Making Room (Advent Newsletter)

 I grew up privileged. It wasn’t silver-spoon-stuck-to-the-tongue kind of privilege. Having been raised by parents who had survived the Great Depression, my parents diligently avoided ostentation. Dad always bought Plymouths, for heaven’s sake. He was a physician, and he was never really “off duty.” He could have bought nicer (and more dependable) cars, but he didn’t. When I was in high school, he splurged and bought, of all things, a light blue VW Rabbit—just for himself. The only time I saw Dr. Dad work on a car or do something less than honest was when he crawled under that Rabbit and performed a catalytic converterectomy.

Without the catalytic converter, the Rabbit could burn regular gas instead of unleaded.

Because it was cheaper.

I learned to drive a straight-shift in that non-street-legal VW Rabbit.

         Car talk aside, my three siblings and I never ever lacked for food, clothing, shelter, health care. We always had everything we needed as well as a good bit of stuff we didn’t. Our enough-and-then-some made us privileged in a world in which far too many people struggle simply to meet their basic human needs—which are, themselves, chief among basic human rights.

For some reason, Christmas has become about satisfying desires for extraneous, material stuff. That means it has become as much (more?) about greed as it is about grace. Even when we buy gifts for things like Angel Tree or donate to Salvation Army, we often say that we’re trying to help others “have a Christmas.” As a child of privilege, and as a dad who did his best to “give his children a Christmas,” I get that. I do. As a pastor who preaches Jesus week after week, I have, by God’s incarnate grace, lost a lot of that, too.

         Every year, I still buy a few things for my family at Christmas, but we no longer have presents piled under the tree like sacks of rice and beans in a doomsday prepper’s basement. Having said that, our celebration of the nativity of the Christ does involve preparation. In paradoxical contrast to the commercial carnival of Christmas, the spiritual practice of Advent is a season of letting go. It’s a season during which we make space in our harried lives for quiet mystery and subtle miracle. To make that kind of room, we need less feasting and more fasting—which was the principal Advent practice as the season evolved during the late fourth and early fifth centuries.

          Advent invites us into a subversive, counter-cultural observance. During these four weeks, we say Yes to surrender, to emptiness, to what Jesus calls “poverty of spirit.” Letting go is how we prepare ourselves to receive the immeasurable gift of God’s eternal Yes to us in Christ. In Jesus, God says to all Creation, I created you. I love you. I am with you. And I send you out, vulnerable as children, to discover the Christ within you and to embody love in the world.

         Now, another Yes: Yes, we all need certain material things. We need food, water, clothing, and shelter. We all need health care. We need human conversation and touch. We need sleep and exercise. We need personal, physical interaction with the natural world. We need exposure to and appreciation for music and art.

It just seems to me that to follow and love the One whose birth we celebrate, we also need to surrender our learned attachments to whatever makes us feel entitled, defensive, and suspicious of others.

And since it requires less getting and more giving to learn to surrender, could it be that we need to focus more intentionally on Advent so that Christmas truly becomes the gift we proclaim it to be?

 

                                    Peace,

                                             Pastor Allen

Sheep, Goats, and Grace (Sermon)

  “Sheep, Goats, and Grace”

Matthew 25:31-46 and Psalm 95:1-7a

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/26/23

 

Come, let’s sing out loud to the Lord!
    Let’s raise a joyful shout to the rock of our salvation!
² Let’s come before him with thanks!
    Let’s shout songs of joy to him!
³ The Lord is a great God,
    the great king over all other gods.
⁴ The earth’s depths are in his hands;
    the mountain heights belong to him;
⁵     the sea, which he made, is his
        along with the dry ground,
        which his own hands formed.

⁶ Come, let’s worship and bow down!
    Let’s kneel before the Lord, our maker!
⁷ He is our God,
    and we are the people of his pasture,
    the sheep in his hands.  (CEB)

 

³¹ “Now when the Human One comes in his majesty and all his angels are with him, he will sit on his majestic throne. ³² All the nations will be gathered in front of him. He will separate them from each other, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³ He will put the sheep on his right side. But the goats he will put on his left.

³⁴ “Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who will receive good things from my Father. Inherit the kingdom that was prepared for you before the world began. ³⁵ I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. ³⁶ I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.’

³⁷ “Then those who are righteous will reply to him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? ³⁸ When did we see you as a stranger and welcome you, or naked and give you clothes to wear? ³⁹ When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

⁴⁰ “Then the king will reply to them, ‘I assure you that when you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.’

⁴¹ “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Get away from me, you who will receive terrible things. Go into the unending fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴² I was hungry and you didn’t give me food to eat. I was thirsty and you didn’t give me anything to drink. ⁴³ I was a stranger and you didn’t welcome me. I was naked and you didn’t give me clothes to wear. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

⁴⁴ “Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and didn’t do anything to help you?’ ⁴⁵ Then he will answer, ‘I assure you that when you haven’t done it for one of the least of these, you haven’t done it for me.’⁴⁶ And they will go away into eternal punishment. But the righteous ones will go into eternal life.” (CEB)

 

         Every time I face this passage, I reflect on those times when I have come face-to-face with God in the face of someone in need. Like Jacob at the Jabbok, I wrestle with feelings of both concern and inconvenience. It takes a hard heart to look hunger in the face and not feel some compassion. Then there’s the guilt of relief when ten bucks of fast food and a God bless you so easily buys my way out of truly seeing the human being in need. The whole experience leaves me feeling, again like Jacob, out-of-joint.

         It can also be frustrating trying to decide whether an expressed need is real or just a front for some sort of addiction. Feeling used even once can jade us and make us treat all requests as suspect. And when that happens, the truly insidious thing happens: Trying decide who deserves help, we set ourselves in a position to make judgments that none of us are equipped, much less called, to make. Our judgments often fail the test of true grace.

If there’s no other hopeful word to hear in these dislocating verses from Matthew 25, there is this one hopeful word: The Father’s judgment will be carried out by none other than the Son; and his love-drenched authority to welcome, to heal, and to redeem knows no bounds.

         Today, on Reign of Christ Sunday, we celebrate our faith claim that God’s realm is revealed and embodied in a first-century rabbi from Nazareth. And this rabbi not only teaches that God’s realm is manifest in the simplest, most earthy expressions of love and compassion, he lives what he teaches. Even when speaking sharply to those who oppose him, his words well up from his eternal love for them.

         In the end, you see, as far as this judge is concerned, everyone is a sheep. Some just don’t act like it because they just don’t know it.

         The story we’re looking at today is Jesus’ final teaching in the first gospel, and Matthew sets up an interesting juxtaposition. Jesus’ breakout sermon in Matthew 5-7 occurs on a mountain before a big crowd of people. The Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes, the proclamation of blessedness on specific people. And here, at the end of his ministry, Jesus speaks only to his disciples, telling them to go and be a blessing. Tend to the hungry, the thirsty, the lonely, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned.

         Reflecting on this passage, Charles Cousar says that the “judgments declared by the Son of Man and the categories describing the needy…carry immense and even threatening power.”¹ He reminds us that in the first century, each of the groups of people Jesus mentions is considered unclean.

         “Sickness,” says Cousar, “carries the notion of sin and contagion, and nakedness implies shame and powerlessness.” Prisoners represent those whom society has locked out of sight and out of mind. And, while hospitality to the stranger was a crucial part of everyday life, strangers still represent those who lie at society’s outermost fringes.

         “To be deeply involved with such people,” says Cousar, “means to be…guilty by association. This teaching,” he says, “demands something more profound than” being nice. To live under the Reign of Christ means mixing it up with the very people that goats turn away from in judgmental fear or disgust. To live under the Reign of Christ means to reach out to those who suffer, for whatever reason, and to love them as God loves them.

That means that goats are not people out there who don’t do right. Goats are those within the body who know better and still withhold the transforming power of God’s joy and God’s hope from people in need. The distinction between sheep and goats is hard to assess because the only person whose relative sheep-ness or goat-ness any of us have the right to judge is our own self. Besides, within each of us is an unblemished sheep and an old cranky, spotted goat.

          Tony Campolo is a writer, teacher, preacher, and out-spoken advocate for people who languish on the fringes of society. I’m going to let him finish this sermon with a personal story that illustrates one facet of the sheep-and-goat dynamic.²

         Walking down a street in his hometown of Philadelphia, PA, Campolo met a street person. The man’s clothes were ragged and covered with soot. Neither his clothes nor his body had been recently washed, so his bouquet was arresting. His thick beard was strung with bits of old food like ornaments on a Christmas tree. The man, whom many people today would call a bum, approached Campolo and held out a cup of McDonald's coffee saying, “Hey mister, want some of my coffee?”

         Initially seized by his inner goat, Campolo politely declined and walked on. Then his inner sheep gave his inner goat a powerful headbutt. So, he stopped and said, “You know, I think I’d like some coffee.” Campolo took a deep breath, then he took a sip, and gave the cup back to the man saying, “You're being pretty generous today.”

          “Well,” the man said, “the coffee was especially good today, and I think that when God gives you something good, you ought to share it.”

         Stunned, Campolo said, “Can I give you anything?” I thought that he would hit me for five dollars.

         At first, the man said “No,” then he said, “Yeah…You can give me a hug.”

         “As I looked at him,” said Campolo, “I was hoping for the five dollars!” The two men embraced right there in the street—Tony Campolo in his coat and tie, and the street person in his filthy rags.

“I had the strange awareness,” said Campolo, “that I wasn’t hugging a [dirty street person], I was hugging Jesus. I found Jesus in that suffering man.

         “Whenever you meet a suffering person,” he says, “you will find that Jesus is there waiting to be loved in that individual. That’s why Jesus said, ‘when you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.’

“You cannot embrace somebody…who is in desperate straits,” says Campolo, “without having that eerie and wonderful awareness that Jesus is coming back at you right through that person.”

         Are we sheep, or are we goats? Well, we’re both, aren’t we? When we withhold compassion, we are goats. And there is that much more darkness, that much more weeping and gnashing of teeth, within us as well as around us.

         And whenever, and for whatever reason, we show compassion to another human being, we are sheep crowning the Universal Christ as Lord. And then and there, some new brightness, some new wholeness, joy, and hope of God’s realm breaks through into our lives, and into the world.

 

¹All references to Charles Cousar come from: Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV—Year A, Westminster John Knox Press, 1995, p. 575-577.

²I don’t recall where I got this story, but all credit goes to Tony Campolo.

A Holy Balance (Sermon)

 A Holy Balance

Joshua 24:14:15 and Romans 12:1-8

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/19/23

 

Now, therefore, revere the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt and serve the Lord. 15 Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living, but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. (NRSV)

 

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship. ² Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

³ For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. ⁴ For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, ⁵ so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. ⁶ We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ⁷ ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; ⁸ the encourager, in encouragement; the giver, in sincerity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. (NRSV)

 

 

         When reading through Paul’s letter to the Romans, one notices that the Apostle is both passionate and compassionate. He manages to be candid with his criticism and gracious with his readers. He demonstrates the kind of holy balance it takes to be both prophetic and pastoral. And he challenges us to find that same balance.

The word balance may be a little misleading. The dynamic to which Paul invites us is not like a gymnast on a balance beam. It’s more of a one-foot-in/one-foot-out kind of thing. “Do not be conformed to this world,” he says, “but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” This is one of the principal passages from which we extrapolate the adage, Be in the world but not of the world.

Holy balance becomes a kind of paradox that helps us to live amid all the world’s idolatry and fear without forgetting that God’s redeeming love and goodness flow without ceasing at the deepest core of our human being and of all that exists, because the Creation itself is God’s seminal medium for self-revelation.

Now, yes, the world is constantly plagued by both random and human-induced suffering. Then again, the story of Israel and the life of Jesus declare that we experience God no less immediately in the midst of suffering than in the midst of joy and thanksgiving. Being all about transformation and renewal, God demonstrates a particular preference for working through and being known in all that is weak and despised in the world. (1Cor. 1:27-28)

People who, by sheer luck, are born into contexts of privilege, and who feel empowered in that privilege, almost always dismiss the wisdom of being in but not of the world. Their situation tempts them to associate power and privilege with divine favor. It tempts them to deny things like, “Blessed are the poor…the hungry…the meek…the merciful…[and] the persecuted.” (Matthew 5); and things like, “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

Paul seems to find the Romans lacking in the crucial trait of humility. “For by the grace given to me,” he says, “I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.”

Sober judgment.

A philosophy professor named Joe Sachs translated numerous ancient Greek texts, and where the NRSV translators chose “sober judgment,” Sachs would have chosen “temperance.” Either way, says Sachs, the Greek word, sophrosune, refers to the “condition by which one chooses bodily pleasures in the ways and to the extent that they enhance life, not by an effort of self-control but by a harmony of desire with reason.”¹ A willfully-chosen harmony of desire with reason. Talk about a holy balance!

Sachs says that the ancient Greco-Roman culture recognized human desire as crucial aspect of human nature that warranted satisfaction. Paul, himself a Roman, would not entirely disagree. Recall what he said to the Corinthians: “I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful…[because] I…won’t be controlled by anything.” (1Corinthians 6:12) So, the Apostle is always trying to temper runaway indulgence by encouraging sophrosune. And according to Sachs, this sobriety/temperance is “the stable state of character which, in any mature human being, replaces the overgrown impulses of childhood.”

 “When I was a child,” says Paul, “I spoke…thought…[and] reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” (1Cor. 13:11)

Mature disciples of Jesus inhabit God’s creation with minds constantly open to transformation and direction. Childish minds are vulnerable to the intoxicating ways and means of the world. Greed and fear can overwhelm a mind that has not learned to recognize its longings as potential sources of blessing for others. Consumed by worldly wants, the untransformed mind fixates on its desire for possessions, power, and attention.

How many times has the story been told of people who reach the top of some ladder only to find themselves unfulfilled? How many times have each of us wanted one thing or another, expecting it to complete us in some way, only to have that thing expose nothing more than a deeper emptiness within us? When we strive only to acquire something, we may achieve what economists call “satisfaction,” but we usually end up unsatisfied and wanting more. And that leaves us out of balance.

While it’s important to recognize that reality, it’s even more important not to stop with: Quit wanting stuff. Just want God. Aren’t we physical creatures? And don’t we engage the world not only through our minds, but also through our bodies? Paul encourages us to be prophets, ministers, teachers, givers, andleaders, and we can do those things only in the context of physical reality.

Years ago, the great preacher and teacher Barbara Brown Taylor was invited to speak at an Episcopal church in Alabama. She asked the priest what he wanted her to talk about, and he said, “Come tell us what is saving your life right now.”²

The priest’s invitation made Dr. Brown Taylor stop and think very carefully and creatively. As she thought, prayed, and wrote, she realized that her saving conviction was that “there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends,” she says, “on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them.”

Barbara Brown Taylor is describing the holy balance that blurs the lines between secular and sacred. And she discovers that she becomes most authentically human when she trusts that an authentic path to God necessarily involves a faithful embodiment her own human, physical being in a beloved, physical creation.

Barbara Brown Taylor says all of this in the introduction to her book An Altar in the World: A Geography of God. And in that book, she talks about twelve physical practices through which one can encounter God and deepen one’s faith and one’s ability find blessing in the world and to live as a blessing for others.

It seems to me that Barbara Brown Taylor helps us to understand that inhabiting this Creation as Christian humans means accepting a magnificent and often-frustrating paradox. While we always have one foot in this world, as followers of Jesus, we also have one foot in God’s realm of grace—which is our true hope, identity, and home.

In this week of Thanksgiving, may we all open ourselves to the gifts God gives to each of us, and to the truest, deepest gratitude we find in the transforming presence of the One who creates all things, loves all things, and provides more than enough for all that has being.

 

¹All Joe Sachs references come from: Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle. Translation by Joe Sachs. Focus Publishing, R. Pullins Co., 2002. P. 211.

²All BBT references come from: An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, Barbara Brown Taylor. Harper One, 2009. Pp. xv-xvi.

A New Heaven and a New Earth (Sermon)

 “A New Heaven and a New Earth”

Isaiah 65:17-25 and Colossians 3:12-13

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/12/23

 

17 Look! I’m creating a new heaven and a new earth:
    past events won’t be remembered;
    they won’t come to mind.
18 Be glad and rejoice forever
    in what I’m creating,
    because I’m creating Jerusalem as a joy
    and her people as a source of gladness.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad about my people.
    No one will ever hear the sound of weeping or crying in it again.
20 No more will babies live only a few days,
    or the old fail to live out their days.
The one who dies at a hundred will be like a young person,
    and the one falling short of a hundred will seem cursed.
21 They will build houses and live in them;
    they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They won’t build for others to live in,
    nor plant for others to eat.
Like the days of a tree will be the days of my people;
    my chosen will make full use of their handiwork.
23 They won’t labor in vain,
    nor bear children to a world of horrors,
    because they will be people blessed by the Lord,
    they along with their descendants.
24 Before they call, I will answer;
    while they are still speaking, I will hear.
25 Wolf and lamb will graze together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
    but the snake—its food will be dust.
They won’t hurt or destroy at any place on my holy mountain,
    says the Lord. (CEB)

12 Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13 Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (CEB)

 

         Most of Isaiah’s audience knows nothing but exile. Then again, for those Hebrews born and raised in Babylon, distinguishing between exile life and “normal” life is probably splitting hairs because Babylonians manage to be relatively progressive captors. After defeating and dispersing a weaker nation, the Babylonians offer the vanquished the chance to maintain some semblance of self—at least they do for those whom they bring home to Babylon. Instead of treating the Hebrews like Pharaoh did in Egypt, the Babylonians allow the Hebrews to practice their faith and, to some extent, flourish.

         So the Hebrew’s stories remain. Stories about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Stories about Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and David. Stories about Hebron and Jerusalem. These are stories about providence, redemption, and belonging.

         Then there’s the flip side of the situation. While things could be worse for the Israelites, Isaiah’s prophetic job in Babylon is to make the Hebrews long for Israel. So, when he paints a picture of a “new heaven and a new earth” in which suffering yields to joy, gladness, fruitful vineyards, and homes of their own, Isaiah is acknowledging the fact that the people’s situation in Babylon includes more than enough sadness, servitude, and a deep and haunting homesickness.

         As a prophet of hope, Isaiah not only describes a new future, he declares that God is already at work bringing it about. “Before they call, I will answer,” says God. God is already creating something new in the midst of all that is diminishing and disheartening.

         Isaiah’s prophecy flies in the face of Solomon’s much earlier, conditional prophecy that has been so revered by revivalists: “If my people…pray, [if they] seek my face, and [if they] turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear…forgive...and heal.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

No ifs, says Isaiah. By grace, God is already redeeming Israel. God has already filled out, signed, and turned in a pledge card on behalf of the Israelites. And, because that one nation serves as a symbol for all that God has made and loves, God is acting on behalf of the entire Creation.

As encouraging as that proclamation may be, for the Israelites and for us, Isaiah’s beautiful day prophecy meets some sharp skepticism. What appears real doesn’t look new and promising.

Consider our own context: Poverty. Addiction. Natural disasters, many of which are the result of an out-of-kilter climate. Wars, and not just rumors of wars, but overt threats of escalated conflict. The relentless tyranny of guns and gun violence oppressing us with suspicion and fear. And political rhetoric that crosses the line into hate speech—speech aimed at the very neighbors Jesus calls us to love.

Like ancient Israel, we, too, could use “a new heaven and a new earth.” And given the immediacy and the magnitude of our concerns, it’s a new earth that most of us want. Don’t many of us crave an experience of God’s vision for the future in this moment?

God’s vision declares shalom, that is wholeness and well-being for all. In God’s vision, you and I are aware of, in love with, and eager to celebrate God’s grace by choosing, each day, to live in harmony with our neighbors and the earth.

According to Luke, in Jesus’ first sermon, he reads from Isaiah saying, “‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because [God] has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’” Then Jesus lays down the scroll and says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:18-19, 21) That’s what I want—God’s promises fulfilled today.

        But that just makes me lazy. I say that because isn’t it specifically the work of Jesus-followers to embody in the world God’s vision for the world, today?

In his book Growing Churh Leaders, Dr. Bob Ramey said, “Whatever our denomination…I am convinced [that] we share a common call: [we are] a people called by God to be a sign, a foretaste, and an instrument of the [household] of God.”¹ Dr. Ramey then quoted Walter Bruggeman who said, “The purpose of [our] call is to fashion an alternative community in creation gone awry, to embody in human history the power of the blessing. It is the hope of God that in this new family all human history can be brought to the unity and harmony intended by the one who calls.”² Ramey and Bruggeman are describing God’s new heaven and new earth.

        As the Church, we are called to make room for moments in which God’s vision of redemption and reconciliation burst through. It’s our call to embody the promises of God in our own lives. That’s a tall order because we don’t make those moments happen through individual effort. We humble ourselves, empty ourselves, offer ourselves to the Spirit saying, like Isaiah said when he was called, “Here I am. Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8b) From there, God’s Spirit works through us for the sake of others, undeterred by our lapses into selfishness and idolatry.

        So, our lives—our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits—are the most crucial offerings, the most important pledges, we make to God. For in offering ourselves completely, in faith, hope, and love, we give more than resources. We give to ourselves the best chance to experience God’s new heaven and new earth right here, right now.

While we can receive gifts of grace, when we offer ourselves to God by offering ourselves to others in love, we can experience in far deeper and more transforming ways the holy power and presence of the living God. Sure, it’s good to receive a gift. And sometimes they save us. It’s an even higher thing to experience God loving others through us.

        If you haven’t already, I hope you will make a pledge to support the mission of Jonesborough Presbyterian Church. I challenge all of us to commit ourselves to God’s vision for a whole and holy creation. The relational, hands-on mission to which God calls us is more important than ever right now.

Writing to the Colossians, Paul reminds us that our collective witness depends on how gratefully and fearlessly we, “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe [ourselves] with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience…[and how we] bear with one another and…forgive each other.” (Colossians 3:12-13)

This morning, we consecrate far more than money.

We consecrate ourselves.

 

¹Robert H. Ramey, Growing Church Leaders, CTS Press, 1995, p. 13.

²Ramey, p. 35, (Ramey is quoting Walter Brueggemann).

Love Is...Fierce (Sermon)

“Love Is…Fierce”

Psalm 131 and 1Corinthians 13:1-13

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/5/23

 

Lord, my heart isn’t proud;
        my eyes aren’t conceited.
    I don’t get involved with things too great or wonderful for me.
² No. But I have calmed and quieted myself
    like a weaned child on its mother;
    I’m like the weaned child that is with me.

³ Israel, wait for the Lord—
    from now until forever from now! (CEB)

 

If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.³ If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs;⁶ it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. ⁷ It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹ For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, ¹⁰ but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

¹² For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³ And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love. (NRSV)

 

 

         Sometimes I stop, stand outside myself, and like the psalmist, ‘I look at the heavens…the moon and the stars…[and] human beings.” (Psalm 8) In that moment, I get a little overwhelmed by the very fact of existence. What are the chances of oceans and amoeba, consciousness and creativity, ecstasy and agony? What are the chances of tulips, toucans, Tolstoy, and time itself?

While I cannot prove anything, neither can I accept chance as our origin, and oblivion as our destiny. So, I receive wonder as a gift of grace, as the Creator’s own joyous love within me. And wonder takes me back to the origins.

         “When God began to create the heavens and the earth,” says Genesis 1. “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,” says Genesis 2. The two versions of creation in Genesis do not speak in unison, but they do sing in harmony. And while they are not history, they are magnificent, poetic affirmations of faith in a Presence that precedes, gives birth to, and infuses the Creation with Itself. The ancient storytellers call this generative, outpouring Presence God. So does John. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through” this Word.

         Whatever God is (Light, Energy, Grace), and whatever God is not (a huge white guy with a long beard and anger issues), by faith, I am helpless to do anything but affirm that, because the Creation exists, God exists. And the very essence of God is love.

“Love is patient…kind…” generous, humble, mature, compassionate, level-headed. Love seeks justice and truth.

When we consider what Christian theology calls the communion of the saints, I cannot help considering every human being past and present. I say that because I trust that Love knows no bounds. Only the most un-loving side of me casts anyone out, and I have to fend off that guy constantly. I trust that, ultimately, ALL that God has made and loves, no matter how broken in God’s eyes nor infuriating in ours, returns to God.

Today we observe All Saints Day. We stop to remember those whom we have loved and who have loved us and for whom this life has ended. And in that remembrance, we give thanks to God for everything about those people that revealed love to us. For whenever and however any of us reveals patient, kind, generous, humble, mature, compassionate, level-headed, justice-seeking, truth-telling love, we reveal something of God. And whenever and however any of us do not embody love, we obscure God. And exactly none of us love faithfully all the time.

         Now, let’s acknowledge that the word love often becomes so trivialized that it actually avoids the love which Jesus embodies and about which Paul teaches. One’s “love” for a favorite celebrity or pair of shoes is emphatically not the same as the love with which God loves us and the love to which God calls us. Love is for-the-sake-of-others action. It’s a way of embracing and inhabiting the world that sets one who loves over against all the selfishness, resentment, and anything else that allows anyone or any group to ignore, persecute, or exploit another person or group.

This makes me remember two people who are now among the timeless communion of the saints. During his declining years, my dad kept going by talking about what he called “practical thanksgiving.” Briefly, practical thanksgiving involves choosing to be grateful for that person before you at any given moment. It means recognizing them, regardless of background or worldview, as one whom God loves. It means asking ourselves, What is the good and right thing to do with and for this person right now? How can we live as mutual blessings to each other and to our community?

         Practical thanksgiving requires a fierce love. I say fierce because that love includes speaking the truth graciously and without fear of rejection or persecution. That’s how Jesus loved the Pharisees, the Sadducees, Herod, and how he loved his own often-less-than-loving disciples.

         Into the institutionalized terror of apartheid, Desmond Tutu loved fiercely. “I wish I could shut up,” he said, “but I can’t, and I won’t.” That angered the minority white establishment. Then, when apartheid ended, he loved even more fiercely, saying to the black majority, who had been tortured, murdered, and exploited, “Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.”

I remember these two saints this morning, and as we gather at the table, I trust that they are with us. “When we gather at the Lord’s table,” says our Book of Order, “the Spirit draws us into Christ’s presence and unites us with the Church in every time and place. We join with all the faithful in heaven and on earth in offering thanksgiving to the triune God.” (PC(USA) Book of Order, W-3.0409)

In the end, as in the beginning, God’s fierce love, which surpasses all understanding, prevails. Because of that, I step out in faith and hope to say that I trust that all who have gone before us, those whom we knew and miss, those whom we knew and do not miss, and those whom we never knew, gather with us at this table. For again, in the end, God’s creative and redeeming love makes all things new and all things one.