Who Are You (Sermon)

“Who Are You?”

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/2/12

         Jesus has crossed the sea and gone to Gennesaret – again. To hang out with Gentiles – again. Some Pharisees and scribes show up. They have followed Jesus to Gentile country to catch him failing to live as a good Jew – again.

         This time the Pharisees take offense at Jesus’ disciples eating with defiled hands. Now understand, the Pharisees are not worried about those hands being “dirty.” The Pharisees and scribes watch as these self-affirming, practicing Jews press the flesh with Gentiles, and then sit down to eat without so much as a glance toward the heavens.

         This outrages the purists. Eating is more than a necessity of life. Eating is a revelatory, community event. Table fellowship is stir-fried in the oil of holiness because it is a moment in which human beings profess their absolute and grateful dependence on God’s gracious provision. We do not control the mystery that makes the earth grow the beans. All we can do is plant the seeds and bake the casserole. In ways more obvious than circumcision, kosher food laws distinguish God’s chosen people and remind them that they are a unique reminder of God.

         When we hear the Pharisees and scribes ask Jesus why his disciples so flagrantly dismiss Jewish custom, we can rephrase their question in three words: “Who are you?”

It is a matter of identity.

         Did any of you ever have a parent or grandparent tell you, as you left the house, “Now, remember who you are!”? To be sure, parents and grandparents often season that phrase with the salt of guilt. So, if we do forget who we are, maybe that salt will sting us with a reminder. When that admonition wells up from a heart that fears its own embarrassment, it becomes a kind of defilement. It tends to do more harm than good. But it can come from a place of love and belonging. In that case it reminds us that who we are is not a matter of laws that bind us, but of the community to which we are bound.

         In one respect, our present state of being, with all our flaws and foibles, is “who we are.” But the Gospel declares this to be an incomplete truth. It is incomplete because who we are cannot be separated from who we are becoming. So Paul writes to the church at Corinth: “If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”(2 Corinthians 5:17)

That new creation is a process. We are who we are becoming in Christ.

         I think the confrontation at Gennesaret is a clash between the traditional but fixed understanding of who we are as defined by the Law, and the unfolding understanding of who we are in our Christmas-Easter-Pentecost becoming.

         Now, the Pharisees deserve some credit. They serve as recipients and stewards of a tradition that aims to help Yahweh’s followers maintain a distinctive identity in a wildly seductive world. If that identity fades, Israel cannot fulfill her God-given purpose of serving as source and reminder of holy blessing.

         The Pharisees’ question comes from a place of deep commitment. Who they are as Jews is tied closely to what they do. Understanding this, Jesus turns the question back at them.

‘Well, just who are you?’ he says. ‘You act like a bunch of actors who are stuck in a script of your own creation. But your script…it’s kind of boring. It has no story line. It's all grammar, make-up, and mood lighting.

         ‘We may be in a script,’ says Jesus, ‘but it’s God’s script. And God’s script is a story, an open-ended journey. And neither God’s story nor our participation in it can be bound by any static tradition.

         ‘Bless your hearts, he says, ‘the Law has hemmed you in so tight, you're little more than the fear that you feel at any given moment. You've given up on Exodus. You're stuck at Sinai. You've stopped becoming the people that God calls and equips you to become.

         ‘Now listen,’ he says. ‘It's not what you fence out that makes you who you are. It's the outpouring of faithfulness or foulness from within that makes the difference. You reveal who you are and who you are becoming through your love for family, neighbor, enemy, and earth, through the ways you laugh at their joy and weep at their pain.’

         As followers of Jesus, you and I are not the rules we keep. We are the organic faith, hope, and love we enjoy and share.

         The World does not much care for real Jesus-followers. They’re dangerous, subversive. The World is okay with church folk, though. It is okay with folks who abide by rules and hierarchies and who impose such things on others by force of fear. The World is okay with folks who give to charity without asking why systemic inequities and dehumanizing poverty even exist. And The World seems to love it when church folk make their religion and nationalism synonymous.

         It is to this church folk part of each of us that Jesus refers when he quotes Isaiah, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

         When we open to the Christ within us, when we set out on the path of becoming rather than settling for the stagnant “is-ness” of who we “are,” The World will try to discredit or even silence us, because Jesus threatens the status quo of bankrupt power and violent injustice.

         Out of a becoming heart, there arises the identity-affirming, kingdom-revealing grace of God. Out of a becoming heart there arises courage to speak and live a world-transforming truth.

         We know some of the familiar names and stories: St. Francis of Assisi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, Gandhi, Malala Yousafzai – people who looked the beast in the eye and called it out. And their courage continues to inspire us.

Rather than one of these stories, this morning I share with you a prayer by Ted Loder, a now-retired United Methodist pastor and transformational preacher. As I read this prayer, from Loder’s book Guerillas of Grace, examine your own life, and imagine the ways that God is challenging you to be and become more fully who you are as a human being grounded in Christ.

And remember, God is not through with you.

You are still becoming.

“Go with Me in a New Exodus”

O God of fire and freedom,
deliver me from my bondage

to what can be counted
and go with me in a new exodus

toward what counts,

but can only be measured

in bread shared

and swords become plowshares;

in bodies healed

and minds liberated;

in songs sung

and justice done;

in laughter in the night

         and joy in the morning;

in love through all seasons

and great gladness of heart;
in all people coming together

and a kingdom coming in glory;

in your name being praised

and my becoming an alleluia,
through Jesus the Christ.¹

¹Ted Loder, Guerillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle, Augsburg Books, Minneapolis, 1981. p. 117.

Mystic Fear (Sermon)

“Mystic Fear”

Psalm 111

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/23/15

         In chapter nine of his book A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren quotes a Walter Brueggemann essay entitled, “Poetry in a Prose-Flattened World.” In that essay Brueggemann writes: “The gospel is…a truth widely held, but a truth greatly reduced. It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane. Partly, the gospel is simply an old habit among us, neither valued nor questioned. But more than that, our technical way of thinking reduces mystery to problem, transforms assurance into certitude, [and] revises quality into quantity…”¹

         Throughout chapter nine, McLaren carefully exposes the faith community’s understandable tendency to rely on the tangible and repeatable technicalities of reason to bring some kind of order to the wildly varied ideas about that subjective Truth some of us choose to call God. But God defies reason.

As an unverifiable reality, God cannot be explained through logic. The best we can do is to express our encounters and involvements with God. Nor is God containable. God cannot be housed, only inhabited. And to do that, say McLaren, Brueggemann, and others, we need the poet, the psalmist, the artist.

About a century ago, G. K. Chesterton wrote: “The poet only asks to get his head in the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And…his head…splits.”² Brueggemann adds that when we try to reduce God to a manageable project, “There is then no danger, no energy, no possibility, no opening for newness!³ The poet behind Psalm 111 would probably say that when one tries to reduce God to something reasonable and manageable, there is no “fear.” And without that poetic, mystic fear, there can be no wisdom.

Collectively, psalmists demonstrate that the appropriate response to the Mystery called God is not logically-argued doctrines, but lively praise. And praise takes many forms. It is far more than soaring Alleluias. As books like Genesis and Exodus, Samuel and Kings, and all four gospels illustrate, sacred storytelling is memorable and transforming praise. Serving, witnessing, and loving as we are loved also constitute praise. Whether offering celebration or lament, psalmists and other spiritual poets praise God, as well.

Now, praise is not political rhetoric screaming, “My god is greater than your god!” In its purest form, praise expresses humble and grateful awe. It is that high road where we stand before an incomprehensible Creator offering, as Anne Lamott says, the only prayers that matter: Help! Thanks! and Wow!⁴ Through praise we put speech to speechlessness.

As speakers of praise, poets caress words into images the way painters spread colors and textures onto canvas. So when the psalmist suggests the odd pairing of “fear of the Lord” and the gift of wisdom, he asks us to imagine much more than feeling afraid and being clever. He asks us to allow ourselves to be drawn to the very limits of human experience. He invites us to stand right up close to the fire, to swim as far from shore as we dare. He invites us to love our enemy, to pray for those who persecute us, to lose everything about our lives that feels safe, secure, and certain so that we might discover our true selves and our deepest and broadest fullness.

The last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark, the so-called longer ending, are almost universally recognized as an addition to the original work. This addendum encourages the followers of Jesus to do irrational things like handling deadly snakes and drinking poison. I will never commend such endeavors as true devotion, but I am beginning to hear the poetry in them. They invite us to imagine ourselves engaging the mystic fear that ushers us toward the limits of trust. We may not survive all those limits, but only on such a journey do we discover a truth without which we may never truly live.

Think of it this way: If our primary objective as the Church is to get everyone to believe certain doctrines and to be “good,” the most dangerous thing we will teach our kids to handle is pizza! I cannot imagine the psalmist imaging junk food as the food God provides for “those who fear him.”

The psalmist, like Jesus himself, invites us to far more than mere “belief” in God. These and other mystics dare us to live differently in, with, and for the Creation. They challenge us not simply to regurgitate pious platitudes or to shovel money at causes. They dare us to live dangerously. They goad us to discover joy and to share hope by following the Spirit to the boundaries of personal comfort and common sense.

Don’t just tell someone that God cares for widows and orphans, says Jesus. Show them! Go to the least of these. Listen to them. Eat with them. Suffer with them. In person. And in my name.

In a “prose-flattened world,” we will choose not to follow Jesus where he leads. We will choose, instead, to memorize information and call that faith.

In a “prose-flattened world,” we will not just rationalize entitlement and systematize prejudice, we will declare that excess is a sign of God’s favor and that injustice reflects God’s judgment.

In a ‘prose-flattened world,” we will settle into the reasonable illusions of safety, separateness, and certitude. And we will call that “heaven.”

But God calls us to be poets in a suffering Kingdom of God. God calls the Church to be a sign of shalom in the chaos. When people of faith isolate ourselves inside comfortable, “prose-flattened” boundaries, our poetry loses all substance. Praise, then, becomes a kind of denial – like a child sticking his fingers in his ears and shouting, “I can’t hear you!”

The realm of mystic fear is the realm of faith. In a life of mystic fear, we take all manner of chances for the sake of both receiving and offering the kind of fearless Love embodied in Jesus of Nazareth. Once again, it boils down to the Love called agape. When the psalmist speaks of fear, he means self-emptying, limit-testing, awestruck Love.

To live in Love with and for one another in our suffering, and to live with and for the Creation in its suffering – this is to follow Jesus. This is to practice wisdom and to learn true understanding.

¹Brian D. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, Zondervan, 2004, pp.161-162.

²Ibid., p. 165.

³Ibid., p. 162.

⁴Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, Riverhead, 2012.

The Ins and Outs of Wisdom (Sermon)

“The Ins and Outs of Wisdom”

1Kings 3:3-15

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/16/15

         David is dead. And in spite of his foibles, the king will still be remembered as “The Great King David.” Apparently, our particular sins and shortcomings matter less than the grace with which we recognize our community-damaging selfishness. What people remember is how we turn back toward thoughts and actions that are, at the same time, faithful to our own individuality and faithful to God’s purposes in and for creation. It seems to me, that from the beginning, God’s purposes have to do with creative, well-spirited relationships.

         “Then the Lord God said, ‘it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’” (Gen. 2:18) And God adds to the creation “every living creature.” When dogs and cats, and birds and bees are not enough, God adds more human beings.

         The psalmist understands this, too: “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity…For there the Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore.” (Psalm 133:1, 3b)

         The story of Jesus’ temptation illustrates his commitment to a life of faithful relationships. The Beatitudes and the entire Sermon on the Mount are all about right relationship with God and the creation. Jesus makes it explicit when he condenses the Torah to: Love God and Love neighbor.

         And the whole idea of the Trinity is that God is in eternal relationship with God’s own Self. God is, by nature, relationship.

         Not long after assuming the throne, Solomon goes to sleep one night. Imagine the pressure he feels. He is relatively young. He succeeds his “great” father, and inherits a reunited Israel and Judah. How can he possibly rise to the occasion?

         As Solomon sleeps, his own deepest, widest, highest wholeness, his own God-shaped soul confronts him with the unnerving question: What do you need to become the best king that you can be? What do you need, individually, to be a blessing for Israel and for all creation?

         The question is not about filling some void in Solomon. Like all dreams, it comes as an invitation to give thanks for what is already true about the dreamer – even if he or she has yet to recognize it. Solomon’s in-spired self, his own God-breathed holiness reveals the already-given gift, the gift of wisdom. Solomon must claim this gift not for his own benefit, but for the well-being of the community and its relationships.

         Wisdom, like a sense of humor, like compassion, like empathy and forgiveness, is one of the border collies of grace. These gifts are Love at work bringing people together. Wisdom helps to create community by gathering the personal and collective experiences of happiness and sorrow, success and failure, faith and despair, wholeness and brokenness, and compiling them into a realistic hope based on the understanding that every human being represents an invaluable and irreplaceable expression of God’s joy. Not everyone sees that giftedness in himself or herself, of course. And when we do not see it in ourselves, we usually fail to see it in others. Accordingly, we tend to treat our mis-valued neighbors as either disposable means to our own selfish ends. Or we treat them as impediments to our own materialistic happiness.

         Solomon’s father, David, treats Bathsheba as a tool of personal satisfaction. And that eventually means having to treat her husband, Uriah, as an impediment. But when the prophet Nathan calls David to the carpet, the king hears, confesses, and repents.

In contrast, Solomon’s brother Absalom treats pretty much everyone as a tool or an impediment for his own mercenary schemes. And he does so to such extremes that in his unrepentant vanity and greed, he and his big hair become his own worst impediment.

         With all these memories playing in his head, Solomon hears God calling him toward a path of greatness that could exceed his father’s achievements and influence. It could dwarf his brother’s wildest and most gluttonous fantasies. And it terrifies him.

         ‘Lord, help me!’ he prays. “I do not know how to go out or come in.”

         Going out and coming in are good metaphors for the spiritual life. “In and out” can be also be expressed as ascending/descending, moving left/moving right, submerging/floating, even going to sleep and waking up. The movement is back and forth, between the outer/conscious world and the inner/unconscious world. To move between the conscious and unconscious is to occupy the otherwise invisible, but expansive space between them. The familiar word for this is prayer.

         In his very fertile and cooperative unconscious, Solomon commits himself to lead Israel through a life of prayer. He seems to know that he cannot lead all those outside him without bring order to his vast, interior self, to the entire “chosen [and] great people’ within.

         As I have mentioned before, I have done a little dream work, and one thing I learned is that everything in a dream – every person, place, vehicle, animal, geological feature, weather condition, everything – represents some aspect of the dreamer. I remember sharing a dream with a Jungian analyst, and in my dream there are all these people, folks I know in waking life and folks I do not. We are all in a basement.

“Wow,” said my analyst. “You really have a lot of personality, a lot of diversity and energy down in your unconscious!”

         I am convinced that, like Solomon, we all have deep layers of holiness as part of our natural, God-imaged humanity. Wholeness as human beings comes to us, at least in part, through intentional relationship with all of that stuff, both the good and bad. Within each of us lies a deeply textured landscape over which “the wind from God” (Genesis 1:2) broods in creative, redeeming Love. From that wildly mystical place comes the God-initiated prayer called dreaming. I think that this is where we learn to do the formative and transformative, in and out travel that leads to spiritual gifts like wisdom.

And messianic courage.

         The four canonical gospels remember only a tiny bit of Jesus’ ministry, and far less of his entire life. They are a very selective and subjective memory, and they do not always agree on just what Jesus does and says, or exactly who is with him in key moments. All four gospels do, however, remember him constantly going out and coming in. The IN is always solitary prayer or private communion with his disciples. The OUT is always to teach, preach, heal, or to deal lovingly and boldly with those who fear and oppose him. Jesus’ courage for living a gracious, outer life comes from his Solomon-like commitment to creating space for disciplined, inner experience.

         We all have spiritual gifts. I think God grants them for us to enjoy, but they are for more than our own benefit. To discover them, and to “comprehend…the breadth and length and height and depth” (Ephesians 3:18) of these gifts, we pray and dream our way into active, for-the-sake-of relationship with our selves, with our neighbors, and, thus, with God. To hoard spiritual gifts for our own material benefit is to live the violent, destructive, lonely life of an Absalom, or a Pharisee, or a “rich young ruler.”

No one is beyond the reach of grace. Whether we remember our dreams or not, we all receive these God-given prayers. Through our spiritual disciplines, our intentional acts of coming in and going out we discover our own wisdom. By coming in and going out we receive our particular gifts and bring them to bear on the creation as well-spirited relationships lived with and for the world within and the world without.

One of my prayers is that each of us discovers this in such a way that we look for and give thanks for the giftedness of those around us rather than quietly assessing the relative correctness of doctrine or what side of what issue someone holds.

One is about creating community; the other is about erecting boundaries.

One is about forming relationships of Love; the other is about circling wagons in fear.

One is the spiritual gift of wisdom.

And as Solomon knows, wisdom can make all the difference.

Insure Tennessee: A Moral Perspective (Written for a Town Hall Meeting)

Insure Tennessee: A Moral Perspective*

*I wrote the following piece and delivered it at a "Town Hall" meeting at the Jonesborough Visitors' Center on Tuesday, August 11, 2015. It represents a bit of a diversion from my normal posts, because it addresses a public policy program. But the issue of morality and how we treat one another in public deliberation and debate is crucial in this and every age. I also include it because these few words represent many hours of utterly invaluable conversation with my dad, Dr. Thomas Huff, whose years of study and careful thought in the field of "practical thanksgiving" has shaped the way I preach, lead session meetings, visit with parishioners, and try to approach life in general. I thank God for you, Dad.

 

I have been asked to share my opinion regarding morality and Governor Haslam’s proposed Insure Tennessee.

Included in this program’s first-tier objectives is the provision of support for those whom the earth’s major religions refer to variously as “the poor,” “the needy,” “widows and orphans,” “the least of these,” and so forth. And many, if not most, secular ideologies recognize the virtues of The Golden Rule, versions of which have helped to shape the ethics of countless theologies and philosophies in every age and place.

Morality is most commonly understood as the relative “rightness” or “wrongness” of specific actions. And I certainly believe that showing compassion toward our neighbors, particularly toward those in need, fits under the broad heading of a “right act.” Because of this, it seems straightforward to me to affirm the fundamental morality of Insure Tennessee.

If only it were that easy. As we have acknowledged, Insure Tennessee is a government program. And a state legislature with a republican majority is being asked to accept and appropriate funds made available by a democratic federal administration.

To say that there is “reservation” is like saying that when Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier stepped into the ring there was “tension.”

My point is this: Until we who support and we who oppose a program like Insure Tennessee – until WE commit ourselves to living together and to extending to each other the same compassion that long-standing rules of human decency call us to demonstrate toward those in need, the “issue” may never become specific enough to reflect its moral basis.

It will remain a general issue of conflict, and thus an issue of power. And when power is the goal, the truly powerless, voiceless, and invisible ones almost always lose.

It seems to me, that if Insure Tennessee is to become an impactful moral issue, the entire community called the State of Tennessee, including republicans, democrats, green partiers, tea partiers, and everyone else, all of us will have to seek the moral courage to work together with respect for one another as well as with compassion for those in need. One goal of such an approach is for as many of us as possible to look at a decision and to be able to say, in whatever way, “Thank God we did that.” If that is, indeed, a goal we want, I think we will have to deliberate from within the framework of intentional gratitude. And we have much to be grateful for.

I think we can be grateful that we have resources available to address the undeniable challenges of uninsured neighbors from Mountain City to Memphis.

I think we can be grateful that our governor has had the foresight and taken the initiative to act on behalf of these vulnerable neighbors.

I think we can be grateful that, as a state, we have the autonomy to craft a policy to fit our specific needs.

I think we can be grateful that we have a diversity of opinion gathered here this evening. We have at least the opportunity to learn from each other.

Finally, I think that if we will risk a daring relocation, if we will choose to move from living according to the more polarizing means of competition, distrust, and fear and to begin living in the open-ended community of cooperation and compassion, or what my dad likes to call “practical thanksgiving,” many others will be made grateful, and for many different reasons.

So yes, in my personal opinion, Insure Tennessee reflects a well-spirited intent of the general will to live well together in a healthier community for all by tending to the well-being of specific individuals. To me, that makes it a “right” and, therefore, moral action.

But I also think that it has to be a moral issue in its deliberation first. And to me, that means that we look at those around us, especially at the particular people with whom we disagree. We give thanks for them. We listen and speak with respect. And by respect I don’t mean simply that someone’s “opinion matters.” I mean that we recognize that that particular person is invaluable. He or she is an irreplaceable human being. Together then, we imagine our common future. Only from that place can we act in ways that will sow seeds of gratitude, compassion, justice, and hope in, with, and for the entire community.

O Absalom! (Sermon)

“O Absalom!”

2 Samuel 18

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/9/15

         Absalom is David’s son. So one can really feel the pathos in David’s lament. In fact, it is enough to make most of us want to grab someone we love and hold on for dear life.

There is more to the story, though. Absalom’s death is no isolated tragedy. It represents a culmination of years of one family’s lustful treacheries, incestuous violence, poisonous revenge, and shameless treason. And all this dysfunction stems from the family’s basic bankruptcy: Their failure to learn the admittedly difficult, but life-giving and healing and art of forgiveness.

         Let’s remember highlights from the backstory.

         Not long after David claims kingly power, power claims the king. Upon seeing the beautiful Bathsheba, David sends servants to find out who she is. He learns that she is the wife of Uriah, one of one of David’s military leaders.

‘Bring her to me, anyway,’ says the king.

A month later, Bathsheba sends word to David that she is pregnant. David immediately sends for Uriah, planning to get the husband to enjoy a little R&R at home with the wife, thereby covering the king’s entitlement-fueled betrayal. Faithful to his fellow soldiers and oblivious to the state of affairs, Uriah refuses to take time for things his men cannot enjoy. Desperate, David arranges a front-line assignment for the cuckolded warrior. Had Uriah volunteered for that post, it would have been a suicide mission. On David’s order, it becomes murder.

Later, when David’s children are grown, his son Amnon takes a shine to his own half-sister, Tamar, who is a full sister to Absalom. With the help of his servants, Amnon orchestrates some alone time with Tamar. After forcing himself on his sister, Amnon does the predictable thing. He throws Tamar out with duplicitous loathing.

In a cruel culture that faults women for suffering sexual violence, Tamar must take a profound risk. She must reveal her shame to someone – someone with enough power either to protect her or kill her. She tells her brother, Absalom. He takes her in, and immediately begins to plot the assassination of Amnon.

         With Tamar’s defilement irrevocably avenged, Absalom must flee Jerusalem. Three years later, David invites Absalom to return, but it takes the father two more years to welcome his fratricidal son back into his presence, and to offer forgiveness. The two meet, but it is too little, too late. David’s forgiveness only releases Absalom to his next mischief.

         Finally free to move about, the stunningly handsome and charismatic Absalom begins a subversive campaign. He tells disaffected Israelites, Boy-O-Boy, if I were king, I’d sure take better care of you than David does.

(Is it just me, or does that sound familiar right now?)

After four years, the son asks the father for permission to go to Hebron so that he might make good on a promise to God. It is a ruse, of course. At Hebron, the site of David’s anointing, Absalom gathers a majority of Hebrews and declares himself king of Israel.

         Outnumbered now, David flees Jerusalem. After two-and-a-half chapters of political espionage and prophetic intrigue, we get to the story of Absalom’s brutal execution.

Staring up at the ravaged, lifeless body of the king’s son swinging from a tree by his thick hair, Joab, one of David’s principal commander, who has just done what David publically asked him not to do, sends a lowly Cushite to break the news. Messengers who bring the report of a king’s personal tragedy are often killed. But hearing of his son’s death, all David can do is to heave his cries of overpowering grief and devastating guilt.

         “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

         There is a fascinating observation in this story. It invites reflection into the often furious realities of life. The storyteller informs us that when David’s and Absalom’s armies meet: “The battle spread over the face of all the country; and the forest claimed more victims that day than the sword.” (2 Samuel 18:8)

         The primordial forest of vengeance, envy, resentment, and greedy power reduces virtually everyone to predator and prey. And a combatant knows for sure which one he is only at the moment when he takes a life or loses his own. And if he survives that moment, everything may change the next.

         It seems to me that as long as individuals and communities choose to homestead in the disorienting forest of vengeance, envy, resentment, and greedy power, we will continue to deal violently and deviously with each other. As long as the powerful benefit from these fearful and one-sided arrangements, we will call them “good,” our Manifest Destiny. And we bequeath our arrogant and destructive ways from one generation to the next.

         References to “the sins of the fathers” begin in Exodus 20. The second commandment links inherited misery to the worship of idols – an idol being any tangible thing or personal bias which we elevate to the status of Mystery, and to which we grant creative or redemptive power. Kingly authority is an example.

         When Israel demands a king so that they will be “like other nations,” the prophet Samuel tries to talk them out of it.

Think carefully about this, he says. A king will only lead you deeper into the primordial forest of vengeance, envy, resentment, and greedy power. If you become like other nations, you will find yourselves demoted from God’s Image Bearers to predators and prey. Worldly kings live by fear and by sword. They will regard you and your children as Cushites, as renewable and expendable resources. But suit yourself.

When Absalom, David’s physically beautiful son, dies in that forest, something in all of Israel dies. “O my son Absalom…Would I had died instead of you!” David’s lament becomes God’s lament. From this moment on, Israel begins to realize, ever so slowly, that Yahweh is far more than a projection of their own jealous pride. She begins to realize that being chosen by Yahweh has nothing to do with being entitled. Yahweh has chosen Israel to serve as a visible witness to all of creation, a witness to the eternal strength of grace, a strength manifested most frequently, most memorably, and most transformingly in the gift of forgiveness.

         Forgiveness is not about dismissing past offenses and animosities. To give and receive forgiveness is to hitch our wagons to the open-ended future of Love.

         The first death and resurrection of Jesus happens at his temptation. After facing down his own internal David and Absalom, Jesus returns from the wilderness – from the primordial forest. He returns, cured of any desire to live as a fearful, vengeful predator.

         At that first resurrection, God cries, You are my son, my beloved son!

From that point on, Jesus lives as prey, and he does so willingly. To predators, his grace smells like weakness, so they come running. Yet even when the predators kill the Son, the Father reveals his relentless commitment to forgiving grace.

         And on Easter morning God cries, O Humanity, my child! I have died and risen that you might live! O Humanity, my child, my beloved child!

The Currency of the Kingdom (Sermon)

“The Currency of the Kingdom”

Isaiah 55:1-11

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

6/7/15

         Take a trip to the grocery store with me.

         It’s 1960-something. We are in Durham, NC. Mom has my little brother and me with her in the aisles of Winn Dixie.

         I am about four. My brother is one. He sits in the grocery cart seat, happily gnawing on one hand. Between the slobber and his runny nose, his chubby, round face shines like a full moon on a farm pond. It’s gross.

         I am standing on the bottom rack of the shopping cart and clinging to the side of the basket. I look like a lizard on a screen door.

         I have recently visited a friend whose mom made us some kind of chocolate drink. The drink comes in a tall, dark brown, plastic cup. It’s sealed on top and contains a little packet of chocolate powder inside. All one has to do is add milk. To a 4-year-old, this is a great wonder and mystery. It is water-into-wine.

         While riding the shopping cart, I spot a shelf full of those dark brown plastic cups. I leap down, run to the shelf and grab one. Mom says it’s okay and to put it in the cart, but I can’t wait that long. I want full possession of this chocolate miracle now.

         I tell Mom I’m going to the line where everyone has to stand before they leave the store with their groceries in paper bags.

         It’s 1960-something, so Mom says, “Okay.”

         I stand next to the black conveyor belt, and I hold on to my cup. I do not trust my treasure that disappearing counter top. When it’s my turn, I hand it to the lady standing behind the counter. She takes my brown cup and examines it with all the careless boredom of someone watching her fingernails grow. She reaches out and mashes a couple of buttons on an old cash register the size of an engine block. Then she slams the heel of her right hand on the long button on the right side of the register. The machine coughs and sputters, like it’s clearing its throat. Then it sighs.

         (I’m sorry young people. You can YouTube this, but you will never really appreciate it.)

         The cashier says some numbers to me. I learn that it has to do with money. It turns out that after the big machine clears its throat and sighs, and before you can leave with your groceries in a paper bag, you have to give money in exchange for those groceries. This is news to me. Apparently, without money, you can’t buy anything – at least not at Winn Dixie.

         “Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you have that have no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

         Since reality teaches us that to buy something means to exchange something of value for something else of value, Isaiah's invitation to “buy…without money” puts a little strain on our definitions, doesn’t it? The turn toward new revelation comes when Isaiah asks his rhetorical question: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”

         ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘do you spend precious resources on food that does not nourish, on material things that do not provide shelter and clothing, and on other fluff that does not help make your community and your world a better place for everyone?’

         ‘Come here!’ Isaiah says. ‘I’ll show you how to buy stuff for nothing.’ Then he calls up memories of King David. He reminds the people of who they are and what it means to be Israel. He reminds them that they have been chosen for covenantal relationship with Yahweh and each other for the sake of the creation.

         Then Isaiah issues a string of imperatives: Listen. Eat. Delight. Incline. Come. See. Seek. Call.

         When spoken with grace, imperatives not only make demands, they make commitments. When a doctor says, “Take this medication,” she commits herself to your continued care. When a teacher says, “Learn this lesson,” he commits himself to helping you understand both the information and why it is important.

         Isaiah’s imperatives make similar demands and commitments. He invites us to begin “buying into” a way of listening, seeing, and living that creates widespread gratitude and shalom. He presses us to discover the wealth of a currency that does not lose its value – the currency of faith.

         Faith is the currency of the kingdom. It is the spendable endowment that allows us to hear that while God’s thoughts and ways may surpass and confound us, God does not overlook or ignore us. God’s Word is God’s personal investment in the creation, an investment that continues to create something redeemingly new and gracious.

         The currency of the kingdom is unlike any human currency. There will be many times when we feel that we have exhausted all our resources of faith. Our account is empty. We may even begin to feel as if there never were anything or anyone to trust. Ironically, the way to gather new sources of this most valuable currency is to acknowledge one’s poverty in prayer, then to spend even more faith, with even greater abandon.

         Mother Teresa may be the most over-used sermon illustration in the last sixty years. And about ten years ago, when her private journals were published, her inspiration only deepened. Such was the case for me, anyway. In those writings she revealed her own devastating and heroic struggle with doubt. Is God real? Does God care? Do I matter? Such questions can destroy faith. They can also reveal that faith is a renewable resource that must be continually planted, harvested, and replanted.

In the midst of her struggles, Mother Teresa simply continued the servant work of Love and compassion. She continued to spend more and more faith energy loving the unlovable, touching the untouchable, all in all doing the unthinkable on behalf of others. Her life illustrates that the most reliable way to find faith is to splurge one’s spiritual currency with reckless generosity.

The economics of the kingdom are kind of screwy that way. While we may run out of its currency, we cannot overspend it.

         “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. [So trust me, says God.] My word…shall not return to me empty…it shall accomplish…the thing for which I sent it.”

         To our deep dismay, perhaps, God’s inscrutable thoughts and ways call us to spend our way into an abundance of trust. That’s what poverty of spirit and the promise of resurrection are all about.

         Come, then, and spend some of your kingdom currency at this table. Trust that in bread and wine you will be fed by the new life of Jesus, the Christ, our Host.

         Come and discover that for all you spend, you only have more of the very best that Love has to offer.

Charge/Benediction:

A clinical psychologist and Thomas Merton scholar, James Finley says, “If we are absolutely grounded in the absolute love of God that protects us from nothing even as it sustains us in all things, then we can face all things with courage and tenderness and touch the hurting places in others and in ourselves with love.”¹

May you spend your way, gratefully, into the kingdom of ever-deepening faith, hope, and Love.

¹http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Richard-Rohr-s-Meditation--John-of-the-Cross--Part-II--The-Dark-Night.html?soid=1103098668616&aid=iKJi6fcLP-I