Jesus Is Lord (Sermon)

"Jesus Is Lord"

Matthew 25:31-46

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/22/20

 

³¹“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, ³³and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. ³⁴Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’

⁴⁰And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

⁴¹Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; ⁴²for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’

⁴⁴Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’

⁴⁵Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ ⁴⁶And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”  (NRSV)

 

         On Reign of Christ Sunday, the last Sunday of the liturgical year, Christians around the world affirm the lordship of Jesus Christ. We conclude each year this way because whether our lord-of-choice is holy or unholy, we all commit our lives and our allegiance to something. And for Christians, if that lord is something other than Jesus, it shows.

         Adolph Hitler’s lord was absolute power—politically, militarily, economically, socially, and personally. And it showed. He cared not what human suffering he caused in his quest for power. Committed to German nationalism and white supremacy, Hitler evangelized with fear and violence. He even convinced many Christians to profess faith in his graceless gospel, and to accept not only the lordship of his own brutality and hate, but also the impossible union of Christian discipleship with nationalism and militarism.

         Those who accepted Christianity on Hitler’s terms did what one must do when unable to accept that faith in Jesus is much more an ethos embodied than a dogma uttered: They chose to understand Jesus as strictly a personal savior. In do so, they reduced faith to a purely private matter. Such individualistic religion fit nicely into Hitler’s scheme. It allowed the significant Christian community to equate patriotic zeal with Christian truth. So, loyalty to the protector state and its murderous focus on racial purity and world domination became the same as faith in God. National symbols then invaded Christian sanctuaries, and allegiance to the nation became a matter of holiness. The Church’s mission was quickly purged of Christlike expressions of justice and righteousness. Those whom Jesus describes in Matthew 25—not to mention Jews, Gypsies, disabled people, people of African, Polish, or Russian decent—all these were considered “inferior” and a threat to the purity of Hitler’s Aryan society. Exterminating these human beings became a purge as mindlessly ordinary as confessing the “sin” of eating too much chocolate.

         In following Hitler, many Christians may have avoided persecution, but they ceased to follow the lordship of Christ. Christians don’t profess Jesus’ lordship of by saying the Lord’s Prayer and reciting the Apostles’ Creed. We profess our faith by following Jesus—our one and only Lord.

         In response to widespread Christian capitulation to Hitler’s demands for lordship, 139 delegates from the German Evangelical Church, convened a confessional synod in the town of Barmen in May of 1934. Their urgent and prayerful discussions gave birth to a theological statement which is as concise in its language as it is courageous in its fidelity to Jesus.

         “The Theological Declaration of Barmen," which is now in our Book of Confessions, unequivocally asserts that, “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and death.”¹

         Therefore, they said, “We reject false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.

         “We reject false doctrine, as though the Church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans.

         “We reject false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords…”²

         Jesus is Lord! they cried. Not Hitler! Not the Third Reich! Nor any government, nor state, nor army! Jesus is Lord! And in the last sentence of the confession, the writers of the declaration urged the church “to return to the unity of faith, hope, and love.”³  

         The Nazis got the message, and all 139 of the delegates were branded traitors, as were all pastors and lay people who openly concurred with the Barmen declaration. Some would hide or emigrate from Hitler’s wrath; many were imprisoned. And some were executed for declaring their faithfulness to Jesus.

         On Reign of Christ Sunday, we do declare that Jesus is Lord by gathering for worship. Much more importantly, though, we enter and participate in his lordship through our day-to-day speech, actions, and attitudes.

In his last public teaching before his arrest, Jesus brings all his previous teachings home with a powerful image of the Son of Man surveying a culminated human history. When all is said and done, he shows much less concern with people being “good” and having stayed out of “trouble” than with them having gotten into “good trouble”⁴ Jesus is much more interested in people having followed him in the ways of God’s hospitality, compassion, and justice than his is in the words they say.

         How did you respond to “the least of these,” he asks? How did you respond to the hungry? The thirsty? The naked? The sick? The imprisoned? How did you respond to those whom the power-drunk lords of this world scorned and persecuted?

         Jesus says that when he is truly our Lord, we’ll know it. Everyone will know it, because we’ll feed the hungry and give water to the thirsty. We’ll clothe the naked, and visit the sick and the imprisoned. We’ll help house the homeless and show compassion to the poor. And we’ll stand in solidarity with those who, because of the color of their skin, are systemically treated more like varmints than human beings and neighbors.

         All of that is challenging enough, but it can befuddle Christians to hear Jesus imply that his lordship extends beyond those who have made verbal professions of faith in him. When Jesus is truly Lord, the name “Jesus” may not even enter the minds of those who care for others. How else would it be that his “sheep” would ask, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we…welcomed you…gave you clothing…visited you?”

But isn’t such unpremeditated faithfulness consistent with Jesus’ teaching earlier in Matthew when he says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven”? (Mt. 7:21)

         Discipleship is premeditated faithfulness to the lordship of Jesus. And when he is Lord, we care for those in need not because we believe that doing so decides ourfate. This is not about works righteousness. When Jesus is Lord, we help our neighbors for their sake. We help them because they are beloved human beings, and we see the image of God in them. We see Jesus in them.

         Many gods compete for lordship in this world. And falling under the spell of some lesser lord is as easy as walking into some big-box store, or pressing a button on a TV remote, or getting overwhelmed into fear by all the changes and challenges around us.

When we follow Jesus, though, when we demonstrate his ways loving justice and fierce righteousness, we inhabit, by grace, the realm of God in which you, and I, and all humankind are welcome, and through which you, and I, and all humankind, and, indeed, all Creation are being transformed and restored.

         What lord do you trust?

In this heartbreakingly beautiful and broken world, whom do you follow?

 

¹The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Part I: Book of Confessions. Office of the General Assembly, 2016. Pp. 280-284. (Also online at: https://www.creeds.net/reformed/barmen.htm)

^2&3Ibid.

⁴Thanks to the late Rep. John Lewis for that term.

An Apocalypse of Grace (Sermon)

“An Apocalypse of Grace”

1Thessalonians 5:1-11

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/15/20

 

         1^st and 2^nd Thessalonians are almost universally considered the earliest New Testament writings. They’re also acknowledged as authentically Pauline. Paul writes them to a very new Christian community in a town that has proven rather inhospitable to the gospel. When his missionary work infuriates some prominent Thessalonians, Paul slips away under the cover of night and begins to preach in Berea in northern Greece. Further angered by Paul’s actions and success, the same Thessalonians hunt Paul down and persecute believers in Berea.

         Throughout his earliest letters to oppressed and nervous communities, Paul tells people to expect Jesus to return at—literally—any moment. And apparently, those Thessalonians who have escaped or survived persecution begin to worry about loved ones who had died while the wait dragged on. Will they have missed on the promises of the gospel?

         In 1Thessalonians, Paul seeks to calm the people’s fears and to renew their faith that God has neither abandoned them nor destined them for wrath. (1Thess. 5:9) In the verses immediately preceding today’s text, Paul assures the people saying that when the Parousia occurs, “the dead in Christ will rise first.” (1Thess. 4:16) I’m not sure how Paul knows that, but I do share his awareness that his words alone won’t bring peace to anxious hearts. The time for experiencing a gospel life is not in some utopian future. It is now—fully and intentionally engaged in the painful struggles and realities of the moment.

 

Listen for God’s Word.

Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. ²For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.³When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! ⁴But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; ⁵for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.

⁶So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; ⁷for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. ⁸But 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. ⁹For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁰who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.

¹¹Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing. (NRSV)

 

         Scholars classify Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians as apocalyptic writing. Many people associate the word apocalyptic with images of an end-of-days Armageddon when good and evil finally settle the score in a violent, bloody showdown. Literally, however, apocalypse means a “revealing” of truth. As such, apocalyptic literature is, at its heart, a genre of hopeful proclamation and invitation.

Over the centuries, however, Christian preachers and teachers seem to have found that terrifying people into professions of “faith” is quicker and easier than the long, slow work of cooperating with an often frustratingly patient Holy Spirit who encourages and builds up disciples through more gracious means. Never captured in a conversion date written inside the front cover of a Bible, the Spirit’s work is a lifetime of life-to-death-to-resurrection-to-new life transformations.

         While Paul’s own conversion may have been dramatic and traumatic, he also seems to know that because his experience is the exception, it calls him to an exceptional ministry. To try to force extraordinary experiences on others inevitably results in manipulative, even abusive evangelism—and, therefore, manipulative and abusive religion. Such religion, the religion of demagogues, uses apocalyptic language to scare people into thinking that the end of the world is near and that the only way to avoid destruction is to make an immediate profession of faith and then to equip themselves for preemptive destruction of enemies. Only then will leaders—armed more with desperate rightness than holy righteousness—say to their people,Now “there is peace and security.” And yet that, says Paul, is precisely when everything falls apart.

The calamity is not something God inflicts as punishment. It’s something people bring upon themselves by “falling asleep,” by abandoning the sobriety of a more gracious apocalyptic life—that is, a Jesus way of life, the way of bringing “justice and righteousness” to the poor, the oppressed, and the outcast.

Ironically enough, and sadly enough, worldly demagogues often find more than willing support from religious demagogues who not only participate in the destruction, but do so in God’s name. Recall the cautionary tale of a “Christian” university president who whipped up his entire student body into a rapturous mass of drunken, narcoleptic fury by calling them all to arm themselves so that they could, with God’s blessing, “end those Muslims.”¹

         That’s not peace and security, says Paul. That’s death.

Instead of preparing for fearful violence, “Let us keep awake,” says Paul. “Since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and let us put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”

This is remarkable. To a persecuted community, Paul says, Yes, there is suffering and pain in this world; but it’s not the result of God’s wrath. Nor does God call us to inflict wrath upon others—especially in God’s name!

Paul knows this all too well. Remember what he did before his conversion: He made a living by persecuting Christians in God’s name.

To Paul, since we’re here to receive, inhabit, and share the redeeming grace of the realm of God, living the faith, hope, and love of Jesus is the wakefulness of the Christian life.

         That’s just a whole lot easier to proclaim than it is to live, isn’t it?

         To understand the dissonance between the path to which God calls us and the paths human beings tend to follow, let’s look again at Paul’s image of sobriety. Self-serving motives and emotions can overwhelm and possess our brains. Waking up, like sobering up, is difficult and often painful work, because it requires the death part of the process of life-to-death-to-resurrection-and-new life. Ask anyone in recovery. Sobering up is a way of life. It’s not the moment one quits the addiction.

         I’m going to sing a song for you. I’ve sung this song in worship before, and it’s the story of an apocalypse of grace, a sleepwalker’s death to himself and the beginnings of his resurrection where he recognizes that encouraging others and building them up is to receive, to inhabit, and to share the redeeming grace of God’s kingdom.

The song leaves the story unfinished. It leaves the new-life story for us, the hearers, to pick up and live for ourselves, and for the sake of others.

 

Comfort of a Creed

w/m Allen Huff

©2020

 

Adam went to church most every Sunday

To thank his lucky stars for God above,

God helps those who help themselves, he heard the preacher say.

Now let’s sing a song of happiness and love.

 

In the parking lot a ragged man approached him.

Can you spare a buck for a piece of bread?

Adam stared right past the man disgusted.

I’ve got no change, so I’ll pray for you instead.

 

Chorus:

Oh, but all of us are hungry until all of us are fed.

Love is more than thoughts and prayers; it’s everything we share.

And compassion is the greatest gift to neighbor and to self.

We’re all in this together; if we share heaven, we share hell.

 

That night within a dream a thin hand beckoned,

Hollow eyes searched only to be seen.

To the sound of his own groaning Adam wakened.

In ceaseless tears he poured out all his grief.

 

He killed the fatted calf for familiar faces,

He gave to those deserving of a gift.

But when came the beggar dirty or the wino wasted,

He closed his heart and mind and clinched his fist.

Chorus:

 

Bridge:

In the morning at the mirror, Adam looked into his face.

He saw hunger in his own eyes and loneliness in his gaze.

He knew he’d starved himself when he denied his neighbor’s need,

And traded true religion for the comfort of a creed.

Final Chorus:

 

¹https://www.relevantmagazine.com/current/nation/trouble-jerry-falwell-jrs-words-violence/

Prophetic Stewardship (Sermon)

 “Prophetic Stewardship”  

Luke 21:1-4

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/8/20

 

He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; ²he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins.³He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; ⁴for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.” (NRSV)

 

         For some of us, Covid-19 may have turned stewardship season into something we’ve always wanted it to be—a discreet, minimalist affair. We’ve had to pledge as if following Jesus’ instructions on prayer: Isolate yourself in your room. Give privately, anonymously.

         On the whole, though, that’s not the way of Christian stewardship. What we do today is a prophetic aspect of our communal faith.

         The impoverished widow knew what isolation and anonymity felt like. Being poor and a widow in first century Jerusalem was like wearing Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. Her presence in the temple stirred the air about as much as the flutter of a fish’s eyelash. If we’d been there, we probably wouldn’t have noticed her, either. There would have been too much else to see, hear, and smell—merchants selling sheep and doves, Roman soldiers keeping a grim watch, Pharisees preening in their gilded robes, pilgrims from all over chattering loudly in their various languages and dialects.

Such pulsating carpe diem is a luxury beyond the woman’s imagination. Her life is far more about surviving than anything we might call “living.” Perhaps because of that, she has an angle on giving that the wealthy folk around her don’t. So, she wades into the wild cacophony of Passover preparation and whispers her two-cent blessing.

Giving out of acute need is very different from giving out of wealth and privilege, which often becomes a conspicuous exhibition. Giving out of poverty declares a person’s gratitude for their dependence on the Giver of all good gifts and an intrepid compassion for people in need. Giving out of poverty is a prophetic act. It proclaims, as Paul says, that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed.” (Romans 8:18)

         In practical terms, this woman’s gift is two pennies toward a multimillion-dollar budget. It’s pretty much useless. The sad and shameful irony is that it’s toward folks like her that God calls the temple to direct most of its earthly energies and money. At the deepest heart of it all, loving God means loving and caring for widows, orphans, strangers, and others in need.

         Isn’t that something? The impoverished one, whom the community is supposed to care for, teaches the community’s well-heeled leaders about the nature of true gratitude and generosity.

         While Jesus does make an enduring example of the woman, it’s still a sad commentary that she gives everything to the community that ignores her, that she empties herself for the sake of a broken institution.¹

Institutions can wield that kind of influence. And religious institutions have been notorious for manipulating people in the name of God. That’s one reason that Jesus is such a thorn in the Pharisees’ side. He challenges their understanding of who God is and what it means to be God’s people. Calling attention to the widow only sharpens that critique.

         Look at her, says Jesus. She gives all she has to the temple in spite of its failures. She offers all she has for the sake of the community, not because they have remained faithful to God, but because God has remained faithful to them.

         The Spirit continues to call the community to faithful worship and service. Jesus continues to lead us toward holiness. And God continues to do all this through the prophetic gratitude and generosity of people who, by some uncommon grace, have seen God’s presence in the community, and in humankind as a whole, and who refuse to give up on us.

We must still confess that, over the centuries, the church has traded Jesus’ prophetic life, and his call to go and do likewise for individualistic spiritualties of personal salvation. Such self-centeredness has paved a wide and winding road for superficial religion, for the belief that a person’s wealth and well-being conclusively declare God’s love for them.

People of religious faith who give out of material excess, or, as Jesus says, “out of their abundance,” often hold back because they fear losing material advantage. Theologically—for people like the Pharisees in Luke’s gospel, and for many much closer to home in our own day and time—to have less than more-than-enough means that God has judged or even forsaken them. When we structure our spiritual world that way, we reject any kind of lack or loss; and we can’t abide Jesus’ talk of the last being first, of experiencing blessedness in poverty, and of gaining one’s life by losing it.

         If I, as a member and a leader in a community, make my love of God contingent on personal ease and contentment, I will almost inevitably ignore God’s fundamental call to care for people like the widow who—giving from the fullness of her faith rather than the emptiness of her pocketbook—dropped her last two coins in the temple treasury knowing that the temple and its leaders will fail to be faithful stewards with her gift.

         Another compelling thing about this brief story is that the widow’s gift to the temple anticipates Jesus’ gift to us. Let’s face it: You, I, and the Church itself can all be as selfish, power-hungry, and hurtful to one another as the Pharisees and the temple were 21 centuries ago. And yet it was for them and for us—broken and beloved creatures all—that Jesus drops the two cents of his life into the great treasury of time. Knowing full well that even those closest to him will abandon him, Jesus does not withhold the fullness of his life. In an unforgettable act of prophetic stewardship, he empties himself in praise of God and in love for us, for all that, in God’s eyes, we are and can become.

Together, Jesus and the widow invite us into that same prophetic adventure. And this is more than a Consecration Sunday event; it’s a way of life, a continual emptying of our limited, imperfect selves into God’s loaves-and-fishes grace.

         As we think about what we will pledge, or have already pledged to God, some of us may think about all that we consider right or wrong with Jonesborough Presbyterian Church. I hope, though, that we all hear God’s call to live prophetic lives, lives that proclaim the holy “nevertheless” of faith. For while we’re not always faithful, God is. And what each of us dedicates today, we dedicate not simply to this church or to the people in it. We dedicate our gifts and ourselves to God so that we may be, together, a sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s kingdom of justice, compassion, and grace.

Here and now, and in the days to come.

 

¹I no longer remember where I read this interpretation of this text, but I do remember that the idea of the widow’s gift to a broken institution came from the Rev. Pete Peery when he was serving as president of Montreat Conference Center.