The Reign of the Christ and the Missional Church (Sermon)

"The Reign of the Christ and the Missional Church”

John 18:33-38a

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Reign of Christ Sunday

11/21/21

 

³³ Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

³⁴Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”

³⁵ Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?”

³⁶Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

³⁷ Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?”

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

³⁸ Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” (NRSV)

 

 

         Pontius Pilate. Some see him as a kind of tragic/comic figure, hustling anxiously back and forth, wavering between the rabid crowd outside and the calm, inscrutable Jesus inside. This Pilate might actually prefer to let Jesus go.

         Others see him as just another scheming, egomaniacal autocrat who manipulates people and their fears in order to get what he wants while making the masses think that they are getting what they want.

         Because of John’s consistent view of what he calls “the world” and how it operates, the latter possibility seems more likely in the fourth gospel. Whatever the case, John makes it clear that the Roman governor is outmatched. It reminds me of Matthew’s gospel when Jesus advises his disciples to enter the world with the wisdom of serpents and the innocence of doves. (Matthew 10:16) And that seems to be the Jesus that John presents before Pilate.

         Why do your people want you dead? Pilate asks. Are you some kind of king?

         If you say so, says Jesus.  

         That’s like Moses standing at the burning bush and asking for some name to drop when he confronts Pharaoh. And Yahweh just says, Tell them that I AM WHO I AM sent you.

         I can imagine Moses saying, Gee, thanks. That’s really gonna spook the old boy, isn’t it?

         When Pilate asks a direct question, the Johannine Jesus—who, throughout his ministry, echoes God’s words to Moses saying: I am the good shepherd, I am the bread of life, I am the vine, I am the way, the truth, and the life—gets all cagey and mysterious. How does that help him further the work of his “kingdom”?

         The very idea of kingdom creates problems. When hearing the word king, iconic images come to mind—over-the-top displays of power and wealth. Castles, feasts, and garish robes. And these things were defended not just by armies but by the principle of the divine right of kings. And if a king held office by God’s decree and with God’s blessing, he could do no wrong. When funded by fear—especially religious fear—power can turn large groups of people into flocks of violent sheep, sheep who seem to think they’re independent-minded guard dogs or something. That’s one reason many Christians today avoid the term “kingdom of God,” preferring instead terms like the Realm of God, or the Household of God, or the Kindom of God (because we’re all kinfolk in the family of God).

         The words king and kingdom would have threatened Pilate. And he would know what to do with any challengers to the Roman government. He just doesn’t seem to know what to do with Jesus who leads his followers according to a very different drumbeat—the drumbeat of God’s eternal truth, a truth that does not bow to fear, or power, or money. And while the Pilates and the Caesars of the world canwreak havoc, they cannot, finally, control or defeat God’s truth, which is Alpha and Omega truth, original and ultimate truth—the truth of love over selfishness, grace over competition, compassion over apathy, justice over exploitation, forgiveness over vengeance.

         That’s probably why Pilate says, “What is truth,” then leaves before Jesus can answer. Pilate seems to know that if he tries to argue with Jesus on the nature of truth, he has no answer for love. Any leader who is guided by love, any leader who has the strength to lead with a heart for the people whom he or she governs will have far greater influence than one who leads by threat of violence.

Overcoming humankind’s addiction to violence is one of the great projects of any community committed to God’s truth. I think that’s why Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world,” because if it were, he says, “my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over…”

         The realm of the Christ cannot be established and maintained through the means of worldly kingdoms—through sword and shield, rifle and bomb, pride and fear, dollars and ownership. And trying to force Jesus’ realm on anyone almost always destroys their desire to enter it. One enters the here-and-now realm of God by intentionally living for the well-being of neighbor and earth.

         Reign-of-Christ living is a day-to-day thing. We can live in love for God’s Creation one minute and cast stones the next. That’s the challenge and the beauty of the Christ’s realm: It’s not subject to our whims or even our acknowledgment. And we constantly slip in and out of it. Even when we have been out of it for some time, it’s always as close as our next act of compassion or justice toward another, or someone’s similar kindness toward us.

         Jesus concludes his earthly ministry in the same place he begins it—with a proclamation of and an invitation to the kingdom of God. Remember, after his baptism and trials in the wilderness, Jesus reappears preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”

         Turn, says God’s Christ. Turn and see your neighbor and the earth through my eyes, the eyes of fear-shattering love, and you will live a new life, because you will inhabit this world from an altogether different realm.

Learning to live in the Realm of Christ is our mission.

         In the early chapters of his book, A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren offers a critique of every mode of Christianity that accommodates itself to Caesar. The first chapter is entitled “Why I Am Missional.” And in this chapter, McLaren builds his understanding of “missional” around a bit of wisdom shared with him by a mentor he doesn’t name. That person told McLaren that “in a pluralistic world, a religion is valued based on the benefit it brings to its nonadherents.”¹

         Think of Abram. God calls him to a missional life saying, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you…so that you will be a blessing…” (Gen 12:1-3)

         Inasmuch as God’s creatures, wherever and whoever we are, strive to live as blessings upon the rest of Creation, we inhabit and reveal the Household of God. This is what it means for us to live under the Reign of Christ.

         There’s an irony here: While we do not find our true home in any worldlykingdom, finding our home in God’s kingdom does indeed happen in this world. It happens in everyday relationships when we choose to live as blessings.

         This Thursday we celebrate Thanksgiving. Giving thanks is only half of recognizing and receiving God’s blessings. The other half of full-fledged gratitude is sharing the benefits of God’s goodness with the rest of God’s good Creation.

         As a missional church, we are called live for the sake of others and the earth. And when we live this way, we do, in truth, live under the gracious, trustworthy, eternal Reign of Christ.

 

¹A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 2004, p. 121.

Endings and Beginnings (Sermon)

 “Endings and Beginnings”

Mark 13:1-8

Alen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/14/21

 

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” ² Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

³ When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ⁴ “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?”

⁵ Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. ⁶ Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. ⁷ When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. ⁸ For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” (NRSV)

 

 

         Mark and Luke both preface Jesus’ teaching about the destruction of the temple with the story of the widow’s two-cent offering to the temple. That juxtaposition creates a disconnect. In one breath Jesus commends a widow for her financial sacrifice, and in the next he says that the temple’s days are numbered. So, wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for Jesus to have told the woman, Ma’am, keep your money; you need it more than the temple does?

         Shortly after Jesus reveals the news about the fall of the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew come to Jesus in private and ask when all of this will happen. And Jesus opens up about would-be messiahs, about wars, about tensions and military posturing between nations, and about earthquakes and famines.

         Such predictions don’t seem all that insightful, do they? When has the world ever been turmoil-free? And doomsayers thrive on predictions of utter and final destruction. This seems especially true for Christian doomsayers—and shouldn’t Christian doomsayer be an oxymoron for Resurrection people? If I were to preach doomsday theology, I would be projecting onto God my own faithless fears and judgments. For some twisted reason, though, doomsday preaching is extremely profitable.

         But I digress; besides Jesus has a surprise in store. After all of his dire warnings, he turns to his disciples and says, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

         While that phrase sits in a grim shadow, it sits there as a kind of glowing coal, and Jesus represents the ruach, the pneuma. His words and actions become the very Breath of God on that smoldering, two-cent ember of hope.

         What gives a poor widow and God’s despised Messiah the faith to give their all to an institution and a Creation that appear on the verge of collapse? To embrace and embody the trust that God can craft beginnings out of endings takes a fresh awakening to God’s redeeming presence which is already at work in the world. Through its own fear, greed, and love of violence, humankind brings countless endings on itself, and it takes a Resurrection mindset to grasp that the God of nevertheless-grace can transform those endings into raw materials for new hope and unimagined peace.

         It can be a fearsome task to face these endings. And while fear usually feels like a sure thing, it’s only the sterile delivery room of religious certainty, of “reasonable” despair, and of every self-serving idolatry. As the opposite of fear, faith is the stable of trust, that compost-rich barn in which God is birthing the New Creation.

         Jesus demonstrates unyielding trust in God. And it seems to me that he trusts God to be a verb, not some static, bearded, white-robed noun. I think we get the truest sense of God when we behold God as the very energy behind, before, and within all things. I get that from First John who writes, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1John 4:16) God is the very activity of abiding love, the activity of creation and re-creation at work in the universe. God is the flow of the river, the rush of the wind, the hot gurgling of the volcano, the heave of the laugh, the fall of the tear, and the joyous interplay and fertile cooperation among religions.

         In his essay, “Another Turn of the Crank,” Wendell Berry writes, “I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe,” says Berry, “that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation…with God.”

         As Love, God allows even the most revered institutions to crumble like sand castles at high tide. And they fall because their familiar and comfortable ways, as constructive as they may have been, now do more to conceal than to reveal God’s new and emerging work.

         And there’s the rub: Revelation. Bringing to light. The story of Jesus’ foretelling the destruction of the temple appears in a section of Mark which scholars call The Little Apocalypse. And while apocalyptic literature may have been hijacked by doomsayers and other fear-mongers, it was never intended to announce God’s retribution or some furious Armageddon. Apocalyptic literature is all about revealing the wholeness of God which comes, necessarily and usually primarily, through justice. Mishpat, the principle Hebrew word for justice, refers to bringing fairness, equity, and wholeness to those who have been ignored and exploited by those who hold privilege and power. Because every human being bears the image of God, mishpat means recognizing the full humanity of those who have been marginalized and abused. It also means caring for the entire Creation the way we care for our church buildings because the earth itself is the first incarnation of the Creator and the original holy text. (Romans 1:20)

         Recently, I watched some old interviews with (the now former) Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Along with Nelson Mandela and others, Tutu helped to bring mishpat to South Africa. And the first step of bringing God’s holy justice was bringing an end to the openly and violently racist system of Apartheid. The process of ending something as horrific as institutional racism requires apocalyptic speech and action, speech and action that reveals prejudice, resentment, and hate as destructive because it is antithetical to God—who is love. And when the Apartheid stones had fallen, things got even more deeply apocalyptic for both black and white South Africans.

         Instead of taking advantage of the situation, Tutu led all of South Africa in a process of restoration. Through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, black victims and white perpetrators of Apartheid injustice were given the chance to tell their stories—to reveal the afflictions suffered and the suffering inflicted. While the process was painful, and, perhaps, not altogether perfect, it gave that nation its best chance to discover new beginnings after old arrangements had come to an end.

         One of the most remarkable things Tutu said to black South Africans, especially to those who craved vengeance, was that when people dehumanize others, they inevitably, and perhaps just as thoroughly, dehumanize themselves. Be kind to the whites, said Tutu. They need you to rediscover their humanity.¹

         Showing compassion to those who so recently had showed none would be a hard pill to swallow, yet such is the justice of God’s eternal Christ, the justice that seeks restoration not revenge, the justice that announces the birth pangs of something new even amid the lamentations of loss. Through such stubborn mishpat Resurrection happens, and fresh revelations of God’s holy realm begin to appear.

         May we have the gracious vision and wisdom to discern in all that seems to be ending, signs of God’s ongoing re-creation.

And may we have the faith, hope, and love to participate in that re-creation by committing ourselves, as Christ’s body, to working for the kind of apocalyptic justice Jesus makes possible through his life, death, resurrection, and ongoing return in and for the world that God so loves.

 

¹A quick search on YouTube will connect you to many wonderful interviews with and speeches by Desmond Tutu. The particular quotation footnoted here can be heard in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV2LURTu3eQ

Prophetic Stewardship (Sermon)

“Prophetic Stewardship”

Luke 21:1-4

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/7/21

 

He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; ² he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. ³ He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; ⁴ for 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)

 

         I don’t relish preaching stewardship sermons. Like most pastors, I know that not everyone makes a formal pledge, and those who do usually prefer to pledge the same way that Jesus urges us to pray: In private. That’s not the way of Christian stewardship, though. What we do today is a defining, and sometimes a defiant act of communal and sacramental faith.

One significant role model for us is a nameless widow who makes a four-verse appearance in Luke, and the same in Mark. As a widow in first century Jerusalem, this woman’s presence in the temple stirs the air about as much as a falling leaf. But she floats into the clutter and ruckus of Passover, and whispers her two-cent blessing­—barely a trifle against the temple’s budget.

Giving out of abundance is one thing, but giving out of poverty can be a prophetic act. I say “can be” because of how often wealthy televangelists take money from lonely people who can’t afford to give it, and then use that money to fund lavish lifestyles. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about giving that expresses a purer sense of gratitude, and a humbler trust in God who says, “my word…shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose.” (Isaiah 55:11)

         Faithful temple leaders would commit significant resources to caring for people just like that widow. Over time, though, the religious community had developed a predatory appetite for wealth. Its leaders colluded with violent power to protect their hold on material privilege. So instead of caring for those who were at risk, they used their considerable influence to make people feel both vulnerable and beholden. Like many Christian leaders today, they wielded an angry and vengeful god in order to protect a status quo rather than truly proclaiming and demonstrating God’s love and justice.

         Another unmistakably Lukan attribute in this story is that the one whom the community is supposed to shelter and care for becomes the one who teaches the teachers about true gratitude and generosity. Jesus makes an enduring example of a woman who gives all she has to a broken institution.

         Look at this widow, says Jesus. She gives all she has to the temple in spite of its failures. She offers all she has not because of the community’s faithfulness to God, but because of God’s faithfulness to humankind.

         I hear Jesus saying that while the widow may give out of the scarcity of her pocketbook, even more does she give out of the abundance of her faith, hope, and love. Through some uncommon grace, she sees the presence of holiness in the Creation, and in spite of human failures, she can give to the temple because she has not given up on God.

         Another compelling thing about this story is that Jesus sees his own life reflected in the widow’s actions. Her gift to the temple anticipates Jesus’ gift to the creation.¹ You, and I, and the Church can all be as selfish, power-hungry, and hurtful to one another as the temple leadership was to first century Jews. Nevertheless, for them and for us—a broken and beloved humanity—Jesus drops the two cents of his life into the offering plate of time. For his gracious efforts, his people arrest and execute him. They—We—abandon him. Nevertheless, Jesus empties himself in love for us and in praise of God. His one human life, among countless billions in human history, is a two-cent act of prophetic stewardship.

         Jesus and the widow invite us to pledge our own lives to that same prophetic adventure. To follow them is to live a nevertheless faith because yes, there’s much about us and our church that’s broken; nevertheless, we live and give in such a way as to declare our trust that God is present and at work even now redeeming and renewing the Creation. And isn’t that what Jesus refers to when he says, “Blessed are the poor”?

         For years, Jonesborough Presbyterian has supported Sunset Gap through our alternative gift fair, and since that ministry is not local, it’s probably the one with which we’re least familiar. So, last Wednesday, six members of our missions team traveled to Cosby, TN to visit Sunset Gap.

         Built in 1924 as a school and community center, Sunset Gap now focuses its efforts on serving the people of Cocke County, a county in the grip of widespread and persistent poverty.

Sunset Gap’s property straddles the Cocke and Sevier County lines, and when you stand on the high front porch of the main building, and look straight ahead, you look into Sevier County, where the road climbs up from a wooded hollow and curves to the right at the Sunset Gap’s front door. From that same porch, when you look left, you look into Cocke County. And right there, at Sunset Gap, the well-maintained Sevier County road gives way to Cocke County’s unmarked, pot-holed asphalt that rumbles and crunches through a landscape that looks like it should be many miles and border-crossings away from the consumeristic carnivals of Dollywood and Gatlinburg—which are only 15 minutes away.

         Sunset Gap is no longer a school, but it remains a PC(USA)-affiliated community center where—two cents at a time—food, clothes, school supplies, diapers, showers, laughter, and tears are shared with people living on the cusp of destitution.

         The people helped by the other ministries we support through the gift fair face similar challenges. And through September and October, you all gave nearly $6000 to help these neighbors. That’s fantastic! Thank you!

Against the unyielding need of the world, or even our region, $6000 may seem like two cents, but when we give, we give to God, who blesses, stretches, and adds other two-cent offerings from other givers. And God continues to ask us to remember and help those who cannot help themselves. And because they matter, every two cents matters.

         It reminds me of what Bob Hall from Family Promise said of your ongoing support: “It’s no small thing.” He said it twice. “Really. It’s no small thing.” Whether large or small, gifts given according to one’s ability to give, gifts given in faith, hope, and love, are no small thing. They make a difference far beyond the imagining of the giver.

         During stewardship season, the Session is not asking anyone to respond to all that’s right with Jonesborough Presbyterian Church, or to react against all that’s not so right about it. We’re trying to encourage all of us to live prophetic lives, lives that proclaim and demonstrate the holy nevertheless of faith.

         Whatever you pledge for the coming year, may you pledge in bold faith, prophetic hope, and generous love, to the broken people next to you, to the broken church around you, and to the faithful God within us all.

 

¹Pete Peery, Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Vol. 4, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. “Homiletical Perspective,” pp.  285-289.