Sobriety in an Intoxicating World (Sermon)

“Sobriety in an Intoxicating World”

Romans 12:1-8

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/27/17

         When reading through Paul’s letter to the Romans, one notices that the Apostle is both passionate and compassionate. He is candid with his criticism and vulnerable with his own failures and foibles. He manages to be direct and challenging on the one hand, and gracious and gentle on the other. Paul demonstrates a kind of holy balance, the balance it requires to be truly pastoral and loving, the kind of balance it requires to be Christlike in and for the world.

The word balance may be a little misleading. The dynamic to which Paul invites us is not like tip-toeing along a tightrope. It’s more of a one-foot-in/one-foot-out kind of thing. “Do not be conformed to this world,” he says, “but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” This is one of the principal passages from which we extrapolate the adage “be in the world but not of the world.”

In his high priestly prayer, Jesus says it this way: My disciples “do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world…As [God] has sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:16&18)

This “balance,” then, has less in common with a wire-walking Wallenda than it does with an agent on some undercover assignment. So, it’s really more of a paradox that helps us to live deliberately in the world, to recognize and enter all its slippery scheming, all its self-serving duplicity, and the outright epidemic of its greed and fear without forgetting who we are, without forgetting that God’s holiness constitutes the core of our human being. Through Paul, the Spirit is encouraging us to be defined and guided by a gratefully chosen vision of ourselves, our neighbors, and of the entire creation as a kind of petri dish of holiness. The Creation is God’s preferred medium of self-expression.

Now, yes, the world is broken. It’s constantly plagued by selfishness, fear, prejudice, and plain old meanness. Then again, the whole story of Israel, and the very life of Jesus, declare that we experience God most intimately and immediately in the midst of the suffering. Because God is all about redemption and renewal, because God is all about “transformed” and “renewed” minds, God chooses to work through and to be known in all that is “weak” and “despised” in the world. (1Cor. 1:27-28)

Take note: Disciples who feel strong and privileged, and who live in strong and privileged circumstances often dismiss the in but not of the world approach. They choose, instead, to associate their strength and privilege with divine favor. But isn’t that to give up? Isn’t that to choose to be of as well as in the world? Having made that kind of choice, world-serving disciples tend to gloss over things like, “Blessed are the poor…the hungry…the meek…the merciful…[and] the persecuted.” (Matthew 5); things like, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God…is…to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:27); and things like, “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

Paul clearly find the Romans lacking in the crucial trait of humility. “For by the grace given to me,” says the Apostle, “I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.”

Sober judgment.

Joe Sachs taught philosophy at St. John’s College in Annapolis for thirty years. He translated numerous ancient Greek texts. And where the NRSV translators chose “sober,” Sachs would have chosen “temperance.” Either way, the Greek word is sophrosune, and according to Sachs, it refers to “the active condition by which one chooses bodily pleasures in the ways and to the extent that they enhance life, not by an effort of self-control but by a harmony of desire with reason.”¹ A willfully-chosen harmony of desire with reason. Talk about a complicated balance!

Sachs says that the ancient Greco-Roman culture recognized human desires as crucial aspects of human nature. As such, they warrant satisfaction. The caveat is that authentic satisfaction and expression of human desires requires sophrosune. And according to Sachs, this sobriety/temperance is “the stable state of character which, in any mature human being, replaces the overgrown impulses of childhood.”²

Paul’s “sober judgment” has to do with overcoming childishness and living a mature faith. Remember what he says to the Corinthians: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” (1Cor. 13:11)

Mature disciples of Jesus Christ inhabit God’s creation with transformed and renewed minds – with sober minds. Childish and untransformed minds, are vulnerable to the intoxicating ways and means of the world. Greed, fear, and self-absorption can overwhelm a mind that has not learned to harness its passions and to offer them up for the well-being of others. A mind intoxicated by worldly concerns will fixate on its own desires for possessions, power, attention, and affirmation.

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis expresses all this from a Christian perspective. “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation,” says Lewis, “is that we were made for another world…Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy [that desire], but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, [we] must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly [desires], and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. [We] must keep alive in [ourselves] the desire for [our] true country, which [we] shall not find till after death...”³

How many times has the story been told of the person who reaches the top of the ladder and finds himself or herself unfulfilled? How many times have each of us wanted wanting this thing or that thing, expecting it to complete us in some way, only to have that thing expose nothing more than a deeper emptiness in our guts? When we strive only to get, only to control and conquer, we may achieve what economists call “satisfaction,” but we inevitably end up wanting more. We end up out of balance. When we choose to work for something so that it will benefit more than some visceral, naked, childish want in ourselves, we have a much better chance of experiencing what Paul calls sophrosune, and what our spiritual tradition calls joy, gratitude, and new life.

Inhabiting this Creation as Christian humans means accepting a magnificent and always-frustrating paradox. We experience that paradox in the fact that while we always have one foot in this world, as followers of Jesus, we also have one foot in the kingdom of God – which is our true hope, our true identity, and our eternal home.

¹Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle. Translation by Joe Sachs. Focus Publishing, R. Pullins Co., 2002. P. 211.

²Ibid. p. 211.

³http://www.mthopechronicles.com/2010/07/made-for-another-world.html

Political Mystics (Sermon)

“Political Mystics”

Matthew 15:1-20

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/20/17

         Some Pharisees and scribes have traveled from Jerusalem to Galilee. That’s between 75 and 100 miles depending on the route they walked. They’ve come to confront Jesus – about his disciples’ hand-washing habits.

         Seriously? A week of travel – each way – to call Jesus on the carpet for digital hygiene? That’s like someone from Seattle driving all the way to Tennessee, Starbucks latte in hand, to complain about someone drinking instant coffee!

         Jesus sees and understands the fundamental issues lying at the core of his cultural context. He sees and understands the personal and the communal dimensions of those issues. He also sees into the frightened and frustrated hearts of the Pharisees and scribes. And out of courageous Love for the Creation, Jesus does not shy away from people or issues.

Jesus is a political mystic, someone whose deep spirituality calls him to speak and act in the public square for the public good. He has inspired other political mystics like St. Francis, Sojourner Truth, John Muir, Martin Luther King, Jr. Jesus even inspired Gandhi, a Hindu.

To Jesus there’s no such thing as a religious, political, economic, or social issue that doesn’t belong in the conversation of the community of faith. If he were with us in the 21^st century in the same flesh he wore in the first century, he would never shy away from issues regarding racism, immigration, environmental stewardship, healthcare, or poverty, because those issues are not merely political issues. At their heart, they are spiritual issues, because our responses to them reveal what’s in our hearts. They reveal how we relate to each other, to the Creation, and, therefore, to God.

That’s exactly why the Pharisees and the scribes travel all the way from Jerusalem to Galilee. The actions of one group of increasingly visible Galilean Jews is affecting the theological, spiritual, and political climate within all Judaism.

         Why, the Pharisees ask, do you allow your disciples to defy the Law?

Citing a rabbinical tradition that justifies breaking the fifth commandment if resources are being given to God, Jesus says, Why do you elevate human tradition over Torah?

A quick history lesson: In the first century, Midrash is coming into its own. Midrash refers to a scholarly pursuit, an art form really, in which rabbis create narratives to explain particular laws in the Torah, or to smooth over inconsistencies in scriptural texts. It’s not hard to understand why all those nit-picking laws need some narrative back-up. Simple adherence to rules and belief in doctrines takes no creativity, no imagination. In fact, it’s satisfied with just the opposite – a kind of mechanical and unconscious submission. But professing, describing, and sharing a dynamic faith in the great mystery of the Creator cries out for some kind of creative underpinning. Faith needs color and texture. It needs images and interactions. It requires plot and tension.

Midrash provides this. It brings to the study of scripture the indispensable gift of story – backstories that help breathe life into the Law. Jesus’ parables are wonderful examples of Midrash. The good Samaritan helps us understand of all those texts that talk about welcoming the stranger. The rich man and Lazarus illuminates texts having to do with greed and poverty. Honoring parents, confession, forgiveness, pride, jealousy – all these issues play out in the parable of the prodigal.

“It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles,” says Jesus, “but what comes out.” And those who get bogged down in rules are like the blind leading the blind.

Frustrated when his disciples fail to understand his Midrash, Jesus gets graphic, Look, whatever goes into a person’s mouth finds its way out through…the digestive system. That’s just biology. But what comes out of the mouth reveals the heart. That is spirit.

I hear Jesus affirming the Torah. The Jews trust that Yahweh gave the law to Moses. That is to say, the Law comes out of the mouth of God. The Law is not the heart of God, but it reflects God’s heart. It reveals God’s desire for human beings to live together in community, as one humanity. And Jesus isn’t about to let the Pharisees forget that the Law declares that family relationships are foundational to human community. Besides, that Law says nothing about washing one’s hands before meals. The texts that mention washing have to do with ritual purity, not pre-meal hygiene!

Having lost sight of the grander purpose and gift of the Law, the Pharisees have made a Faustian bargain: They’ve exchanged Love of God for ownership of orthodoxy. And they’ve exchanged Love of neighbor for domination of adversaries. So, their mouths and their actions reveal hearts being blinded by petty legalism, divisive fear, and violent self-righteousness. These things defile the individual, and they poison the community.

Not every Christian is called to be a political mystic. But as the body of Jesus Christ, created by the Holy Spirit through the power of Resurrection, the Church as a whole is most certainly called to that work.

Every congregation must empower those whose gifts call them to make music, or to maintain church property, or to manage church finances, or to facilitate education, fellowship, or crisis care for members. By the same token, every congregation must nurture its prophetic voice in and for the world. While those ministries share equal importance, there are times when one of those ministries takes on acute significance in and for the congregation or acute significance in and for the wider community.

Now is such a time for the Church to claim its prophetic, political-mystic voice. We must speak and act in ways that don’t simply denounce every form of prejudice, hatred, and racial supremacy. We must proclaim our trust in the God who creates this world and who loves it, in all its beautiful if exasperating diversity. We must live as a kind of Midrash, an organic example of the faithfulness and righteousness it takes to live together in the imperfect peace of human community.

Do you folks realize how well you’re already doing that? Jonesborough Presbyterian isn’t very diverse racially and ethnically, but sitting side-by-side in the pews, and working together on the session and in ministry teams are folks who passionately and vocally support almost the full spectrum of theological, political, economic, and social opinion. And sometimes you talk about those things. Some of you may think I occasionally go too far in comments from the pulpit. Some of you are frustrated that I don’t go far enough. And regardless of what you think of the person next to you or of the preacher in the pulpit, most of you keep coming back! In this fractured, contentious world, how do you do that?

I pray that it’s because you have seen and keep trying to see each other’s hearts.

I pray that it’s because you recognize that we truly depend on each other’s gifts.

I pray that it’s because you’re open to Christ’s vision of becoming one body, here in Jonesborough and throughout God’s creation.

I pray that we all continue to bear with one another as God and world events stretch us with an always-challenging future in which every day we are called to confront dangerous realities like racism and violence.

And I pray that we do all this while proclaiming our Love for one another in Jesus Christ, and while trusting the voice of fearless compassion within our God-imaged hearts.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayers.

True Blessedness: A Gift of Loss, Not Gain (Sermon)

“True Blessedness: A Gift of Loss, Not Gain”

Genesis 32:22-31

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/6/17

         “I feel so blessed.”

         “You’re such a blessing.”

         These affirmations, as well-intended as they may be, are often as hollow as most of what one hears on religious broadcasting. The very idea of blessing has been co-opted by the moralizing and self-serving distortions of the prosperity gospel in which blessing is synonymous with possessions or personal security and happiness. Getting used to that mindset is understandable, but it can all-too-easily become our truth, even when it’s far from true. To white landowners in the south, slavery was once blessing and truth. To the robber barons of the late 1800’s, so was child labor. So are the greedy and violent conquests of nations driven not by national defense, but by the Machiavellian siblings of divine right of kings and Manifest Destiny. Before the dust settles on those battlefields, the victors turn their backs on the desecration and say, in the name of some god or gods, “We’re so blessed.”

         When blessing gets reduced to wealth or power, when it gets reduced to the preservation of one group’s privilege, it inevitably gets twisted into entitlement. It belongs only to those who deserve it, those who earn it, because God helps those who help themselves. That distortion breeds a callous vanity that is antithetical to everything Jesus teaches and lives.

         All this makes me wonder if First World cultures in general, and First World Christians in particular have the spiritual, moral, and ethical courage to recognize and embrace true blessedness.

         So, what is blessing?

         Today’s story has to do with Jacob in his later years. At first glance, he may remind us of Job. He has a large family – two wives and eleven children. All his livestock and other possessions place him among the elite of his day. Looking at Jacob through First World eyes, one might say that he should consider himself “blessed.” He has lots of stuff.

Jacob is on his way to meet his brother, the firstborn twin, Esau. Remember, through premeditated deceit, Jacob stole the family birthright and Isaac’s blessing from Esau. Jacob’s trickery landed him in the lap of luxury, but as he prepares to face his brother, Jacob feels anything but blessed.

         Reaching the Jabbok River, Jacob sends his family and all his possessions across the river, into Esau’s territory. Not only do the women, children, sheep, and goats go first, Jacob stays behind, terrified of Esau. Jacob is alone, vulnerable, and completely divested of everyone and everything for which he has either worked or connived. He has sent his whole life, his very identity across the river. That’s when it begins.

         “Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”

All night long, Jacob and “a man” are locked in a kind of struggle for which words like wrestling match, or fight, or combat seem inadequate. At the Jabbok, Jacob experiences a fierce spiritual and existential crisis. To me, this scene feels descriptive of someone weeping through the night, or someone raging at God, casting questions and curses for hours. At the Jabbok, we all confront our brokenness, and that of the creation. The Jabbok where we face the truth that the stuff we had once considered blessing has been revealed as fleeting and empty, maybe even a burden.

         Jacob makes a curious demand. “I will not let you go,” he says to the man, “until you bless me.” Jacob seems to realize that he hasn’t been struggling to win or protect anything. This long, dark night of the soul is revealing Jacob’s true self. The man blesses him with a new name: Israel. You will be called “Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and you have prevailed.”

         “Prevailed.” That word does not convey a sense of victory over anything, but of having survived. Through this experience, Jacob dies and rises to a new and different way of being alive in the world. Jacob prevails because, at long last, he accepts defeat. He has been humbled into his deepest and truest self. Only when he has lost, only when stripped of his stuff, and of his inflating and inflammatory ego, is Jacob ready to recognize and embrace the fullness of blessing.

Richard Rohr calls this the path of descent.¹ Over the centuries, sages in the Church have called that narrow and lonely path “the way of the cross.”

“The path downward,” says Rohr, “is much more trustworthy than any path upward, which tends to feed the ego…[On some level,] Authentic spirituality is…about letting go…letting go of our small self, letting go of our cultural biases, and letting go of our fear of loss and death. Freedom is letting go of wanting more and better things, and it is letting go of our need to control and manipulate God and others. It is…letting go of…our need to be right.”²

         Referencing the stories of the prodigal son, and of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Rohr writes that, “Those who are proud of how they have done everything right – but also feel superior to others – are not open to God’s blessing…Fortunately, life will lead us to the edge of our own resources through…[pain, mistakes, unjust suffering, tragedy, failure, and the general absurdity of life]. We must be led to an experience or situation that we cannot fix or control or understand. That’s where faith begins. Up to that moment it has just been religion!”³

         Rohr could have used the story of Jacob, as well. Jacob, meaning all of Israel, and by extension all of us, discovers true identity, purpose, and blessing not by gaining, but by losing. Jacob prevails not through victory, but through what Frederick Buechner calls The Magnificent Defeat.⁴

         Recently, a friend emailed me at 4:00 in the morning. She was struggling with the imminent and untimely death of a long-time friend. She’d been up all night crying, yelling at God, questioning, praying. I wrote back trying to say that I understood. I asked her to consider the possibility that her tears, shouts, and questions were the prayers that really mattered. Maybe they were even prayers the Holy Spirit was praying for her, “in sighs too deep for words.” I told her that grief was a process that always changes us.

It seems to me that she was on the banks of her own Jabbok, hanging on for dear life, and crying out for blessing. She was on a path of descent where the blessings of a deepened and deepening faith were possible.

         I don’t know how much I helped. But I do trust that for her, as for all of us, true blessedness is the gift of loss, not of gain. Only there do we really learn to trust, follow, and love the one who “emptied himself…humbled himself…and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)

As we come to his table today, may we come as a community who is willing to lose all for the sake of true blessing, for the sake of receiving and sharing the unearnable welcome of grace, and the eternal belonging that is the household of God.**

¹http://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/63917A424BC93F40/CAEF12FB6B3D7B5544D0DD5392A9C75A

²Ibid.

³http://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/FD47744CCC670B8C/CAEF12FB6B3D7B5544D0DD5392A9C75A

⁴“The Magnificent Defeat” From: The Magnificent Defeat, Harper/San Francisco, 1966. Pp. 10-18.

**While preaching this sermon, I knew that it was not complete. (They seldom are.) So as the charge, I added something similar to the following:

         Guilt is not a good place to start on the path of descent. Guilt sends us on journeys of resentment, not of discovery and transformation.

         Having said that, without thinking critically as well gratefully about our material/physical situation, we may become complacent and self-satisfied. We may associate what we have with our efforts alone and interpret them as God’s particular reward for good behavior. And those who don’t have enough must not be as diligent in their faith and work as we are. At that point (and please pardon the cliché), we don’t own our possessions, they own us.

         The path of descent is most certainly the way of humility, of letting go. And along this path, we discover that all we have and all we are is gift from God. We discover that for us to recognize and embrace such things as true blessings, requires sharing them. Only when gratefully and freely share do they reveal their lasting value. Only then do they transform private enjoyment into interactive discipleship. AH