Visible Hope (Sermon)

“Visible Hope”

Psalm 40:1-4 and Romans 8:12-25 

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/30/23

 

I put all my hope in the LORD. 

He leaned down to me; 

he listened to my cry for help. 

²He lifted me out of the pit of death, 

out of the mud and filth, 

and set my feet on solid rock. 

He steadied my legs. 

³He put a new song in my mouth, 

a song of praise for our God. 

Many people will learn of this and be amazed; 

they will trust the LORD.

⁴Those who put their trust in the LORD, 

who pay no attention to the proud 

or to those who follow lies, 

are truly happy!  (Psalm 40:1-4 - CEB)

 

¹² So then, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation, but it isn’t an obligation to ourselves to live our lives on the basis of selfishness. ¹³ If you live on the basis of selfishness, you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the actions of the body, you will live. ¹⁴ All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters. ¹⁵ You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to lead you back again into fear, but you received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children. With this Spirit, we cry, “Abba, Father.” ¹⁶ The same Spirit agrees with our spirit, that we are God’s children. ¹⁷ But if we are children, we are also heirs. We are God’s heirs and fellow heirs with Christ, if we really suffer with him so that we can also be glorified with him.

¹⁸ I believe that the present suffering is nothing compared to the coming glory that is going to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ The whole creation waits breathless with anticipation for the revelation of God’s sons and daughters. ²⁰ Creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice—it was the choice of the one who subjected it—but in the hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from slavery to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of God’s children. ²² We know that the whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now. ²³ And it’s not only the creation. We ourselves who have the Spirit as the first crop of the harvest also groan inside as we wait to be adopted and for our bodies to be set free. ²⁴ We were saved in hope. If we see what we hope for, that isn’t hope. Who hopes for what they already see? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we don’t see, we wait for it with patience. (Romans 8:12-25– CEB)

 

 

         In the eighth chapter of his letter to the Romans, Paul crafts some of his most memorable and influential writing. One of my seminary professors said that, because of the passion and depth of this chapter, some scholars wonder if Paul wrote it while in the throes of some sort of spiritual ecstasy.

         Whatever the case, a clearly inspired Paul is writing the first systematic theology. When he began writing to churches, Paul handled new Christians as a parent cares for a newborn. “I couldn’t talk to you like spiritual people,” he tells the Corinthians, “but like unspiritual people, like babies in Christ. I gave you milk to drink instead of solid food, because you weren’t up to it yet.” (1Cor. 3:1b-2 - CEB)

         In Romans, though, the apostle seems to expect more from his readers. Still, with all of its grownup philosophy and studied argument, systematic theology is, to me, kind of like plain yogurt. It has nutritional value, but to be interesting, systematic theology has to be mixed with something else because the most transforming theology is not systematic; it is systemic. Good theology is not organized and argued. It is discovered in the messy, day-to-day realities of life. It is told and shared as narrative. Good theology is lived, because it is story.

         Story puts “flesh” on theological arguments. And because that flesh is human flesh, much of it is imperfect. Nonetheless, if the story is to hold relevance, all that flawed flesh is necessary.

         I think Paul understands this. He begins his letter to the Romans lamenting that he can’t be with them in person. (See Romans 1:11-12) He knows that there is no substitute for face-to-face relationships, no substitute for storying one another, especially in spiritual matters. As human beings, we don’t experience and relate to God through systematic arguments, but by participating in the organic processes of life. The best theologians are like gardeners. They have dirt under their fingernails.

         Aware of this, Paul embraces his role as a kind of midwife for the new life which God is revealing through the story of Jesus. And while Paul’s letters provide valuable insight on Jesus, their real authority comes from Paul’s own story.

Think about 1Corinthians 13. The so-called Love Chapter brings a bright clarity to life’s dark mirror because we know the relational process through which God transforms Saul into Paul. We know how God stories this man from a systematic persecutor of Christians into a man of buoyant, infectious faith.

         Paul’s conversion from persecutor to preacher is only part of the story. Paul also suffers as he travels the Mediterranean world sharing the gospel.

On one voyage, while heading toward Italy, Paul endures deep sufferings and groanings because, for one, he’s among several state prisoners. Then a storm causes the boat to run aground. Washing up on the shores of Malta, Paul finds new life and renewed hope when he and his fellow survivors are greeted with kindness by the people they meet. As these new friends light a fire to warm the castaways, Paul gathers an armload of brush for the fire. When he throws it toward the flames, a poisonous snake rushes out of the fire and bites Paul on the hand. The Maltese people recoil saying, “This man must be a murderer! He was rescued from the sea, but the goddess Justice hasn’t let him live!” (Acts 28:6)

Ironically enough, Paul is, in fact, a murderer. However, since God’s justice is restorative rather than retributive, Paul not only survives, he turns around and heals someone else.

         By the time Paul writes to the Romans, he’s been living a life which reveals all manner of unseen hope. Maybe he calls it unseen because so many of his readers have yet to live into their own stories of adoption and redemption, and, through those experiences, to gain the new eyes of faith.

         Like Paul’s boat, our world is relentlessly rocked by violence, by war, by hate between religions (and within them), by children and adults dying of starvation and preventable diseases, by hateful rhetoric, by the degradation of climate and environment. Every day, we can hear enough discouraging news and see enough naked hopelessness to drive us into tombs of despair. And when the Church bows before despair, our buildings become bunkers of brick and mortar. We seek certainty and safety rather than faithfulness. In the sanctuary of despair, we remove ourselves from the ongoing story of God’s work in the creation—maybe because so much of it happens, as Paul says, in deep groaning. So, we retreat, trying to recreate all that we remember from days that are gone forever.

         An irony emerges when we discover that the more we allow our stories to intertwine with the present sufferings of the creation, the more we enflesh our “breathless anticipation” with acts of defiant love and daring hope. When we’re honest about our own suffering, and when we enter the suffering of others, we participate in God’s always creating and re-creating story.

         The irony deepens, because to embrace the good news requires a letting go. “By the Spirit,” Paul says, “put to death the actions of the body.” His word for this letting-go is kenosis. The fifth chapter of The Wisdom Jesus, our current Monday-night book, is entitled “Kenosis: The Path of Self-Emptying Love.” One of the points the author makes is that, through Jesus, we may enter and even welcome all things. Nothing is “renounced or resisted,” she says. The trick, however, is “to cling to nothing.”¹ For those living the Christian path, everything is about experiencing and sharing the love of God in Christ. While we may claim some things, in the eternal sense, we own nothing, because, ultimately, nothing is truly ours. To realize this is to enter a new freedom. When we are owned by nothing, we can commit all things, including ourselves, to ministries of God’s creative and unifying love.

This is no easy path. We get on it, then leave it, then back on it, and leave it, again. Richard Rohr observes that, “Jesus clearly taught the twelve disciples about [this kind of] surrender, the necessity of suffering, humility, servant leadership, and nonviolence. [But they] resisted him every time, and so he finally had to make the journey himself and tell them, ‘Follow me!’”²

         To follow Jesus is to enter his ongoing story. And as both Jesus and Paul reveal, that path leads us into deep suffering as well as great joy, because the two cannot be separated. And it is exactly there, in the tumult of life’s painful and glorious realities, that our stories, that our own love-redeemed and hope-revealing lives, really begin.

 

¹Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming the Heart and Mind—a New Perspective on Christ and His Message. Shambhala, Boulder. 2008. P. 70

²http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Richard-Rohr-s-Meditation--Following-the-Shape-Shifter.html?soid=1103098668616&aid=9rfAlUEk3b0 

Parable Life (Sermon)

 “Parable Life”

Psalm 126 and Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/9/23

 

³¹ He told another parable to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and planted in his field. ³² It’s the smallest of all seeds. But when it’s grown, it’s the largest of all 

³³ He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast, which a woman took and hid in a bushel of wheat flour until the yeast had worked its way through all the dough.”

⁴⁴ “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure that somebody hid in a field, which someone else found and covered up. Full of joy, the finder sold everything and bought that field.

⁴⁵ “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. ⁴⁶ When he found one very precious pearl, he went and sold all that he owned and bought it.

⁴⁷ “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that people threw into the lake and gathered all kinds of fish.⁴⁸ When it was full, they pulled it to the shore, where they sat down and put the good fish together into containers. But the bad fish they threw away. ⁴⁹ That’s the way it will be at the end of the present age. The angels will go out and separate the evil people from the righteous people, ⁵⁰ and will throw the evil ones into a burning furnace. People there will be weeping and grinding their teeth.

⁵¹ “Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked.

They said to him, “Yes.”

⁵² Then he said to them, “Therefore, every legal expert who has been trained as a disciple for the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings old and new things out of their treasure chest.” (Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52 – CEB)

 

 

         One reason Jesus teaches in parables is because signs pointing to the kingdom of heaven are all around us.

The image of the kingdom as a mustard seed brings to mind children walking out of church with paper cups filled with a slurry of dark earth. Somewhere inside that muddy cup lies a tiny, drowning seed. I don’t know how many of those cups might have held mustard seeds, but North American Sunday school teachers who wanted to make a point similar to Jesus’ point needed to send the kids home with kudzu or English Ivy. For farmers in first-century Palestine, mustard plants were invasive and unwelcome.

It’s interesting. The story immediately preceding today’s string of pithy kingdom parables is the parable of the wheat and the weeds. By juxtaposing the wheat-and-weeds and the mustard seed parables, Matthew asks us to think very carefully about what we write off as weeds. Remember, that mustard plant, so vexing for farmers, creates a home for birds who not only aid in the propagation of crops, but whose plumage and song nourish us with awareness, joy, and gratitude—attributes which become a kind of yeast that leavens us for fuller living.

         Yeast is another odd image for God’s household. Yeast is a fungus, a biochemical change agent that becomes part of the dough just as bread becomes part of the body that eats it. And while too little yeast has no effect, too much yeast causes food poisoning.

The yeast metaphor says that God is a subtle mystery transforming us from within. So, when even well-intentioned followers of Jesus try to impose rigid dogmas or ecclesiastical systems on other individuals or societies, it’s like too much yeast. It’s toxic.

         In the parables of the hidden treasure and the perfect pearl, Jesus seems to compare God’s household to worldly wealth. And while I wince at comparing God’s realm of grace to anything suggesting materialism or greed, thanks to Cynthia Bourgeault,^* I’m also beginning to understand Jesus as a wisdom teacher who is inviting us to listen with the ears of our heart—ears that hear beyond the limits of literal understanding and lead us toward not only deeper understanding, but toward the truer yearnings of the human heart. Those timeless and essential yearnings invite us to recognize and embrace our made-in-God’s-image selves. And that’s the treasure. That’s the pearl. When we begin to encounter that holy place deep within us—a place all human beings share—laying aside worldly and material distractions becomes possible.

“Again,” says Jesus “the kingdom of heaven is like a net.” In this parable—which is simply a recasting of the parable of the wheat and the weeds—only the good fish are kept. Of course, being a good fish means that you’ll be gutted, skewered on a spit, cooked over an open fire, and eaten. That kind of makes you re-think righteousness, doesn’t it?

         Let’s remember, though, the comparison is to the net, not the fish. God’s household of grace is that which gets cast into our depths in order to gather in the holy and community-building gifts that lie beneath the surface. And those parts of us that remain selfish, violent, exclusive, and otherwise unkind, that gets thrown away.

         Again, the invitation is to look within ourselves and to encounter God’s transforming presence and strength. That means that Jesus’ parables usually put us at odds with pride and individualism, at odds with the cultures and ideologies of the nations we love, and at odds with groups that give us identity. And that can include the Church.

         Many of us feel grave concern over the Church’s decline. And we can cast nets of blame into the waters and haul in all sorts of culprits, and yet the most liable “bad fish” is the Church itself. Far too often the Church has proved itself more concerned with constructing grand buildings than communities of welcome and belonging, more concerned with protecting wealth than committing it to ministry, more concerned with holding power than advocating for the powerless, and, especially, more concerned with trying to decide for God who’s “in” and who’s “out.” If the Church is struggling, I think it’s because we have gotten too accustomed to favored relationships with wealth and violent power to follow our calling to love as we are loved.

God calls and equips the Church to discover its inner treasure, and to become mustard seed, yeast, and net. And when we fail to embrace that vocation, then by the deepest, most radical and unsettling grace, God will use other means to reveal God’s kingdom. God will work through other people, many of whom “good” church folk fear and despise.

         Still, when the Church confesses and resists our addictions to entitlement and privilege, we can become the subversive weed Jesus plants in the creation. We can become the yeast the Spirit hides with carefully-measured breaths within the nations. We can become part of the wide net God casts into the world not to judge, but to gather in all whom God loves. And that leaves out no one.

         The Church is not God’s realm. It’s merely a witness to God’s new reality of peace, non-violent justice, and diverse community being revealed through life itself, and through human parables living lives of compassion and joy. Wherever householders reach into our storehouses of ancient spiritual wisdom, and of ongoing spiritual experience, we continue to reveal God’s re-freshing holiness even in that which appears old, tired, and irrelevant.

         I’m going to close with Psalm 126. Listen to the delight of the psalmist who describes God’s grace which has surprised him with abundance and hope in a world that had seemed to be defined by scarcity and fear. And as you listen, know that, even now, the same God cares for and calls us—the same God parables us—toward faithfulness and wholeness.

 

When the Lord changed Zion’s circumstances

for the better,
    it was like we had been dreaming.
² Our mouths were suddenly filled with laughter;
    our tongues were filled with joyful shouts.
It was even said, at that time, among the nations,
    “The Lord has done great things for them!”
³ Yes, the Lord has done great things for us,
    and we are overjoyed.

⁴ Lord, change our circumstances for the better,
    like dry streams in the desert waste!
⁵ Let those who plant with tears
    reap the harvest with joyful shouts.
⁶ Let those who go out,
    crying and carrying their seed,
    come home with joyful shouts,
    carrying bales of grain!

 (Psalm 126 - CEB)

 

¹Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—a New Perspective on Christ and His Message.” Shambala, 2008.

The Beast with Two Minds (Sermon)

 “The Beast with Two Minds”

John 7:10-13, 37-43

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/2/23

 

But now hear this, Jacob my servant,
    and Israel, whom I have chosen.
² The Lord your maker,
    who formed you in the womb and will help you, says:
    Don’t fear, my servant Jacob,
    Jeshurun, whom I have chosen.
³ I will pour out water upon thirsty ground
    and streams upon dry land.
I will pour out my spirit upon your descendants
    and my blessing upon your offspring.
⁴ They will spring up from among the reeds
    like willows by flowing streams. (Isaiah 44:1-4 - CEB)

 

 

 

¹⁰ However, after [Jesus’] brothers left for the festival, he went too—not openly but in secret.

¹¹ The Jewish leaders were looking for Jesus at the festival. They kept asking, “Where is he?”

¹² The crowds were murmuring about him. “He’s a good man,” some said, but others were saying, “No, he tricks the people.” ¹³ No one spoke about him publicly, though, for fear of the Jewish authorities.

³⁷ On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and shouted,

“All who are thirsty should come to me!
³⁸     All who believe in me should drink!
    As the scriptures said concerning me, 
        Rivers of living water will flow out from within him.”

³⁹ Jesus said this concerning the Spirit. Those who believed in him would soon receive the Spirit, but they hadn’t experienced the Spirit yet since Jesus hadn’t yet been glorified.

⁴⁰ When some in the crowd heard these words, they said, “This man is truly the prophet.” ⁴¹ Others said, “He’s the Christ.” But others said, “The Christ can’t come from Galilee, can he? ⁴² Didn’t the scripture say that the Christ comes from David’s family and from Bethlehem, David’s village?” ⁴³ So the crowd was divided over Jesus. (John 7:10-13, 37-43 – CEB)

 

 

         In best-case scenarios, the most influential people in our lives embody love and forgiveness. They speak challenging yet transforming truth to us. They evoke laughter and tears, humility and confidence, gratitude and awe. And if they’re truly influential, we can’t help sharing what they teach us. Both of my parents have been wonderful teachers. And while I’ve shared some of my dad’s wisdom, my mom has spoken some memorable words, too.

         I am the second of four children, and when any of us complained about something we had just received or experienced, something we had expected to be pleasing but which had been rather disappointing, Mom would say, “Things are almost always better while you anticipate them than when you actually get them.” I was too young to get the irony that she would say that while she was cooking for us, cleaning up after us, or breaking up some fight among us.

         Still, I didn’t want to hear it! I was a kid. I didn’t have a driver’s license yet. I hadn’t earned a paycheck yet. I hadn’t kissed a girl yet. I was looking forward to those things with great anticipation! So, I dismissed Mom’s advice as a symptom of her advanced age. She was in her thirties for crying out loud!

To my chagrin, Mom proved more right than wrong. Selfish anticipation tends to breed unrealistic expectations. When hit by enough disappointment, we often try to protect ourselves through suspicion or even full-on cynicism. When fear drives anticipation, the effects can be even worse. Fear devolves into impatience with and judgement of those whose desires and expectations seem different from ours. That impatience and judgment can create festering division in any society.

In John’s gospel, one of the main characters is the crowd. Following Jesus everywhere he goes, the crowd represents any of us and all of us. It represents our belief and disbelief, our hope and despair, our gratitude and disdain.

In John 7, Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Festival of Booths. This festival amounts to a kind of Thanksgiving meets Mardi Gras meets Holy Week. It’s a week-long, harvest celebration with parades, feasting, and solemn worship. Word is out that Jesus is in town. The Jews are looking for him, and the crowd is in an absolute lather.

Jesus is here? Where! He’s really something special, say some folks.

Nah! He’s just another fraud, say others.

The crowd has heard stories about Jesus, and rumors that he could be the Messiah, But coming in from north and south, east and west to gather at the table, they’ve listened to different storytellers. There are two basic camps of messianic expectations. Some see messianic hope in Jesus’ authoritative teaching, in his compassion for the poor, and in stories about things like turning water into wine, and five loaves and two fish into enough for everyone. Others expect the Messiah to bring both religious and political redemption. So, until Jesus leads the Jewish people in successful rebellion against Rome, he’s just one more charlatan hawking snake oil.

The crowd may be one literary character, but being of two minds, it is at its own throat. The tension we see and feel at the Festival of Booths exposes more than a momentary dilemma. It illustrates the way of life for people of faith.

All the gospels acknowledge that tension. Just last week we read the text in which Jesus says, “I haven’t come to bring peace but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34 - CEB)

We’re hardly strangers to tension. The last decade or so has been one of acute division in our own culture. Religiously, politically, socially, and economically we are the crowd. Divided and anxious, we’re at our own throat, like a beast with two minds.

Watching the crowd wrestling with their expectations, and with each other, Jesus says, “All who are thirsty should come to me! All who believe in me should drink! As the scriptures said concerning me, ‘Rivers of living water will flow out from within him.’”

Jesus is calling us to a sacred memory, and within that sacred memory are words from Isaiah, the prophet to exiles. Through Isaiah, God said: “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendants…” (Isaiah 44:3 - CEB)

The purpose of sacred memory is to re-connect us to holy community. One fly in the ointment is that, in both the first and the twenty-first centuries, some in the Judeo-Christian tradition hear different promises in those ancient words. Some hear a promise of a return to oneness in community with God, neighbor, and earth. And others hear God promising to return one particular community to religious freedom and political prominence—be that Israel, or America, or our party, or our race. And as a single character–as a community—the crowd hears both. And what can a divided body expect? “A house torn apart by divisions,” said Jesus, “will collapse.” (Mark 3:25 - CEB)

Being divided and of two minds, and having expected something very different, the crowd collapses and turns on the one who represents all that is kind, loving, faithful, peaceable, and true. Blaming Jesus for their disappointment, the crowd rejects him. And both religious and political leaders are only too happy to be rid of Jesus.

When he would not go away, though, when goodness, light, and truth persisted, the empire, with its armaments and influence, persecuted those who continued to follow Jesus.

When the suffering witnesses to the light continued to live humbly, graciously, and with courageous commitment to peace and justice, the empire, in the fourth century, did its deepest and most lasting damage. It co-opted Jesus and made him the mascot of the empire. To be a good citizen, then, one had to identify as Christian. And the symbols of the nation stood next to the symbols of the faith as if they were somehow equivalent.

So, the division continued; and it continues still.

Long before John wrote his version of the Gospel, Paul wrote to the Corinthians saying, “Christ is just like the human body—a body is a unit and has many parts; and all the parts of the body are one body…We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body…and we all were given one Spirit to drink.” (1Corinthians 12:12-13 - CEB)

As followers of Christ, our first priority is to live as members of his one body. And even when we experience division, even when that division precipitates one Friday after another, we are still the body of love. And love will, finally, have the last word.

This morning we come to re-unite at Christ’s table. We come to drink from the well of living water. And here we will receive and share the meal that reminds us to whom we belong and that our call is to live and serve as one body, demonstrating to the world the love, mercy, peace, welcome, and joy of Christ in whom we find our only true and lasting home.