Sunday, February 25, 2018

The Best of Times/The Worst of Times (Sermon)


“The Best of Times/The Worst of Times”
1Kings 19:9b-15a
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
2/24/18

         “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”1
         Those opening lines from Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities can be used to describe virtually every day of every age. Just like it’s always day somewhere and night somewhere else, best and worst co-exist on this earth.
         For the prophet Elijah, it’s the best and worst of times.
         Prior to today’s reading, Elijah engages in a winner-take-all showdown with the prophets of Baal up on Mt. Carmel. In what might have looked like an episode of some ancient version of Survivor, Elijah kicks all competing prophets off the island. And he does so with higher drama than any “reality TV” finale. But, things go quickly from best to worst. And Elijah’s ensuing actions should humble and maybe even embarrass those of us in the Judeo-Christian tradition who tend to judge other faith traditions for their violent ways. After defeating the prophets of Baal, Elijah rounds them up like sacrificial goats, herds them down to the river, and slaughters every one of them. 450 men!
King Ahab, who had put his money on the prophets of Baal, scurries home to tell his wife, Jezebel, what happened. Now, Jezebel is a piece of work. Suffice it to say that she would never make the short list for Sunday School Teacher of the Year.
         When she hears what Elijah has done, she vows to do the same to him within the next twenty-four hours. Knowing that Jezebel’s threat is real, Elijah runs deep into the wilderness and hides in a cave. God tends to him there. Feeds him. Still, Elijah cries out to God, saying, Life is cruel. Take me now, Lord!
         Think about that: On Mt. Carmel, Elijah confidently faces 450 men. Now he cowers in fear of one woman. What happened?
         Caught in the tension between best and worst, Elijah’s story begins to instruct us.

1Kings 19:9b-15a
Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
10He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”
11[God] said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.
Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
14He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”
15Then the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.

         When God says to Elijah, “What are you doing here?” God is challenging the prophet to meditate on his situation, and to remember how he has already experienced God’s sustaining love, strength, and faithfulness.
         Paralyzed by fear, Elijah just complains to God saying, in effect,
I have been your faithful servant, and for all my trouble I get death threats while they keep destroying the world!       
         ‘Go higher up the mountain,’ says God. ‘And get ready. I’m about to pay a visit.’
         Then come the rock-splitting wind, the earthquake, and the fire.  And afterward the “sheer silence.” In the wake of all this wonder, Elijah covers his face and walks out of the cave.
         Again, God says, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
         Elijah gives, word-for-word, the same answer as before: “I have been very zealous for the Lord, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant,” and so on.
         And God says, Well then, just go on back to Damascus.
         For Elijah, it’s the best and worst of times. But life is always that way – best and worst, light and dark, hope and despair all knotted together, like wind, earthquake, fire, and holy silence up there on Mt. Horeb. In that grueling tension we can discover wonders that defy description. And usually, like Elijah, we discover it later, during remembering and reflecting. I say that because while he’s up there on the mountain talking with God and watching the elemental struggle of creation, Elijah is aware only of himself and Jezebel.
         Our nation’s addiction to violence is a kind of Jezebel. And that vile mistress manipulates us into thinking in superlative terms – best/worst, strongest/weakest, right/wrong. She turns every issue into us versus them. Perhaps her favorite manipulation is to make us think that our struggle is about ourselves alone, and that we only truly live when we equip ourselves to cause death. Jezebel is far removed from – and would remove us far from – our Lord who says “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another…just as I have loved you.” (John 13:34) That’s where life is – in agape love.
My family is wrestling with a kind of Jezebel right now. Her name is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS. Her torment comes at random, and in and of itself, is purposeless.
I spent Thursday afternoon through yesterday afternoon in the company of my dad who is in the short rows with ALS. It pained me to watch him struggle against gravity, trying to communicate by typing, but having only a tiny remnant of strength in his right arm. It pains me even more to think of him sitting in that nursing home room mostly alone and unstimulated, because his mind is still as sharp as ever. ALS has made dad’s body kind of like Elijah’s cave. Dad didn’t escape to that cave, but there is an elemental struggle within and before him, and God is in the midst of it. This weekend was the first time Dad made it clear that he’s ready to die, ready to move higher up the mountain, ready to experience whatever is next for one who is loved and claimed by God.
         Many of you have experienced this kind of thing already, and I have accompanied some of you as you did. But I’ve not walked this particular road with someone to whom I am as close as I am to Dad. The last 48 hours were full of tears and grief. But they were also full of unanticipated and unparalleled intimacy, honesty, gratitude, and even joy. ALS weakens a human body into death, but in the crucible of that weakness, we were experiencing, as never before, the incredible strength of love.
         One fundamental reason for living together in communities of faith, or family, or simply proximity, is to share each other’s burdens and joys. God sends Elijah back to Damascus, back to the Israelite community. And there the prophet finds his strength and his faith renewed so that he can face Jezebel with confidence.
         As a particular congregation, we are called to share each other’s burdens and joys, so that we might witness to the way in which we’re also called to share the burdens and joys of the wider communities around us. We do not exist for our own sake. As the body of Christ, we are created and called to live over against every Jezebel we face, thoughtfully and prayerfully, yes, but more importantly, with the confident, non-violent, and relentlessly active love of Jesus.
That’s how God uses us to help transform what may feel like the worst of times into at least better times.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Repentance (Sermon)


“Repentance”
Psalm 25:1-10
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
2/18/18


Psalm 25:1-10
To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
O my God, in you I trust;
    do not let me be put to shame;
    do not let my enemies exult over me.
Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame;
    let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.
Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
    teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth, and teach me,
    for you are the God of my salvation;
    for you I wait all day long.
Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love,
    for they have been from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
    according to your steadfast love remember me,
    for your goodness’ sake, O Lord!
Good and upright is the Lord;
    therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
He leads the humble in what is right,
    and teaches the humble his way.
10 All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,
    for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.
        
Like many psalms, Psalm 25 is a song of lament, a cry for help. Enemies and afflictions seem to be gathering around the psalmist like a cloud of locusts. This cloud threatens his peace, his health, his future. His very life is being swallowed up by some kind of swarming, all-consuming appetite. In a long-standing and all-too-human tradition, the psalmist connects goodness with prosperity and sin with bad luck. And the duplicity of the psalm is undeniable:
Don’t let me be ashamed, he says. “Let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.”
Then he says, God, please, don’t get hung up on all the stupid things I did when I was young. “Be mindful of your mercy…and of your steadfast love.”
         Sitting with this psalm during the first week of Lent has made me think about the distinctions between confession and repentance. While related, they’re not the same thing. In confession we acknowledge our sins. We admit the words we have used and the actions we have taken or not taken that have hurt others and ourselves. We name the selfishness of humankind that has damaged soil, water, air, and fellow creatures. And we can confess our sin the same way we confess particular beliefs – without demonstrating any real conviction.
In repentance, however, we move toward new and more gracious ways of thinking, speaking, and acting. That makes repentance more like faith. It’s the outward expression of an inward transformation. And it doesn’t happen all at once. Repentance is a process, a path.
         “All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,” says the psalmist. When embodied in a human life, God’s path becomes our intentional pursuit and exercise of justice and righteousness. Such a path must be taught and learned. It must be practiced. That makes repentance a basic element of the classwork and homework in the curriculum of justice and righteousness.
         In a collection of meditations entitled Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter, the first reading is a short piece entitled “Repentance.” In it, Kathleen Norris, shares the story of an experience she had while serving as artist-in-residence at a parochial school. In a creative writing class, she shared with the kids some of the angry psalms that they didn’t normally hear on Sundays. (For examples of angry scripture, read Psalms 44 and 88.) Then, wanting the kids to explore constructive ways to work through anger and vengeance, she asked them to write their own angry psalms.
         “One little boy,” says Kathleen Norris, “wrote a story called ‘The Monster Who Was Sorry.’ He began by admitting that he hates it when his father yells at him: his response in the poem is to throw his sister down the stairs, and then to wreck his room, and finally to wreck the whole town. The poem concludes: ‘Then I sit in my messy house and say to myself, “I shouldn’t have done all that.”’
         “‘My messy house’ says it all,” says Norris. “With more honesty than most adults could have mustered, the boy made a metaphor for himself that admitted the depth of his rage and also gave him a way out. If that boy had been a novice in the fourth-century monastic desert, his elders might have told him that he was well on the way toward repentance, not such a monster after all, but only human.”
Norris concludes her story by saying, “If the house is messy, [the elders] might have said [to the boy], why not clean it up, why not make it into a place where God might wish to dwell?”1
         There is the point of repentance. Repentance is not a response of guilt or fear, but an active posture of renewal and commitment. In repentance, we surrender our hearts, minds, and bodies to God’s indwelling purposes for all of creation. That says to me that repentance is about choosing to participate in God’s boundless capacity for steadfast love and mercy.
         In one of his books, Shane Claiborne re-tells the old story of two guys talking about God. One tells the other that he’d like to ask God, Why do you allow all this war, illness, famine, and evil in the world?
         “So, why don’t you go ahead and ask?” says the other guy.
         The first guy shakes his head and says, “Because I’m afraid God will ask me the same question.”2
         We’ve had another horrific week, haven’t we? The lives of seventeen high school kids and teachers were cut short by the actions of what many are calling a “monster.” Instead of hearing God ask us why we’re allowing such tragedy to continue, we’re playing the blame game. Depending on various factors, we blame others. Usually the first to get blamed are low-hanging fruit like the ready availability of the kind of weapons for which only soldiers and police have any use.
Gun advocacy groups and lawmakers are next.*
But what about the inaction by authorities who, months ago, had tagged the shooter as a potential threat? And the family of a young orphan bouncing between homes – a family who missed the signs of trauma and trouble?
What about an internet culture that welcomed him, gave him an identity, and nurtured his rage and despair?
Lack of access to mental health and the negative stigma associated with seeking help?
And what about an entertainment industry that reflects our values by continually giving us the desensitizing brutality that we demand? The industry follows the money, and they’re just feeding our appetite for violent heroes who are themselves exempt from death and the repercussions of killing. And it’s we who choose to leave our children in the company of video games in which body counts and ever more life-like carnage are simply the means to winning scores.
The blame game is nothing but an exercise in self-absolution. And as long as responsibility always lies beyond us or our group, nothing changes.
         As the Church, we can’t fix all that’s wrong with the world. But God calls us to do more than believe doctrines. God calls us to accept the responsibility to live as ones through whom God reveals God’s desire for health, well-being, cooperation, and reconciliation. That means we leave the lip service of “thoughts and prayers” to those who have given up, or who don’t really care, and we take up our cross and follow Jesus in his paths of justice and righteousness. It means we affirm the image of God in all human beings and celebrate the inherent goodness of creation. We hold one another accountable for faithfulness, and, like Jesus, we work toward a better world for all people by tending to and loving one person at a time.
         None of us are monsters. We’re human beings – broken, fallible, anxious human beings in need of mercy. During Lent, we do confess and repent of our sinfulness, but this season prepares us for more than being forgiven. It prepares us for not giving up when the locusts swarm. Lent and Easter prepare us for living lives of justice and righteousness even in the face of despair.
Repentance strengthens us for recognizing, loving, and following the resurrected Jesus whose grace restores us to Shalom, and makes of us holy temples in which God dwells.

1Kathleen Norris, “Repentance,” in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 2006. p. 5.
2Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. Zondervan, 2006, 2016. Pp. 58-59.

* When I wrote this sermon, my initial wording at this point was: “The NRA and politicians who are beholden to them.” Just before preaching the sermon, I changed to the current wording. In what may have been a kind of reverse political correctness, I chose not to push away a sizeable group of listeners with that one phrase.
More importantly, I confess that, in my own heart, that phrase had some angry teeth in it. We were only four days out from another school shooting. (17 students and teachers killed in Parkland, FL.) I was making it personal. And while preachers are indeed called to embody a prophetic role, and to pour their deepest passion into their preaching, it felt inappropriate to use that line, that day from that pulpit.
Because the Reformed tradition has always held that political and social engagement is crucial to Christian discipleship, it would have strengthened the sermon to have encouraged the congregation, regardless of political affiliation, to write their state and national representatives.
I don’t expect many people to read this, but to those who do: If you don’t already know who your representatives are, go online and find out. Call them and/or write them. Encourage them. Thank them. Challenge them. Let them know your opinions. It does matter.  AH

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Transfiguration: Antidote for Tiny House Theology (Sermon)


“Transfiguration: Antidote for Tiny House Theology”
Mark 9:2-8
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
2/11/18

2Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
5Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.
7Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
8Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. (NRSV)

Up on a mountain, standing before a transfigured Jesus, Peter is thrown into a kind of spiritual confusion. Overwhelmed by all that bright holiness, the disciple offers to do something selfish and short-sighted. Knowing Peter, it’s not a surprising suggestion. Knowing Jesus, though, it is absurd.
“Rabbi,” he says, I like being here. Let’s just stay. I’ll build each of us a tiny house.
The story of the Transfiguration illustrates one of the fundamental tensions in the Church – the tension between the call to be Jesus’ body in and for the world and the temptation to stuff him inside a Tiny House. To contain and control Jesus by building physical and philosophical walls around him.
When we read the stories of Jesus, we’re introduced to a man who goes out of his way to get into our way. He calls us to live as signs of life and love in a world rocked by death and fear. He does this consistently and without reserve. While Jesus does slip off to pray on a regular basis, moss does not grow under his feet. And everything he says and does challenges his disciples to follow him in faithful service.
Very early on, the Church forgot that. In the days of Constantine and Theodosius I, the Church began to teach that consenting to prescribed dogma, reciting formulas, and feeding the church coffers were more important to discipleship than loving God, loving neighbor, and feeding the poor. That led to the individualistic credo that a Christian’s only real concern, was to achieve a happy afterlife for himself or herself – more specifically, to avoid an unhappy one. The Church has earned the criticism of being “so heavenly minded that it’s no earthly good.”
Having said all this repeatedly, I imagine some of you thinking, “Here he goes again.” But I really do think that Christianity, especially in first-world cultures, inclines toward Peter’s Tiny House understanding of faith and discipleship as its default position.
Tiny House theology explains why congregations tend to face bigger arguments about paint and carpet than missions.
Churches use it to justify building up large investment portfolios and not even tithing from them.
Tiny House theology shapes a passive, sit-and-wait-to-be-served practice of celebrating the Lord’s Supper.
It makes congregations nervous about opening their doors to people who need ministries of healing and support like AA, NA, and Al Anon.
From the collusion of the Jewish leadership with Rome in the ancient Middle East, to the violent and corrupt papacy of medieval Europe, to the religious right of the modern West, Tiny House religion has sought to secure status and future by bedding down with the ways and means of empire.
One of my own weekly struggles against Tiny House theology is choosing hymns. So much of the doctrine in our hymnody proclaims a god of retribution, a god who can be appeased only through blood-letting. Or it has us fluttering our eyes at a diaphanous Jesus waiting to welcome us into the “Sweet By and By.” And in my opinion, those images tempt us with a god who allows and even encourages us to get comfortable with violence and superficial piety. That god engulfs us in smallness.
Now, I am aware that we live in chaotic and frightening times. And this place is called a “sanctuary.” We come here seeking peace and assurance.
We come here to be reminded that we’re not alone in the universe.
We come here trusting that the timeless Spirit we call God loves us and gives meaning to our lives.
We gather to hear the music, the words, and the silence that both grounds us in God’s good Creation and releases us from the crushing gravity of life in a broken world.
We come here to meet Jesus, and to sit in his presence.
We come here to share each other’s awe, and wonder, and love of God, and to be sent forth renewed and empowered for grateful and joyful service.
Here, in this sanctuary, in the company of Jesus, God’s voice affirms our faith, saying, Yes! “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”
That’s why we’re here: To listen to Jesus. And what does Jesus say? He says, Follow me. Not, Follow protocols.
He says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35) Not: Sit here in sanctimonious compliance for an hour, then go joke about beating the Baptists to the Sunday buffet.
Jesus says, ‘When you show compassion to those who are hungry, thirsty, sick, and imprisoned, you are showing compassion to me.’ (Mt. 25:40) Not: When you look right, act right, and don’t rock the boat, you make me proud.
He says, “In my Father’s house are many mansions…” (John 14:2) Not: Build yourself a tiny house.
Jonesborough Presbyterian has about two hundred people on its roll. Anywhere from ninety to a hundred and twenty people are here on a normal Sunday. While we are not, thank God, a megachurch, we don’t do God or ourselves any favors by dismissing Jonesborough Presbyterian as some quaint, “little church.” Listen, there’s nothing tiny about Jesus. We’re a mission outpost in the worldwide Body of Christ! And Body of Christ doesn’t exist for its own sake. Any congregation, regardless of membership, who sees itself as a “little church,” as a tiny house for Jesus, is just trying to avoid the call to be, to do, and to experience all the things disciples are called to be, to do, and to experience “through Christ who strengthens [us].”
As Presbyterians, we’re not a Tiny House church. We are part of a connectional, relational denomination. What any one church does is done on behalf of the wider church. That’s why, officially anyway, we don’t send out “missionaries” anymore. The PC(USA) sends out “mission co-workers.” We send out men, women, and families whose work around the globe is our work. God hasn’t called you and me to labor in the fields of Haiti, Puerto Rico, Sudan, Malawi, the Philippines, Bangladesh or any other nation in which God’s beautiful and beloved people cry out for help. But we are co-workers with those whom God has called and sent. They need our prayers and financial support. We may be stationed here, but we’re part of a vibrant, global body.
It follows that those of us who don’t personally participate in Family Promise, or the food pantry, or Loaves and Fishes, are still there when members of this congregation do take part. We’re in this together.
Jesus’ Transfiguration calls us to “Listen to him.” And he is calling us to our own ministries.
Listen, and your life will reveal your ministry to you.
Listen, and your heart will speak to you when you recognize suffering to which you can bring relief or meaning.
Listen, and your heart will call you to joy that you can enter and increase.
Even now, the voice of God saying to you, “Listen to him!”
And Jesus is saying to you, “Follow me.”

Monday, February 5, 2018

Love and Lent (February 2018 Newsletter Article)

          For the first time in decades, Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day fall on the same day. That gives us a unique opportunity to celebrate two kinds of love simultaneously.
On Valentine’s Day we hail the gift of Eros, the love between two people that includes the kind of companionship and intimacy that makes being human such a pleasure and such a struggle. Along with Philos (the companionable love of friends), Eros is gifted to us when, in the second version of creation, God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” (Gen. 2:18)
Created for relationship, human beings need helpers and partners. Virtually all of us need to be held in an embrace which proclaims affection and vulnerability as well as commitment and accountability. As the “one flesh” embrace of committed love, Eros is that kind of love. It can be, and faith traditions argue that it is intended to be, a love of profound depth, substance, and holiness. Apart from mutuality, however, Eros leads us, at best, into the heartbreak of unrequited love. At worst, it mires us pits of obsession and lust.
On Valentine’s Day, we celebrate Eros with physical expressions like chocolates, flowers, nice dinners, flirtation, and romance.
Ash Wednesday begins the liturgical season of Lent. And Lent is the journey of Agape love. Lent culminates with Passion Week. Worship during Passion Week tends to be very physical, as well. It includes things like Seder Meals, services of darkness and light, walking the stations of the cross, and celebrating the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Passion Week gives way to the great observance of Easter (Resurrection), which, along with Christmas (Incarnation), proclaims God’s material presence in and undying love for the Creation.
Agape love is the passionate and unconditional love of divine initiative. Unlike Eros, it neither requires nor expects requital. Agape is love that can’t be helped. And while it is given in utter selflessness, purely for the benefit of the other, true acceptance and embrace of Agape is almost always marked by some sort loving response.
Perhaps this is the way Agape love redeems. It generates within those who embrace it responses of unfettered gratitude and generosity.
All genuine love is an expression of Agape love in the same way that all of Creation itself is an expression of the Creator. We are not God any more than Eros is Agape, but we are made by God, and even of God (Julian of Norwich), just as Eros and Philos are, at their purest, reiterations of Agape.
The word love is thrown about with careless abandon in our culture. And it seems to me that to use that word without intention is, in many cases, not much different than taking God’s name in vain. Implicit in the acknowledgment that we are created by God is the affirmation that we are connected by Love. Surely that is why we read in 1 John: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”
Christmas. Lent. Passion Week. Easter. Pentecost. Valentine’s Day. All of it is, at its deepest heart, all about God, because God is all about Love.

Sunday, February 4, 2018

Ordinary Time (Sermon)


“Ordinary Time”
Mark 1:29-38
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
2/4/18

29As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. 31He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
32That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. 33And the whole city was gathered around the door. 34And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
35In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36And Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.”
38He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” (NRSV)

We are currently in the liturgical season known as Ordinary Time. Each year has two intervals of Ordinary Time, a short interval occupying the several weeks between Christmas and Lent, and a longer one spanning the months between Pentecost and Advent.
Ordinary Time is just that – ordinary. The color is this lukewarm green. During Ordinary Time we plod along with Jesus as he travels about the countrysides of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. It follows his interactions with his disciples, with Jewish leaders, and with the impoverished and forsaken people to whom Jesus pays the most attention. Sometimes the stories are interesting and compelling. Other times they’re, well, ordinary. Maybe today’s text contains your favorite scripture passage. And that’s wonderful. To me, though, it’s one of those all-too-ordinary texts. Tell me if this summary is basically accurate:
Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, and she gets up and gets to work.
By evening, the street outside Peter’s house is lined with sick folks. Jesus helps as many as he can.
         Early the next morning, Jesus slips away to pray. His disciples hunt him down and tell him that folks are looking for him. And Jesus says, We have to keep moving. So they do.
The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
How numbingly ordinary…
A true story: Sam was eagerly involved in the life of his congregation. He came to small group studies. He served as a deacon. He got excited about learning and growing as a Christian. Then came a moment of foreshadowing.
Sam’s pastor became aware of a nearby family who was experiencing an acute need for warmth. He asked a study group if they’d like to help this family by getting a space heater. Sam jumped at that. He contributed money and volunteered to help purchase and deliver the heater.
During the delivery, Sam and his pastor talked with the woman who had a young son. They lived in a small house that was sealed about as tight as a screened porch. While describing other issues her family faced, the woman was clearly asking for more help. The pastor told her about other resources, then he and Sam wished her well.
Driving away, Sam was bewildered by the experience. “She barely said Thank you!” he said.
“No,” the pastor said, “but they’ll be warmer.”
That didn’t mollify Sam. He seemed to need recognition more than that family needed heat. Or, maybe when expecting an extraordinary experience, he found it ordinary and unsatisfying.
Over the next couple of years, Sam’s church attendance and participation grew sporadic. He said it was getting monotonous. He climbed on the contemporary worship bandwagon, and while he found the music livelier, he said it was still “just the same old same old.”
In his early forties, Sam had more discretionary money and time than most people his age. Discipleship became no match for the allure of shiny things and opportunities to use them. He spent more money and time satisfying his desires. He got divorced, again. Within three years, Sam had completely abandoned his communal faith practice.
I can understand Sam’s struggle. When something that’s supposed to be transforming and life-giving feels numbingly routine and imprisoned by the way we’ve always done it, it feels dead.
It seems to me, though, that the real problem was Sam’s sense of entitlement to being entertained, to being constantly excited and stimulated. He lost interest in a church that spends most of the year following Jesus on the plodding journey of Ordinary Time, tending to commonplace needs piling up at the door. Jesus may take a few minutes here and there to pray, but for the most part, he just keeps moving. Lumbering ahead. Day-to-day. Town-to-town. Person-to-person.
It doesn’t take a linguistic savant to recognize that the words disciple and discipline are related. Discipleship is the discipline of following a leader in the midst of tedium and stasis as well as excitement and change. Aware of how ordinary life will be even after Easter, Jesus says, “You will always have the poor with you.” (Mt. 26:11) Following Jesus means tending to those whose needs often seem tiresome and interminable.
When Christian practice, which is voluntary, begins to feel tiresome and interminable, why bother?
We all have to wrestle with that question. And one reason I continue to bother is because I continue to find blessing and purpose in the midst of the ordinary. I continue to recognize God in those reaching out for acceptance, assurance, and healing in places like Family Promise, the JAMA food pantry, Loaves and Fishes, and ASP. I experience the same-old clamoring for holiness and hope right here in worship, Sunday school, committee meetings, and on CL&M outings.
Now, if fewer and fewer people look to the church for experiences of holiness and hope, that’s partly our fault. The more the Church considers itself extraordinary, the more Christians separate themselves from ordinary reality. The more the Church turns inward, the less we go out to seek and help those who suffer. We even blame them for their suffering. Spiritually, we reduce Jesus to personal savior. He’s no longer our Lord who leads us into the world’s ordinary brokenness and hurt with words of kindness and deeds of love.
“Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary,” said Mother Teresa. “What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that [our] strength lies.”1
When reflecting on his own life, Frederick Buechner began to experience God’s presence in ordinary places he never thought to look. And he summed up his understanding of Christian practice this way: “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”2
On the table before us is grape juice from a grocery store, and bread baked in someone’s home this morning. Now, those gifts sit in shiny silver trays that date back to the mid-1800’s. Such heirlooms are more expensive and needy than they ought to be when offering what Jesus offers in his ordinary, human hands. That means we have to distinguish between the gift and the giftwrap we put around it. The gift feeds us, and it sends us out to recognize the presence of holiness and grace in the ordinariness of life, and to share the redeeming love of the risen Jesus.
So, come to the table. And come what may, let’s keep moving.