What's Next? (Sermon)

“What’s Next?”

Mark 4: 36-41

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

6/24/18

         Jesus has just told the parables of the sower, the lamp under the bushel basket, the growing seed, and the mustard seed. After telling the parable of the sower, the disciples ask Jesus why he uses parables. To keep you on your toes, he says. And to teach you about the subtleties of faith.

I hear Jesus saying that recognizing, trusting, and inhabiting the kingdom of God takes more in the way of contemplation and creative awareness than information management. Faith’s native tongue involves the subjective nuances of metaphor. And while thinking metaphorically isn’t the same thing as mastering multiplication tables, it still takes practice. We have to learn to open ourselves to metaphors, to see more than is apparent on the surface. As part of the fabric of life, metaphors surprise us when we’re not expecting them. They lurk in gardens, oceans, families, and storms.

Metaphors are like portals into a parallel universe, a place that is as real and compelling, even if not as immediate as the world of our five senses. And metaphors allow us to see this parallel world as not only real, but deeper and longer-lasting than the world lying on the surface of things. The point of parables, then, is to train us to think symbolically and creatively, and, while inhabiting both worlds, knowing which is our true home.

Immediately after teaching in parables, Jesus says to his disciples, Let’s “go across to the other side” of the lake. Unaware that they’re walking into a parable, the disciples ready the boat, and load up.

³⁶And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. ³⁷A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. ³⁸But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

³⁹He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!”

Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm

⁴⁰He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

⁴¹And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:36-41 NRSV)

While parables point to a world that may be more real than the one in which we live, our world is by no means unreal. Indeed, it’s relentlessly and all-too-often painfully real. When their storm hits, the disciples are not thinking, Wow, what a lovely near-death experience this will be! Surely, it will bless us with a splendid opportunity to learn some helpful life lessons. No! They are barking orders at each other, bailing for their lives, cursing, and crying out, God help us! We’re dying here!

When the peril is immediate, no one’s thinking about some bigger picture. They’re just trying to survive.

Stories like this, are more than memories. They’re mirrors. They’re snapshots of the human experience that reveal something enduring and true about us, something we may need to be reminded of, or something new and either encouraging or humbling– or both. Imagine what the disciples might say today if they looked at themselves in the mirror of their own story:

Peter, look at you! All confused and mad but trying to look serious and important. You look like a camp counselor trying to stop a food fight on the last night of camp.

Always the comedian aren’t you, Thaddeus? Well, just look at you, huddled in the floor of the boat like Bartholomew’s dog during a thunderstorm!

Hey, it WAS a thunderstorm!

Hey, y’all look at Levi, heaving more than sea water over the sides! Ha! You can tell the tax collectors from the fishermen at a time like that can’t you!

Oh, cork it, James. You Zebedee boys always did think you were Jesus’ favorites.

During all of this, Judas sits in silence thinking what might have been had the storm just swallowed him that night like some shamefaced Jonah. Maybe he could have saved everyone instead of wrecking everything.

While Jesus chuckles at the banter, he sits right next to Judas, as if to remind him that all is forgiven. All is well. And to say that Judas’ death would not have changed a thing.

When Jesus looks at the mirror, he hears himself saying, “Why are you still afraid? [After all our talk,] have you still no faith?”

He didn’t mean that there was nothing to fear. He meant that there was even more to trust. And once again, he sees and feels the panic in the eyes of the men he led and loved, and he wants to cry out all over again, “Peace! Be still!” But he lets everyone keep looking into the mirror and reliving that terrifying night, because he knows that they’re telling themselves, Jesus saw us through that storm, and through all the storms that came afterward. Even through our own stormy deaths. And while we’re different now, we’re still bound by the same love that brought us together in the first place. After that storm, we looked at Jesus and said, ‘Okay, what’s next?’

The most obvious metaphor here is Jesus’ presence in life’s fearful storms. Granted, though, you and I have less to fear than many others. In his song Relatively Easy, Jason Isbell says that “compared to people on a global scale our kind has had it relatively easy.”¹ There are far more dangerous storms rocking places like Syria, Somalia, Central America, and the slums and public schools of US cities. Nonetheless, in some way, every home and every heart gets rocked by something that feels life-threatening. And where is Jesus in our storms?

One angle on today’s story says that Jesus is asleep in the back of the boat, a disinterested and disengaged God who has to be awakened by us. And who hasn’t felt that way at one time or another? But maybe a sleeping Jesus isn’t a metaphor for God’s absence. Maybe it’s a metaphor the presence of God’s peace. Somewhere in the storm, there’s a place of reassurance and calm, a place to find strength and purpose for the journey. It may be a prayer – The Serenity Prayer for example. It may be a stalwart relationship. It may be a walk in the woods. Whatever that place is, that’s where we find Jesus, who calms our minds and our spirits.

That’s not to say that our storms will end as quickly as Jesus saying, “Peace! Be Still!” It’s just to say that Jesus is the source of whatever helps us to endure and thrive because he can redeem even our most terrifying experiences. When fear, anger, or loneliness have us in their grip, so does God.

That Jason Isbell song is a song about a human relationship, but because it’s a metaphor, we can co-opt it for our purposes. In the last line of the first chorus, Isbell sings, “And here with you there’s always something to look forward to. Our angry heart beats relatively easy.”²

Even in the storm, Jesus gives us something to look forward to. So, through faith, our angry hearts [can] beat relatively easy.

Now, the arbitrary luck of being born into relative ease is no excuse for claiming God’s special favor. To people of faith, it’s a call to bring our abundant gifts to bear as we enter some besieging storm to work for justice, to help reconcile important relationships, or simply to be with people for whom storm is a way of life.

In the midst of these experiences, metaphors and mirrors surround us. They reveal a new and different life. They give us language to bear witness to our faith in the promise that, come what may, Jesus was, and is, and always will be with us.

So, what’s next?

¹Jason Isbell, Relatively Easy, from his CD: Southeastern. Southeastern Records, 2013.

²Ibid.

Serenity Prayer

Reinhold Niebuhr

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
taking, as [Jesus] did, this sinful world as it is,

not as I would have it;
trusting that he will make all things right

if I surrender to his will,
that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with him forever in the next.
Amen.^*

^*Prayer by Rienhold Neihbur (1892-1972) http://www.beliefnet.com/prayers/protestant/addiction/serenity-prayer.aspx)

Earth as Parable (Sermon)

“Earth as Parable”

Mark 4:26-34

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

6/17/18

         The parables of Mark 4 create a kind of theological watershed. And the images are both simple and extravagant. In this collection of stories, Jesus repeatedly – and artfully – compares the kingdom of God to hidden mysteries occurring within the earth. These faithful mysteries happen season after season, year after year. They involve soil, water, sunlight, death, and new life. The kingdom of God, says Jesus, is like the life-force of the earth itself, the force that makes things grow, become, and change. And while we can see, hear, feel, smell, and taste its effects, we can’t actually observe that dynamic power at work.

         Paul alludes to the same thing. When distinguishing between his ministry and that of Apollos, Paul tells the Corinthians, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe…I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (1Cor. 3:5-6)

As human beings, created in God’s image, we, and the faith that is within us, are signs and expressions of the presence of God and of God’s kingdom. And for all of our indelible holiness, all we can do is to bear witness to the mystery. We are its stewards and beneficiaries, not its architects, or builders, or gatekeepers.

The teachings of both Jesus and Paul take us way back. Remember what happens on day 3 of the ancient Hebrew parable of a seven-day creation: “And God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And it was so…And God saw that it was good.” (Gen. 1:9-11, 12b)

Scripture is not a legal document. It’s not meant to limit us or to answer every question. Scripture is a faith statement. It’s a work of art. It’s a Spirit-inspired gift meant to tease us with and invite us into the mystery and the holiness of God’s kingdom-revealing creation. So, when Jesus mentions seeds in his parables, he’s talking about more than seeds. He’s talking about the entire process of beginnings, growth, fruitfulness, falling, dying, and new beginnings. And it seems to me that he’s using this every-day mystery as a metaphor for the very personality of God in the universe. So, in spite of everything that’s obviously and painfully awry, the creation is like the kingdom of God. And it is good.

One of my favorite storytellers is Doug Elliott. He’s a diminutive, gentle-spirited, mustard seed of a man. And if the power went out for good, I’d want Doug Elliott next to me long before I’d want someone like Bear Grylls. Doug is not a “Man Against Nature” kind of guy. He’s not a survivalist who regards the earth as a something to subdue and exploit and the rest of humanity as a potentially hostile presence to fear. Doug Elliott is a Man With Nature. He’s a mystic who has learned how to be in relationship with his neighbors and the earth. Most of Doug’s stories have to do with the natural world, and he delights in sharing its wonders with whoever will listen.

On one of his CD’s, Doug tells about visiting the legendary storyteller Ray Hicks who lived at Beech Mountain, NC. Doug had gone to Beech Mt. to go ginseng hunting with Ray’s sons. When that trip didn’t pan out, Doug spent the morning talking with Ray and his wife, Rosa. For Ray Hicks, keeping silent was genetically impossible. Once he started talking, the rock was rolling downhill. Jack Tales, recollections of experiences, and mountain lore welled up like water from a spring. And that morning, ginseng was on tap.

Doug says that Ray talked about looking for a particular fern, rattlesnake fern. When you saw it, ginseng would be nearby, unless someone had already dug it up. “Yeah,” said Ray, “and some kind of fungus gets hooked up with the roots.”

Doug realized that the old mountain man was talking about a fungus that made what’s called a michorrizal connection. That specific fungus and the roots of plants like ginseng, rattlesnake fern, jack-in-the-pulpit, and mayapples form a symbiotic relationship – a relationship that’s more than mutually beneficial. It’s essential to the survival of both the fungus and the plants.

“What do plants eat?” Doug asks his audience. “They eat light. And they suck dirt. You want to talk about a miracle,” he says. “Whoa! Plants eat light and suck dirt and make wood and fruit” and flowers!

For ginseng, a crucial element in that creative process is the michorrizal connection that its roots form with the fungus. When the fungus makes its way into the cell structure of the roots, it expands the surface area of the roots so they’re able to draw enough moisture and nutrients from the soil to sustain the plant’s leaves above ground so that they can eat enough light to feed the root which is itself the valuable part of the plant. Even the richest soil will not grow healthy ginseng without this essential relationship between fungus and plant.¹ Think about what that means for the first parable in Mark 4, the parable of the sower. Good soil is a place teeming with unseen relationships and wonders.

Doug Elliott says that the science of this process is a relatively recent discovery, but somewhere in the consciousness shared by those who have lived in close relationship with the earth for generations, that kind of mystery had already been perceived. And the kingdom of God is like that mystery, says Jesus. It’s like the hidden things that occur for the sake of visible things. Parables are born through our awareness of such mysteries.

Individually and together, we are parables, too. There’s an old proverb that says something like: Be mindful of your life. You’re the only Bible some people will ever read. While that adage is potentially self-serving, it also carries some real truth. When we open ourselves to mystery in the world, when we love each other, when we share laughter in joy and tears in sorrow, when we care for the earth, when we welcome the stranger –when we do these things because we recognize that our own lives are connected to all life, we become living parables.

The kingdom of God is the michorrizal connection among us. And while every day is burdened with stories that challenge our faith, hope, and love, every day is also resplendent with stories and wonders to hear, to behold, and to share. And we hear, behold, and share those stories not to deny and avoid those challenging realities. We hear, behold, and share the earth-wrought parables as a way of participating in God’s ongoing redemption of all that is broken, hurtful, and destructive in the world.

So, in all things, look for the parables. Tell the parables. Be a parable. And trust the Mystery.

        

¹Doug Elliott on his CD “Of Ginseng, Golden Apples, and the Rainbow Fish: Ancient Tales, Traditional Lore, Lively Tunes and a Modern Mythic Adventure” © 2017. (Recorded live at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN.)

Do Not Lose Heart (Sermon)

“Do Not Lose Heart”

2Corinthians 4:13-5:1

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

6/10/18

         Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians takes us inside the apostle’s deep grief and anxiety clouding his relationship with the congregation at Corinth. It’s not clear exactly what happened, but it is clear that during a previous visit, Paul encountered some strong opposition. Someone in the congregation questioned his authority, or his sincerity, or his faith, or all of the above. Stung by the criticism, Paul cancels a return trip to Corinth.

         “I made up my mind,” he says, “not to make you another painful visit…For I wrote you out of much distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.” (2Cor. 2:1, 4)

         Throughout this letter, Paul defends himself and his teaching. He also tries to demonstrate a new-found humility – in himself, in the Church, and in humankind in general. “We have this treasure in clay jars,” he says, “so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed.” (2Cor. 4:7-9)

         Suffering is not punishment for wrongdoing. Suffering is simply a given, and it can’t be avoided by trying to act upright and holy. Paul knows this not only because he has experienced such suffering as a follower of Jesus, but because he inflicted it on so many people before his conversion on the Damascus Road.

I don’t know about you, but Paul’s struggle is familiar ground to me. As both an agent and bearer of suffering, I appreciate Paul’s example of trying to allow God to transform suffering into a witness to the power of resurrection. “For while we live,” he says, “we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh.” (2Cor. 4:11) With his next breath, Paul writes the words of today’s text.

¹³But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture —“I believed, and so I spoke” — we also believe, and so we speak, ¹⁴because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. ¹⁵Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. ¹⁶So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, ¹⁸because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.

5For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (NRSV)

         It seems to me that an embattled Paul writes these words to himself as much as he does to the Corinthians. He’s encouraging them, and himself, and now us to look beyond all that seems apparent, all that seems obvious and immutable about the human condition. Beneath everything that appears to be falling apart, says Paul, God is building a new heaven and a new earth. Beneath everything that is dying, God is bringing forth new life. Don’t look at what can be seen, he says. All of that is temporary. Look at what cannot be seen. That’s where we encounter the eternal. So, do not lose heart.

Philosophical jargon can be a greased pig. It’s hard to grab hold of. On the other hand, Paul can’t make it too obvious because he’s trying to describe the paradox of living “in the world but not of the world.” His language calls us to wrestle with the complexities of inhabiting the kingdom of God while living in a world plagued by things like war, cancer, poverty, natural disasters, and by the absolute fact that as long as human beings have the capacity to form their own opinions, no two people will ever agree on everything. The unyielding immediacy of such realities can diminish our faith in God, our hope for the future, and our love for neighbor. In 2Corinthians, Paul is trying hard not to lose his own faith, hope, and love.

The gospel encourages us to hold onto those gifts by declaring that God is as present and real in the middle of all our chaos as God is present and real in times of gladness and peace. To realize that truth requires us to learn to open our hearts to the possibility of seeing and experiencing something eternal, holy, and joyful in the midst of the temporal, the mundane, and the painful. It’s a matter of posturing our hearts toward holiness.

In his commentary on this passage, Mark Barger Elliott includes this little parable:

         A follower once asked his teacher, Where can I find God?

         Right here, the teacher said.

         Then why can’t I see God?

         Because you don’t look.

         But what should I look for?

         Nothing, the teacher said. Just look.

         But at what?

         At whatever your eyes see.

         But do I have to look in a special kind of way?

         No, said the teacher, the ordinary way will do.

         But don’t I always look the ordinary way?

         No, you don’t.

         Why not?

         Because, the teacher said, to look, you have to be present, right here. And most of the time you’re somewhere else.¹

         The teacher seeks to be thoroughly present in a broken and challenging world because he trusts that it is possible to see all things through God’s eyes of grace. Through those eyes, one can, on occasion anyway, get glimpses of what and how Jesus sees. We can see God not as something other and out there, but something indwelling, something eternally at hand and available. Through Jesus’ eyes we begin to catch glimpses of the holiness of our humanity, and that of both friends and enemies.

         So, do not lose heart. Even when we feel consumed with despair, threatened by things that feel devilish and destructive, God, through those very experiences, is renewing us. That’s how resurrection works. As the redeeming power in the universe, resurrection strengthens us to be present here and now, in the midst of the conflict and chaos, trusting that the ever-present God is in human suffering, transforming it into a means of grace “as it extends to more and more people,” and so that it “may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”

That doesn’t mean that we turn away from suffering saying that “everything has a reason.” Not at all. We enter the suffering around us as Jesus did. We enter it with compassion so that we might witness to God’s resurrecting love in and for all the world.

         The nineteenth century English writer Emily Brontë plays with this truth in a poem entitled “No Coward Soul Is Mine.” Because Paul shared the same bold confidence of Brontë’s words, the poem sounds like something the apostle might have written…if he’d had a few creative writing classes.

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere,

I see Heaven’s glories shine

And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear.

O God within my breast,

Almighty ever-present Deity,

Life, that in me hast rest,

As I – Undying Life – have power in Thee.

Vain are the thousand creeds

That move men’s hearts, unutterably vain,

Worthless as withered weeds

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main

To waken doubt in one

Holding so fast by thy infinity,

So surely anchored on

The steadfast rock of Immortality.

With wide-embracing love,

Thy spirit animates eternal years,

Pervades and broods above,

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears.

Though earth and moon were gone,

And suns and universes ceased to be,

And Thou wert left alone,

Every Existence would exist in thee.

There is not room for Death

Nor atom that his might could render void,

Since thou art Being and Breath,

And what thou art may never be destroyed.

¹From Mark Barger Elliott’s article on Homiletical Perspective in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Year B, Volume 3). Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. p. 115.

2Emily Brontë, “No Coward Soul Is Mine.” From Passion and Peace: The Poetry of Uplift for all Occasions. Compiled by Diane Tucker. Wood Lake Publishing, 2017. p. 281.

From Farm to Table (Sermon)

“From Farm to Table”

Mark 2:23-3:6

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

6/3/18

         Mark 1 is a whirlwind introduction to Jesus. Beginning with John the Baptist, it includes Jesus’ baptism and temptation, the calling of the first disciples, three high-profile healings, and Jesus’ first preaching tour through Galilee. It closes with Jesus as a kind of reluctant celebrity. He “could no longer go into a town openly,” says Mark.

         Mark 2 walks us through a series of confrontations between Jesus and the Pharisees. With each clash, the intensity builds, and the mighty Pharisees become increasingly hobbled by righteous indignation.

         The first incident occurs in Jesus’ own home. A crowd has gathered inside and is spilling into the street. Four men who have brought a paralyzed friend climb onto Jesus’ roof. They dig a hole through it and lower their friend to the floor at Jesus’ feet.

         “Your sins are forgiven,” says Jesus.

         “Blasphemy!” cry the Pharisees.

         “Holy mackerel! Look at that!” says the crowd.

         Jesus’ radically new witness to God angers the Pharisees. More addicted to power over the masses than they are committed to authority on behalf of God’s beloved people, the legalistic Pharisees come across as pathetically mystified. “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” “Why do…[Jesus’] disciples not fast?” “Why are [Jesus’ disciples] doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” Why? Why? Why?

The third Why? occurs in today’s text, and Jesus’ answer draws from a story that was ancient even in the first century. He refers to an account from 1Samuel 21. David is on the run from a murderously angry King Saul. He asks the priest (Ahimelech, not Abiathar) if he has anything to eat. Only what’s holy, says Ahimelech. He’s referring to the bread of the Presence, which is bread kept out as an offering to God. It’s to be removed only when fresh bread replaces it, and only the priests can eat it. Smelling fear on Ahimelech’s breath, David, who’s on the lam all by himself, says that he and his men are hungry.

This is Yahweh’s bread, says the priest. Are you and your men clean?

Oh, sure, says David. King Saul has sent us on a secret mission. The details are classified, but my guys haven’t so much as laid eyes on women for a long time.

Ahimelech gives David the bread.

Now, the stories aren’t exactly comparing apples to apples. There’s no mention of the sabbath in 1Samuel. And while David may be hungry, his story is layered with lies. Jesus’ disciples aren’t running from anyone, and they’re not really harvesting the grain. They’re just idly noshing on it on a sabbath – the way that you and I might sit on the couch and eat popcorn on a Sunday afternoon while watching the Braves blow a big lead in the bottom of the eighth. It’s all just normal stuff.

         With the sabbath as background, Mark puts us in fourth commandment territory. The comparison is to the bread of the Presence itself – something created and set aside as a means of drawing us closer to God. Jesus’ point is that such things – the bread of the Presence, the sabbath, the law itself – exist not for their own sake, but for the sake of humankind. To the extent that human symbols and systems deepen us spiritually, they serve us well. When allowed to become equal to God, they inevitably become idols. We may even prefer them to God because we can comprehend and manipulate them. And instead of welcoming others into God’s means of grace for all creation, our inner Pharisees dole them out on the basis of merit.

         God calls us to sabbath observance for our sake, says Jesus. We don’t exist simply to populate the sabbath like ants in some glorified ant farm. And grain in the field, like the bread of the Presence, is a holy gift from God. To pick it, to feel it on the tongue, to taste it, such simple actions can be sabbath experiences when we do them mindfully, gratefully, humbly – when we recognize the Spirit renewing us through them. That’s how Jesus is lord of the sabbath, regardless of the day of the week.

         At some point after the grain-picking episode, Jesus is in the temple again. It’s the sabbath, again. He sees a man with a withered hand. If Jesus waits until sundown to heal the man, the sabbath will have ended, and he won’t offend the Pharisees. But the man and his suffering stand before Jesus now.

To everyone in general and to the Pharisees in particular, Jesus says, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath?”

The Pharisees watch with interest, but without compassion. They see the man as just another ant on the farm. His suffering is secondary to their sabbath observance. Mark says that the Pharisees’ “hardness of heart” moves Jesus to both anger and grief. While this story appears in all three synoptic gospels, only Mark includes the detail about Jesus feeling both anger and grief toward the Pharisees. And I think that pairing those two emotions has profound implications for us.

Estranged from grief, anger ignores the creation’s inherent holiness.

Estranged from grief, anger ignores our own faults and limits.

Estranged from grief, anger tills the soil of our basest, Machiavellian impulses. If the ends justify the means, it’s not the devil who makes me do it. God blesses everything from my pettiest selfishness to my most idolatrous cruelty.

Estranged from grief, anger seeks revenge in ever-escalating degrees. Feeling only anger after Jesus restores the man’s withered hand, the Pharisees, that very sabbath day, scurry away from the synagogue to conspire with political leaders about how “to destroy” Jesus.

As beneficiaries of the inequities of religious and cultural idolatries, the Pharisees hear Jesus’ good news as bad news. It challenges them – and us, because very often we are they ­– to face and confess our complicity with every kind of injustice – religious, political, social, economic, environmental. The gospel calls us to embrace the new life of the kingdom of God where, in spite of ourselves, God feeds us with the bread of eternal Presence and restores our withered lives. God helps us to choose the ambiguities of faith, the uncertainties of hope, and the demands of love over the idolatries of power and fear.

Our version of the bread of the Presence lies on the table before us. If the god it calls to mind is a god of griefless anger, a god who can only be appeased by some violent death, then we’ll most likely reduce our churches to little ant farms – idols for idle hands and minds. And we may even sacrifice others, willingly, for our own ends.

As the Bread of Life, though, Jesus reveals God at work within our theological and ecclesiastical structures not for the purpose of limiting and controlling us, and certainly not as a way of being limited and controlled by us. Indeed, our rules don’t apply to God. No, God squeezes just enough of God’s eternal self into our structures in order to tease us toward freedom from every selfish idolatry. That’s why everyone, with no exceptions, is welcome at the Lord’s Supper. We may set the table, but Jesus is Lord of the table. He is Lord of this day and all days – past, present, and future. From farm to table, the bread and the cup are his life and joy for us.

Let’s make Jesus’ joy complete. Let’s gather at his table, and be made whole, and made one.