Never Again (Sermon)

“Never Again”

Genesis 9:1-3, 8-17

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/23/17

         In July of 1984, while working as a summer youth director in N. Augusta, SC, I took a small group of kids on a mission trip to Bennettsville, SC, a rural community that had been devastated by tornadoes that spring. We went to offer such help as we could, and our experience gave us new respect for nature’s power to rearrange people’s surroundings and priorities. In the midst of it all, one image stood out.

         While ripping apart a shopping center, the largest tornado grabbed a quarter-ton I-beam and hurled it through the air for about a mile. It landed in someone’s front yard, about 30 feet from the front steps. It stuck in the ground. Angled back toward the house, it looked like an arrow that had missed its mark. Of that 18-foot beam, about half remained above ground. The family left it there, and by the road they placed a granite marker engraved with the date of the storm and the words In God we Trust.

         After the trip, I was in the church kitchen one afternoon telling the cleaning lady about our trip. Kind-hearted and soft-spoken, the woman listened intently behind a tight-lipped smile that seemed to acknowledge the pain, yet without surprise.

         “You know,” she said putting a finger to her cheek, “You hear about things like that all the time, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and people getting hurt and killed. And I really think that those things are the good Lord trying to tell us something.”

         She was a wonderful lady, and I enjoyed her company. But she may have gotten her theology from TV preachers.

         Many televangelists flog their listeners with dispensationalism, a theology that divides human history into quantifiable eras, or “dispensations” of divine revelation. Believing that global death and destruction must herald the second coming, dispensationalists crave the fall of civilization. Convinced that all suffering, regardless of the cause, is God’s judgment, they grant their toxic blessings to religious and political leaders who have the power to call up fresh floods of violence and to drown the world with division and fear. Only then, they say, will Jesus return.

         Sure, breaking certain laws can cause suffering. Defy the law of gravity and one discovers just how true the old saying is: It’s not the fall that kills you. It’s the sudden stop. Of particular concern to me is the fact that, for years we’ve been reaping the bitter fruits of poor stewardship of the earth, which, according to both creation stories, is the original human vocation. That’s simple cause and effect, and that’s on humankind not God. Until we recognize the natural connection between our sinful lust for excess and convenience on the one hand and environmental degradation on the other, the waters will keep rising. And if we don’t make that turn, how will future generations sustain themselves?

Having said that, attaching a sin, or even a sinner, to every storm and illness is more than self-serving theology. It’s idolatry. It makes judgments for God.

The story of the Great Flood becomes helpful when we remember that it has less to do with our sinfulness than it does with God’s grace.       A little background: The concept for the biblical story was sponged from one chapter in the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh. The book of Genesis reached its current form, more or less, during the time of the Babylonian Exile. It became a staple of preaching and worship for a vanquished people who were being told that their crisis was their own fault. The flood narrative helped to restore Israel’s identity and vision. ‘Exile is not the judgment of an angry God,’ says the story. ‘It’s a symptom of the world’s lust for power and excess, for wealth and convenience. And God, who is faithful, loving, and just, is with us, now and always.’

         Through Isaiah, God makes this explicit: “[To me] this is like the days of Noah,” says God, “just as I swore that the waters of Noah would never again go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you and will not rebuke you. For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed…” (Is. 54:9-10)

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

         While the story of the flood begins with God attempting to blot out evil by blotting out humankind, it also shows God discovering the futility of such efforts. “The inclination of the human heart is evil from youth,” says God. This lament acknowledges that neither floods, nor tornadoes, nor plagues upon our houses will turn us around; and they certainly won’t redeem us. So, God makes a new covenant and promises that never again will God use “grapes of wrath” to bring about transformation.

         Why won’t we learn the same thing? All the wars and rumors of wars on this planet, and all the glorification of them reveal that humankind still trusts violence more than we trust God’s covenants of grace. That misplaced trust makes dispensationalism very lucrative business. Its apostles terrify their way deep into people’s minds and pockets.

By contrast, the flood story proclaims that God initiates a covenant with us and remains faithful to it, even when we don’t. Rather than trying to force our hand through catastrophe, Yahweh, who is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,” (Ex. 36:4) commits to shepherding us patiently toward faithfulness. Isn’t that the God revealed in Jesus?

In a brief article entitled “Reinhold Niebuhr on Moral Motivation,” L.L. Wilmoth says, “the highest moral and spiritual achievements depend not upon a push but…a pull. People must be charmed into righteousness. The language of aspiration rather than that of criticism and command is the proper…language” for proclamation.¹

The story of the flood begins with an anthropomorphic God feeling “sorry” for having created humankind (Gen. 6:6), and seeking to correct the creation through “criticism and command.” After the flood, God realizes that punitive violence never produces constructive change. The story ends with God deciding to pull humanity forward, to charm us into aspiring toward things like righteousness, faithful stewardship, and grateful, generous living. The language becomes gracious and covenantal rather than resentful and coercive.

“Never again,” says God. “Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood.”

This is more than some silver lining. This is God entering the creation’s relentless suffering with healing love and redeeming purpose.

God commits to this new covenant with a sign as simple and as elegant as a wedding band – the rainbow. Think about that: Rainbows require both bright sunlight and significant moisture. The sign of God’s covenant arcs across the heavens only when there’s obvious tension between fair skies and foul.

This same tension makes the last first and the first last.

It makes losing one’s life the very way to discover one’s true life.

It’s makes poverty, grief, hunger, and persecution signs of “blessedness.”

This same tension makes shepherds kings and Friday “Good.”

Because of this tense yet gracious paradox, God’s promise of “never again” floods the earth with hope. And we hear it echoing in Jesus’ “final” words to his disciples: “And remember,” he says, “I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Mt. 28:20b)

¹https://externalword.wordpress.com/2017/03/19/reinhold-niebuhr-on-moral-motivation/

Snake! (Sermon)

“Snake!”

Genesis 3:1-24

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/16/17

         There’s a cliché that I can understand, but can’t stand: “The only good snake is a dead snake.”

I’ve never grieved the death of fire ants or cockroaches. With clear conscience, I’ve ended the lives of houseflies and stink bugs. And with my bare fingers I’ll help my wife squish Japanese beetles by the dozen in her garden. But there’s something about snakes that I can’t shake. I’m fascinated with them. I don’t want to be surprised by them, and I don’t go around catching them and handling them. But when I’m outside, I look for them. I want to see them.

These prehistoric creatures show up frequently in my dreams, too. Having a prominent place in the pantheon of archetypes, snakes possess a mythical hold on the human psyche. Slithering and lurking, hissing and striking, they symbolize danger and fear. But because poisonous species carry the cure to their bites in their own venom, snakes often represent healing, as well. The symbol for the medical community is the caduceus – two snakes winding their way up a winged staff. Living beneath the ground, they frequently represent a deep and earthy wisdom. And because they shed their skin, snakes often represent transformation and new life. Whatever the association, anything that draws out of us such visceral reactions is begging for attention.

         As someone steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition, when I think of the Genesis story snaking its way through the interpretive forests of centuries and cultures, I have trouble limiting my understanding of even that serpent to a symbol for treachery and sin. Most of us have been taught that this story illustrates how evil and suffering entered the world. But such readings ignore the rich revelations below the surface.

         By interacting with this forked-tongued symbol of danger, the man and the woman move from security to vulnerability. And by interacting with this skin-shedding symbol of transformation, they also move from innocence and unawareness to a state of deeper understanding of themselves, of the creation and their place in it, and, most importantly, of the holiness of God. At first, it looks and feels like a painful snake bite, but maybe this story also reveals potential for human health and wholeness.

         Ancestors that predate all of our parents and Sunday school teachers bequeathed to us an image of Eden that describes both a garden that was and a heaven that awaits. And personally, I’m coming to understand the descriptions of this garden/heaven are the honest longings of human hearts and minds overwhelmed by human suffering. Thus, we have images of an existence where there’s no pain, no cancer, or war, or famine, or mosquitoes, and where we don’t even remember snakes.

         I can’t say what my own timeless heart of hearts remembers of Eden. And my continually evolving expectations of the life to come look nothing like what they did years ago. All I have, all any of us has is the here and now. And who can imagine this life without story, without the ebb and flow of weariness and wonder, ecstasy and agony, heartache and healing? So, what would life be like without “snakes”? It’s right here, in what often feels like the snake pit of real life that we experience and cling to God’s grace.

         In Genesis, God declares the consequence of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: “In the day that you eat of it you will die.” But after eating the fruit, Adam and Eve shed their skins of innocence. The misty ignorance clears from their eyes. And instead of dying, they are tended to by God.

Yes, giving in to temptation does mean that human life now includes death. It includes experiences from which human beings need deliverance and recovery, and in which we need strength for endurance. The story also reveals that humankind, having moved beyond its original state, now has the opportunity to truly understand what it means to bear God’s image.

         I’m beginning to see the events of that last day in Eden as much more than a “fall” or a death. I’m beginning to see a birth and an ascent, as well. In this story, humankind begins to make peace with the reality of suffering and evil, and with our part in perpetuating it. But this story is not about fault-finding. It’s not about laying blame. It’s about declaring that regardless of where all the snakish evil comes from, God enters our suffering, choosing to transform and redeem both our accidental and intentional brokenness. Spiritual maturity depends on accepting that reality and following God into suffering – our own and that of others – with faith, hope, and love. That’s what it means to be made in God’s image. I think the storytellers say as much by attributing to God these words: “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.”

The creation has always been wounded by evil, by deliberate sin, and by plain old bad luck. Our world is fraught with disease, poverty, and war, with neglect and abuse of people and the environment. Thorns and thistles can choke our energy and creativity. Our labors, which are meant to sustain us, can tear us down. Destroyed by dishonesty, greed, and arrogance, relationships and communities become petri dishes for violence and cynicism. In the midst of everything that can make this life a living hell, life-restoring examples of beauty, kindness, wonder, and joy also weave their way into our experiences.

         We are both cursed and blessed by the knowledge of good and evil. Out of love for a broken and suffering world, God gives to humankind, to you and me, gifts of vision, compassion, and creativity. And without such gifts, without people willing to claim them, nurture them, and share them, what would happen to our hope? As the Church, we are called to be a reminder of the Love that creates us, and a foretaste of the Love that awaits us. And God not only calls us to that work, God entrusts us with the burden of doing it in the throes of the creation’s brokenness and suffering.

         Ask people who are passionately involved in a particular church what makes their commitment strong. I’m willing to bet that it’s not what the preacher says or what songs we sing on Sundays, but how they serve God and neighbor in and through that faith community. If folks show passion in worship, it’s because they are personally involved in that congregation’s ministries of compassion and justice in and for a hurting creation. What they experience in the sanctuary is connected to experiences of freely-offered discipleship. God is not real and alive because the preacher says so, but because the worshipers have relationships with hungry people at the food pantry, homeless children in Family Promise, sick and dying people in hospitals and nursing homes.

Without entering human suffering, “church” all-too-easily becomes a plastic Eden – a place where we try to hide from God, a place where faith is reduced to moralistic obligation, or to some kind of civic duty.

The Garden of Eden may be a long-ago memory in the hearts of humankind, but the Kingdom of God exists visibly, audibly, and palpably whenever and wherever we forsake the temptation to live fearfully and selfishly, and choose instead to live gratefully and compassionately, in the midst of the world’s grief, loneliness, and despair.

Jesus reveals and embodies that truth for us. When he says, “Follow me,” he invites us into salvation. And the path of salvation leads not around or away from evil and suffering, but straight into the heart of it. And there we proclaim, in all manner of actions, and “when necessary”^* in words: “He is risen! He is risen, indeed!”

^*This quotation is often and probably mistakenly attributed to St. Francis of Asisi. (http://appleseeds.org/St-Fran_Preach-Gospel.htm)

So That None Should Be Alone (Sermon)

“So That None Should Be Alone”

Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-23

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/9/17

         The creation stories in the first two chapters of Genesis create in me a sense of awe and gratitude. Imagining the cosmic scope of the story in Chapter 1 is like sitting on top of Buffalo Mountain and watching the sun set over the plateau to the west, and the stars come out over the Appalachian highlands to the east. Reading the earthy, nitty-gritty detail of the story in Chapter 2 is like watching my wife at work in her garden.

         Both stories offer magnificent and compelling, but thoroughly distinct images. They harmonize well enough, but any attempt to create unison between them yields artificial results. We can no more overlay the two stories and get one authoritative history than we could overlay photographs to the east and west of Buffalo Mountain and get one coherent perspective.

Think about it: Did God take seven days to create the universe, as described in Genesis 1, or a single day as described in Genesis 2? Did God make all the animals first then human beings, as in Genesis 1, or the human male, then all the animals, then the human female as in Genesis 2?

The discrepancies do not overwhelm the sophisticated brilliance in Genesis. Aware of the limits of language, the ancient storytellers used images and symbols to suggest what their hearts felt but their words could not adequately describe. Feel free to disagree, but I have to interpret the creation stories as statements of faith rather than historical documents, as poetry rather than science.

Back “in the day that God made the earth and the heavens,” says Genesis 2, all was dry and barren. But, in this pre-beginning, beneath the surface, a spring flows. Down in the unconscious depths, the possibility of water churns like undreamt dreams and unwritten songs. And all that potential needs a vessel. So, God pulls the waters upward, through the dry and gritty void. Streams and rivers flow. They feed the sky. Clouds gather. Rains fall. Plants take root and grow. But who will tend them? Who will enjoy them?

Scooping up a handful of water-logged dust, God infuses it with ruach – with breath, a holy spirit. Into the enlivening stew, God adds humankind – a unique blend of matter and spirit, consciousness and unconsciousness, instinct and innovation.

         “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,” sings the psalmist, “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.”

         In some way, all living things share God’s breath; so all living things are holy. And the deep capacity for awareness of self, awareness of the waters above and below, grant to the human a particular holiness, a particular likeness to God. This gift will get all humanity into a bit of a pinch, but first, the man is simply to care for all that God has created. He has more than existence. He has something to do, something to give his life meaning. He has a calling, a vocation.

         Having formed the man of dust and water, having blown animating breath into his nostrils, God sets the man in the garden to till and keep it. He is free to eat and enjoy all of it – with one prohibition: Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Being as much like God as he is, knowing good and evil would be one burden too many on the man’s heart of flesh. He’d have trouble bearing that burden without mistaking himself for God - especially if he’s alone.

         “It is not good that the man should be alone.” What a profoundly revealing thing for God to say. In the first creation story we hear God say, “Let us create humankind in our image.” And later in the second story, after Adam and Eve have been exiled from the garden, God says, “See, the man has become like one of us.”

God doesn’t have some kind of multiple personality disorder. The storied image in which we are made is one of relationship. To be like God in the healthiest sense necessarily involves others. This is the point of Trinitarian language. God is one, but because God is Love, the essence of God is relationship.

         The philosopher Charles Taylor wrote: “One cannot be a self on one’s own.” The man needs an other because loneliness diminishes both our humanity and our holiness.

         So, God experiments with animals. And they’re wonderful, but the man needs more than dogs and dolphins, copperheads and chickadees. He needs a partner who will both counter and complete. So, God closes the man’s eyes and sends him into a deep, self-emptying sleep. During that time of unconsciousness and vulnerability, God removes a rib, one of the bones that protect the man’s heart and other vital organs. From that piece of the man’s foundational structure, God fashions another human being, a woman. At last the man has a companion, someone who may expose his heart a little bit, but one who cures loneliness.

Let’s remember, loneliness and solitude are two very different things. We often choose and enjoy solitude for Sabbath renewal, but loneliness is the curse of exclusion from community. The creation story in Genesis 2 declares that exclusion and loneliness run counter to God’s will – for everyone. No human being should be alone. We need each other the way scripture needs both creation stories.

         Who we are and what we do as human creatures, we do in community. As a place of creativity, the Church is called to share in God’s eternal breathing. By telling the ancient stories and living our new ones, we wade in the waters of all that is seen and unseen, of that which is and that which is becoming.

         As a place of purpose, the Church is called to nurture vocation. We till and keep the God-planted garden on which all human beings depend, and in which we all may experience our strengths and weaknesses, our God-given gifts and those of others.

As a place of worship, the Church encourages prayerful solitude, where we learn to listen for and to relate to God. And as a place of community, we do not tolerate loneliness. We welcome, enjoy, struggle with, and forgive one another.

         Each day, may you look deeply into yourself. May you see both your fragile dust and water held together by God’s holy breath, and your own extraordinary beauty and potential. May you sit in wonder before yourself and others as you would sit on a mountain top, watching the sun set and the moon rise.

         We are indeed “fearfully and wonderfully made” in God’s image. We often know that image within us by acknowledging the selfishness, the violence, and other brokenness within us, as well. Whether we want them or not, both realities, both stories our ours. One participates in God’s creativity and joy. One struggles with it, and often denies it.

The more we love one another as God loves us, the more we experience and share the God within us and within others.

We’re in this life together – all of us, all of our stories. And this must be God’s intent for us, so that none should be alone.

Ambushed by Resurrection (Sermon)

“Ambushed by Resurrection”

Matthew 10:34-39

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/2/17

         The passage we just read appears in Matthew and in Luke. In fact Luke, in some respects the most socially and religiously provocative of the four canonical gospels, includes not one but two versions of this text. To be honest, I have never liked this passage. It always feels like an ambush.

         “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” What happened to the Prince of Peace?

         “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” What happened to Honor your father and mother?

         To be worthy of me, says Jesus, take up your cross. Didn’t Rome use crucifixion to manipulate public behavior through the most horrifying cruelty possible?

         To really live your life, release your death grip on it. With that, Jesus challenges some of the most fundamental tenets that first-world cultures celebrate and enshrine as “inalienable rights.” Things such as: Grab all the gusto you can! Control your own narrative!

Dogmatic maxims like these can lead to trouble. If I claim some divine right to grab all the gusto I can get, I inevitably keep grabbing, even when it means grabbing more than my fair share. And the more I consume, the more insatiable I become. That becomes a way of life. I feel entitled to all I want, so, I lose sight of others and their needs. I lose compassion for them.

Similarly, when I claim divine right to control my own narrative, I will have to control other people’s narratives, because my life cannot be distanced from the lives around me. Controlling my narrative, means forcing my opinions, my desires, and my fears onto the lives around me. And I find that if I don’t do this, my neighbor’s own quest for well-being may hinder my gusto-grabbing happiness, or threaten my power-hungry and image-conscious ego. Only when I get my way, by whatever means, is God in heaven, and all right with the world.

         Into all of my efforts to manipulate and rationalize advantages for myself, Jesus keeps saying emphatically and unequivocally, Stop it! To use your God-given gifts to make some kind of god out of yourself is to misuse them. It’s also, unavoidably, to exploit your neighbors.

So, give it up, Allen. Lose that life. Only then will you truly live.

         Like I said – I’ve never much liked this passage. But bless my heart, it’s challenge to me is what makes it gospel for me.

         Here’s how things unfold: While these six verses do feel rather blunt at first, I stop and remember that Jesus offers them as an expression of Love, not of anger or vengeance. After spending enough time with them, I begin to hear them revealing a purpose that aims to heal and make whole. Instead of blunt, they become incisive.

         When Jesus says that he comes not “to bring peace, but a sword,” I can hear him saying that he comes to sever some of the bonds that human beings hold most tightly and dearly. But, what’s loving about that? Well, I think he does that not to end relationships, but to re-new them.

When a broken bone doesn’t set correctly, an orthopedic surgeon may have to re-break the bone and re-set it. The intentional break and re-set allows the arm, or leg, or rib to be restored to proper alignment and to full strength and function.

         If this is the kind of thing Jesus is talking about, then in order for groups of people, even those as close as family, to discover their true purpose and their deepest joy, they must cut themselves loose from what has become outdated ties. Then, in a consciously-chosen act, they commit themselves to something new, something even deeper than the bonds of family relationships, deeper than the bonds of any sort of tribe, congregation, denomination, party, or nation. Even more appropriate than the image of re-setting a bone, is the image of cutting the umbilical cord between a newborn and mother.

         Marianne gave birth to our children in a birthing center in Rincon, GA. Both times, I watched Marianne, exhausted and awestruck, hold that pink, wrinkled, puffy-eyed baby she had carried within her for nine months. And both times, the midwife took two surgical clamps and pinched them down tightly and close together on that gently twisting, bluish-gray tether still attached to our baby’s belly.

The midwife held out a pair of sterile scissors and said, “Would you like to cut the umbilical cord?”

         It was not a merely symbolic act. By cutting the cord, I severed the most vital physical aspect of the pre-natal bond between Marianne and our children. Forever. The experiences of both pregnancy and childbirth were complete, and an utterly new set of relationships began, for all of us. Relationships of unspeakable joy and heartache. Relationships of relentless discovery and bewilderment. Relationships in which we began a continual process of coming together, ripping apart, and coming together anew. Peace is a rare gift in all of that purposed turmoil.

         All relationships experience turmoil, don’t they? Things as they were end. And after each experience of change and loss, the Spirit lays us at our mother’s breast, freshly re-formed and capable of new depths of trust. Accepting this process as not merely inevitable, but healthy – that’s the key. It’s a necessary step toward making peace with the always surprising ambush of Resurrection. I think that’s how losing one’s life for Jesus’ sake becomes an experience, ultimately, of great joy.

         For us as Christians, the Sabbath day is always a celebration of Easter. No matter what outside distractions may clutter our hearts and minds on a Sunday morning, the reason we gather is to bear witness to the transforming power of Resurrection in the world. All that we say and do and sing should proclaim that truth.

In a few minutes, we will celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. As you pass the bread and cup today, I ask you to say something different. As the first tray comes, say to your neighbor, “Broken bread for your broken heart.” And when the second tray comes, say, “The cup of Resurrection.”

As we remember Jesus’ passion at the hands of a fearful and violent empire, may we all be reminded that through this ritual meal we are being nourished with the resurrecting power of agape Love, that perfect Love that liberates us from all encumbering fears and loyalties, so that we may die to self, and rise to Christ. So that we may live in and share the presence of God’s kingdom here, and now, and always.