Practical Thanksgiving (Sermon - Original title: I Will Feed Then)

“Practical Thanksgiving”

Ezekiel 34:11-24

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/23/14

Reign of Christ Sunday

          When most western, Judeo-Christian, grocery store-fed minds hear the word shepherd, they conjure up rather romanticized images – images of the Lord as a shepherd delivering us from want, and of shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night. Many of us have also been told that shepherds were a grimy, bawdy lot, and maybe there’s some truth to that. But these may have been the shepherds Jesus calls “hired hands,” ones who are apt to abandon their flock in the face of acute threat. These are not true shepherds.

          Old Testament professor Wil Gafney reminds us that shepherds were businessmen who held multifaceted interest in their flocks. Dr. Gafney refers to sheep as “mobile currency and primary source of nutrition [which shepherds would] regularly breed, sell, and eat.”¹

          It’s interesting, the word “pastor” derives directly from the Latin word meaning “shepherd,” or “to feed.” So, folks like me are often referred to as shepherds of a flock, aren’t we? What if I brought to the session a detailed program through which I began to select certain ones of you for marriage – and breeding? Then I designated some of you as having either too much or too little value to keep, so I took you to market and sold you or traded you away to other shepherds. Finally, I mean a man’s got to eat. So others of you I, well, invited home to dinner. If the session approved that pastoral initiative, it would somewhat modify your concept of shepherd, wouldn’t it?

          In Ezekiel’s day, kings were often regarded as shepherds. And if not literally, then in a very real sense, selfish kings tended to treat their subjects the way I just described. When it began to happen to the Hebrews, prophets made it clear that Yahweh had no intention of getting fleeced like that.

          Ezekiel 34 opens with a scathing condemnation of kings: “Ah, you shepherds of Israel, who have been feeding yourselves! Should not the shepherds feed the sheep! You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.”

          Through Ezekiel, Yahweh hammers away at those who abuse, ignore, scatter, and otherwise “consume” God’s sheep.

          “Thus says the Lord God, I am against the shepherds.”

          Old Testament scholars argue over whether these violent shepherds are Israelite kings or foreign kings.² It seems to me, however, that for our purposes, trying to make that distinction becomes a distraction. Ezekiel was attempting to make a particular point to particular people, but the point scripture now makes applies to all people who hold responsibility of leadership over any of God’s creatures – whoever and wherever they may be. Regardless of one’s office, one cannot maintain a position of leadership by feeding himself or herself at the expense of the sheep. One cannot maintain credibility and respect by fouling the sheep’s pastures and still waters with his or her feet.

          An irony surfaces: Sheep are never stronger than when, by the negligence of a self-serving shepherd, they find themselves lost, scattered, injured, and weak. Having nothing to lose, they will rise up. And they often prevail.

          Yet another irony: When sheep achieve freedom through the same means by which they were overcome and oppressed, they will eventually become abusive shepherds themselves.

          Through Ezekiel, God makes a new promise: “I will feed them. I will seek the lost…I will bring back the strayed…I will bind up the injured…I will strengthen the weak…[and] I will feed them with justice.”

          There’s the difference – justice. In systems energized by competition, fear, and greed – all of which are forms of violence – true justice is the scarcest commodity of all. There may be laws and law enforcement, but in violent systems, justice is reduced to retribution, to seeing that law-breakers get their just desserts. Old Testament stories make it clear that eye-for-an-eye justice was standard for the old law. But we have been called to a new way of life. Our new way of life is not only changed and transformed, but a way of life that becomes transforming for others, as well. It is, of course, the Good Shepherd, the King of Kings who calls us to and leads us in this new way of life. My dad calls it the life of “practical thanksgiving.”

          The life of practical thanksgiving is a life lived for the sake of others. What makes this life so difficult is the fact that it demands us to be continually attentive to, responsive to, and grateful for not just people we already know, and love, and trust. Practical thanksgiving challenges us to live for the sake of everyone around us. Living in the kingdom of gratitude allows us to see the eternal impact of extending loving care for what Dad calls “the ultimate and particular,” for the specific person with whom we are engaged at any given moment.

          The Greek word for the ultimate and particular is eschaton, which is the root word for eschatology. The Church has reduced eschatology to the study of end times, to doomsday discussions littered with citations from the Revelation to John and from brimstone prophets. But that eschatology limits our understanding of ultimate to the last days. It ignores the particular, the earthy, gloriously God-imaged creation before us here and now.

          Dad’s onto something. Biblical eschatology opens the door of the real and present Kingdom of God which we enter through living gratefully with and for one another in the joys and horrors of the present, palpable moment.

          Through the life of practical thanksgiving we find universal consequence – we experience salvation – in acknowledging and welcoming the stranger, and in connecting with the holiness of creation in all its ordinariness and all its magnificence. Practical thanksgiving humbles us into the paradoxical realization that we are both more and less important than we once thought. Every one of us is truly, deeply, eternally loved by God, but we are not loved any more than those whom we dislike, fear, and ignore. And as followers of Jesus we do not live the life of practical thanksgiving by our own wits and wills. To live with and for the sake of one another in gratitude and love, is to live under the reign of Christ in this world.

          Perhaps only Jesus himself surpassed St. Francis of Assisi in living the life of practical thanksgiving. St. Francis left us with memorable wisdom that calls us to our new life: “Start by doing what's necessary,” he says, “then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible…If you have men,” says St. Francis, “who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion…, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”³

          Do you hear the scandalous particularity in those words? Do you sense how we touch the eternal, how we live eschatologically by embracing the mundane, by tending and feeding the sheep within us and beside us at any given moment? To live in the realm of the Good Shepherd, the King of Kings does not mean walking on streets of gold with good people who have done it right. It means, in the words of Micah, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with your God, in your home, in your community.

          Today.

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

Jesus Freak (Sermon - original title: Intrusive Grace)

“Jesus Freak”

John 9:1-41

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/16/14

          The story of the man born blind returns me to yet another of my favorite authors, fellow Georgian Flannery O’Connor. Flannery O’Connor had an acute sense of the bizarre and grotesque, and many of her characters are, like the man born blind, possessed of some deep defect. In an essay published in the 1950’s, O’Connor, a devout Catholic who often seems to have used paint thinner for ink, made this straightforward observation regarding “freaks” (her word), religion, and the art of literature:

                    “Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have               a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still          able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to      have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the      general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is        a…dangerous [statement]…for almost anything you say about   Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal      propriety. But…I think it is safe to say that while the South is     hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The   Southerner, who isn't convinced of it, is very much afraid that    he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God…it is         when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential          displacement that he attains some depth in literature.”¹

          Forty years later, North Carolina author Susan Ketchin published a book inspired by Flannery O’Connor’s work. She entitled it The Christ-Haunted Landscape. In her book, Ketchin compiles samplings of writings by and interviews with twelve southern writers in whose work religious themes surface constantly.

          (Bear with me. I’ll connect all this.)

          Most of the writers Ketchin features grew up in the Church and know the Bible quite well. However, with only two or three exceptions, all of these wonderfully creative people have disassociated themselves with the Church, and most of them for the same tediously uncreative reason: The Church is full of hypocrites. One of the writers has something more thoughtful to say, though. Randall Kenan says, “I was having a lot of trouble in college about faith and what not. My doubt arose when I realized that my religion came from a cultural happenstance, when, where, and to whom I was born. Most of us inherit our religion,” he says. “That really bothered me.”²

          Kenan says that religion happened to him. It was a natural consequence of his heritage. He’s right, too. But that’s the nature of an inheritance. Be it the gift of a magnificent estate or the curse of a congenital disease, it is there for you as a result of who you are – whether you like it or not. And while you might deny or be denied an inheritance of land, you cannot deny a physical or psychological trait born into you. It will likely create some dis-ease to say this, but an inherited faith may have more in common with an inherited malady than with an inheritance of property or money.

          Jesus and his disciples notice a blind beggar on the street. Now, the disciples are like most other Jews of their time. They are also like a lot of Flannery O’Connor’s southerners. They have some sense of the whole person, and they have inherited a religious tradition based on retributive justice. Naturally, then, the disciples assume that the man’s blindness is a punishment for someone’s sin. So, one of them asks the question that is really a statement of judgment: “Who’s to blame for this freak?”

          Having an even greater sense of the whole person, Jesus will have none of this spiritual blindness. So, without asking for permission, without demanding any kind of religious warrant, Jesus spits on the ground and makes a couple of mud pies. He rubs them on the man’s eyes and tells him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. The man does as Jesus says, and for the first time in his life, he sees.

          The man becomes the talk of the town, but there’s a problem. Jesus heals the blind man on the Sabbath. Furious that someone would do something as impious and illegal as heal on the Lord’s Day, the Pharisees approach the man and demand to know who healed him, and where did he go?

          “I don’t know,” the man answers. And he doesn’t. His eyes may work now, but he never saw Jesus.

          As the Pharisees continue their inquisition, the man’s responses move from oblivious wonder to faith. At first it is simply, “Jesus put mud on my eyes and told me to wash. I did, and now I can see.” Next comes the affirmation: “He is a prophet.” Then he dares to challenge the Pharisees. “Listen to you!” he says. “You don’t know who he is, but he opened my eyes. Everybody knows that God won’t work like this through people who are sinful, but only through the truly faithful.”

          Finally, when his enlightened eyes see Jesus for the first time, the man says, “Lord, I believe.”

          Jesus approaches the man out of the blue. Like an inheritance, like the man’s blindness itself, Jesus happens.

          God does not demand faith from us in order to love us and to work through us. God’s grace is often intrusive, something that happens to us.     The word predestination has become a kind of birthmark that we Presbyterians often try to cover with makeup and turtlenecks. But predestination has nothing to do with an arrogant fatalism. It has nothing to do with owning some unique reward or spiritual license. Predestination has to do with inheriting the responsibility for and of a story. It’s about entering and inviting others into intimate communion with God here and now. That communion is a family trait.

          Yet, like ones born blind and then having sight thrust upon us, those among us who were raised in the Church may find ourselves doubtful of what and why we believe. Maybe the heritage of dysfunction and hypocrisy in the Church does repel us. Maybe we have yet to make the faith our own. Maybe we pull away because of unresolvable questions about the arbitrary horror of suffering. Or maybe like Randall Kenan, we cannot make peace with what appears to be our arbitrary inclusion in the Church.

          These are all good and healthful questions. They are part of the process of claiming a faith that many of us often feel has been forced upon us like a hereditary disease. So please, ask your questions. If you can’t ask them here, where can you ask them?

          All of this turns us toward our children and youth. Many of them have been or will be baptized into the covenant of God’s intrusive grace. They come because someone in their family brings them. When they’re old enough to think for themselves and to ask their own questions, what will happen? Will they decide that the rich and mysterious tradition of their inherited faith is something to distrust or even resent? Will we watch them, one by one, march out of here in search of a cure?

          Let’s be honest: Some Christian traditions regard youth the way they regard other strangers – as dangerous freaks who must be “saved” and forced into tiny boxes where they learn to regurgitate religious words and phrases, and to give at least the appearance of following a set of outward moral principles rather than a law-bending freak named Jesus.

          Or will we model for young folks a place where, like that same Jesus, people see and celebrate the whole person, even when the whole person has yet to emerge?

          Will they look back and see how their lives have been permanently and positively shaped by the stories we told them and the Love, the intrusive grace, we stubbornly refused to withhold from them?

          Will they treasure their faith as a birthright, something to celebrate and share throughout their lives and to pass on to the next generation?      Or will they just be, so to speak, freaked out by religion?

          What will our kids inherit? What have you inherited?

          Blindness or sight?

¹Flannery O”Connor, Mystery and Manners, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Inc. NY, 1961, pp. 44-45.

²Susan Ketchin, The Christ-Haunted Landscape: Faith and Doubt in Souther Fiction, University Press of Mississippi, 1994, p 297.

Dark Sayings Brightly Uttered (Sermon)

“Dark Sayings Brightly Uttered”

Psalm 78:1-7

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/9/14

          In the thirteenth chapter of his version of The Old, Old Story, Matthew clusters together six parables. These parables serve as Matthew’s introduction to Jesus’ most memorable method of teaching. Well into the chapter, Matthew makes this editorial comment: “Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.’” (Mt. 13:34-35)

          As we have just been reminded, the prophet to whom Matthew refers is the writer of Psalm 78. Verses two and three of that psalm yawn before us like a crevice in a glacier. To go down in such an abyss is not merely to descend a certain distance below the surface. It is to go back in time. Scientists bore holes deep into glaciers around the world to extract, exegete, and then tell the stories preserved in the ice. There is deep, deep memory in the creation, memory that constitutes the “dark sayings from of old,” “the things hidden from the foundation of the world.”

          That same dark and hidden memory lies within us. It forms and defines us. It also confounds and humbles us. The memory to which the psalmist refers is not the same as the ability to catalog events and recite information. The memory of which the psalmist speaks predates the consciousness of any created mind. As I’ve mentioned before, Karl Jung called this deep memory the unconscious, the place from which dreams arise. I would say that it is also the place from which faith and inspiration arise.

          I understand that this can begin to sound kind of “out there.” So I offer this provocative little story from Richard Rohr’s book, Immortal Diamond. Rohr cannot verify the claim, but the story came to him as an actual account. Regardless of fact, it tells truth. This story is a parable, a bright new utterance of a dark saying from of old.

          “A young couple [put] their newborn in the nursery for the night. Their four-year-old son said to them, ‘I want to talk to the baby!’ They said, ‘Yes, you can talk to him from now on.’ But he pressed further. ‘I want to talk to him now and by myself.’ Surprised and curious, they let the young boy into the nursery and cupped their ears to the door, wondering what he might be saying. This is what they reportedly heard their boy say to his baby brother, ‘Quick, tell me where you came from. Quick, tell me who made you? I am beginning to forget!”¹

          This story illustrates our struggle with a memory that we have not only forgotten, but a memory that we have forgotten that we have forgotten.

          On the island of Iona, ancient Celts discovered and developed a Christian discipline that allowed them to bore into that twice-forgotten memory. Their brand of Christian spirituality did not find broad appeal in the world because it will not become a tool of violent power. As a way of enlightenment and peace, Celtic Christianity follows Jesus along a path of memory restoration. In his book Christ of the Celts, Philip Newell says that Celtic spirituality lifts up the two creation stories of Genesis 1 and 2 to claim that our foundational memory lies in humankind’s creation in the image of God. “Everything else that is said about us in the scriptures,” says Newell, “needs to be read in light of this starting point. The image of God is at the core of our being. And…it has not been destroyed.”²

          The point of our faith tradition, the point of any faith tradition worth its salt, is to arrange an inviting and disciplined approach to re-membering our truest, our deepest, our eternally God-imaged selves. As Christians, we practice a discipline that is so much bigger, so much more gracious, and so much more exciting than some well-argued case for believing certain things and behaving certain ways. Christian spirituality is an attempt to rediscover our most ancient and defining memory – and to live, gratefully, that truth.

          In one of the apocryphal gospels, Jesus says, “‘I am the memory of fullness.’”³ Jesus is the bright utterance of THE dark saying from of old. All too loudly and violently, the Church has made the Christian faith a means to an individualistic end. But more and more I think our tradition invites us to seek the memory from which we have come, to journey both inward and outward, here and now, in Love for self, neighbor, and earth, and, thus, for God.

          Love is the very heart and soul behind the commandments of which the psalmist speaks. In spite of that, the Law became a list of requirements for trying to please and satisfy a humanesque God prone to anger and retribution. But when The Memory of Fullness condenses the Law into the great commandment of Love for God and neighbor, he calls to us to a path of healed and healing memory. To live according to the discipline of Love is to bore deep into the timeless memory we may have forgotten, but which does not forget us. To Love as we are loved is to embark on a journey of restoration. To Love as we are loved is to embrace and engage the creative power of resurrection itself.

          I constantly hear bright new utterances of dark sayings from of old in the writings of Wendell Berry. I consider him a prophet, a teller of parables, parables that have the power to restore our memory, our identity, and our will to love. In the following Sabbath poem, entitled only XI, Berry tells a kind of Celtic parable that reveals love of life, connection to the earth, fearlessness in the face of death, and an awareness of the eternal in the midst of the mundane, the work of a single shepherd. May you find yourself in this parable, and may you hear an invitation to re-member yourself to your own belonging and purpose.

"XI."

Though he was ill and in pain,
in disobedience to the instruction he
would have received if he had asked,
the old man got up from his bed,
dressed, and went to the barn.
The bare branches of winter had emerged
through the last leaf-colors of fall,
the loveliest of all, browns and yellows
delicate and nameless in the gray light
and the sifting rain. He put feed
in the troughs for eighteen ewe lambs,
sent the dog for them, and she
brought them. They came eager
to their feed, and he who felt
their hunger was by their feeding
eased. From no place in the time
of present places, within no boundary
nameable in human thought,
they had gathered once again,
the shepherd, his sheep, and his dog
with all the known and the unknown
round about to the heavens' limit.
Was this his stubbornness or bravado?
No. Only an ordinary act
of profoundest intimacy in a day
that might have been better. Still
the world persisted in its beauty,
he in his gratitude, and for this
he had most earnestly prayed.⁴

¹Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, Jossey-Bass, 2013, p. 10.

²J. Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts: The Healing of Creation, Jossey-Bass, 2008, p. 3.

³Ibid,. p. 7.

⁴Wendell Berry, “XI.”, from Leavings, Counterpoint, Berkeley, 2010, pp. 121-122.

Stewardship for Exiles (Sermon)

“Stewardship for Exiles”

Isaiah 55

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/2/24

          If you sit down and read all the way through the book of Isaiah, you may feel as if the writer suffers some kind of multiple personality disorder. Most biblical scholars would give you a wink and say, “Trust your instincts.

          At some point prior to and in the early years of Israel’s captivity in Babylon, a prophet known as Isaiah speaks out. Laying claim to divine authority, he pronounces judgment on the Hebrews. “Your misery is your own fault,” he says. But here’s the rub: Like all ancient prophets and teachers, Isaiah has students. And to claim credibility among their hearers, these followers preach and teach under the name of their tutor.

          According to widely-accepted scholarship, the original Isaiah, First Isaiah, is responsible for the first half of the book. He tears into Israel: “Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity…How the faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her – but now murderers! Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them.”

          Later students of Isaiah dramatically change the prophetic tone. They change it so much, in fact, that the First Isaiah school probably regards the Second Isaiah school as a bunch of revisionist patsies with no appreciation for history and tradition, no sense of morality, and no real fear of God. How else does one get from First Isaiah’s teeth gnashing to Second Isaiah’s, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price”?

          I may exaggerate the case, but not much. There are occasional words of assurance in First Isaiah, but they speak of a redemption that lies in a distant future. It’s a sad commentary on spiritual communities, but the more a group gets used to screaming God’s judgment, the less they really expect from God. The only true deliverance, then, is death. God’s satisfying and delightful hope are reduced to some post-mortem reward for good behavior. In that economy, we act justly and righteously for our own sake.

          Second Isaiah begins to turn things around. In an early version of “the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Mt. 4:17b), the new prophet announces the arrival of God’s bright new future. And it is a time and a place marked by a visible commitment to justice and righteousness on behalf of widows, orphans, and an equally vulnerable creation. In political life there will be no more princes who trade bribes or chase gifts. They will not serve themselves before serving the people who depend on them. Indeed, in all matters – political, religious, economic, and social – there will be no more out-of-sight-out-of-mind when it comes to “orphans and widows,” a term that refers to all people who have no voice and no power.

          For both First and Second Isaiah, political abuse and neglect of the community’s poor and forgotten constitute the fundamental “wickedness” and “unrighteousness” from which Israel must turn. Self-serving power and self-serving wealth are the most beloved and insidious other gods of first commandment infamy. Aware of this, Second Isaiah pleads with Israel saying, “Why do you spend your money on that which is not bread, and your labor on that which does not satisfy?” He is calling them to Yahweh’s economy of redemption which is guided not by laws of supply and demand, but by intentional commitments to justice and righteousness.

          Now remember, Second Isaiah is speaking to a people who have been in exile for two or three generations. Having been born in exile, most of Second Isaiah’s audience doesn’t really know the difference between exile and independence. Babylon, you see, is an uncharacteristically progressive conqueror. When the Babylonians vanquish a nation, they drive them into wide dispersions, creating weakness through separation. However, the conqueror then allows that same people to practice much of their faith tradition, if they have one. To some extent, Babylon also permits the people to thrive economically. On top of all that, Babylon is a wondrous place – wealthy, powerful, a land of remarkable beauty and material promise. The Hebrews are, in fact, safe in Babylon. These realities make it difficult for Isaiah to convince a religious people that spiritual renewal holds any real promise for them. They are cold to the idea that they are captives not only to Babylon but also to their own economic comfort and their own social well-being.

          Second Isaiah cannot extract Israel from Babylon. Nor can he improve any aspect of their lives by pounding them with judgment. As a spiritual leader he can only model the change he desires for the people. As Gandhi said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”¹ To do that, Second Isaiah returns to the language of grace, of present hope. He returns to the language of covenant. Using those familiar words that soothe and console the way a mother cares for a hurt or heartbroken child, the prophet says, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry for her.” (Isaiah 40:1-2)

          By chapter 55, today’s text, Second Isaiah is saying to Israel, in effect, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” (Mt. 5:6) He is also saying that wherever the people of Israel find themselves, they live in the presence of a transforming Mystery whose thoughts and ways are incomprehensible to the mind of Babylon. This Mystery operates according to a gracious purpose and a fierce intent. “My word shall not return to me empty,” declares Yahweh. “It shall accomplish that which I purpose.”

          Yahweh will send a sign to confirm this promise. “You shall go out in joy and be led back in peace.” And all creation will join the magnificent celebration. The image is one of both exodus and resurrection. The people of God will begin a brand new way of life. They will live and serve as the “everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

          The community who lives and serves in justice and righteousness lives and serves as an expression of God’s vibrant word which is creating the new economy. In that economy, that which truly satisfies is given, by grace, to everyone – no exceptions. And it is offered first to all who hunger and thirst, and who have no means.

          Is this not true gratitude – to live generously for the sake of others? Will not all creation burst into song and clap its hands when no one feels hunger, thirst, loneliness, prejudice, or fear?

          When a Christian church asks its people to give, it dares us to go against the grain of a world that places its trust in Babylon’s well-reasoned power and wealth. Giving generously to God through the church is to live as exiles in the world. As stewards in exile, we are a people on an exodus, a holy journey in this very real world where physical realities must be tended to with deliberate care, that is to say, with justice and righteousness.

          As Christian stewards in exile, we are also a mystic people. We walk in the light of resurrection. Our physical journey is absolutely crucial because it serves as a metaphor for our greater, transcendent journey within and toward the thoughts and ways of God. What we give to this church in the way of money, time, energy, prayer, and love makes our journey and everyone else’s more satisfying and delightful.

          What will you give this year? How will you contribute to Jonesborough Presbyterian Church and help make this spiritual community a tangible expression of the challenging, liberating, and faithful word that God is always speaking, a gracious and prophetic word that is always revealing something new?

¹http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/24499-be-the-change-that-you-wish-to-see-in-the