The Way Down Is the Way Up (Sermon)

“The Way Down Is the Way Up”

Luke 14:1, 7-14 

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/28/16

         In his book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Richard Rohr explores a truth as old as humankind itself, but a truth that much of humankind tries with all its might to deny. “The way up is the way down,” says Rohr. “Or, if you prefer, the way down is the way up.”¹

         “It is not that suffering or failure might happen,” he says, “or that it will only happen to you if you are bad…or…unfortunate…or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from [it are] necessary and even good part[s] of the human journey.”²

         The biblical story serves as one long illustration of this truth. Think of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Joseph, the Hebrews in Egypt, Moses, David, John the Baptist, Peter, the rich young man, Paul, even Jesus. Indeed, scripture not only confirms that the way down is the way up, it offers this dependable reality as a kind of metaphor for God.

In his book Let Your Life Speak, the Quaker mystic and teacher Parker J. Palmer candidly shares his experience with depression. He speaks of finding the strength to face what he calls the “figure” that had hounded, tormented, and almost killed him. Much like one can turn to confront and receive a blessing from some monster in a dream, Palmer turned and asked the figure, “What do you want?”

And the figure said, “I want you to embrace this descent into hell as a journey toward selfhood – and a journey toward God.”³

         Palmer began learn that the way to God begins not by going “up” as he’d been taught to assume, but by turning downward. Taking the risk of going “underground,” as Palmer says, gives us the opportunity to learn that wholeness comes as the gift not of being “set apart or special or superior but [as the gift of a] mix of good and evil, darkness and light.”⁴

This downward rise includes the experience of being humbled. “For some of us,” says Palmer, “the path to humility…goes through humiliation, where we are brought low…stripped of pretenses and defenses. [Humiliation] allows us to grow from the ground up.”

Palmer equates this groundedness with what theologian Paul Tillich meant when referring to God as the “Ground of Being.”⁵ Tillich describes God as groundedness, rootedness, as the very Invitation to connection with the source and destination of all creation. To lose connection with the ground, the earth, and the creatures who share dependence upon it is to lose connection with God.

         Have you ever dreamed you were flying? Those are wonderful dreams – to feel lifted up, weightless, soaring above the earth. What occasionally happens in those dreams, though? We come crashing back down, don’t we? Dreams of flight usually warn us of a heart, mind, and soul caught in the throes of dangerous inflation – feelings of superiority, arrogance, invulnerability. Flight dreams indicate that a person is becoming disconnected from the earth, from the communities on the ground, and thus from God. The unnerving fall serves as God’s gracious gravity bringing us back to earth, humbling us back to awareness, not of our unworthiness but of our no better-no worse standing in relation to the rest of creation. To ignore this invitation sets us up for an all-too-public humbling when the host says, “You. Get up, and give this person your place.”

         The two parables in today’s reading may seem antithetical to what Jesus normally teaches. They appear to encourage a very shallow, self-serving humility, like a candidate trying to manipulate votes out of a demographic he or she has openly criticized or mocked. But I think these two parables have more in common with the parable of the heartless judge whom the woman must hound until justice is done. In that parable Jesus teaches that prayer is a discipline, a relationship that requires attention and intention. The more we pray, the more we feel connected to the Reality to whom we pray. Likewise, the more we do justice, the more just we become.

Jesus is teaching humility to the Pharisees the same way. It takes practice to accept and then to participate gratefully in the reality that groundedness in God means living in active and empathetic solidarity with the mentally, spiritually, physically, emotionally, and morally broken of the earth.

Remember, the Pharisees don’t get excluded from the banquet. Indeed, Jesus accepts their hospitality, and at the same time, he asks these high-flying dreamers to make room for those whom they have learned to consider “beneath” them.

         When grounded in the Ground of Being, the way down is the way up. Living that truth requires more than the occasional sprint at JAMA’s Food Pantry, Loaves and Fishes, or Family Promise. It’s a lifelong marathon of discipleship. Each day the effort begins anew by deliberately turning one’s heart toward humility. I think that’s why Jesus sounds like he’s encouraging the Pharisees to be humble for selfish benefit. He knows that the more one practices humility, the more humble one truly becomes – and the more humble, the more hospitable.

So, too, the more one practices kindness, the kinder one becomes – and the kinder, the more compassionate.

The more one practices gratitude, the more grateful one becomes – and the more grateful, the more generous.

The more one practices resurrection, the more alive and new one becomes – and the more alive and new, the more fearlessly loving.

         The more we practice all these virtues, the more like Jesus we become. And the more like Jesus we become, each according to our own gifts, the more we become the unique human beings God created us to be.

         Living as though the way up is the way up, the Pharisees have become disconnected from their neighbors, their true selves, and from God. Through these odd parables, Jesus teaches them that pride and prejudice among leaders creates a fractured and hostile community.

‘You’re better than this,’ he says. ‘And to enjoy the gifts of your true nature, you’ll have to learn to humble yourselves, even if you don’t really mean it at first.’

Poet Rainer Maria Rilke expresses this beautifully:

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing-
each stone, blossom, child –
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things teach us:
to fall,
patiently trusting our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.⁶

¹Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2011. p. xviii.

²Ibid. p. xx.

³Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2000. p. 69.

⁴Ibid. pp. 69-70.

⁵Ibid. pp.69-70

⁶Originally publish by Rainer Maria Rilke in his book Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Letters to God. Copied from: https://consciousmovements.com/how-surely-gravitys-law/

Do Over! (Sermon)

“Do Over!”

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/21/16

         Jeremiah is distraught. God has called him to speak bold truth to wayward Israel. He’s doing it, but it’s killing him.

Just prior to today’s reading, Jeremiah cries out, “My anguish! My anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart!” The prophet’s lament over Jerusalem recalls King David discovering his beloved but treacherous son Absalom hanging dead in a tree by his hair: “O my son Absalom,” he wails, “my son, my son Absalom! Would that I had died instead of you!”

         Out of that same tortured love, Jeremiah dares to name the people’s failings: foolishness, stupidity, willful denseness of heart and mind, and their conspicuous preference for evil over good.

         What if I sidestepped pastoral sensitivity and began to connect specific names with specific acts of selfishness, greed, pride, and idolatry right here at Jonesborough Presbyterian? For reasons that reveal my own selfishness, greed, pride, and idolatry, I won’t do that. After spewing such judgment, instead of crying for you, “My anguish! My anguish,” my lament would be, “My paycheck! My benefits!”

Besides, to go all Jeremiah on you would only allow you to protest about the “hot wind” coming from up here, “out of the bare heights.”

         Jeremiah’s ancient words hold relevance for contemporary speakers and listeners alike. He does not intend to anger or terrify people out of self-righteous indignation. As God’s servant, he preaches out of love for God’s people. That’s the heart of the matter: Love. God uses Jeremiah and his words like steel wool. The prophet’s job is to reveal the forgotten holiness beneath the tarnish. When Israel lives only for itself, the people sink deeper and deeper into suffering. And they drag the creation down with them. 

         Four times Jeremiah says, “I looked . . . and lo . . .” And each time his vision is one of the creation rolling backward, from order, and light, and abundance to a desert – a place of utter desolation.

         Spiritually speaking, we slog through deserts all the time. When we dis-order our priorities, we participate in foolishness, stupidity, lack of understanding, and preference for evil over good. When choosing such things over love, gratitude, and generosity, we, who are created in God’s image, begin to dry up and wither away. This is when God tends to step in with prophets like Jeremiah.

         Have you ever watched children sorting through the rules to some game? As they decide what they will require of each other, the game moves forward a little. But when a participant questions some rule or relationship, he or she will utter the traditional playground call for renewal: “Do over!”

         “I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking. And all the hills moved to and fro. I looked…and lo,” says God, ‘things are not as they should be.’

         “Do over!” says God.

         When things we know and are comfortable with come to an end, it may well be God’s judgment. But when God is behind the changes, an “ending” signals God’s new beginning.

         Relationships are almost always that way. As children begin to move into greater autonomy, the relationships they had with their parents do come to an end – and those endings can be terribly painful. But Wise Design also allows parents and children to enter new territory together. At first, that new territory feels dry and desolate. In time, though – if the parents are aware, humble, and patient enough – the whole family may begin to see the shape and beauty of the always new, and often frightening territory unfolding before them.

Tomorrow is a frontier, and each generation has no choice but to entrust it to those who come after us. Last week I heard someone say that we can’t turn “21^st century youth into 20^th century adults.” Part of our calling as the Church is to participate in the practical, nuts-and-bolts work of preparing each new generation for accepting their responsibility for preparing the next generation. The other part of our calling is to practice, to live the hope of a community who entrusts itself and the creation to a Do-Over God, a God who never ceases to be at work bringing to an end both our mistakes and all of our best efforts, anything that no longer reflects the grace of God and no longer effectively communicates the Love of Christ.

This may not serve as an apropos example, but it’s what’s on my mind right now. My Dad “retired” some 10-15 years ago, but he kept a number of patients with whom he had enjoyed close relationships for decades. About two years ago he had to call this remnant and release them to other endocrinologists. Ending those relationships was excruciating for him, and, I imagine, for some of the patients who had entrusted themselves to Dad.

By the painful necessity of a neurological condition that is not ALS but which acts like it, Dad’s medical career completely ended. And when it did, a whole new relationship opened up between him and me. A self-taught philosopher, Dad is particularly interested in, and has a very keen understanding of Aristotle. “I think Jesus read Aristotle,” he says.

Over the last couple of years, he and I have found common ground we never knew we had. Much of what he studies has implications for what I do. And our conversations have significantly influenced how I speak to and interact with you as pastor.

If there were any foolishness or lack of understanding in all of this, it would simply be that it took us so long to find this relationship. Even though the conversations are slow – these days, Dad’s participation happens one letter at a time on an iPad or computer keyboard – we have discovered a kind of oasis, a rich, fresh new beginning.

I know that at this point some will say, “Well see there, it happened for a reason. Everything does.” And I understand what they are trying to say, but I could not disagree more. In my opinion, that affirmation dismisses and trivializes not only Dad’s situation but all human suffering. And never will I trust or preach a god who causes human suffering. Purpose is the gift of the Holy One who shares our anguish, and who constantly reveals and exercises the power of Resurrection in and for a broken, hurting, and ever-changing world.

The judgment Jeremiah announces is painful for Israel, but not because God inflicts damage, but because God makes us aware of the damage we are doing. The desolation is our doing. And “yet,” says God, “I will not make a full end,” because you are capable of so much more.

God says the same thing through Isaiah: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly.” (Isaiah 35:1-2a)

A Gracious Arson (Sermon)

“A Gracious Arson”

Luke 12:49-56

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/14/16

         Early in Luke 12, Jesus tells the crowds, “Do not fear those who kill the body.” A little later he tells his disciples, “Do not worry about your life.” It all seems wishful thinking, though. When read straight through, chapters 12 and 13 of Luke can leave a person feeling terrified and anxious. Indeed, they convulse with Jesus’ own anguish.

         “I came to bring fire to the earth,” he says, and “division” rather than “peace.”

         “I have a baptism with which to be baptized,” he says, “and what stress I am under until it is completed!”

In this collection of teachings and interactions, we encounter Luke the artist. He’s not merely collating stories of Jesus. He’s writing his readers into a literary diorama. He surrounds us with images of the crushing immediacy of all that Jesus faces on his way to Jerusalem.

         In this climactic moment, Jesus declares himself God’s chosen arsonist, the one who comes to light a fire in the creation and to experience his own baptism by fire. This scene foreshadows and burns with all the agony of Gethsemane. It also reminds me of Joseph facing the brothers who betrayed him, and Moses demanding that Pharaoh release the Hebrews. It recalls David admitting the truth of his treachery against Uriah, and Judas trying to return those thirty pieces of dirty silver. It is confession and liberation, death and resurrection. Every time Jesus faces the magnificence of his truth, it proves to be a bone-crushing cross to bear.

         I genuinely trust that if Jesus is behind it, if he’s alive within it, whatever IT is offers new life to and for all creation. I also genuinely trust that the promised newness will be achieved in ways consistent with the gracious means by which Jesus fulfills his role of Savior. He enters the creation and discerns what is holy and corrupt in all things. Then he tenaciously commits himself to redeeming the creation by loving and nurturing that reconciling, re-unifying holiness into ascendency the way one gently blows on an ember and encourages it into a flame.

         The fire Jesus sets is a gracious arson. It enlightens and refines. Its heat represents the very com-passion of God – the burning with us of God. And through this mystic alchemy, our true selves are redeemed and revealed.

         When Jesus pronounces division,  I hear him crying out in lament, not threat. He knows that when faced with their holy truth and their earthy calling, the people he loves will struggle with discernment like Jacob at the Jabbok, like Elijah in his cave, like Jesus at his temptation.

Discernment is a place of refining and defining tension. It’s a fiery crucible where, through honest and often grueling deliberation, we begin to learn the edifying arts of humility, gratitude, generosity, and justice. Or we give up, and pit ourselves against one another and learn to practice the divisive, love-concealing obsessions of legalism, judgmentalism, and greed.

         Discernment is no picnic. On both the individual and communal levels, discovering and declaring our true selves can prove liberating in both ecstatic and agonizing ways.

Last Sunday morning I talked with the children about Rosa Parks. In refusing to walk to the back of the bus, Ms. Parks said to herself, ‘I am a human being equally beautiful and valuable as anyone else. I will quit acting as if I am not.’ And she sat in a front seat of a city bus, in Montgomery, AL. In doing so, she helped to force our culture to face the deep-seated and too-long-tolerated and denied reality of racism. She helped to push us deeper into a long, arduous, and still incomplete season discernment.

Who are we? Are we a society in which “self-evidence” has truly declared that “all men [and women] are created equal…[and] endowed with certain inalienable rights [such as] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness?”

Are we paying attention to the signs of the times? Are we aware that, indeed, our “experience [is showing] that [hu]mankind are more disposed to suffer…than to right themselves by abolishing the forms” that enslave, humiliate, and oppress?

Have we really been ignorant of the “long train of abuses and usurpations” that has reduced an entire population of God-imaged creatures to sub-human status? And is it not “their right… and their duty to throw off such” tyranny and to live in the light of God’s joy?

In discerning her own full humanity, Rosa Parks declared her independence. And for all with eyes to see and ears to hear, Ms. Parks invited our divided household into “a more perfect union.”

We are an increasingly divided society, though. Maybe, part of our struggle to be at peace in community arises from our struggle to be at peace individually, our struggle to accept and Love ourselves as we truly are at the core of our being. Maybe, before we can understand and heal the widening rifts among us, each of us needs to try to understand and to forgive ourselves.

This is always true for me: When I am most irritable, most impatient, most unpleasant to be around, most prone to make decisions that tear down rather than build up, those are times that I feel most divided within myself. At such times I am most likely to use words to assault, belittle, and judge.

The divisions ripping at us right now are, I think, timely signs that as followers of Jesus, we are being challenged to set our faces toward Jerusalem. And here we face an unnerving truth: In Jerusalem, life as we’ve known it comes undone. The journey to the good news of Sunday passes through the heart-rending trauma of Friday and the drifting weightlessness of Saturday.

And here we also face the redeeming truth: Jesus leads the way through this passage. His gracious arson is our light, and it has been kindled. His baptism is our redemption, and it is complete. Even when we fail to live completely in the completion of his Love, he has shown us what is primordially and ultimately true about ourselves and about all creation. God has declared us “good.” And nothing anywhere or anytime, can divide “us from the love of God.”

There’s a communion hymn that begins: “I come with joy to meet my Lord, forgiven, loved, and free, in awe and wonder to recall His life laid down for me.” And in the third verse we sing: “As Christ breaks bread and bids us share, each proud division ends. The love that made us makes us one, and strangers now are friends.”¹

Doesn’t humankind owe most of our divisions to that most serious of the seven deadly sins – pride? And to fear of the stranger, the other?

Offering the best of who they are, Jesus, and other whole-hearted folks like Rosa Parks, Shane Claiborne, Matthew Vines, Mohandas Gandhi, Malala Yousafzai reveal the best within us, as well. When it comes to discerning holiness from corruption, we’re not perfect. And while we’re not without forgiveness, we are without excuse.

The Light of the World burns within and among us. And the times demand that we embrace and share our gift.

        

¹“I Come with Joy,” Brian Wren (1968, rev. 1977). The Presbyterian Hymnal, Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville/London, 1990. Hymn #507.

Redeeming Obedience (Sermon)

“Redeeming Obedience”

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/7/16

         “Go…to the land that I will show you,” says Yahweh to Abram.

         Moses delivers ten plagues – each plague an order for Pharaoh to release the Hebrews.

Then Moses delivers the 10 Commandments to the Hebrews.

         For generations, Israelite judges and kings receive and give all sorts of orders. Some good. Some really bad.

         Hosea gets one of the most interesting orders. God tells him, and I quote, “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom…” God mandates Hosea’s marriage as an object lesson for unfaithful Israel. Like God, Hosea makes the best of a heart-breaking relationship.

         After finally doing as God tells him to do, the Apostle Paul writes lots of letters telling others what to do.

         The biblical story teems with divine and human directives. Whether implied or directly addressed, the issue of obedience lies at the core of these stories.

         The very word obedience conjures up all sorts of images. For some, they are images of honor and loyalty. When given some sort of command, they tend to hear, ‘Do this, because I trust you to do it well.’ Or, ‘Don’t do that, because I love you. You may hurt yourself or others.’

Conversely, some hear the word obedience and think of subservience, of the loss of dignity and individuality, and of outright oppression. They tend to hear, ‘Do this, or Don’t do that because I said so, and I’m more important than you.’

Cultures based on power and wealth tend to reduce obedience to the defense of some status quo. The Church is no exception. Ever since the fourth century when Constantine legalized Christianity, and 67 years later when Theodosius I declared it the only legal religion in Rome, the Church has cultivated fear, hindered Love, and shrunk God, by issuing edicts, writing doctrines, and creating structures to protect and serve its state-sponsored privilege.

          Power and wealth have little to do with faith and obedience, though. They assure us of what appear to be guaranteed things and convict us of what appear to be obvious things. When human minds reduce Mystery to certainty, ears and hearts shut. Walls and fists come up. The embarrassing messiness and the inspiring beauty of stories then fade from the holy narrative. Without story, we lose the relational context for commandments, pronouncements, and proverbs. Obedience, then, becomes shallow, rocky soil. Faith cannot grow in it.

The writer of Hebrews nurtures the soil of story in order to make his point on obedience. He recalls the seminal, Hebrew narrative. Deep within Abraham there stirs a hope for new beginnings. He looks toward the horizon and knows that beyond the limits of his sight lie new lands and new possibilities. Unwilling to ignore this restless, exciting, holy urge, Abraham obeys, and he goes. He trusts that he will know what he is looking for when he finds it.

Abraham’s journey illustrates for us a hope-inducing, vision-crafting truth: God is both transcendent and immanent.

Relish this irony: While we do experience and speak of God as The Creator, an unfathomably Eternal Energy at work beyond us, that wild and boundless image of God is incomplete. It casts God out there, into the sky, into the future. Obedience, then, becomes a desperate attempt to placate a fearsome and unknowable master. So, we fear the unknowable other in ourselves and our neighbors.

Scripture reveals an immanent God, as well. To imagine God dwelling as deeply and eternally within each of us as well as God reaching far beyond us expands our understanding of God. It leaves nothing and no one out. Remember, when Abraham leaves Ur at God’s urging, every forward footstep shatters the prevailing theology of place-bound gods. Abraham’s journey proclaims one God who encompasses and permeates all things. His story completely transforms the concept of relationship, of homeland, and of obedience.

Knowing God and knowing Self are intimately connected. Human kinship defies theological and ideological dogma. Homeland, in the spiritual sense, defies political borders. And obedience is not about sacrificing one’s unique giftedness. It is willfully and daringly claiming and sharing our true selves before God. Jesus exemplifies this mold-breaking, law-bending, “your will be done” obedience. Faithful obedience leads us to our God-imaged core. And there we find not original sin but “original blessing”¹ – the innate holiness that is our participation in God.

         In 1983, Matthew Fox, then a brother in the Dominican order, coined the phrase “original blessing.” When he began to call into question centuries-old doctrines regarding sin and grace, Fox was called up for review by the Vatican. Two years later, he was cleared, and he continued to challenge tradition by teaching a radically gracious and inclusive theology. In 1993, “Fox was expelled from his monastic order for failure to fulfill his vow of ‘obedience’ to church authorities.”²

         It seems to me that Matthew Fox had simply deepened his obedience to God. He embraced the immutable holiness within himself, within you and me, within all humanity, and within every aspect of the creation. Having heard from a transcendent/immanent God, Fox obediently went in search of a new homeland. In finding new identity, new belonging, and new creative potential in himself and in all that God has made, Fox follows Jesus in setting an example of redeeming the very notion of obedience.

         To be sure, living in intimate, relational obedience to the immanent/transcendent God requires profound humility. The relentless temptation, as Jesus himself discovers, is toward arrogance and self-righteousness. That’s why the Abrahamic faiths are communal journeys. Servants of God need the tension of relationship to keep things in perspective. To accept our essential holiness is to play with fire.

Yet even then, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:3-5)

         “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed,” says Jesus, “For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” (Luke 17:20-21b) Other translations read, “the kingdom of God is within you.”

         “Christ,” says Paul, is “the secret centre of our lives.” (Colossians 3:4a – J. B. Phillips NT)

         Friends, this is spectacularly good news. It is resurrecting news, timely news. And it is ever so demanding. God is our hope and our homeland. God is the center of our being and the relationship between us.

May we choose, deliberately and gratefully, to live the journey of faithful obedience this day and all days. For in doing so, we embody the covenant God makes with Abraham: We receive blessing, so that through us “all the families of the earth [may also] be blessed.”

¹http://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2011/11/embracing-christianity-and-evolution-matthew-fox-original-blessing-and-creation-spirituality/

²Ibid.