy, wistful nostalgia like rotary phones and outhouses.

          When church leaders, clergy and lay, allow such despair to overwhelm, we inevitably lead congregations into the spiritual vacuum of self-righteous survivalism. In that vacuum, a church mistakes life-support for life; but on life-support, all we can do is turn inward and to try to fend off everything we hate and fear. Then we wait for death to rapture us to “heaven,” our forever reward for being good, or at least for not doing too much wrong – which often becomes a cover for not really doing anything at all.

          The Kingdom of Heaven has patience, but not for mere survival. It is like a tiny seed, says Jesus, which grows into something tall, and broad, and welcoming. It is like yeast writhing imperceptibly within the dough, giving a brand new kind of life and purpose to flour. It is like giving up all the best for something better. And this Kingdom is not up there somewhere. We inhabit the Kingdom of Heaven in and through what often appears to be risky and rather un-churchlike ways of being and doing, ways that the survivalist mentality will misunderstand and even condemn. Isn’t this the way Jesus lives among the religious and political authorities of his day?

          Wendell Berry, long after creating his fictional town, Port William, KY, wrote a stunning parable about a formative, Kingdom of Heaven moment in the history of that community. Prior to this event, Port William has much in common with other isolated backwaters. Violence often has its way on Saturday afternoons when there isn’t much else to do. The county sheriff considers Port William “beyond the law’s reach and certainly beyond its convenience – a source of … never forseeable bad news.”³

          Berry’s short story, entitled “Pray Without Ceasing,” recalls a particular crime, the murder of Ben Feltner by Thad Coulter.

          One Saturday morning, Thad visits Ben seeking help. Thad is about to lose his farm, his home and his life’s work. The two men are friends, but Thad’s whisky-drenched rants cause Ben to send him away until he sobers up. Feeling shunned, Thad rages. That afternoon, in town, in front of many witnesses, Thad Coulter rides his mule up to Ben Feltner and shoots him once in the forehead.

          When Ben’s grown son, Mat, sees his father’s body, and hears the report of witnesses, he tears out on foot in the direction of the killer’s escape. His Uncle Jack catches him, however, and holds the young man back. During that brief struggle, a transformation occurs.

          “Jack felt that his arms would pull apart at the joints. He ached afterward. Something went out of him that day, and he was not the same again. And what went out of Jack came into Mat. Or so it seemed, for in that desperate embrace he became a stronger man than he been. A strength came into him that held his grief and his anger as Jack had held him. And Jack knew of the coming of this strength, not because it enabled Mat to break free but because it enabled Jack to turn him loose…To Jack, it was as if he had caught one man and let go another.”⁴

          Thad “escapes” to the sheriff’s office in the county seat. Turning himself in, he confesses to having killed his best friend. Learning of this, the men of Port William gather into a vigilante crowd and go to the Feltner house. They claim the right and the desire to avenge the murder that has happened in their town. With Mat’s approval, they will take their rope and travel to the jail that evening.

          Mat Feltner, standing on his father’s porch and surrounded by family, holds a long silence before the offer.

          Finally he speaks. “No, gentlemen. I appreciate it. We all do. But I ask you not to do it.”

          His mother steps forward and asks the same. “Let us make what peace there is left to make,” she pleads.

          Then Mat invites the crowd: “If you want to, come and be with us. We have food, and you all are welcome.”⁵

          The story is narrated by Andy Catlett, the grandson of Mat Feltner. However, because of the powerful yeast, and the mustard-seed grace of that moment, Andy is also the grandson of Thad Coulter’s first cousin.

          “My grandfather made a peace here that has joined many who otherwise would have been divided,” says Andy. “I am the child of his forgiveness.”⁶

          Port William discovers a treasure, a most valuable pearl. The discovery costs Ben Feltner his life. Claiming it costs Mat Feltner, and the entire Port William community, the poisonous desire for revenge. Yet it creates a re-defining memory within and for an entire community, a memory that reveals to a group of neighbors the deeper and more gracious identity within them. It is a memory that has the power to resurrect their God-imaged humanity. For those who see, hear, and understand, it becomes a Kingdom of Heaven memory that changes and redeems everything.

          I certainly pray that it does not entail murder, but this very week we will have the opportunity to plant a mustard seed, or to knead a little yeast into some dough.

          This very week there is great treasure to be discovered in some unexpected place. We may have to part with something as precious as pride or rage, but no one makes it to Easter Sunday without passing through Good Friday along the way.

          And now, Jesus’ question: “Have you understood all this?”

          Have we?

¹http://www.churchpastor.com/2014/07/10-behavior-patterns-inwardly-focused-churches/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fbpage&utm_campaign=cpupdate

²J. David Waugh, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p. 287.

³Wendell Berry, “Pray Without Ceasing,” Fidelity, Pantheon Books, 1992, p. 46.

⁴Ibid., pp. 36-37.

⁵Ibid., pp. 57.

⁶Ibid., p 59.

Sighs Too Deep for Words (Sermon)

“Sighs Too Deep for Words”

Romans 8:26-39

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/10/14

          This much-quoted passage from Paul to the Romans is, at the same time, one of the most encouraging and one of the most disturbing passages in the Bible. It is encouraging because it tells us that nothing can undermine God’s Love. It is disturbing because it also tells us that we will never get a break from the things that try to do so.

          This was the sermon text for last week, but we never made it to the text or the sermon. And that’s okay. Kailee Amburgey sang all the sermon we needed.

          For the benefit of those who were not here, Kailee sang the anthem, and the lyrics of her song acknowledged the very weaknesses and sufferings of which Paul writes. And as she sang, I peeked around the sides of the pulpit and into the pews, and over the top into the balcony. I watched the faces listen, and I wish everyone could have seen what I saw. That young lady held this congregation in the palm of her hand. Everyone was rapt in her voice, in the words, and in a melody that had the courageous grace not to leave us in the neat and tidy resolution of some bright major key, like Maria Von Trapp singing about how good she feels when she just remembers her “Favorite Things.”

          It was an achingly beautiful sight, to see a group people swept up in a moment like that. And I do mean swept. There was an obvious, physical, spiritual, and emotional lean toward the voice of the Spirit as it came through the voice of one of our own young people. It was like watching a field of wheat bend in one direction beneath the gentle push of the wind. For me, it became a vivid witness to the deep, wordless sighs, the intercession of the Spirit for a people and for a world hungering and thirsting for peace.

          I felt the weariness of so many loved ones passing away in so short a time. I felt the hardships of endless wars and violence doing so much damage to human life, to animals and plants, to cultures and ecosystems. I felt the distress of anxiety over the relentless barrage of changes in our society, and even changes in our own bodies as they grow, and as they age. And while such changes are not only inevitable, many of them have the potential to reveal great blessing. Still, before all of these things, many of us feel a perilous nakedness.

          After having just helped my parents move out of their house of 44 years, a move precipitated by increasingly evident health concerns, I felt these things very personally. And though I may have projected my feelings onto you to some extent, as your pastor, I did feel that “eager longing” on your faces, and on your collective face. I still do.

          Think about it: We have not had a summer slowdown, have we? Five funerals in three weeks have meant one reception after another for the ladies of CL&M and Shalom Circle. It has meant the choir coming back time after time to rehearse and to sing at the services. It has meant our property guys coming back over and over to run the elevator and give directions to folks who have never been here before. The nominating committee has struggled to get a slate of officers together. Missions, as always, scrambles to get people and resources together to offer hospitality to neighbors in need. The Administration and the Finance folks have had to get creative to meet the shifting realities of staff and aging equipment. Members of Christian Education pulled off another Bible School. And the whole Session is talking and praying about significant changes in denominational policies. In the midst of these things we have barely had time to catch our breath.

          After Kailee sang, and after watching what I interpreted as the visible turn and press of humanity toward the holy utterance of “sighs too deep for words,” I stood up to read Paul’s words to the Romans, and all of that hit me all at once. And I just came uncorked.* While it was rather embarrassing for me, and for some of you, perhaps, I have decided to credit that moment to the ever-prayerful Spirit. I decided that it was God’s way of saying, “Allen, leave the sermon alone. I’ve read it, you know, and, well, bless your heart, it just won’t add a thing to what Kailee and I just offered. It’s communion Sunday. Feed my sheep.”

          The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, enacts the proclamation that “nothing [but nothing] can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Even when we face the worst that the world can throw at us, says Paul, we can still love as we are loved. We can still love ourselves and others the way Jesus loves even the soldiers who mindlessly follow heartless orders and crucify him. We can still love ourselves and others the way Jesus loves even the disciples who abandon him. That is the love from which we cannot be separated.

          You and I, we are equal parts recipients and bearers of the Love that is creating and redeeming the universe. The ministry of this church over the last few weeks has been to bear that Love for others, to serve as a gracious reminder of God’s faithful presence. I am more grateful than I can say that we really do have “Ministry Teams” and not mere committees.

          I wish I could tell you that things will get easier. And who knows, we may plateau for a little while. If we are the body of Christ, however, we will keep recognizing the “sufferings of the present time.” Yet even that is grace. God does not cause suffering to make some point. God makes us aware of suffering because God trusts us to share generously the unhindered Love that we receive so gratefully.

          One thing to remember: There really is no difference between receiving and sharing God’s Love. The experience of Love always happens in the midst of a transfer, a transfer unburdened by any need for justification or compensation. Still, there are times when, like Jesus, we need to head for a quiet, lonely place where we can sit in the presence of God simply to receive, to hear those “sighs too deep for words.” How can we share Love in the midst of someone else’s turmoil if we haven’t learned to receive it in the midst of our own?

          I invite you to such a place. I am going to sit, and Jeri is going to play three times through a familiar hymn.

          Be still. Breathe. Listen. And may the stubborn Love of God renew you with peace and hope.

*At the previous week’s worship service, the accumulated emotions of the day and of recent days became overwhelming. Unable to speak clearly, I asked the congregation if we could just move on to Communion. They graciously agreed. I am grateful to them for their understanding and patience. AH