Witness in the Wilderness (Sermon)

 “Witness in the Wilderness”

Isaiah 51:1-6 and Revelation 21:1-4

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

4/23/23

 

Listen to me,
    you who look for righteousness,
    you who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were cut
    and to the quarry where you were dug.
² Look to Abraham your ancestor,
    and to Sarah, who gave you birth.
They were alone when I called them,
    but I blessed them and made them many.
³ The Lord will comfort Zion;
    he will comfort all her ruins.
He will make her desert like Eden
    and her wilderness like the Lord’s garden.
Happiness and joy will be found in her—
    thanks and the sound of singing.

⁴ Pay attention to me, my people;
    listen to me, my nation,
        for teaching will go out from me,
        my justice, as a light to the nations.
⁵     I will quickly bring my victory.
My salvation is on its way,
    and my arm will judge the peoples.
    The coastlands hope for me;
    they wait for my judgment. 
⁶ Look up to the heavens,
        and gaze at the earth beneath.
    The heavens will disappear like smoke,
    the earth will wear out like clothing,
    and its inhabitants will die like gnats.
But my salvation will endure forever,
    and my righteousness will be unbroken.

(Isaiah 51:1-6 — CEB)

 

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ² I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. ³ I heard a loud voice from the throne say, “Look! God’s dwelling is here with humankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his peoples. God himself will be with them as their God. ⁴ He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1-4 — CEB)

 

 

         Isaiah’s audience are the Israelites exiled in Babylon. After thirty-nine chapters mostly dedicated to itemizing Israel’s sins, Isaiah 40-55, or Second Isaiah, contains the prophecy of Israel’s release. And this section begins with those memorable words: “Comfort, comfort my people.”

Through the prophet, God says, Your current situation is going to change. You’re going home! To those stuck in Babylon, Isaiah’s words probably sound like wishful thinking, or maybe some religious zealot seeking attention. And, since almost all the Israelites in Babylon had, by the time of their release, been born into exile, one can also imagine the prospect of deliverance feeling unsettling to many people. They would be leaving the only home they knew. And isn’t it a human thing often to prefer the wilderness we know rather than the wilderness we don’t?

         Like a gardener preparing depleted soil, the prophet has to prepare the people’s weary hearts. He has to remind them who they are, whose they are, and what home really is.

In today’s text, Isaiah says, “Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry where you were dug.” Like stars and planets hewn from one colossal and purposed explosion of spirited matter, so, too, were the Israelites chipped from the same ancestral quarry.

Isaiah’s image of being quarried and cut isn’t random. Between the first verse of chapter 40 and today’s text in chapter 51, the prophet spends a good deal of time disparaging the idols of Babylon.

Idols are sculpted images created by craftsmen, says Isaiah. And what good are they to people who have been created in the image of God?

You are the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, he says. You are among those counted when Abraham looked up at the heavens and God told him, Count the stars if you can, and trust that your descendants will be as plentiful as the stars in a clear night sky.

God’s promise to Abraham occurs while he and Sarah are in the midst of their own wilderness. They’re homeless, childless, and aging. Yet they trust that God is leading them to a place rich with new beginnings, family, and belonging. They trust that God is leading them home.

Experiences of exile and exodus—the dis-orientation of wilderness—are endemic to the life of faith, because they’re endemic to human existence. There’s just no such thing as a human life without wilderness. And when we’re wandering in some wilderness, the prophets challenge us also to imagine ourselves in a place where God is about to reveal something new.

“Pay attention to me,” God says to Israel. There will be comfort in your ruins.“[I] will make your desert like Eden and [your] wilderness like the Lord’s garden.” Everything you see will, eventually, disappear, says God, but my love for you, my presence with you, and my making-things-right for all Creation will never end.

John declares a similar promise in Revelation 21 when he speaks of “a new heaven and a new earth.” Just as God promised a family and a home to Abraham and to Sarah, and just as God promised deliverance to the Israelites exiled in Babylon, so does God promise “a new heaven and a new earth” to early Christians who are trying to follow Jesus while living in the wilderness of Caesar’s relentless brutality. 

We dare not gloss over that reality. Too many people die in the wilderness. And maybe that’s why Isaiah brings up Abraham and Sarah. Sometimes wilderness is as far as even the great ones get. Neither Abraham nor Moses really crosses the finish line. Abraham, The Father of Many, has only one child with Sarah, his co-recipient of God’s promise. And Moses dies before reaching the land to which he is leading the Hebrews.

Christa Tippett hosts a podcast entitled On Being, and recently, she interviewed Christian preacher and teacher Barbara Brown Taylor. During the conversation, the topic of wilderness came up, and Tippett asked Taylor about the role of wilderness in the human condition. Taylor responded saying that one benefit of a wilderness experience is that “your ego will get a major thump. I think of wilderness,” she said, “as where you get a feel for your true size.”^*

In the whole that conversation, I heard Taylor saying that wilderness is where we remember, through shared suffering, that we are created by a Creator who is best understood as relationship. And we are most authentically God’s people when we recognize our need for one another, our need for fellow travelers in the wilderness. In that recognition, each of us confronts our incompleteness apart from the community. And while that can thump an individual’s ego, it also reminds us that we’re always part of a larger community and a larger story.

I think Isaiah wants the people in Babylon to remember that God has created flourishing gardens out of wilderness wastelands before. The prophet wants the people to dig deep into the quarry of their collective memory and recall that while God seldom prevents suffering, God never abandons the people in their sufferings. Isaiah seems to want the people to say, Hey, we’ve been here before. All will be well because God is faithful.

The “true size” of an individual and of a faith community is never determined by any status or privilege, but by the extent to which we embrace our blessedness, even in the wilderness, and offer ourselves as a blessing. Thus does God say, “They were alone when I called them, but I blessed them and made them many…Happiness and joy will be found in her—thanks and the sound of singing.”

         Suffering in community with others, and living as a source of “happiness and joy”—isn’t this the call of a community that follows Jesus? Isn’t this John’s “new heaven and…new earth”?

To be a faithful and biblically-grounded community does not mean that we bind ourselves to a static set of beliefs and insist that others do the same. To be a faithful and biblically-grounded community means that we live as a people of humility and joy, people possessed by a passion for God’s justice, that is for mercy, kindness, peace, equity, and welcome for all whom God loves.

So, whatever wilderness may look and feel like right now for each of us, and for all of us together, isn’t it faithful to both Isaiah and Jesus to open ourselves to our wilderness experience as people who need each other, and who are fellow travelers in a much deeper and wider narrative?

And isn’t it radically faithful to God, and faithfully subversive to all the Babylons and Romes of the world to say, We’ve been here before? Wilderness never gets the last word. Even now, God, who is faithful, is birthing a new Creation. And even if we don’t get to see it ourselves, we will not give in to hopelessness.

By loving as we are loved, by living gratefully, generously, and justly, we will inhabit, here and now, God’s new heaven and new earth.

 

^*All references to the On Being conversation between Tippett and Taylor can be found here: https://onbeing.org/programs/barbara-brown-taylor-this-hunger-for-holiness/#transcript

A New Creation (Easter Sermon)

 “A New Creation”

Matthew 28:1-15a

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Easter Sunday 2023

 

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the tomb. ² Look, there was a great earthquake, for an angel from the Lord came down from heaven. Coming to the stone, he rolled it away and sat on it. ³ Now his face was like lightning and his clothes as white as snow. ⁴ The guards were so terrified of him that they shook with fear and became like dead men.

⁵ But the angel said to the women, “Don’t be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. ⁶ He isn’t here, because he’s been raised from the dead, just as he said. Come, see the place where they laid him. ⁷Now hurry, go and tell his disciples, ‘He’s been raised from the dead. He’s going on ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there.’ I’ve given the message to you.”

⁸ With great fear and excitement, they hurried away from the tomb and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹But Jesus met them and greeted them. They came and grabbed his feet and worshipped him. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell my brothers that I am going into Galilee. They will see me there.”

¹¹ Now as the women were on their way, some of the guards came into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. ¹² They met with the elders and decided to give a large sum of money to the soldiers. ¹³ They told them, “Say that Jesus’ disciples came at night and stole his body while you were sleeping. ¹⁴ And if the governor hears about this, we will take care of it with him so you will have nothing to worry about.”

¹⁵ So the soldiers took the money and did as they were told. (Matthew 28:1-15a – CEB)

 

         Twice in Matthew’s telling of the Easter story we hear this instruction: Don’t be afraid. Go to Galilee. You’ll see Jesus there.

Matthew continues the story of the disciples’ encounters with the resurrected Jesus. For today, though, let’s linger in this moment of wonder.

         Both the angel and Jesus say, Don’t be afraid. What might they expect the women to fear? Maybe they realize that new experiences often involve, for human beings, a certain degree of anxiety and sometimes outright fear. Even things of which we are fully aware can frighten us—especially when we know they can harm us or people we love.

It seems to me that another thing making fear so, well, fearful, is that the things we fear usually lie beyond our control—even when they claim to represent something helpful, healing, or hopeful. And Resurrection is one of those terrifying wonders.

Resurrection is intimately and eternally tied to Incarnation. As such, it’s more than merely a do-over. Resurrection is a beginning that recapitulates the Creation—the event through which that creative, relationship-seeking energy and purpose we call God uttered the universe into being. That means that Resurrection starts with more than a momentary interruption of some progression or status quo. Resurrection follows a death, a termination. What was is no more, and will never be, again. Nonetheless, that death sparks a re-creation, something completely new and different, yet intimately and eternally tied to the thing that precedes it.

Attempts to describe Resurrection always fall flat. That’s one reason that images and metaphors are so important to Easter. And laying aside that irrelevant bunny, we’ll use the monarch butterfly as an example. In its first existence, the larva stage, a monarch is a fat, yellow, black, and white-striped caterpillar crawling about on slow, sticky feet. It inches its way along milkweed stalks and eats its way through as many leaves as it can stomach. As a caterpillar, it probably travels no more than a total of a few yards before it attaches itself to something stable, curls up, and within a few hours, sloughs off its skin and finds itself cocooned inside an emerald green chrysalis flecked with iridescent yellow spots. This is the pupa stage.

If all goes well, in a couple of weeks a radically new creation emerges—the adult butterfly with a lean body, long, soft hair along its back, and antennae that are, essentially, two slender noses. From that body spreads a pair of delicate golden wings fringed with black and accented with white spots. After some weeks of gathering nectar, the monarch flies not a matter of feet or yards, but some two thousand miles on its crepe paper wings.

The metamorphosis takes the creature from portly, cumbersome worm to magnificent, continent-crossing butterfly. And it doesn’t happen without a kind of death, without the complete surrender of one form to another.

If a caterpillar’s brain could imagine that it would trade in its surface-gripping feet for gravity-defying wings, it might lift up a prayer saying Please, take this cup from me. This is terrifying!

And maybe God’s answer would be something like, I understand. But listen, while you can’t imagine your next life right now, trust me, it’s going to be worth it. Don’t be afraid.

Now, back to the Mary Magdalene and the disciples.

After hearing that the world has changed beyond all experience and expectation, we receive the next instruction. Go to Galilee. Some 100 miles north of Jerusalem, the region of Galilee carries deep historical and symbolic significance.

Nazareth, the place of Jesus’ birth, is in Galilee. The Sea of Galilee, along whose shore Jesus called his first disciples, is the eastern boundary of Galilee. Capernaum, where Jesus preached his first sermon, is in Galilee. So, Galilee represents a place of beginnings.

         Now, on Easter morning, when the angels and then Jesus tell the women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, the instruction isn’t to return to the way things were. The instruction is simply to go back where it all started, because a whole new way of being in the world awaits them. And while that way of being will be entirely new, it awaits them in the person of the same person that all of them had loved, followed, and watched die just 36 hours earlier. And since that time, everything has changed—forever. A New Creation has begun.

         For us, post-resurrection Galilee can be pretty much anywhere. And wherever it is, to get there, something must die, metaphorically anyway. And whatever it may be, we have to let go of it. Letting go is the path toward the New Creation of Resurrection.

         Much has been said and is being said about the “decline” of the Church. And something is definitely happening. It seems to me, though, that a healthy and hopeful way to look at our changed and changing situation is to imagine the Church, as the body of Christ, experiencing, globally, a season of moving from one stage of being toward a whole new creation. Something even more beautiful. Something with wings, perhaps.

Still, it’s scary. The Church that most of us in this room grew up with, love, treasure, and continue to embrace and to nurture, could very well be entering a kind of pupa stage. That would mean sloughing off familiar skin, familiar practices and arrangements, and preparing for ways of being and doing church that we have never experienced, nor really imagined. And yet, such a transformation might just help us to follow more faithfully a resurrected Christ.

Easter invites us to imagine ourselves—individually and communally—as part of a continual and a sacred process of creation, death, and re-creation. God did not establish a static order, but an organism, something that lives, moves, has being and purpose, and that is always in the process of becoming.

Resurrection is part of that process. Resurrection gives us wings on which we transcend our slow-footed fear and selfishness. Resurrection gives us the strength and courage we need to embrace the new vision and the new possibilities that come with being a New Creation.

Resurrection empowers us to release old hurts and the thirst for vengeance, and to forgive that old nemesis.

It empowers us to forgive old institutions, their smallness, their self-absorption, and their archaic prejudices against people whom God made different but no less beautiful and holy.

Resurrection empowers us to see the world around us as God’s presence with us, and God’s provision for us—something to steward with gratitude and generosity because none of us survive without this earth. And when we see the earth through the eyes of transformed creatures, we recognize that there is, in fact, enough for everyone because we recognize our need in our neighbor’s need, and we work to make sure that all have enough.

Resurrection sends us to Galilee to open our minds, our hearts, and our hands to the new thing God is doing in us and through us.

What new thing is God doing in you?

Where is your Galilee?

Resurrection Relationship (Sermon)

 “Resurrection Relationship”

John 20:1-18

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

April 9, 2023

Easter Sunrise

 

Early in the morning of the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. ² She ran to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they’ve put him.”

³ Peter and the other disciple left to go to the tomb. ⁴ They were running together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and was the first to arrive at the tomb. ⁵ Bending down to take a look, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he didn’t go in. ⁶ Following him, Simon Peter entered the tomb and saw the linen cloths lying there. ⁷ He also saw the face cloth that had been on Jesus’ head. It wasn’t with the other clothes but was folded up in its own place. ⁸ Then the other disciple, the one who arrived at the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹ They didn’t yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. ¹⁰ Then the disciples returned to the place where they were staying.

¹¹ Mary stood outside near the tomb, crying. As she cried, she bent down to look into the tomb. ¹² She saw two angels dressed in white, seated where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the foot.¹³ The angels asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

She replied, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve put him.” ¹⁴ As soon as she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t know it was Jesus.

¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she replied, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabbouni” (which means Teacher).

¹⁷ Jesus said to her, “Don’t hold on to me, for I haven’t yet gone up to my Father. Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, ‘I’m going up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

¹⁸ Mary Magdalene left and announced to the disciples, “I’ve seen the Lord.” Then she told them what he said to her. (John 20:1-18 — CEB)

 

         Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the disciple whom Jesus loved are overcome with emotion. They’re trying to believe something that defies comprehension. On that Sunday morning, as they stand next to that empty tomb, what appears to be the case lies beyond anything any of them can conceive. Indeed, the disciple whom Jesus loved doesn’t believe it until he actually sets foot in the tomb and sees for himself, lying on the ground, the grave coverings and the face cloth that had swaddled Jesus since the previous Friday evening.

         Now, John is known for his use of irony. And there’s a deep irony in this scene. However, most of us have heard the Easter story enough times that we get so caught up in the outcome and miss the irony. What Mary Magdelene, Peter, and the disciple whom Jesus loved are struggling to believe, what they’re trying to come to grips with in the first fifteen verses of John 20, is not that Jesus has been resurrected, but that his body has been stolen.

And what a trauma that would be! Who would do such a thing? How could they do it? Physically, spiritually, emotionally, morally, how could anyone steal a body?

In the minds of the three who discover the empty tomb, grave robbery is the only thing that makes sense, because while it may be unbelievable that someone would do such a thing, it’s not actually beyond belief that it could be done. So, when the disciple whom Jesus loved steps into the tomb and sees for himself the absence of a body, John says he “believed.” What the disciple believes, though, is only what Mary Magdalene said—someone has taken Jesus’ body.

         The first witness of that first Easter morning was one of insult to injury. Jesus had been crucified, buried, and stolen. Even when Mary looks back into the tomb and sees the angels, and hears them ask why she’s crying, she doesn’t even imagine resurrection. Why would she? Even when Jesus asks Mary the same question that the angels ask, she remains blinded by her perfectly rational belief in a morally unbelievable prospect. It’s not until Mary hears who she thinks is the “gardener” call her by name that she recognizes Jesus. And that’s when the real work of believing begins—when the relationship is inexplicably restored.

         When it comes to believing and not believing certain things, human beings often take whatever road requires less investment or risk. And generally speaking, the greater the mystery surrounding something, the greater the risk in believing it, thus making it easier not to believe. And in certain cases, not believing something is the wiser path.

I refuse to believe doomsday predictions and conspiracy theories because things like that create in their believers the kind of fear that breeds suspicion, enmity, and an ever-deepening reliance on violence, intimidation, and manipulation. And it’s generally true that destructive beliefs create destructive agents.

         There’s a different belief-disbelief dynamic at work in the fourth gospel. In John, belief refers to one’s embrace of the presence and power of the mystery that, in Christ, God is doing something so remarkable as to defy explanation. And it’s not just that God is doing something so remarkable as to be inexplicable. Like Resurrection itself, God IS Something inexplicable. And that Something is initiated by love. That Something is sustained by love. That Something is, finally, love itself. This creative and re-creative love is alive—permanently alive—in the Creation. And that love, embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, cannot be entombed by human selfishness.

         As we said earlier, it’s when Jesus speaks Mary’s name that she finally recognizes Jesus and begins to imagine that something greater than foul play is afoot. When she resumes relationship with Jesus, she begins to believe something even more unbelievable than body snatching.

         Maybe that’s why Thomas figures so prominently in John. He refuses to believe until he sees and touches Jesus—that is to say, until he, himself, resumes relationship with Jesus.

One thing to remember about Resurrection, is that it’s not the same as resuscitation. When Lazarus was raised, he was resuscitated, not resurrected. His body, being merely restored, would die again. As John suggests in more than one place, the resurrection of Jesus was the raising from one state of being to another. “Don’t hold on to me,” Jesus tells Mary. This whole resurrection thing, it’s a process. And it’s not over. And that night, when Jesus appears to the disciples, John takes care to say that he does so through closed and locked doors where the disciples are hiding from the religious leadership. So, whatever the disciples experience, it isn’t relationship with Jesus as they had known him. Nonetheless, in some way, relationship with him is restored. He’s more than a memory. They encounter him.

         Maybe the spiritual belief to which we are called is a matter of facing all the unbelievable and yet all-too-real stuff our world throws at us every day, then listening for and encountering the Christ in the midst of it. And isn’t that our calling as the church? To bear witness to the risen Christ here and now by being ones through whom Jesus restores relationship with the world? That is Resurrection life—a life of peace-making engagement, courageous hope, restorative justice, unprejudiced compassion, and enduring love. It’s a life of Christ-centered relationship with all people and all things. And in those relationships, we encounter and share Jesus himself.

In our family and friends, he is with us.

In our adversaries, he is with us.

In those who annoy us, he is with us.

In believers and non-believers, he is with us.

In creatures both beautiful and frightening, he is with us.

In the faithful passing of the seasons, he is with us.

In our beginnings and endings, he is with us.

In all things, Jesus is alive.

He is alive as the love we give and receive.

He is alive as the compassion we share.

He is alive as justice, mercy, kindness, and joy.

Jesus is alive! For he is risen!

He is risen, indeed!