Summing It Up (Sermon)

 “Summing It Up”*

Micah 6:6-8 and John 13:34-35

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

6/23/24

 

⁶“With what shall I come before the Lord

and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,

with calves a year old?
⁷Will the Lord be pleased

with thousands of rams,

with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
⁸He has told you, O mortal, what is good,

and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness

and to walk humbly with your God?

 

³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

 

 

         Eugene Peterson was a Presbyterian pastor, seminary professor, and writer. While he wrote a number of books, he’s best remembered for his paraphrase of the Bible entitled The Message.

Peterson was also a dad, and he and his one of his sons, Leif, had a running joke. The joke was that, for all his years preaching and teaching, the elder Peterson had “only one real sermon.”¹

“It’s almost laughable,” said Leif at his dad’s funeral in 2018, “how you fooled them, how for 30 years every week you made them think you were saying something new.

“They didn’t know how simple it all was. They were blind to your secret.” That secret, said Leif, was that he preached “same message over and over…‘God loves you.’”²

Leif said that his dad wanted him, and everyone, to trust that God is with us, loving us relentlessly. That was the bottom line. And that was Eugene Peterson’s sermon.

I’m not the scholar and author Eugene Peterson was, but I think that, like him, I have “only one real sermon.” And when preaching last Easter, I felt more acutely than ever that I was saying what I had said some 1200 times before. And my one sermon, which is similar to Eugene Peterson’s, is an attempt to restate what we just read in the passages from Micah and John.

God “has told you…what is good,” says Micah, “and what does the Lord require…but to do justice…love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.” And in John, Jesus tells his disciples, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Do justice. Biblical justice demands far more of us than obeying commandments and punishing those who occasionally break them. The justice to which Micah and other prophets refer is restorative justice—the justice predicated on God’s redemptive and reconciling love. So, when people are hungry, to love justice means feeding them. When people are systemically exploited, abused, and ignored, doing justice means naming the problem and helping reshape human systems so that everyone has the opportunity to recognize and enjoy their own God-imaged humanity. And that’s something we cannot do individually. As a holy gift, our God-imaged is something we realize through relationship. So, the surest way to recognize and enjoy the image of God within ourselves, is to seek it in others, to honor it, and then to mirror it between and among us in community.

Learning kindness is foundational to doing justice. Far more challenging than “being nice,” biblical kindness involves compassion and empathy. Kindness recognizes not only that everyone struggles in this life, but the less obvious reality that when any of us struggle, we all struggle, because when even one part of the body suffers the whole body suffers.

Kindness recognizes our interconnectedness, our interdependence. Kindness, says one educator, requires incredible courage and strength, because it moves us “from me to we.”²

And how do we open ourselves to God’s kindness? I think Micah would say that we do that by practicing humility. And that means confessing that in God’s all-loving and all-redeeming eye, there’s not one of us who can claim superiority over another. And when we, nonetheless, try to live that way, we fragment ourselves into homogenous, fear-bound groups, and we almost always end up doing injustice, loving unkindness, and walking away from God in prideful arrogance.

When we pray the prayer of confession on Sunday mornings, that is the unfaithfulness we confess. That is the life Jesus calls us to lose so that we can embrace the life in which we love as we are loved.

Over the years, I’ve become convinced that the love Jesus teaches and demonstrates is predicated on Micah’s God-centered ethos that moves from humility, into kindness, and culminates in holy justice. In this movement—which beautifully parallels the beatitudes—justice actively seeks the well-being of all people, and of the whole. And justice-seekers recognize that working for the well-being of neighbors is to work for one’s own well-being.

In the 18^th century, the Scottish economist Adam Smith said that a free-market system is, on the surface, an amalgamation of individuals seeking their own self-interest. That self-interest gets tempered by, what he called, an invisible hand which somehow makes everything work out just right for everyone. Frankly, I think that’s kind of suspicious logic. Almost inevitably, individuals seeking their own self-interest collude with others pursuing the same goal to create systems which always shift advantage and power toward those who hold increasingly disproportionate wealth. Those societies become consumed by injustice, cruelty, and pride. And whatever is loving or Christlike within those societies emerges as a prophetic voice calling for repentance—that is to say, calling for justice, kindness, and humility and the well-being of the whole.

It seems to me, then, what we often call “social justice” is God’s holy justice. It’s God acting through those who pursue justice—even through those who are not motivated by a biblical call to love. As Jesus says in Mark, “Whoever is not against us is for us.” (Mark 9:40)

So yes, I think Jesus lived and taught Micah’s ethos of justice, kindness, and humility. This ethos of prophetic love can be hindered momentarily, and when that happens, all will look and feel bleak. Throughout history there have been countless eras during which the clouds of injustice, cruelty, and pride have caught the thermals of greed, fear, and nationalism and risen to ascendance. In those crucial moments, God’s beloved community of grace is called to gather its courage, to speak, and to act. And the community doesn’t merely protest. It distinguishes itself as a voice of love, as a presence of welcome, inclusion, and reconciliation.

To some extent, every era is just such an era. Because of that, the Church is always called to be a place of prophetic grace. Our buildings, our policies and protocols, our investments and vestments may have their place, but when we care for them at the expense of our call to do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with God, isn’t that to abandon holiness and hope?

So, friends, this is my sermon: God, through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit has graced us with God’s image and God’s trust. God has empowered us to be, not an invisible hand, but God’s intentionally visible hands and feet and hearts in the world, for the world—a world that God loves purely, personally, and relentlessly. And by loving as Jesus loves us, we are embraced by Resurrection, and we inhabit the eternal realm of God. Right here. Right now. In the midst of one another. In the midst of Creation’s most ordinary and yet most holy realities.

I’ve tried to say that in lots of ways. I hope it came through.

You’re probably ready for, and due, a new sermon. And whatever it may be, may we all continue to embody God’s love by doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God.

In God’s Beloved Community.

Thanks be to God.

 

¹https://www.christianpost.com/news/eugene-petersons-son-reveals-his-father-fooled-everyone-had-only-one-real-sermon-for-the-world.html

²Ibid.

³https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/everyday-resilience/202303/the-remarkable-power-of-kindness-and-why-it-matters

 

*This was my final sermon at Jonesborough Presbyterian Church. As of July 1, 2024, I will retire from congregational ministry and move on to whatever God may have in store for me. I do hope to continue this blog, though entries will no longer—or at least seldom—be sermons. May God’s peace be with you all. Allen

The Ethos of Blessedness (Sermon)

 “The Ethos of Blessedness”

Psalm 34:1-10, 22 and Matthew 5:1-12

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

6/16/24

 

¹I will bless the Lord at all times;
    his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
²My soul makes its boast in the Lord;
    let the humble hear and be glad.
³O magnify the Lord with me,
    and let us exalt his name together.

⁴I sought the Lord, and he answered me
    and delivered me from all my fears.
⁵Look to him, and be radiant,
    so your faces shall never be ashamed.
⁶This poor soul cried and was heard by the Lord
    and was saved from every trouble.
⁷The angel of the Lord encamps
    around those who fear him and delivers them.
⁸O taste and see that the Lord is good;
    happy are those who take refuge in him.
⁹O fear the Lord, you his holy ones,
    for those who fear him have no want.
¹⁰The young lions suffer want and hunger,
    but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

²²The Lord redeems the life of his servants;
    none of those who take refuge in him will be

condemned.  (NRSV)

 

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

 

³“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

⁴“Blessed are those who mourn,

for they will be comforted.

⁵“Blessed are the meek,

for they will inherit the earth.

⁶“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they will be filled.

⁷“Blessed are the merciful,

for they will receive mercy.

⁸“Blessed are the pure in heart,

for they will see God.

⁹“Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they will be called children of God.

¹⁰“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of

righteousness

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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

¹²Rejoice and be glad,

for your reward is great in heaven,

for in the same way they persecuted

the prophets who were before you.  (NRSV)

 

         Since I’ve been in Jonesborough, one three-word phrase has become a common punch line: Bless your heart. Just a reminder: In the south, to bless someone’s heart is not always a compliment. It’s code for, Friend, you ain’t got the sense God gave a lug nut.

From members of this church, I have received two pillows and one paperweight with Bless Your Heart written or stitched on them. So, honestly, I’ve probably overdone it and created a monster that will never die.

         “Blessing” has become a slippery concept. Whether in condescending idiom, a verbal pat on the head after a sneeze, or some winning team’s locker room where God’s name is taken in vain more dangerously and tediously than it ever has in genuine anger and pain, we have so trivialized and materialized the idea of blessedness that the Beatitudes may ring hollow in our over-blessed/under-blessed ears.

         In Luke, Jesus offers his most famous sermon on a “level place,” where every valley is lifted up, every hill is made low, and everyone stands on equal footing.

In Matthew, Jesus goes up a mountain. Matthew wants us to imagine Jesus as the second Moses, high and lifted up, and giving a new Torah. But Jesus does not give commandments. He pronounces particular blessings on particular people who seem anything but blessed. In doing so, Jesus peels back the eschatological curtain and scandalizes human reason. He reveals that the realm of God does not arrive in glorious conquest but through “the least of these.”

Do you want to know true blessedness? says Jesus. Then look at “the poor in spirit…theirs is the kingdom of heaven. [Look at] those who mourn…the meek…those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…the merciful…the peacemakers…” Look at them and see God!

True blessedness begins with what Frederick Buechner calls “The Magnificent Defeat”—God’s radical and painfully gracious overcoming of the soul-rust of pride, fear, selfishness, and anything else that blocks the doors of humility and gratitude.¹ “The Magnificent Defeat” was a sermon Buechner preached on Jacob wrestling that mysterious stranger on the banks of the Jabbok, a struggle that Jacob finally concedes, with one condition: “I will not let you go,” he says, “unless you bless me.”

         The liberty of blessedness begins in the sheer stillness of defeat, and the unwelcome awareness that we cannot create lasting freedom and wholeness by ourselves. The Beatitudes reveal the path of radical Christian spirituality, the path of subversive love, the path by which the human heart, mind, and spirit move from the immaturity of an ego-centric existence toward the freedom and wholeness of intimate reunion with God through the embodied prayer of relationship with neighbor and earth.

         Brian McLaren, teacher, pastor, author, and now dean of the faculty at the Center for Action and Contemplation, views the Beatitudes as foundational for understanding our God-imaged selves and our mission as disciples of Jesus. To illustrate how revolutionary the Beatitudes are, McLaren has written his own version of the opposite of each beatitude. Listen to a few of his anti-beatitudes; and beware, while some are tongue-in-cheek, others have teeth:

         Blessed are the rich and successful, for they shall consume more than their fair share.

         Blessed are those who laugh, for they shall inherit amusement.

         Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for status, for they will be full of themselves.

         Blessed are those who launch preemptive attacks, because they will never be bored or caught off guard.

         Blessed are those who persecute others for righteousness’ sake, for they have a great future in talk radio…

         And blessed are you when people honor you and flatter you and give you all kinds of extraordinary compensation on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great right now in the religious-industrial complex, and in the same way, they celebrated the inquisitors before you.²

“What [we] consider blessed,” says McLaren, “will be the ethos [we] desire and imitate.”

By definition, ethos refers to a culture’s accepted ways of thinking, and being in relationship.

“[Our] ethos,” says McLaren, “will determine [our] ethics…[and] our ethics will create our future.”³

         Any future that depends on an ethos of consumerism, militarism, authoritarianism, or winner-take-all triumphalism is a future that will not hold. For proof, look at the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, European colonialism, German fascism. Just ask American slave owners and carpetbaggers alike.

Whenever human institutions equate blessedness with individual privilege and tribal supremacy over others, they will be consumed by consumption and humiliated by pride. And they’ll never hear Jesus’ call to poverty of spirit, to meekness and mercy. They’ll never follow him into the costly and rigorous work of helping to create more peaceable and just communities.

         Friends, hear the Good News: The Beatitudes convey the very power of resurrection for humankind. They give us the means by which to die to self. Then they breathe new and lasting life back into us.

         When working as an attorney in South Africa in the 1890’s, a young Hindu from India named Mohandas Gandhi recognized the blessedness of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. He decided that if Christians really followed that teaching, he wanted in. So, one Sunday, Gandhi wandered into a Christian church. And immediately, the dark-skinned immigrant was physically thrown out into the street. One can only imagine that afterward, the congregation inside that building proceeded to sing praises and offer prayers to the God of love. Who is being revealed in Jesus. Who preaches the Sermon on the Mount.

         While Gandhi did not become Christian, one would be hard-pressed to find another human being in the last 140 years who more fully and more graciously embodied an enriching poverty of spirit; who mourned humanity’s brokenness with healing love; who felt an aching hunger and thirst for righteousness for all humankind; who possessed a world-transforming meekness and a luxuriant purity of heart; who displayed a fierce and often disruptive commitment to peace; and who endured persecution with such determined love for those who persecuted him.

It seems to me that Gandhi recognized Jesus’ point better than most people in the power-coddled, post-Constantinian Church ever did—that point being that God calls and empowers us to become an eschatological community of diverse individuals who come together, intentionally, to live into a healing and redeeming relationship with God and with all Creation.

         Our purpose is to live the ethos of true Blessedness, the life of Resurrection—the life of humility, simplicity, and grateful service.

         In living the ethos of true Blessedness, we become more fully human, and more fully the Body of Christ. And we discover that being that Body means inhabiting, through better and worse, and for the sake of others, the mystery of God’s eternal realm, which is our true home—our past, present, and future home.

 

¹Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat, Harper Collins, 1966, pp10-18.

²http://www.slideshare.net/brianmclaren/getting-blessed-new

³Ibid.

Surviving Temptation (Sermon)

 “Surviving Temptation”

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16 Luke 4:1-13

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

6/9/24

 

 ¹You who live in the shelter of the Most High,
    who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
²will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress;
    my God, in whom I trust.”

⁹Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
    the Most High your dwelling place,
¹⁰no evil shall befall you,
    no scourge come near your tent.

¹¹For he will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you in all your ways.
¹²On their hands they will bear you up,
    so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.
¹³You will tread on the lion and the adder;
    the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.

¹⁴Those who love me, I will deliver;
    I will protect those who know my name.
¹⁵When they call to me, I will answer them;
    I will be with them in trouble;
    I will rescue them and honor them.
¹⁶With long life I will satisfy them
    and show them my salvation. (NRSV)

 

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, ²where for forty days he was tested by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over he was famished. ³The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”

⁴Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

⁵Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶And the devil said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. ⁷If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” ⁸Jesus answered him, “It is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,
           and serve only him.’”

⁹Then the devil led him to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, ¹⁰for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    to protect you,’

¹¹and

‘On their hands they will bear you up,
    so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

¹²Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

¹³When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time. (NRSV)

 

         Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is a watershed experience. It defines him personally, spiritually, vocationally. Surviving the temptation leads Jesus to say things like: “Blessed are the poor…Love your neighbor…Love your enemies…Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them…[and] Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing…”

 The story of Jesus’ temptation challenges us to confess the uncomfortable truth that many things we’ve learned to regard as signs of blessedness are exactly the things about which Jesus says, “Woe to you!”

In the wilderness, Jesus does more than reject offerings of material wealth, political power, and fame. He declares that the very things the Caesars and Herods of the world uphold as signs of greatness and divine blessing do far more to hinder than to encourage faithful discipleship.

Still, whether it’s some lavish “crystal cathedral,” or nationalistic rhetoric from Christian pulpits, or a high-profile pastor using his charisma to use his congregation to buy him a 70 million-dollar Gulfstream jet, the heresy-breeding attitudes of excess, of violent theology, and of celebrity worship are alive and well today.

Those things can get our attention. They can tempt us, seduce us. And when they convince us that we’re entitled to them, we no longer hear Jesus’ still, smallvoice saying something entirely different. So, we distort the spiritual gifts and the energies we were given for loving God into means of personal gain.

Another cautionary tale from the story of Jesus’ temptation is that temptation hits us hardest when we’re least prepared to resist.

Jesus has fasted for days and days. His body is weak; his mind is vulnerable. When depleted, a person becomes open to virtually any suggestion. The same is true when our collective minds are weakened by fear. That’s why, for untold centuries, human beings have tortured each other for information, for revenge, and, when we’re at our absolute worst, for some kind of hideous satisfaction. And things like starvation and sleep deprivation are common techniques used by psychopaths and governments.

Sapped by the self-imposed hunger of fasting, Jesus confronts real possibilities—actions that can make him comfortable, powerful, and popular. He can make people flock to his side, willing to lie and kill for him. Remember Peter. Starving for security and for revenge against Rome, he falls prey to temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane. When he draws a sword and tries to kill for Jesus, Jesus makes it clear that to kill for him is to deny him and to abandon him.

Jesus expects more from his followers. Even when it seems impossible, Jesus still calls us at least to strive for the same spiritual strength against temptation that he demonstrates in the wilderness. And how do we do that? Especially when we’re famished, anxious, and vulnerable?

In the wilderness, Jesus has been fasting from protein and carbs. And when weakened by hunger and tempted to live a life at the mercy of devilish appetites, he reaches into his spiritual pantry and brings out scripture.

When tempted to turn rocks into bread—that is, to reduce the Creation to a mere commodity to be exploited—Jesus says, “One does not live by bread alone.” We’re more than our wants and needs, he says. We’re children of God. And God is trustworthy.

Then Jesus is tempted to reach not just for political power, but for domination. To rule the world, all he has to do is sell his soul to The Author of Lies, and everything will be under his feet. But that will make him just another Caesar or Herod, and just another pawn on the devil’s chessboard.

“Worship [and serve only] the Lord your God,” says Jesus. The strength and influence that matter come from grateful and humble devotion to God alone.

Maybe Old Scratch doesn’t like being down 2-0. So, he cherry picks a line from Psalm 91, a song about God never letting anything bad happen to God’s faithful ones. That pipe dream has never ever been part of anyone’s faith experience. Nor is the poet encouraging anyone to jump off of a building. He’s reminding us that, come what may—bitter suffering or blessed peace—God is faithfully present and can be trusted to see us through even the most painful experiences, and to redeem them.

Trust God in all things, says Jesus. But don’t test God. Common sense is an overlooked spiritual gift.

At his temptation, Jesus demonstrates that scripture provides what the five food groups cannot—resources for living a life according to that foundational prayer: “Not my will but yours be done.”

Now, of course human beings need food, shelter, and clothing. We need structures for our communities and people to lead them. And while human systems inevitably change or even fall apart and get replaced by new arrangements, they can also succumb to temptation and become structures of authoritarianism, manipulation, and violence—just like Rome, who had gained global power and was abusing both that power and the people.

The story also shows us that the constant in creation is God. When taken as a whole, scripture feeds us the same nourishing promise, the promise that:

God is not only in the beginning, but before the beginning, and beyond the end.

God is in Abram’s and Sarah’s search for home and belonging.

God is in Joseph’s sojourn in Egypt.

God is in Moses’ struggles to discover faith and faithful leadership.

God is in the Hebrews’ own wilderness wanderings and temptations.

God is in the voice of David the poet even more so than in David the king.

God is in Israel’s every heartbreaking exile and in every blessed return.

God is in the birth of Mary’s child in Bethlehem, and in the young man’s words and actions.

God is in the midst of that confusing Thursday night, that terrible Friday, that desolate Saturday, and that altogether new and mystifying Sunday morning.

When weakened by hunger, fear, or grief, human beings often wrestle with the temptation to think and act selfishly. So, even now, God is calling us into the scriptures to strengthen our hearts and minds so that when we face temptation, we have the spiritual reserves to follow Jesus who leads us through those trials and leads us in the ways of God’s will—ways of peace and self-emptying love.

“When the devil had finished every test,” says Luke, “he departed from [Jesus] until an opportune time.”

That says to me that temptation is a way of life. And when we face it, especially on those dismal, famished, Gethsemane nights, come what may, God is there.

Let’s remember Peter once again. After trying to kill for Jesus, Peter—whom Jesus nicknamed Rock—denies Jesus, repeatedly, in the most straightforward way, saying, I do not know him!

Nonetheless, Peter, the disciple who argued God’s will with Jesus, who attempted to kill for Jesus, and who denied and abandoned Jesus—the disciple who gave in to every temptation—that granite-skulled disciple becomes one rock Jesus does turn into bread.

Christ or Mascot? (Sermon)

 Christ or Mascot?

Psalm 100 and 1Corinthians 3:1-8

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

6/2/24

 

¹Make a joyful noise to the Lord,

all the earth.
²Serve the Lord with gladness;
    come into his presence with singing.

³Know that the Lord is God.
    It is he who made us, and we are his;
    we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.

⁴Enter his gates with thanksgiving
    and his courts with praise.
    Give thanks to him; bless his name.

⁵For the Lord is good;
    his steadfast love endures forever
    and his faithfulness to all generations. (NRSV)

 

After all the introductory niceties, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians cuts right to the point: Y’all aren’t getting along, he says, because you’re fussing over loyalties to people who are not Jesus.

I wonder if the Corinthians, as ancient Greeks, were so used to having a smorgasbord of gods to choose from, that every time things got difficult, they went looking for something more satisfying on the buffet. And now, their faith community is fraying because some of them recognize only the authority of Paul, The Apostlewho planted the church. Others recognize only Apollos, who was smart and a great speaker, and whom Paul left to lead the congregation. Some lean toward Peter, who was intense and a direct link to Jesus. And apparently, some say they follow Jesus, who, it seems, was just one more item on the menu.

Lovingly distressed, Paul calls out the Corinthians for having grown so divided that they no longer experience Christ, much less represent his body. The Apostle challenges the Corinthians to understand that the gospel may sound a bit ridiculous at first. Remember, Paul tells them, that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise…[and] what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” And Jesus had said that to find one’s live, lose it. How does all that work?

Paul wants the people to understand that, the longer one follows Jesus and his topsy-turvy gospel, the more one needs a well-practiced and mature spirituality—a spirituality balanced by contemplation and humble service. Then, in the thirteenth chapter of this same letter, Paul writes one of his most memorable passages, the passage that concludes, “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three: and the greatest of these is love.” (1Cor. 13:13)

Love is the origin and the goal of faith and hope because, as Richard Rohr says, We can never truly know God. We can only love God. And that’s all God asks.¹ Paul urges the Corinthians to recognize that while they may be on the way to beginning to understand that truth, they need to grow up. They need to mature into agape love before it can become their truth.

With that context in mind, let’s listen for God’s Word.

 

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. ²I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, ³for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? ⁴For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?

⁵What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. ⁶I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. ⁷So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. ⁸The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. (NRSV)

 

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

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

Let’s remember that Paul used to persecute Christians. He turned his Pharisaic fears into judgment, anger, and violent aggression toward followers of Jesus. Now he nurtures and leads them as a brother, and as a servant. To make that transformation, Paul himself, like a seed, died with Christ, and was raised, by God, to new life in Christ. So, he has unique authority to say that when followers of Jesus look for hope and redemption in anything besides Christ, they’re seeking comfort in what we might call mascots.

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

As immeasurably different as the first and twenty-first centuries are, much about human relationships remains the same. The Corinthians’ competing loyalties to Paul and Apollos mirror the divisions we experience in our contemporary jealousies and quarrels. Human beings have always been driven by our obsessions with power and security. And through the eons our cultures have relied on brutality and intimidation to achieve those ends.

Since the fourth century, when Constantine legalized Christianity and Theodosius I made Christianity Rome’s official religion, the Church has fully participated in devotion to worldly mascots. And since misappropriated love is just another name for fear, the history of the Church has always included not only division, but destruction of things God creates and loves. The Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust are marquee examples of our corporate sin.

As members of that Church, we must confess that we have participated in and benefited from the Church’s state-sanctioned, fear-driven jealousies, quarrels, and power-grabs.

“Power is of two kinds,” said Gandhi. “One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective than [power] derived from fear of punishment.”²

While Gandhi wasn’t Christian, there’s an unmistakable harmony between him and Paul on the matter of all-embracing, all-redeeming, fear-defying love.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to be boldly different from the world around us while remaining lovingly engaged with it, as well. We’re called to be servants who have a “common purpose” even when we get sideways with each other. Our common purpose, as workers in God’s garden, is to receive and share the eternal love of the One who creates and redeems us.

We’re called to be a community of yeast, a ferment in the world according to Jesus’ ways of mercy, justice, and peace.

We experience unity not by coalescing around the same, rigid doctrines, but by holding the inevitable tensions of living in community with love, because love is “patient [and] kind…[it’s] not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude…[love] does not insist on its own way…[it’s] not irritable or resentful…[and love] bears…believes…hopes…and endures all things.” (1Cor. 13:4-7)

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

Thanks be to God.

 

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

²https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/78373-power-is-of-two-kinds-one-is-obtained-by-the

June 2024 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

         As I continue to reflect on my upcoming departure from JPC and from congregational ministry, one biblical story keeps coming to mind. In Deuteronomy 32-34, Moses sings the swansong of his leadership of the Hebrews. He blesses the people. Then he dies on Mt. Nebo. From that mountain peak, in the land of Moab, Moses could see Canaan—the Promised Land—but he would never enter it.

         Now, in no way am I claiming Moses-caliber leadership. Over the last 28 years, I did the best I could. Mostly. But I’m no Moses. And, no, I don’t plan to die. Yet. I expect to keep moving just like you. Though in what capacity I don’t yet know.

         What I am saying is that, like Moses, most pastors experience Mt. Nebo moments—revelatory moments at which they can see, on the horizon, a future they know will forever remain beyond their reach. They recognize that new territory as one charged with unmet challenges and unrealized possibility. And while it’s a land toward which they have been leading God’s people, it’s also a land into which others will be called and equipped to lead those same people. Through Moses’ story and my own experience, I’ve also learned that leaders of all kinds may achieve specific goals, but they never really complete the work. They simply hand it off to new generations—like Moses handing off the leadership of the Hebrews to Joshua.

         My prayer is that, during my time with you, I have cooperated with the Holy Spirit faithfully enough to have helped you—a vibrant, blessed-to-be-a-blessing faith community—to recognize your new threshold.

I have tried to preach and teach Jesus and a Jesus-following faith.

I have tried to emphasize God’s incarnate love and reconciling grace not as soft words on which to rest, but as compelling and empowering antidotes to the world’s thunderous din of selfishness, fear, and violence.

I have tried to guide you to a sustained and sustaining sense God’s presence with you and purposes for you in this particular place and time.

And I pray that you sense the future as a realm of possibility and hope.

         While Mt. Nebo is an actual location in the Kingdom of Jordan, it’s place in Moses’ story makes it a metaphor, as well. From any mountain summit, we can only travel downhill, with the force of gravity fueling our steps. And on that journey, we can move toward the new horizon, or we can fall backward toward some familiar and comfortable default. That is to say, toward the past. And gravity can pull us back toward the past as surely as it can urge us forward into the future. The past is a rich storehouse of memories that can define and guide us. So, while it deserves to be remembered with gratitude and piercing honesty, we can never return to the past. In the grand scheme, there is no “again” that can hold us.

         In love, God can and does hold us. And in that love, God calls us forward, creating the future as an eternal realm of ever-expanding, ever-demanding, ever-welcoming, ever-redeeming grace.

         As I say my goodbyes to you over this coming month, and as our relationship shifts from pastor/parishioner to neighbor/neighbor, I pray that your memories of the last 13+ years help you to focus your gaze on the future. And while the specific twists and turns of the path toward that territory lie beyond my sight, I fully trust the Spirit to provide leaders to move you forward. I also trust that all of us—you on your path, and Marianne and me on ours—will be accompanied by Jesus.

         I am now, and will forever be, grateful to each of you and to Jonesborough Presbyterian.

 

         Peace,

                  Pastor Allen