A Snapshot of the Kingdom (Sermon)

“A Snapshot of the Kingdom”

Luke 2:22-38

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

12/31/17

         From the days of Abraham, Jewish custom required circumcision of all boys. From the days of Moses, it required the “redemption” of all firstborn sons. The redemption, purchased for five shekels of silver, served as a reminder of the Exodus. Following childbirth, a mother had to observe a period of purification – 40 days for male children and 80 days for female children. In addition to being considered unclean for a prescribed time, the mother’s purification cost a lamb and either a turtledove or a pigeon. For the poor, the cost dropped to two turtledoves or two pigeons. ¹

         Jesus has already been circumcised. And in today’s text, Joseph, Mary, Jesus, and a pair of hapless birds come to the temple for the rituals of redemption and purification. Their arrival is unremarkable. They’re just another poor Jewish couple bringing in just another Jewish baby for just another Jewish ritual according to the same old Jewish law. Only for Joseph and Mary would the event have been any more memorable than watching someone checking out at Food City with milk, bread, toilet paper, and a few other necessities.

         One thing that my relatively new-found interest in photography is teaching me is that the most extraordinary beauty lies not so much in the spectacular, but in the everyday comings and goings of life. So far, I’ve done mostly landscape photography, but I want to learn to capture moments in which human subjects are being themselves transparently, without pretense. Such moments happen all the time in places like grocery stores.

         The trouble with taking those pictures is that it feels invasive. The camera stares into and through other people in a profoundly intimate way. I feel the need to ask permission to take those photos and to show them to others saying, “Look! Do you see it? This is the face of joy or sorrow. This is what fear, or hope, or love, or despair looks like. This is the face of one who has just discovered faith, or one who has just lost it.”

         In the story of Simeon coming face-to-face with the infant Jesus, Luke takes a candid photograph for us. He captures the moment when an old priest cradles the fulfillment of two promises. For generations, the Messiah has been promised to Israel. In fact, the promise has been told and retold for so long that expectation has, for the most part, faded into rote and lifeless ritual. But Simeon is certain that the Holy Spirit has also promised him that, before he dies, he will see God’s Messiah revealed. So, somewhere beneath Simeon’s mechanical faithfulness to his priestly duties lies a still-simmering hope. And when he sees the extraordinary in this all-too-ordinary baby, the old holy man becomes overwhelmed with new faith and hope. In that breathtaking moment, clouds part, stars align, heaven and nature sing.

‘You can take me now, Lord,’ says Simeon. ‘You have fulfilled your promises. My life is complete. I’m ready to go!’

In that same photograph, Joseph and Mary stand to the side, agog at what they’re seeing and hearing. Their faces are a visual cocktail of wonder, confusion, and pride. Aware that the parents don’t understand the import of the situation, wise old Simeon quickly elucidates the moment for them. And he interprets the photograph for us.

Looking at Joseph and Mary Simeon says, ‘Bless your hearts. Your child is going to upset every apple cart imaginable. Neither Israel nor Rome will ever be the same. And in the process, this boy is going to make all the powerful people afraid and angry. So, in your son’s life, there will come days that will make you wish that you had never been born.’

I want to take photographs like that, photographs that awaken us to our own expectant souls which have just seen some holy, to-die-for truth. And such truths are always beautiful and terrible to behold.

This may sound overly optimistic, or even naïve, but I believe that within each of us lives an old Simeon, or an old Anna. Within each of us there lives a self who is ready to be surprised and overwhelmed by that which we long for in our heart of hearts, and which, somehow, in spite of relentless fears and disappointments, we still expect.

         I trust such expectations not because I believe that “if you just believe with all your heart,” God will do something unbelievable. I trust that kind of spiritual expectation because I trust that when we choose to act in ways that are gracious, generous, loving, and just, even when such actions appears foolish, we are dipping into to a vein of deep and timeless holiness flowing at the very heart of Creation. There’s a name for that vein of holiness.

         In Luke 17, as Jesus approaches Jerusalem, his teachings and his actions get bolder and more prophetic. “Once,” says Luke, “Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’” (Luke 17:20-21) Some translations read, “the kingdom of God is within you.”

         That deep vein of holiness coursing within us and among us is the Kingdom of God. It’s the reality from which and toward which all life flows. While we cannot be, ultimately, separated from the Kingdom, we often live unaware of it. And for reasons all too understandable and real, we often give up on it.

It seems to me that the role of the Church is to live and serve as a kind of photography studio, a place in which we choose to live as subjects in God’s lens of grace, a place in which we open ourselves to moments when the Kingdom of God may be revealed to us, and to others through us. It’s revealed in our interactions, in our celebrations and struggles, our successes and failures, our living and dying.

As we stand on the threshold of a brand new year, I challenge us all to live open and aware – open and aware that even the most routine, tired, and seemingly lifeless moments cradle the potential to reveal some new expression of the Kingdom of God. And I challenge us to live humbly and gratefully, because these gifts are not for ourselves alone. We are merely witnesses. You and I are vessels of blessing for each other’s sake, for the sake of our neighbors, and for the sake of the Creation. Living our faith and being the Church isn’t about getting to heaven in the future. It’s about inhabiting the Kingdom which is here-and-now, which is, as-yet, incomplete, and which Simeon holds in his frail, human arms.

Hold onto your apple carts, because when all is said and done, we don’t belong to any one country, or political party, or ideology, or even any one theology. We belong to Jesus. We belong to the Kingdom God, which, in all things and at all times, through the Incarnation of God in Christ, lives within us and among us.

¹R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” The New Interpreter’s Bible: Volume 9: Luke and John, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1995. p 69ff.

Of Prayer and Blessing (Christmas Eve Sermon)

“Of Prayer and Blessing”

Luke 2:1-20

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Christmas Eve 2017

         When I make pastoral visits, I usually stay for a good while. And that time tends to go pretty fast, what with all the preliminary banter, then easing into the reason for the visit, then the slow process of resurfacing into the shallows to be sure that the person has said all that he, or she, or they want to say. And when our sentences grow shorter, the silences grow longer, and our bodies begin to show signs of restlessness, I usually scoot forward in my chair and say, “May I pray with you?” Then we lean into the silence. And I begin to cover that silence with words – words that I hope will let the person know that they’ve been heard, that they’re loved, that they matter, words which, and this is my greater hope, serve as a kind of manger for the presence of God.

         I appreciate the calling, the opportunity, and your trust to be the one who, for a season, prays with you and for you. More and more, however, I’m coming to understand those last few moments of a visit, those seconds spent in head-bowed, shut-eyed, preacher-prayer as a kind of ritualized “Amen” to the real prayer – the prayer of the visit itself. The prayer of the conversation. The prayers of questions asked and answered, or not. The prayers of laughter and tears. And most importantly, perhaps, the prayers of the lingering silences that become less and less awkward the more we allow ourselves just to sit patiently in each other’s presence.

         I consider the visit the real prayer because it’s through relationship, it’s through caring for and trusting each other, it’s through giving and receiving life-altering forgiveness that we enter God’s presence and experience the Kingdom of Heaven.

         When I presume to speak to God on someone else’s behalf, I make no promises that my prayer will “work.” I don’t consider prayer to be some kind of magic act. I’m not coaxing a genie out of some ancient lamp and expecting the universe to bend to my will, or even to my deepest, most passionate and compassionate desires for someone’s well-being. I consider prayer an encounter of spiritual intimacy where we stand together, surrounded by God, confident that, come what may, we are in the presence of One who loves us and desires wholeness for each of us and for all of creation. To feel that kind of love, and to seek to give it to and receive it from each other, that’s prayer, and that, I think, is the true nature of blessedness.

         I often find myself pondering the whole idea of blessing. And it seems to me that blessing one another lies at the very heart of the spiritual tradition we call Christianity. In many ways, we have traded the spiritual discipline of blessing for the numbing rigors of regurgitating doctrines correctly, of trying to do church right. We’ve opted for the mechanics of conversion over the new life of transformation. Such things distract us from the gritty demands of discipleship, and of following Jesus into the mystery of faith.

         This is why the Nativity of Jesus is so important. Christmas celebrates God’s pastoral visit to us. It’s all about the relationship, the heart-to-heart-ness of the Incarnation of God.

Jesus is God’s embodied prayer for us. The Christ reveals God’s own heart beating with vulnerability, poverty of spirit, and overwhelming wonder.

         When I read the story of Jesus being born to a Hebrew couple in humble surroundings, in a particularly dangerous time and place, this is what I hear:

         ‘Here I am,’ says God. ‘I entrust you, Humankind, with my own incarnate self. I give my self to you because I have faith in your capacity to love me, to nurture me, and to allow me to grow and develop.

         ‘I want you, indeed, I choose you to bless me,’ says God. ‘I want to feel your arms around me. I want you to keep me warm, to feed me, to comfort me. I want you to look into my eyes. I want you to treasure me like I treasure you.

         ‘For a time, I am going to be your child. And like any child, I will challenge you. I will disrupt any selfish ease to which you feel entitled.

         ‘As I grow, you will, too. And I trust that together you and I will live and work side-by-side. We will celebrate and grieve heart-to-heart. I trust that our relationship will deepen and broaden, and that we will bless one another.’

         Christmas reveals this trusting, loving, incarnate heart to us. And therein lies the swaddled, homeless, and holy truth of our existence: By revealing the heart of God to us, Christmas reveals the very image of God within us. It reveals the life to which we are being redeemed.

Christmas is a season and a celebration. It’s also a way of being. Christmas is living in the relentless blessing of grateful, joyful, hopeful, vulnerable relationship. Because we enter and maintain the blessing of that relationship through prayer, prayer is for us what water is to fish. It is our native environment. Prayer is how we breathe. It’s how we live. It’s so much more that trying to influence or to bargain with God.

         So that you may experience the fullness of prayer and of blessing, I pray that a renewed desire might be born in you this Christmas. May you discover and rediscover the richness and wholeness of living a life of intentional relationship with others. And may you find yourself as eager to bless them as you are to be blessed by them.

         May all of you enjoy a merry and most blessed Christmas.

Giving Jospeh His Due (Sermon)

“Giving Joseph His Due”

Matthew 1:18-25

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

12/24/17

         Matthew’s gospel begins with Jesus’ genealogy, 16 straight verses of laborious, tongue-twisting begats detailing 42 generations between Jesus and Abraham. Luke’s genealogy (Lk. 3:23-38) lists 56 generations between Jesus and Abraham, then 20 more to Adam, and one more to God, for a total of 77 generations.

         There are some similarities in the names in the two genealogies, but far more differences. One interesting difference is that Matthew progresses forward from Abraham, while Luke works backward from Jesus. That explains why Matthew uses the transitional phrase, “the father of,” while Luke uses “son of.” In Matthew, if your mind hasn’t been numbed by that list of names, you may notice, at the very end of the genealogy, that the transitional phrase changes to “Joseph the husband of Mary,” rather than “the father of” Jesus.

Only Matthew seems to take Joseph seriously. In Luke, Joseph shows up primarily at the manger. Mark and John mention him only as a kind of immaterial memory. But Matthew takes us inside Joseph’s agonizing struggle. Should he marry this already-pregnant woman, when he’s pretty sure that he isn’t the father?

In first century Jewish culture, betrothal is, for all intents and purposes, the same as marriage. As a Jew, Joseph knows his responsibilities, his options, and his liabilities under the Law. He also recognizes Mary’s vulnerabilities under that same Law. Joseph’s struggle is theological, social, and moral. He holds Mary’s fate, and her baby’s fate in his hands. The Law allows him to seek vengeance and call it justice. At Joseph’s word, Mary, and thus her baby, could be stoned to death.

The law also allows Joseph to divorce Mary. That would mean abandoning her to the almost certain fate of being disowned by her family. Alone in the world, Mary would, in all likelihood, have to resort to begging or prostitution. And I can only imagine that in the first century, such fates would have proven worse than death. But if Joseph divorces Mary, then slips away into oblivion, maybe at least he could find a new start somewhere else.

Shouldering his burden in lonely silence, Joseph, a “righteous man,” chooses divorce. His plan is expedient, bloodless, and simple. But he soon discovers that God is mixed up in all of this.

“An angel of the Lord” appears. (It seems to me that angel of the Lord is a biblical euphemism for ‘one whale of a monkey wrench.’) The angel appears in a dream and says, in effect, ‘Joseph, you may not be the father of Mary’s baby, but you are a son of David. Get married to Mary. Adopt her baby. Be his daddy. Father him as you would your own son. Name him Jesus. He has divine genes and very important work to do.’

I can’t imagine that this announcement comes as anything but an added burden to Joseph. He’s being asked to take an audacious leap of faith. He’s being asked to trust that the authority of his own, personal dream supersedes the authority of the Torah. This is extraordinary! Joseph’s role in the birth of Jesus has all the subversive, revolutionary power of Jesus’ own ministry. By marrying Mary and raising Jesus, Joseph deserves a place in the pantheon of theological pioneers like Abraham, Moses, Galileo, Martin Luther, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and, more recently, leaders in the new reformation like Richard Rohr and Brian McLaren. Through daring leaps of faith, people like Joseph call us to see that God is at work in the world in ways that are as groundbreaking as creation itself. That makes Joseph a perfect choice for Jesus’ dad. He’s willing to take the risk of trusting and following a God who is radically free, a God whose only predictable character lies in the way that God consistently challenges us to travel further and further down the road of redeeming and ever-expanding Agape Love.

With more than enough reasons not to do so, Joseph says Yes to a possibility that wells up from the stream flowing at the depths of human consciousness and of all creation. This simple man, says Yes to a dream that invites him to commit to a complicated life. He welcomes the bad news of Mary’s pregnancy as good news. Joseph just may represent the New Testament’s best example of Christmas faith. In his story, we watch someone receive the gift of God’s call to a demanding new life, a life that reveals our unanticipated capacity to give and receive, to endure and to love.

I saw a short video last night. It’s one of those happy-sappy videos, but danged if it didn’t bring a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. The story has to do with a boy named Kalani Watson at his own tenth birthday party. Sitting in front of Kalani is a thick, muscular man in a white t-shirt and a black ball cap. He is Kalani’s stepfather. He and the boy’s mother have been married since 2010. Kalani’s biological father died recently, and Kalani and his stepfather have bonded tightly over the years. The chubby-cheeked youngster has a sheet of paper in his hand, and he reads this short speech: “I know today is supposed to be all about me, but today is really about us. So let’s stop playing and make it official. Brandon Craig Williamson, will you do me the biggest favor in the world? Will you adopt me?”

The man folds forward and weeps into his hand.

At his own birthday party, Kalani hands Brandon a gift. Inside are adoption papers. This gift says, You love me, and I know it. I love you, too. I trust you. You married my mamma. Will you make me your son?¹

Neither Brandon nor Joseph get the gift of parenthood the way the Old Testament Joseph gets his colorful coat – in an act of preferential treatment. They don’t get this gift the way you or I might get a new shirt or a new toy – as something for us to consume, or to return if it doesn’t fit or please us. They receive the gift the way Abraham and Moses receive the gift of grace, as a holy gift which, by expecting something of us, makes us a blessing to others. That grace reveals the deeper gift, the gift of our own servant-hearted Joseph. Joseph is our own, unique capacity for receiving grace, for adopting, as part of ourselves, the living Christ within.

To fully receive and embrace the Christ-gift, for it to become the gift it was created to be, we must, at some point, let go of it. And that means that, in some way, we let go of ourselves. We let go of our selfish fears, desires, and resentments.

Letting go is a kind of death. But it’s a gracious death. It is the death through which our new life is born.

¹https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/peopleandplaces/10-year-old-boy-brings-stepdad-to-tears-with-adoption-proposal/vi-BBAWsDh

Christmas: God's Vindication of Creation" (Sermon)

“Christmas: God’s Vindication of Creation”

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

12/17/17 – Advent 3

         When a storyteller begins a story with the iconic words, Once upon a time…, she’s doing more than taking us back. She’s inviting us to imagine a future shaped by the characters and events in that story. Offered to Israelites in exile, the prophecy of Isaiah has a Once upon a time…flavor. The prophet invites the people to see beyond the past, beyond particularities of the moment, into a kind of all-encompassing now in which Shalom, God’s justice and wholeness, permeate the creation.

Hardly a pie-in-the-sky proposition, Shalom demands that we turn from things that seem normal, comfortable, even commonsensical, and toward a life of radical grace, compassion, and trust. And that’s terribly difficult to do in our world, isn’t it?

My dad has called the modern/post-modern age a “culture of vengeance.” And humankind does seem to have decided that justice means, first and foremost, retaliation. It means getting even. In a culture of vengeance, everyone gets what’s coming to them – at least they should. “Bad” people get shamed, maimed, and killed, while “good” people get rich and powerful. The culture of vengeance is all about getting.

That also sums up the prosperity gospel, which declares if one believes the right things, works hard, and behaves, God will bless you with health, wealth, and happiness. And it sure is tempting to buy into that heresy. Who doesn’t want a god who promises comfort and security? It’s just impossible, with God, to harmonize the prosperity gospel with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But, Preacher, doesn’t Isaiah talk about God’s “day of vengeance?” Doesn’t he say that God loves “justice” and promises “recompense?”

Yes. And before lumping Isaiah in with the Joel Osteens and Creflo Dollars of the world, I would invite us to acknowledge the wider teaching of Isaiah. While the prophet speaks to exiles who have been vanquished and displaced, he does not preach payback or personal gain. I say that because in 61:2, where the NRSV chooses the word “vengeance,” vindication would be more accurate.¹ Isaiah isn’t calling Israel to get even with her captors, because the justice to which he refers isn’t about retribution. It’s about restoration.

The word restoration often makes us think about going backward, returning to some previous situation. The guys who work on the old rail cars on Spring Street are trying to restore them to something close to original condition. When Marcy Hawley and her husband, Rick, purchased what is now the Hawley House, they completely disassembled the interior from basement to rafters. They catalogued every board, and refinished each one individually. Two years later, their home – Jonesborough’s oldest structure, built on Lot #1 – was beautifully restored.

Biblical restoration leads down a different path. As Isaiah makes clear, and as Jesus makes clear when he quotes Isaiah, biblical restoration has to do with vindicating the oppressed, with redeeming the brokenhearted, the captives, and those who mourn. There is no “again” to God’s restoration. God does far more than return us to a place we inhabited prior to some misfortune or trauma. Now, the Gospel does challenge us to make peace with the past – that’s called forgiveness. But reaching forever forward, God’s vindication turns our hearts toward the joyous encounter of things utterly new and unexpected.

Perhaps some of the most significant Advent/Christmas images, images of God’s vindication and restorative justice, are found toward the beginning of the Old Testament: Abraham being told by God to go, and Abraham stepping out in faith; Moses being told to confront Pharaoh with God’s demand to release the Hebrews, and Moses, after some argument, stepping out in faith; David being anointed by God as king of Israel when the only thing on the young man’s resume is tending sheep on the family farm.

Advent doesn’t prepare us to return to some place we’ve been. Advent prepares us for Christmas journeys. Journeys forward, journeys out of mere existence, out of oppression, captivity, and humiliation. Like Abraham’s, Moses’, and David’s journeys, Christmas journeys take us from the humblest, most broken places toward unimagined possibility and freedom. They propel us toward heights and depths of human experience that vindicate and redeem both us and the creation. Because Christmas journeys reveal to us how much love we are capable of giving and receiving, and how much holiness we are capable of holding and enduring, they are also Easter journeys, journeys through death and toward a life only God anticipates.

How’s that for a definition of faith: Living in the reality of a life anticipated, as of yet, by God alone?

Isaiah alludes to this in chapter 55 when, speaking for God, he says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways…For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts…[and my word]…shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:8-9, 11)

It seems to me that the accomplishment and the success to which God refers is much more than some measurable goal or final answer. If the life of Jesus is any indication, story, mystery, and ongoing transformation are the telltale signs of God’s activity in the world. So, stables, riverbanks, and tombs are not places of arrival and completion. They’re places of origin and departure. They’re places where creation gets an extraordinary new start through invitation, emancipation, and proclamation.

In his song Crooked Road, singer/songwriter Darrell Scott does an interesting thing. He begins the song by singing: “I walk a crooked road to get where I am going. To get where I am going I must walk a crooked road. And only when I’m looking back I see the straight and narrow. I see the straight and narrow when I walk a crooked road.”

Not only does that verse end where it begins, the song concludes with the exact same verse. The singer begins and ends in the same place, a place of mystery, inspiration, and wonder, a place that is both ending and beginning. It’s like ending a story with, Once upon a time…

While Advent and Christmas don’t return us to some happy remembrance, the vantage point of a new beginning does help us to see the past with fresh and forgiving hearts.

One lesson in all of this is that Shalom, God’s justice and wholeness, becomes possible when we understand Christmas as God’s invitation to recognize and celebrate the incarnate holiness of all creation. Advent is our ongoing struggle of learning to follow Jesus, God’s vindicating love made flesh.

To live and love as Jesus lives and loves, we begin and end each day with gratitude, expectation, and hope.

We begin and end each day telling ourselves and each other, Once upon a time…

¹William P. Brown, “Exegetical Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2008. P. 53.

Repentance: An Act of Community (Sermon)

“Repentance: An Act of Community”

Mt. 3:1-11

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

12/10/17 - Advent 2

         Hearing of John the Baptist, both the faithful and the curious creep to the banks of the Jordan River. They stalk the prophet as if he’s some sort of dangerous prey. Not that John would hurt anyone; but people talk. John does cut a fearsome figure. Great mats of camel hair hang about his frame as if his own skin is molting. His beard leaps from his face in a dark, thick spray littered with bits of locust and crystallized honey. And John’s eyes don’t just see the world. They see through it. His gaze is like the burn of the sun on bare skin.

While John can’t be ignored, the Jews, who have not had a truly memorable prophet in many generations, don’t really remember how to watch and listen. And while they love the Law, they don’t appear to expect anything from it. Maybe they don’t want to expect anything from it, at least no more than they think they already know. It’s certainly much less threatening, and much less disappointing not to expect anything new.

         What about us? When we sing “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” during Advent, what do we expect? As heirs of a two-thousand-year-old tradition, do any of us honestly expect anything that we proclaim about Jesus? Or do we just expect to “go to heaven when we die,” and in the meantime, rely on our own hard work and good behavior? The difference between the two is the difference between true faith and practical atheism. They can look astonishingly similar.

         John’s dramatic appearance and challenging prophecy call us to Advent. And Advent, being all about preparation, is all about renewed expectation. And for us, that means a call to repentance.

         It seems to me that the Church has often understood repentance in predominantly selfish terms. We declare personal remorse in order to save ourselves. But John calls us to repent not simply of individual sins, but of the condition of separation from God and from one another.

Repentance turns us from old ways of being in relationship with our neighbors and the earth. It heals the whole body so that we may celebrate and participate in the new thing that God is always doing in the world. Through repentance, our eyes may see the same scenery around us. Our ears may hear the same sounds, but we will see, hear, and speak as ones being transformed for the sake of all creation.

At its heart, repentance is an act of community.

         In October of 2016, Eli Saslow published an illuminating article in The Washington Post. The story introduces us to a young man named Derek Black. Derek’s father is a leader of the White Nationalist movement, and his godfather is – or perhaps was – the high-profile racist, David Duke. Derek’s parents taught him “to be suspicious of other races, of the US government, of tap water and of pop culture.”¹ Bright and curious, Derek learned and assimilated all that he was taught. As a youngster, he even started a children’s page on Stormfront, his father’s chillingly-popular, white nationalist website.

         After completing a home-schooled education, and after two years in community college, Derek entered New College in Sarasota, FL to study medieval history. His deeper plan, and that of his parents, was for Derek to be a kind of prophet of white nationalism on campus.

Derek played it cool at first. He didn’t share his ideology with anyone. And being an amiable sort, he quickly made friends.

         In April of 2011, while Derek was studying abroad – in Germany – someone discovered Derek’s truth and posted it on a college message board. Many at New College felt threatened, betrayed, angry. “How should we respond?” they asked.

Initially, the uproar re-energized Derek’s commitment to his racist, separatist agenda. Then, in the midst of all furious judgments, and all the mystified How could yous?, an unidentified student wrote something remarkable. “Ostracizing Derek won’t accomplish anything…We have a chance to be real activists and actually affect one of the leaders of white supremacy in America.”

         Another student seized the opportunity. Matthew Stevenson, the only orthodox Jew at New College, read some of Derek’s posts and listened to some of his radio broadcasts on Stormfront. Eli Saslow writes that “Matthew decided his best chance to affect Derek’s thinking was not to ignore him or confront him, but simply to include him.

“‘Maybe,’ thought Matthew, ‘[Derek had] never spent time with a Jewish person before.’”

Though challenging, such grace compelled Matthew to invite Derek to his campus apartment to join a Shabbat group which included Jews, Christians, atheists, and a variety of skin colors and ethnicities. And a long-term dance began.

After many months of candid conversation and existential struggle, Derek realized that his upbringing had sent him down a path that was not only a dead-end for him, but a path along which he had already done significant harm. So, in a cleansing zeal, the young Derek published these words: “After a great deal of thought, I have resolved that it is in the best interests of everyone involved to be honest about my slow but steady disaffiliation from white nationalism. I can’t support a movement that tells me I can’t be a friend to whomever I wish or that other people’s races require me to think of them in a certain way or be suspicious at their advancements. The things I have said as well as my actions have been harmful to people of color, people of Jewish descent, [and] activists striving for opportunity and fairness for all. I am sorry for the damage done.”

Matthew Stevenson had to act alone at first, a voice in the wilderness calling everyone to repentance, to a new way of living. Along the way, others found the same courage and joined him in reaching out to Derek Black. And their courageous, patient, prophetic compassion bore the fruit of Derek’s community-restoring repentance.

         Whatever John may have had in mind about “the wrath to come,” must be understood in light of all that Jesus says and does, because Jesus is now our prophet and priest. When the church proclaims a wrathful message of Repent or go to hell, we do nothing more than to prepare people to be dead.

         Hear the Good News: Neither John nor Jesus is in the business of preparing us to be dead. They are preparing us, and all creation to be alive! Right here and now with one another.

Thanks be to God!

¹All references in this sermon to Derek Black, Don Black, David Duke, and Matthew Stevenson were excerpted from Eli Saslow’s article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-derek-black/2016/10/15/ed5f906a-8f3b-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html?utm_term=.55c4775142b2

November Texts (Sermon)

“November Texts”

1Thessalonians 5:1-11

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/19/17

         Along with April, October is one of my favorite months. A reckless gala of the summer’s richness and vitality, October hits us with a sensory overload: reds, yellows, oranges, cobalt skies – Christmas decorations. As the northern hemisphere tilts away from the sun, cooler air wicks away humidity. It’s not cold yet, but the sun feels a little kinder on our skin. It shines a little more gently in our eyes.

         Then comes November. The extravagant flame-out of October has been reduced, for the most part, to some tarnished gold high in the hickories and the darkening burgundy of white and red oaks. As the surrender to brown and gray quickens, November becomes a kind of circumstantial text calling us to prepare for even shorter, colder days. With heat pumps, electric blankets, and a warming atmosphere, we’re less vulnerable to winter than folks were a century ago. Still, while so much of the life around us turns dark and brittle, and sinks into the cold pillow of winter, wouldn’t it be nice, in worship, to hear brighter, more heart-warming texts than we’ve been hearing from Matthew and, now, from 1Thessalonians?

         Sure, I can pick any passage I want. There’s nothing obligatory or sacred about the lectionary. On the other hand, there is method to the lectionary’s madness. By design, November texts unsettle us. They call us to self-examination. They dare us to confess our personal, ecclesiastical, and cultural brokenness and our need for redemption.

I promise to get to 1Thessalonians, but bear with me through a kind of big-picture approach.

November texts prepare us for Advent texts, which prepare for the good news of the Incarnation. Central to Advent is the prophecy of Isaiah, the prophet to exiles in Babylon. Isaiah speaks such re-orienting words as, “Comfort, O comfort my people,” and “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.” And Isaiah’s inspiring words have to push through a curious and disturbing phenomenon.

         The Israelites have been in exile for about three generations. So, many among the vanquished and displaced are forgetting their defining stories and rituals. Fewer and fewer Israelites are feeling like exiles, because more and more, Babylon feels like home. The modern psychological term for this is Stockholm Syndrome; captives identify with and even bond with their captors. And it’s easy to see why new generations of Israelites might adopt Babylon. It’s a place of wealth, abundance, and opportunity – a place that feels like it’s in a perpetual April-to-October loop. But the Hebrew’s story makes it clear that riches and power are not signs of God’s favor. Indeed, overabundance usually blinds us to true blessedness. It renders us too greedy and fearful to live as blessings for others.

         It’s no surprise, then, that Isaiah’s prophecy spans the careers of several prophets from Isaiah’s school. It takes a long time for his good news to burrow beneath the numbness and complacency of exile and to re-awaken spiritual memory.

Re-awakening to deep-time memory is not only a long process, it can be painful, too. It’s kind of like coming in on a bitterly cold day and running warm water over your icy fingers. The water hurts because your brain can’t handle the abrupt change of signal from cold to warm. The pain is necessary, though. Severe frostbite can cost us hands and feet, noses and ears.

For Israel, Jeremiah is the warm water being poured over their numbed memories. And his words hurt. “My anguish, my anguish!” cries Yahweh. “My heart is beating wildly’ I cannot keep silent…For my people do not know me, they are stupid children, they have no understanding.” (Jer. 4:19, 22)

         The psalmist’s lament also calls Israel to re-awakening: “By the water of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion…On the willows there we hung our harps…How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps. 137:1-2, 4)

         In the same way that Jeremiah and the psalmist prepare Israel for Isaiah’s hopeful prophecy, the November texts of Matthew and 1Thessalonians sting us. They call us to prepare for the re-awakening texts of Advent.

Like Jesus, Paul never shies away from truth-telling. And he seems to know how tempting it is to get comfortable with Babylon’s promises and creature comforts. Offering a Jeremiah-like warning to the Thessalonians, Paul writes: “When they say, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them.” For Paul, “they” refers to Rome, the next in a long line of Babylons and Egypts.

The apostle writes to the Thessalonians in about 50AD – right in the thick of the era known as the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace. Paul seems to know that the empire’s brand of peace and security can act like sub-freezing temperatures. It can cause spiritual frostbite. It can make us believe that if our material surroundings are benefiting us, then ‘God is in the heavens, and all is right with the world.’ Paul compares such self-centered thinking to thievery, darkness, drunkenness – actions for which there are inescapable consequences, at least in the short run.

Paul dares us to imagine something different. He dares us to imagine lasting peace and security, which is a gift from God, not empires. We experience lasting peace and security by consciously participating in God’s presence and activity in this world, here and now. True peace and security come not through conquest, not through intimidation, but through determined, even death-defying faith, hope, and love.

There you go again, Preacher, talking your pie-in-the-sky nonsense. You have no clue what it takes to win and keep security. You have to fight fire with fire!

I hear you. And I do understand that this is a frighteningly dangerous and uncertain world. I also know that Paul’s situation is even more tenuous than ours, and still he says, “Since we belong to the day, let us be sober and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”

November texts challenge us to acknowledge all the signs of approaching winter – daylight diminishing, colors fading, cold hardening the ground, “wars and rumors of wars,” “nation…[rising] against nation…famines and earthquakes in various places” (Mt. 24:6), real fears pressuring us to live by the sword.

But even November texts come to us as gospel, as promises of spring, as witnesses to Easter. I trust that God intends these texts to awaken in us an irrepressible restlessness, a hunger and thirst for belonging as well as righteousness. They sting us with memories of our true home. And living at home, while in exile, means living in a kind of terrifying fearlessness. Home for us is following Jesus, “who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.”

I suppose each of us has to decide for ourselves what Paul means when he says to “encourage one another and build up each other.” As for me, even if I sound tiresomely consistent, come what may, I can do no other – unless despair overcomes me – than to live, and die, and lead any congregation I serve by what I consider to be Jesus’ example: non-violent, welcoming, transforming love.

For those times when my encouragement of you fails to meet that standard, I ask God’s and your forgiveness. May the Spirit then challenge me with November texts and return me to a radical grace that I cannot create, but only experience and bear witness to.

And ultimately, from that love, and from that grace, there “will be no escape!”

The Constaninian Test (Sermon)

“The Constantinian Test”

Matthew 23:1-12

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/12/17

         In the fourth century, when Christianity was a mere toddler as a world religion, the Church began to face its supreme test. It started when Emperor Constantine won a battle over a stronger enemy and credited the Christian God. So, in 313, a victorious Constantine legalized Christianity. In 380, Emperor Theodosius I declared Rome to be a Christian nation.

What I’m calling a test occurs when political and martial power tempt the Church to confuse love and service of God with love and service of the state. The unwritten contract goes something like this: If you let us into your sanctuaries, if you tweak your theologies to justify our conquests and excesses, if you make faithfulness to your God synonymous with good citizenship, we will embrace your symbols and language. We will defer to your holy days. We, the State, will favor and exalt you, the Religion.

Since 380AD, Christianity has faced this Constantinian test continually, often unsuccessfully.

In fairness, virtually all major religions struggle with this test. When there’s enough fear and dis-ease in a culture, religions, especially fundamentalist factions within them, gain traction and scramble for exaltation. It seems to me that the three Abrahamic faiths – Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – are particularly susceptible to failing the Constantinian test. And within those religions, perhaps no one is more vulnerable to the temptation to conspire with power than clergy. When a religion holds favored status in a particular nation, its leaders often find the personal benefits of complicity irresistible.

In today’s text, Jesus calls his followers to do something difficult. With regard to the scribes and Pharisees, “Do whatever they teach you and follow it,” says Jesus, “but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” They’re religious gold diggers, says Jesus.

Jesus is saying that authority comes not from the office, not from the size of phylacteries, not from the length of fringes, not from the seats of honor, and not from whatever deference the priests enjoy in public. Authority comes from the Author of Creation.

         I think Jesus gets to meddling because he remembers facing precisely the same test after his baptism. Out in the wilderness, Jesus is tempted to collude with the clannish, manipulative, and violent ways and means of worldly power. And this goes on for forty days.

Now, there’s nothing literal about the number forty. Whether referring to days or years, forty is Bible-speak for a long time. The story of Jesus’ temptation tells us not only that Jesus has to endure a long, grueling test, it also tells us that even Jesus takes a long time to overcome the devil’s deal: that gut-wrenching and all-too-human temptation to use our unique gifts and potential toward selfish ends.

         After its humble beginnings in Jerusalem, the Church enters its own forty-day wilderness. And when Constantine and Theodosius offer the newly-baptized religion power and privilege alien to its identity in Christ, the Church quickly caves in. It accepts the unwritten contract of state exaltation.

When the Church bemoans its decreasing size and influence, we can blame externalities all we want, but for nearly two millennia, no one has given more people more reasons, and no one has given more people better reasons to turn their backs on Christianity, and even on God, than the Church itself. The institutional Church has been more intentional about reaching out for sake of political favor than for the sake of the gospel.

         Our history, though, is about more than any one of us, more than any one congregation or denomination, more than any one era of our existence. So, maybe, we’re still slogging through our own forty-day temptation. Maybe we’re still weathering our own forty-day flood, wandering in our own forty-year Exodus, weeping through our own forty-hour hell between Friday and Sunday. If so, then every day, every moment, every decision, every word, every action, and every one of us matters – really and truly and eternally matters!

         Successfully on the other side of temptation, Jesus commits himself to living humbly and peaceably on behalf of the Creation. He practices what he teaches. Now, he does “tie up burdens hard to bear, and lay them on [our] shoulders.” That’s what take up your cross and follow me is all about. But Jesus lifts more than a finger to help us. He helps us to understand and value our burdens by sharing them and helping each other to carry them.

         Every time we choose to share the burdens of others, every time we choose to serve rather than to be served, every time we choose to forgive rather than to hold onto anger and resentment, every time we choose to stand in awe of what God creates instead of trying to figure out how to monetize or profit from some “resource” – every time we choose these things we’re overcoming temptation. We’re following Jesus.

The Church has survived for two thousand years, longer than any state or nation. That tells me that along the way, at critical times, we have told the Tempter that we depend on more than bread, that we will not test God, and that we will not bow before some devious Caesar.

Sure, sometimes in our weariness and fear, we accept the tempter’s contract. Sometimes we settle for the external trappings of religion over the call of Jesus.

          I wear a robe on Sundays. I wear eye-catching stoles and sit in this tall chair. I stand high-and-lifted-up, and speak into a microphone. With the state’s blessing, I claim my housing allowance as non-taxable income. That’s not fair to you, and I certainly did nothing to deserve special treatment. But I don’t turn it down. And some point, someone – not me – decided that an entire month should be set aside for pastor appreciation. It’s like a liturgical season! I’m truly grateful for every expression of love and support. And pastor appreciation doesn’t include parades and furniture store sales. But a whole month? Doesn’t that tempt all of us, especially folks like me, to exalt pastors onto pedestals where we don’t belong?

         It grieves me to admit this, but I know that if I took another job tomorrow, before long, some of you would fall away from this congregation. I know the same is true if we lost our extraordinary music director or pianist. I know because – and this is as uncomfortable to say as it is to hear – I’ve heard folks say so. Then again, I trust that in spite of such self-serving loyalties, and even if this, or any congregation ends up closing its doors, the Church will survive. God is not dependent on our robes, sermons, anthems, instruments, or buildings. God chooses to be present through our love for one another, through our care for the poor and the forgotten, and through our stewardship of the earth.

         Pastors are to be most appreciated when their congregations embrace discipleship and mission the way they embrace potlucks and bake sales. When doing as Jesus does, we are all, without distinction, ministers in the priesthood of all believers. And in the long run, by the grace of God alone, what we teach transcends what we do.

What do you imagine people see in us? Self-exalting Pharisees or servant-hearted disciples of Jesus? Probably both. So, let’s be gracious with them and with ourselves. And may we trust that we belong to Jesus, and that by his grace, all of us will make it through our Constantinian test.

In forty days or so.

The God of Creative Tension (Sermon)

“The God of Creative Tension”

Matthew 22:15-22

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/5/17

         Jesus has been pushing the envelope with the Jewish leaders. In an effort to rein in this renegade rabbi, and to try to restore a sense of normalcy, at least in their own minds, some Pharisees hatch a scheme to ambush Jesus with a question.

         “Is it lawful,” they will ask, “to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

         The plan is for Yes and No to be equally dangerous for Jesus and equally expedient for the Pharisees. Depending on what gives them the most leverage over Jesus, the Pharisees are willing to position themselves as either loyal Jews first or loyal Roman subjects first. Now, the tax at issue has to do with harvests and personal property.¹ Like a sales tax, it’s regressive. It imposes a much heavier burden on the poor than on the rich. If Jesus says Yes, he will appear to be double-crossing the Jews in general, and the tax-oppressed poor in particular – the very people on whom Jesus’ ministry has focused.

On the other hand, if Jesus says No, the Pharisees can simply report him to the Roman authorities for sedition.

         It seems like a fool-proof plan, unless, of course, the plan has been hatched by fools – fools, in this case, being those who are motivated by fear and revenge, yet tell themselves that they’re champions of righteousness and justice. One aspect of Pharisaic foolishness is to separate the world into dualistic categories – Jew and Gentile, male and female, clean and unclean.

How many times have you heard someone say, “There’re two kinds of people in the world”? Those eight words almost always precede some kind of mind-closing statement of opposing absolutes. And such statements usually imply that one side is strong, or right, or good while the other side is weak, or wrong, or bad.

         The genius of Jesus is that he teaches attitudes and models actions which are righteous and just while living in such a way that he doesn’t bisect the world into opposing factions. It’s his followers who divide the world into saved and unsaved, lost and found, good and bad. And how can disciples justify polarized and polarizing living when the one whom we claim to follow goes out of his way to be not only in the presence of but in relationship with everyone, including those who oppose him?

         It seems to me that Christians often practice Pharisaism in order to maintain a sense of authority, security, and even supremacy in the world. And I think we’re tempted to do it all the more viciously when the world seems to be falling apart around us. Remember, the Jewish world is falling apart during the first century, too. Rome holds all of its territories in a kind of social, political, and economic choke hold. Caesar finances his continuing wars and conquests by emptying the pockets of the peoples he has vanquished. For the Jews in Palestine, everything familiar is ending. The future is unfolding toward something unknown and terrifying. Trying to regroup and to return to what was is futile. They’re in the midst of an all-encompassing death, and to the Pharisees, Jesus seems to be just another sign of the world’s demise.

         As an Easter community, the Church proclaims that Jesus is God’s sign and promise of all that’s new and hopeful, all that’s righteous and just. Even when familiar things are dying around us, following Jesus means following him into that death. The crazy and beautiful thing for Jesus-followers is that entering death means entering, at the same time, into resurrection. Not only does Jesus transcend all the fragmenting categories of opposites, he transcends all that appears to separate life and death.

         Looking at the coin used for the tax, Jesus asks, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”

         “The emperor’s,” they say.

         “Give…to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

         Stunned and speechless, the Pharisees leave Jesus alone.

         The Pharisees try to bait Jesus into to dividing the world into two kinds of people – those who collect taxes and those who pay taxes. And Jesus won’t bite. What’s more, he won’t even divide the world into spiritual and mundane. His answer reveals that the creation is a place in which holiness and worldliness are woven together into an indivisible wholeness.

         In his book Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, Richard Rohr observes that, in the first creation story, it isn’t until the third day that God begins to call the creation good. The first two days had been about making separations – light from dark, sky from earth, up from down. When water and land begin to coexist, when plants and animals begin to appear on the same ground and in the same waters, only then does God begin calling things good.²

In the story of Noah, the Hebrews weave the ancient Gilgamesh epic into their own story. And in the Hebrew version, an ark gets inhabited by all these opposites – male and female, clean and unclean, predator and prey, things that fly and things that creep. And God confines all these opposites together in one place. The ark is a magnificent metaphor. It’s a microcosm of the entire creation. The ark is the earth! And we all live in it, together!

“The…reason that Jesus is the icon of salvation for so many of us,” says Rohr, “is because he [holds opposites] together so beautifully.”³

Discipleship means doing what Jesus does. It means learning to live in the “paradox of incarnation,” holding within us “flesh and spirit, human and divine, joy and suffering.”³ To be fully human means living in that relentless but creative tension in which we encounter and embrace otherness. We cannot experience God as good, nor can we experience the creation as good outside of this tension. As the body of Christ, we are called, individually and corporately, to commit our time, our money, our very lives to bearing witness to the God of creative tension.

Jesus does make one clear distinction in today’s story. There’re two kinds of people in the world, he says: Those who think they’re God, and those who know they’re not. When Jesus says to give to the emperor that which is the emperor’s, and to God that which is God’s, he’s saying that, contrary to what the Caesars of the world believe, they are not God. That’s exactly what the signatories of The Barmen Declaration were saying back in the 1930’s. Jesus is Lord, not Hitler, not the Third Reich, and not the conspicuously pious, Christian Pharisees who were selling their souls to save their lives by colluding with those who were trying to use genocidal fear, prejudice, and violence to return their country to prominence, and to keep it pure and Aryan-nation white. God is never behind the easing of the tension of opposites. God is always right in the thick of it.

“Give…to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” We hold those things in the same two hands.

As human beings, our Sitz im Leben is the tension between holy and worldly opposites. We can deny that reality, but we can’t change it. We can’t legislate, preach, or bomb our way out of it. Nor should we try, because, for Jesus-followers, living in the tension means that every day, every moment, every encounter, and conversation presents us with opportunities to experience both our humbling, human limitations and the transcendent power of resurrection.

Look around you. Look across every aisle you can imagine. Giving to God that which is God’s means recognizing and giving thanks for the mystery and holiness that lives within every corner of the known and knowable creation – including your own life.

¹Susan Grove Eastman, Feasting on the Word, `(Year A, Volume 4), David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Eds., Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2011. P. 191.

²Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, Franciscan Media, Cincinnati, OH, 2008.

Pp. 32-33.

³Ibid. Pp. 36-37.