Incarnation (Christmas Day Meditation)

 “Incarnation”

John 1:1-5, 10-14

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Christmas Day – 2022

 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴ in him was life,^[a] and the life was the light of all people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. ¹¹ He came to what was his own,^[a] and his own people did not accept him. ¹² But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,^[b] full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-5, 10-14 – NRSV)

 

         Over many of the last twenty-six years in ministry, I’ve often said that Christmas has no lasting meaning apart from Easter. Easter, I said, holds the more sacred space.

In recent years, though, I’ve begun to see Easter as a lens through which Christmas comes into focus. More specifically, perhaps, Resurrection is a lens through which Incarnation comes into focus. As a kind of prism, Resurrection bends the bright light of Incarnation into all of its stunning beauty, diversity, and possibility.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things came into being through him…what has come into being in [the Christ] was life, and the life was the light of all people.”

         Recognizing far more than mere doctrine in the fourth gospel, ancient Celtic Christians drew heavily from the witness of John. Through his telling of the story of the Christ, they felt an invitation into the living and transforming presence of God—a presence that is continually welling up from what Richard Rohr calls “an already Christ-soaked world.”¹ So, while scripture is certainly integral to Celtic spirituality, the Celts experienced organic relationship with God through interaction with self, neighbor, and the earth.

How freeing and empowering. Indeed, how resurrecting to encounter Incarnation in ways so much more concrete than in abstract theological arguments. And how artful, inspiring, and appropriate for Christians to embrace the birth of a specific child, Jesus of Nazareth, as God’s unique self-disclosure.

         Christmas is about the Word becoming flesh. It’s about the material quickening of light into life. We use so many metaphors that we forget we’re using them. In the confusion, we can become rigid when speaking of God. And when our words become inflexible and absolute, they’re no longer faithful to God’s Word.

There’s an irony to remember in all of this. While Incarnation is earthy and corporeal, like childbirth, understanding it depends on suggestion, imagination, and reflection. Incarnation is often most faithfully celebrated through story, poetry, and song. That’s why we read, again and again, Luke’s birth narrative with its shepherds and their gamey armpits and crude jokes, with its drafty stable where unimpressed farm animals chew on moldy hay next to a young woman groaning and sweating her way through labor. That’s why we, along with “heaven and nature,” sing—and listen to—so much music at this time of year. That’s also why we celebrated the mystery of Holy Communion last night.

And this is a gracious irony: All of our words fail to convey the fullness of the Word. And the Word always stands the best chance of being heard when articulated incarnationally—through our physical presence with and for one another and the Creation. Very often, even silence expresses the Word better than words.

         Still, words are gifts, too. The poet Mary Oliver had a unique gift for experiencing the Incarnate Word in the world and for sharing the holiness she saw, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted through lovingly chosen, carefully crafted, and sparingly used words. This morning, I share with you one of her poems. It’s entitled simply “Poem.” I take that as the artist’s nod toward the humbling reality that her words cannot adequately express the fullness, the gratitude, and the hope she feels when experiencing the Incarnate Word in the creation.

On this Christmas Day, may you hear, see, and feel the Word in Mary Oliver’s words. And may you sense that ancient and ongoing Word being incarnated in you. For all of us, like the Christ himself, bear in our lives the light, the love, the very image of God.

 

Poem

by Mary Oliver

 

The spirit
  likes to dress up like this:
    ten fingers, 
        ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
  at night
    in the black branches,
        in the morning

 

in the blue branches
  of the world.
    It could float, of course,
        but would rather

 

plumb rough matter.
  Airy and shapeless thing,
    it needs 
        the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
  the oceanic fluids;
    it needs the body’s world,
        instinct

and imagination
  and the dark hug of time,
    sweetness
        and tangibility,

to be understood,
  to be more than pure light
    that burns
        where no one is –

so it enters us –
  in the morning
    shines from brute comfort
        like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
  lights up the deep and wondrous
    drownings of the body
        like a star.

 

¹https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-second-incarnation-flows-from-the-first-2022-12-19/

 

The Gift of Shepherding (Christmas Eve Meditation)

 “The Gift of Shepherding”

Luke 2:1-20

Allen Huff 

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Christmas Eve – 2022

         If you haven’t guessed, shepherds figure significantly into the theme this Christmas Eve. And it’s not so much shepherds as shepherding—the act of watching and tending. On a concrete level, shepherding is an essential business practice. Without a shepherding presence, a flock of sheep is nothing but a moveable feast for predators.

When the work of shepherding becomes a metaphor for human relationships and for our relationship with God, plots thicken. Bonds deepen. Stakes rise. When we elevate shepherding to a metaphor for human and divine interactions, then mutual love, trust, and that deeply sacramental act of forgiveness are added to the basic shepherding tasks of watching and tending.

The first chapter of Luke and the first seven verses of Luke 2 are all about setting the stage for Jesus’ birth and his ministry of radical justice in a culture of violence where women, children, the poor, the stranger, and the sick are exploited for the benefit of those who hold wealth and power. That’s the point of Mary’s Magnificatin Luke 1: “[God] has pulled the powerful down from their thrones…lifted up the lowly…filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty-handed.” (Luke 1:52-53 CEB)

Following all that remarkable prophecy, Luke presents the birth of Jesus as a rather unremarkable event. Jesus, the Christ, is born in a barn in the afterthought town of Bethlehem. He’s born there because Caesar has ordered a census, and because of that census, people are traveling to their hometowns. And maybe it’s more like they’re being scattered to their hometowns, like their ancestors were scattered by Babylonian conquerors. Joseph, Mary, and everyone else are like sheep being herded from place to place for the benefit of the person who, effectively, owns them. And Caesar’s shepherds are heavily armed soldiers who brandish their swords and spears not to protect the sheep, but to coerce them to comply with the emperor’s demands.

The context of Jesus’ birth creates a stark contrast between the shepherds of imperial domination and the ordinary shepherds who tend flocks of sheep. These shepherds are not warriors. They’re not men of wealth and influence. As ones who live close to the earth, they know how to read the skies—the clouds and colors of the day and the stars of night. They know how to read the behavior of flocks who often sense a predator before the shepherds can see it.

As shepherds, they’re probably a grimy and bawdy lot, but as people who pay close attention to the Creation, they have a capacity to recognize and to embrace signs and wonders—gifts to which Caesar’s soldiers and political puppets are blind or indifferent; or else they’re threatened by them, so they kill them.

The birth of Jesus illustrates God’s grassroots tactics in the world. God’s most table-turning signs and wonders happen through the most unlikely people. And through them—the lowly and vulnerable—true blessedness enters the world. As Jesus himself says, It is through the poor, the hungry, the humble, the merciful, the peacemakers, even the persecuted that God most often reveals God’s transforming love, justice, and peace.

It is to the shepherds among us and the shepherds within us that we turn to experience God’s announcement of the ongoing birth of the Christ, the one through whom God makes all things, and in whom all things are united and made whole.

What about you watches most carefully the Creation around you?

What loving energy within you tends to the neighbors, the children, the homeless, the sick, the forests, the rivers and oceans, the skies?

It is through the simplest and most organic things of this world that God embeds the humble wonders that reveal the nativity of the Christ. And it’s with gracious purpose that God shepherds humankind toward the realm of peace.

I close with a song that I wrote four years ago. It celebrates the shepherds as ones who, through their willing connection with the earth are the first to encounter the good news of Jesus’ arrival.

 

Go Now to Bethlehem

Allen Huff

^©2018

 

Six of us got hired that night and sent into the field

To guard the rich man’s sheep from predators and thieves.

Our lives belonged to other men, just like the sheep we kept.

Day to day and hand to mouth, we grazed from debt to debt.

So we took turns standing watch, then warmed up by the fire.

And grumbling through those heavy hours, we made a bitter choir.

 

Chorus:

But that would be the night when everything did change.

The darkness opened up and sang a bright refrain.

Glory in the highest.

Glory in the highest.

Go now to Bethlehem, and behold.

Go to Bethlehem, and be made whole.

 

We pondered for a long, long while, deciding, “Do we go,

And leave the rich man’s sheep right here, or take them all in tow?”

At last we rounded up the flock, and led them through the night,

They needed still a shepherd to keep them in his sight.

Looking for a manger meant looking for a barn.

Behind an inn we found him, warm and safe – for now – from harm.

 

Repeat Chorus:

 

Bridge:

We were men who knew the land, who knew how deep the frost.

We read the skies, the wind, the flocks. We knew how to find the lost.

And in that child we recognized the holiness at hand.

We saw, we heard, we felt, we knew God’s heart beating in a man.

 

Final Chorus:

Yes, that would be the night when everything did change.

The darkness opened up and sang a bright refrain.

Glory in the highest.

Glory in the highest.

Glory in the highest.

Go now to Bethlehem, and behold.

Go to Bethlehem, and be made whole.

It's About Time (Sermon)

 “It’s About Time”

Psalm 146:5-10 and Romans 13:8-14

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Third Sunday of Advent

12/11/22

 

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
    whose hope is in the Lord their God,
⁶ who made heaven and earth,
    the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
⁷     who executes justice for the oppressed;
    who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
⁸     the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
    the Lord loves the righteous.
⁹ The Lord watches over the strangers;
    he upholds the orphan and the widow,
    but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

¹⁰ The Lord will reign forever,
    your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord!

(Psalm 146:5-10 — NRSV)

 

 

⁸ Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.⁹ The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

¹¹ Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; ¹² the night is far gone; the day is near. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; ¹³ let us walk decently as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in illicit sex and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.¹⁴ Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:8-14 — NRSV)

 

         In my limited travels around the globe, one thing I’ve learned is that when First-Worlders pack our bags, we tend to stuff our neuroses in with our underwear, toiletries, and anything else we try to keep hidden, but without which we feel lost. When traveling to less-developed nations, one neurosis that creates lots of headache is our addiction to the clock. And I’m not judging. I’ve never met anyone as enslaved to punctuality as me. If I’m supposed to be at someone’s house at 2:00pm, and I’m running late, I’ll risk a speeding ticket to get there on time. If I’m early, I’ll ride two or three miles down the road and back so I don’t knock on the door at, God forbid, 1:57!

         Time is much more fluid in cultures that thrive on relationships rather than business deals. In Mexico, I learned that telling folks that something begins at 7pm is like us telling a friend, “We should get together next spring.” The target is wide. And when everyone arrives, whenever that may be, that’s when the game, or the meeting, or the celebration begins.

         The ancient Greeks held two understandings of time. First, they recognized chronos­, time as determined by the position of the shadow on the sun dial, or the earth in its seasons.

There’s another kind of time, though. In Romans 13, Paul writes, “You know what time it is; how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep.” The word Paul uses is not chronos but kairos. And kairos refers to a quality of time—a fullness of time, a readiness. That’s what makes Paul’s image of awakening appropriate. As with the threshold between night and day, there’s a continual confluence of past, present, and future. One familiar theological reference to that mystic realm is “the communion of saints.” And as we awaken to kairos, we begin to encounter that communion. The sacraments of the church, and in particular, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, are designed as tangible expressions and experiences of kairoscommunion.

Advent calls us to live in a state of kairos, a state of perpetual awakening to God and God’s realm. Advent prepares us for the timeliness of God taking on flesh and blood, a particular face and personality. And according to Paul, to love is how we prepare. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor,” he says, “therefore, love is the fulfilling of the Law.”

         Perhaps knowing that many of his readers will need something more concrete than “love your neighbor,” Paul says to “live honorably as in the day.” He clarifies that by contrasting day-time honor to night-time dishonor—the common thread among dishonorable things being a short-sighted and selfish disregard for ourselves, our neighbors, and for the wider Creation. And that’s something we do “in the dark,” that is, some injustice we try either to hide, deny, or attempt to justify as good.

         Paul mentions, for instance, drunkenness. And while that can certainly mean just what it sounds like, I think Paul is referring to more than simply drinking too much alcohol. I think he means willfully losing self-control and defiantly labeling it “autonomy.” I do what I want, when I want, because I want, and if you don’t like it, leave.

Advent reminds us that we live in an in-between time. We have one foot in chronos and the other in kairos. When we don’t cherish and care for the unique and immediate chronos realities of who we are in our own physical bodies, how can we cherish and care for the people next to us, or for the earth? Falling short in the call to love, we tend to exploit our bodies and those of others. We’ll use some for superficial pleasures, and others we’ll annihilate for political control. That’s the true nature of “drunkenness, debauchery, and licentiousness.”

So, kairos may be our eternal home, but we cannot ignore the realities of chronos. And right now, people everywhere are suffering the effects of rampant “drunkenness” because, as often as not, dignity and integrity are taking back seat to whatever means will achieve a desired end. Indeed, our own culture often seems to be knee-crawling drunk on violence, on resentment, on blame, on un-forgiveness.

One year during Advent, Marianne and I were traveling on the interstate when we pulled into a rest stop. As we walked into the restrooms, Travis Tritt was on the radio belting out the final chorus of his big 1991 hit: “Call someone who’ll listen and might give a damn/Maybe one of your sordid affairs/But don’t you come ‘round here handin’ me none of your lies/Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares/Yeah, here’s a quarter, call someone who cares.”

The very next song to play on that station was another major hit. And this 1818 hit song ended with this verse: “Silent night, holy night, Son of God, love’s pure light; radiant beams from thy holy face with the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus, Lord, at thy birth, Jesus, Lord, at thy birth.”

What about the juxtaposition of those two songs?

Through God’s incarnation in Jesus, God reveals to us that the Creation is not, as the Greeks thought, some profane purgatory where souls are incarcerated in bodies and have to prove their worth before moving on to higher and holier things. For all of its chronic brokenness, the Creation does more than bear witness to God. It offers a tangible expression of God’s own generous, redeeming Self. The Creation, humankind included, is an ongoing invitation to an organic experience of the Creator. So, the Incarnation is God’s spiritual act of physically kneading kairos into chronos. And that act affirms the fundamental goodness and the eternal holiness of all that God, in love, has made.

While we walk this earth, our purpose is to wake up to “the dawn of redeeming grace,” and to become “someone who cares.” That’s our purpose because that’s how we enter the communion of saints. That’s how we experience union with God.

We need each other for kairos living. None of us can do it alone. Indeed, Paul says that we “owe” it to one another and to all Creation to gather in communities of compassion to do the hard work of living deliberately and visibly as incarnate signs of God’s love, justice, and peace.

During Advent, it is time, through repentance, to wake up from whatever “drunkenness” we’ve been wallowing in, and to renew our commitment to embodying God’s community of grace.

Remembering Advent (December Newsletter)

Dear Friends,

         Below is the third and final verse of a hymn entitled “‘Sleepers Awake!’ A Voice Astounds Us.”

 

Lamb of God, the heavens adore you;
let saints and angels sing before you,
as harps and cymbals swell the sound.
Twelve great pearls, the city’s portals:
through them we stream to join the immortals
as we with joy your throne surround.

No eye has known the sight,

no ear heard such delight: Alleluia!

Therefore we sing to greet our King;

for ever let our praises ring.

 

         “Sleepers Awake!” is #17 in the blue Presbyterian Hymnal. In the office copy of the hymnal, we track how often particular hymns are used in worship. There is no date next to #17. So, at least at JPC, it may be true that “no eye has known the sight, no ear heard such delight” as one might discover in that hymn.

There aren’t many Advent songs in our hymnal, and we use only a precious few of those available. And if we sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” one Sunday, then make a bee-line for “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “Joy to the World!”, we miss crucial elements of the story.

         One of the struggles during Advent is actually observing Advent. Many American Christians jump into Christmas by the time darkness falls on Thanksgiving Day and they’re loading leftover turkey onto white bread with mustard and mayo. That’s why we see all those Frazier firs wrapped in huge hairnets and strapped to the tops of cars the next day. Christmas without Advent, though, is kind of like playing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on a kazoo. You might recognize the melodic Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee theme, but it’s not a symphony of four movements in all its complexity, subtlety, and majesty. Performing and listening to such a masterpiece requires some understanding and practice, that is to say, preparation.

         To experience the true wonder of Christmas—not the doe-eyed Santa brought me stuff wonder, but the transforming, then we will see face-to-face wonder—we prepare ourselves, because it’s not Christmas morning we’re preparing for. We’re preparing for a life of encounter with the God who enters human existence in all its suffering, sadness, and futility as well as its holiness, joy, and hope. Advent immerses us in the wider and deeper story so that we acknowledge Christmas as more than “Jesus’ birthday.” Advent reminds us that Jesus is more than a memorable melody. He’s the theme, the thread that holds together God’s great opus of Creation. And Christmas, the celebration of the ongoing Incarnation, is a defining movement in the masterpiece.

         “No eye has known the sight, no ear heard such delight,” declares the hymn. I know the language, but not the tune. What might that new thing reveal, though? How might it help us to prepare to come face-to-face with God whose presence is both incarnate and mysterious, immediate and timeless?

How might we prepare ourselves to be moved beyond the momentary happiness of Merry Christmas! to the eternal surprise of the all-in love of God embodied in the joys and sufferings of a human being named Jesus of Nazareth?

                                             Peace,

                                                      Allen

Remove the Fuel (Sermon)

 “Remove the Fuel”

Isaiah 11:1-12 and Matthew 3:1-12

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

12/4/22

Second Sunday of Advent

 

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the desert of Judea announcing, ² “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” ³ He was the one of whom Isaiah the prophet spoke when he said:

The voice of one shouting in the wilderness,
        “Prepare the way for the Lord;
        make his paths straight.”

⁴ John wore clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey.

⁵ People from Jerusalem, throughout Judea, and all around the Jordan River came to him. ⁶ As they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. ⁷ Many Pharisees and Sadducees came to be baptized by John. He said to them, “You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon? ⁸ Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives. ⁹ And don’t even think about saying to yourselves, Abraham is our father. I tell you that God is able to raise up Abraham’s children from these stones. ¹⁰ The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire. ¹¹ I baptize with water those of you who have changed your hearts and lives. The one who is coming after me is stronger than I am. I’m not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. ¹² The shovel he uses to sift the wheat from the husks is in his hands. He will clean out his threshing area and bring the wheat into his barn. But he will burn the husks with a fire that can’t be put out.” (Matthew 3:1-12  — CEB)

A shoot will grow up from the stump of Jesse;
    a branch will sprout[a] from his roots.
2 The Lord’s spirit will rest upon him,
    a spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    a spirit of planning and strength,
    a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.
3 He will delight in fearing the Lord.
He won’t judge by appearances,
    nor decide by hearsay.
4 He will judge the needy with righteousness,
    and decide with equity for those who suffer in the land.
He will strike the violent[b] with the rod of his mouth;
    by the breath of his lips he will kill the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be the belt around his hips,
    and faithfulness the belt around his waist.
6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
    and the leopard will lie down with the young goat;
    the calf and the young lion will feed[c]together,
    and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow and the bear will graze.
    Their young will lie down together,
    and a lion will eat straw like an ox.
8 A nursing child will play over the snake’s hole;
    toddlers will reach right over the serpent’s den.
9 They won’t harm or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain.
    The earth will surely be filled with the knowledge of the Lord,
    just as the water covers the sea. (Isaiah 11”1-9 — CEB)

 

 

         The last thing I want to be as a preacher is a purveyor of hellfire and brimstone. I think that brand of theology is manipulative, violent, and, ultimately, unfaithful to the gospel. So, when John the Baptist ignites the early chapters of the synoptic gospels with images of fire, I wince a little. 

Over the centuries, many preachers seem to have taken their homiletical and pastoral cues from John’s firestorm more than from Jesus’ outpouring of Living Water. But aren’t the two supposed to work together?

While Jesus calls us to wade courageously into the darkness where the poor and forgotten cry for help, John lights the fire by which we perceive the problems within ourselves. And these interior problems are usually the very source of the communal problems over which Jesus pours himself out. So, together, Jesus and John call us to be both an eternal flame that reveals God’s creative presence in and for the world, and a well-spring through which God’s life-giving and justice-doing water flows.

Having said that, the image of fire often seems to dominate. Under the influences of wealth and power since the days of Constantine, the Church has built perimeter fires of self-preservation that shed more in the way of raging heat than guiding light. Inside this self-made hell, we’ve done far more to condemn “broods of vipers” than to love our neighbor, and more to pronounce judgment on chaff than to welcome the stranger. Much of the Church’s own fruit has been preaching and practices that aim to terrify people into a scorched conformity rather than to invite one another to gather at Christ’s table of healing and community-creating gratitude.

         Let’s be grateful, then, for Advent, a preparatory season that helps to remind us that fire can do more than destroy. Fire can purify—as one might sterilze a needle before digging a splinter out of a finger. Fire can refine—as gold is refined to remove baser metals and stone. Fire can heal, too. It can take years to experience the full effect, but in some ecosystems, forest fires tend to hit a kind of reset button. And isn’t that what repentance is all about? Resetting hearts overgrown with deadfall and invasive species?

         In her book Wild Card Quilt: The Ecology of Home, Georgia environmentalist Jannise Ray writes that the entire “intricate and intriguing ecosystem [of longleaf pine forests] is…bound to fire…Periodic wildfires thwart the encroachment of hardwoods such as oak and sweetgum into the pinelands, so the trees have evolved not only to survive fire but to depend on it.”¹

For three years, I was a part-time firefighter down in Statesboro, GA. Don’t be impressed. When all the other guys had nicknames like Mad Dog or Flame Throweron their helmets, mine said Hose Roller on one side and Bless His Heart on the other. (That piece of the story may have a little hair on it, but it’s descriptively accurate.) At one of our drills, someone from the local forestry commission came and talked to us about wildfire suppression. He said that the principal strategy for fighting wildfires was to remove the fuel. To stop the progression of a burn, get ahead of the fire, cut a few trees, harrow fire breaks, and then start controlled burns that burn back to the fire line where the two fires simply extinguish each other for lack of fuel. Removing the fuel ends up doing the same as the wildfires of the ancient pine forests. It clears the land of deadwood and husks and restores the ecosystem.

I think John’s and Jesus’ baptisms are acts of removing fuel. I don’t think either John or Jesus singles out particular people to be punished for being deadwood. I think they’re reminding us that we all have chaff in our lives—attitudes and habits that are unhealthy for us and for others. Running those invasive attitudes and parasitic habits through the refiner’s fire helps us to discover what lies beneath them. And something good and edifying may actually be hiding there. We’ve just misused it, or corrupted it.

For instance, if I’m continually angry at and judgmental toward someone or some group, that anger needs a refining fire to reveal its true source. During that fire, the important questions become, What about me am I judging and rejecting? What about me am I angry at or ashamed of? How have I gotten to the point that I turn my own self-loathing into justification for blaming and hurting others? Coming to grips with those realities hurts. It burns. And yet it heals.

         Even in Advent, Sunday worship celebrates the promise of Resurrection. And while John does seem to strike steel to flint with inflammatory warnings, I think he is, really, whether he even knows it or not, calling our attention to the conflagration of grace.

         Since the Exodus, flame has served as a symbol for the presence of God. Remember the burning bush. And at Pentecost, flame becomes the specific symbol for the presence and the work of God’s Holy Spirit. So, even if John holds the feet of Pharisees and Sadducees to the fire, his announcement of the coming of the Christ declares that God always intends healing and wholeness for the Creation.

Through repentance, then, we deliberately burn away the attitudes and habits that reduce us to arsonists. We singe off all our pride, greed, fear, vengeance, and despair. Such incendiary rubbish fuels all the devastating firestorms in our culture, in our churches, in our homes, and in our own minds. And because we cannot earn God’s mercy, true repentance is always our grateful response to God’s purifying grace already at work in our lives.

In the baptism we receive through the Incarnation of God in Jesus, we begin to agree with God. As individuals and as humankind, we agree that we are God’s Beloved.

We agree that we are capable of giving and receiving more love that we ever thought possible.

We agree that this is true for all of God’s good Creation.

And we agree to live the new life of grace, which is, in truth, the native landscape of all things created by God.

Jesus’ baptism by Spirit and fire removes the fuel of our brokenness. It refines us and transforms us. It resurrects us. It prepares us to receive and share with joy the good news of Christmas by igniting within us prophetic and compassionate hearts, hearts which reveal in us, and help us to see in others, the image of God’s ever-arriving Christ.

 

¹Janisse Ray, Wildcard Quilt: The Ecology of Home. Milkweed Editions, 2003, pp. 36-37.

 

Practical Thanksgiving (Sermon)

 “Practical Thanksgiving”*

Ezekiel 34:11-24 and John 10:14-16

11/20/2

Reign of Christ Sunday

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

 

¹¹ The Lord God proclaims: I myself will search for my flock and seek them out. ¹² As a shepherd seeks out the flock when some in the flock have been scattered, so will I seek out my flock. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered during the time of clouds and thick darkness. ¹³ I will gather and lead them out from the countries and peoples, and I will bring them to their own fertile land. I will feed them on Israel’s highlands, along the riverbeds, and in all the inhabited places. ¹⁴ I will feed them in good pasture, and their sheepfold will be there, on Israel’s lofty highlands. On Israel’s highlands, they will lie down in a secure fold and feed on green pastures. ¹⁵ I myself will feed my flock and make them lie down. This is what the Lord God says.¹⁶ I will seek out the lost, bring back the strays, bind up the wounded, and strengthen the weak. But the fat and the strong I will destroy, because I will tend my sheep with justice.

¹⁷ As for you, my flock, the Lord God proclaims: I will judge between the rams and the bucks among the sheep and the goats. ¹⁸ Is feeding in good pasture or drinking clear water such a trivial thing that you should trample and muddy what is left with your feet?¹⁹ But now my flock must feed on what your feet have trampled and drink water that your feet have muddied.

²⁰ So the Lord God proclaims to them: I will judge between the fat and the lean sheep. ²¹ You shove with shoulder and flank, and with your horns you ram all the weak sheep until you’ve scattered them outside.²² But I will rescue my flock so that they will never again be prey. I will even judge between the sheep!²³ I will appoint for them a single shepherd, and he will feed them. My servant David will feed them. He will be their shepherd. ²⁴ I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David will be their prince. I, the Lord, have spoken.  (Ezekiel 34:11-24 – CEB)

 

¹⁴ “I am the good shepherd. I know my own sheep and they know me, ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. I give up my life for the sheep.¹⁶ I have other sheep that don’t belong to this sheep pen. I must lead them too. They will listen to my voice and there will be one flock, with one shepherd. (John 10:14-16— CEB)

 

         Because of Psalm 23, when many of us hear the word shepherd, we conjure up images of being delivered from want and laid down in green pastures. Or, because of Christmas, we imagine “keeping watch over flocks by night.” Some historians tell us that ancient shepherds were, by and large, a grimy and bawdy lot. And surely among such ruffians were the ones Jesus called “hired hands,” men who were apt to abandon a flock in the face of threat.

         Old Testament professor Wil Gafney also reminds us that shepherds were businessmen who held comprehensive interest in their flocks. Sheep, says Gafney, were “mobile currency and a primary source of nutrition [which shepherds would] regularly breed, sell, and eat.”¹

         That got me thinking. The word “pastor” derives from the Latin word meaning “shepherd,” or “to feed.” And since folks like me are often referred to as shepherdsof a flock, I’m contemplating a new pastoral initiative. All this will require session approval, of course, but come January, some of you, my flock, I will pair up for breeding. Then I’ll designate others of you as having either too much or too little value to keep, and I’ll trailer you off to market to sell or trade away. Finally, some of you…well, a man’s got to eat, right?

If the session approved that “pastoral” initiative, how would it change your concept of shepherd? Ezekiel’s description of the way self-serving kings treated their subjects was pretty close to what I just described. And the prophets made it clear to everyone that Yahweh had no intention of getting fleeced like that.

         All you shepherds of Israel, you slaughter the lambs. You eat the fat. You clothe yourselves with wool, but you’re not feeding the sheep. You’re feeding yourselves!

         Ezekiel hammers away at those who abuse, ignore, scatter, and otherwise “consume” God’s beloved flock.

         While biblical scholars argue whether these violent shepherds are Israelite kings or foreign kings,² the point is that regardless of one’s nationality, or party, or office, or religion or lack thereof, leaders cannot lead by feeding themselves at the expense of those whom they lead. They cannot maintain credibility, respect, and authority by fouling the sheep’s pastures and waters with their own filthy feet.

         Over time, two ironies come to light. First, the sheep about whom Ezekiel speaks are never stronger than when, by a shepherd’s negligence, they find themselves lost, scattered, injured, and weak. Having nothing to lose, they’ll rise up, and they often prevail.

Second, when those sheep achieve freedom through the same violent means by which they were overcome and oppressed, they will, eventually, in spite of all good intentions, become abusive shepherds themselves.

         Through Ezekiel, God makes a new promise:

“I will feed [the sheep].”

“I will seek out the lost.”

“I will bring back the strays.”

“I will bind up the wounded.”

“I will strengthen the weak.”

“I will tend them with justice.”

         And there’s the difference: justice. In systems organized around perceived scarcity and greedy competition, true justice is the scarcest commodity. In such systems, justice gets reduced to getting even, to an-eye-for-an-eye retribution. That’s standard fare in the old realm; but Jesus—the Good Shepherd, the King of Kings—creates a new way of life. And he calls us to that life which isn’t only new and transformed, but one that becomes renewing and transforming for others. That’s what makes it truly just: The well-being of others becomes as important to us as our own well-being. As I’ve said to you before, my dad called this approach to life “practical thanksgiving.”

         Practical thanksgiving means living, intentionally, with and for the sake ofothers. What makes this way of life challenging is that it asks us to be continually attentive to, responsive to, and grateful for the particular person in our presence right now, while also living with, and for the sake of all people and all Creation—all that is with us today and all that is to come.

         The Greek word for these particular and ultimate concerns is eschaton, from which we get the word eschatology. Some Christian theology limits eschatology to doomsday discussions littered with citations from the book of Revelation and shouts of catastrophic Armageddon from fire-breathing preachers. And such individualistic theology tends to exile God to some far-off heaven. It ignores God’s innate presence in the Creation. It also tends to ignore and even excuse the crises of incivility and climate degradation we, right now, are imposing on future generations through fearful anger and entitled consumption. Ezekiel’s question is painfully relevant to this generation: “Is feeding in good pasture or drinking clear water such a trivial thing that you should trample and muddy what is left with your feet?” (Ezekiel 34:18)

A more holistic biblical eschatology opens the door to both the already and the not-yet Kingdom of God. Modeling a life of practical thanksgiving, Jesus shows us that the joys and sufferings of the moment are portals into that realm. So, as the Good Shepherd:

Jesus welcomes the stranger.

He feeds the hungry.

He restores the outcast to community.

He celebrates the beauty of the lilies of the field.

He embraces the God-revealing holiness of Creation in all of its fragility and all of its resilience.

And as his flock, we participate in all of those things with him

Through his own life, death, and resurrection, Jesus demonstrates what is true for all of us: We and all things “live and move and have our being” in God. (Acts 17:28) We and all things are loved eternally and equally by God. The faithful response to that love is to love as we are loved. And that takes more than our own wits and wills. To live with and for one another in lives of practical thanksgiving means committing ourselves to the reign of Christ in this world.

         St. Francis of Assisi took seriously Jesus’ call to live a life of practical thanksgiving. Among St. Francis’ many words of wisdom are these bits of advice: “Start by doing what’s necessary, then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible…[And anyone who] will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion,” said St. Francis, “will deal likewise with their fellow [human beings].”³

         Do you hear that blending of the particular and the ultimate? We touch eternity, and we live eschatologically by tending and feeding the people beside us right now, by caring for future generations and the future earth by committing ourselves to gratitude, generosity, and conservation today.

Living in the realm of Christ the King means so much more than walking on streets of gold with people who have “been good” and “done right.” It means, as the prophet Micah says, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God—today. It means, as Jesus says in his last words to Peter, “Feed my lambs…tend my sheep…feed my sheep.”

         God of boundless grace, help us to continue following your Good Shepherd into lives of practical thanksgiving, lives of gratitude, generosity, and responsibility, lives that reflect his trust in you, and his willingness to risk living peaceably with and for the sake of all whom you love.

Amen.

 

¹ Wil Gafney, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 4, Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p. 316.

²Denise Dombkowski Hopkins, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 4, Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p. 319.

³http://www.quotesdaddy.com/author/St.+Francis+of+Assisi

 

*This sermon is a re-work of my Reign of Christ sermon on November 24, 2019.