A Pattern for Living (Sermon)

“A Pattern for Living”

Matthew 5:1-12

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/29/17

         As core value statements go, the Ten Commandments get a lot of attention. And it’s easy to see why. They’re simple, decisive, quantifiable. Do this. Don’t do that. Their lack of complexity becomes their strength. These 10 directives set clear standards for human interaction, and several of them apply almost universally. Honoring elders and categorically rejecting murder, theft, adultery, criminal deceit, and envy – such things make life better for everyone, don’t they?

         The simplicity of Ten Commandments also becomes their weakness. Far too often, folks within the Judeo-Christian community use these statements as permission to make judgments only God can make. When that happens, God, the Creator becomes small enough to fit inside the understanding of a creature. At that point, the first two commandments are forsaken. We have reduced God to an idol.

How we apply the last eight commandments has everything to do with how we embody the first two.

         To me, most public postings of the Ten Commandments reflect a smug self-righteousness. I know it’s long-standing tradition in some places, but when anchored in stone on courthouse walls, the Ten Commandments declare a kind of divine right for judges and jurors. Judicial proceedings, whether civil or ecclesiastical, wander into dangerous territory when human participants feel entitled to sublime authority.

To be honest, I even wince a little when they appear on the lawns of churches. They say to passers-by and would-be visitors, If you come here, expect grace to have its limits.

         Now, we all make judgments and evaluations. So, even those who condemn others for being judgmental only reveal themselves as fellow travelers on the road of judgment. That means, of course, that in the last sixty seconds, I have openly practiced that which I claim to oppose.

Given the virtual impossibility of pure objectivity when faced with the reality of evil and suffering in the world, how can any of us move toward something higher, something more gracious and up-building?

         “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

         With these words, Jesus begins one of the truly remarkable teachings found in any religion or philosophy. Far more than a list of rules, the Beatitudes lay out a progression, a path along which spiritual travelers may learn to experience, trust, and follow God.

Strikingly different from the Ten Commandments, the eight Beatitudes imagine God very differently. Instead of picturing God as some enormous guy watching over things and taking names, the way of beatitude, which means blessing or happiness, suggests that God does not need to be pleased, or appeased, or satisfied by us. As the Eternal Initiative for being itself, for goodness and wholeness in the universe, God pours out blessing and holiness for the sake of the entire Creation.

         Life shaped by awareness of and openness to God has traditionally been called the kingdom of God. Another way to express the same concept is to think of this spiritual reality as a perpetual and dynamic Outpouring of God. Love, creativity, righteousness, justice – all of these blessings continually pour forth from God, like water from a spring.

In their book The Way of Blessedness, Marjorie Thompson and Stephen Bryant say that the Beatitudes offer us “a way of life, a pattern of commitments”¹ by which we deliberately enter, inhabit, and experience life as a participation in the eternal Outpouring of God.

         For today’s purposes, two things about the Beatitudes stand out. First, I find it illuminating that nowhere in the Beatitudes does Jesus say, Blessed are those who keep the Ten Commandments. When viewing the world as a place ultimately governed by black-and-white legalism, retributive justice, and economic scarcity, a person may still claim to be blessed, but that person almost always ties blessing to financial success, physical health, and freedom from legal trouble. And while such an existence has its appeal, the Beatitudes offer so much more.

The Beatitudes, say Thompson and Bryant, describe an inner “posture toward God, other people, ourselves, and the created order. They direct us to attitudes of mind and habits of heart that result in our actual way of being in the world.”²

That brings us to the second observation: The Beatitudes are not individual proverbs, either. They present an evolution of spiritual development through increasingly challenging stages of experience, understanding, and practice. (Open a Bible to Mt. 5:1-12)

The journey begins with poverty of spirit, that is, with the acknowledgement of our incompleteness as creatures and our need for the Creator. When we recognize the limits of our awareness of the Outpouring of God, we begin to feel those limits as the loss of something that is naturally and fundamentally part of who we are.

We mourn that loss. Spiritual mourning humbles us into a new sense of belonging in the creation. Feeling at home, right here, empowers us to live in that bold and generous spirit called meekness.

When we learn that meekness has nothing to do with being a wilting violet, but with claiming the strength of being placed and purposed on earth, we begin to taste its blessing. And that blessing comes from within as a craving for righteousness. Righteousness seasons the holiness within us.

Living according to God’s righteousness means living with and for all of God’s creation. It means recognizing that we’re all in this together, and vengeful power plays, greedy grasping, fearful violence, all these things consume our sense of righteousness. Only merciful living can take us further down the path of spiritual faithfulness.

Living mercifully may be one of the most difficult steps. Mercy cleanses us of selfishness and judgmentalism because it requires us to seek the good of others with the same passion with which we seek our own good. Mercy sears our minds and purifies our hearts. And the blessing of seeing God comes because we begin to see the Christ in one another and in the earth through the eyes of God.

Through God’s eyes, we see that all things are, in truth, created to live interdependently, cooperatively. What is expedient or comfortable for me, may not be good for you. But that which is truly, essentially good for me is also good for you – and vice versa. So, we work for peace, the unique wholeness and holiness called Shalom.

Nothing threatens the holders of power and privilege like those who live according to the demands of God’s justice, grace, and Love. At the pinnacle of blessedness, God’s saints speak truth to power and find themselves blessed with the strength to endure the intimidations and attacks of those who wield temporal authority.

Now, here comes the turn: When disciples find themselves under the duress of having been faithful to God, they discover a new level of spiritual poverty. The process starts all over again, and leads us ever-deeper in the lifelong way of beatitude.

What could it mean, then, for a church to post the Beatitudes on their lawn instead of the Ten Commandments?

It could mean that the people of that church understand what it costs and how it profits the Creation for God’s people to proclaim and inhabit the Outpouring of God. And what a blessing that church would be to its community.

May we commit ourselves to Beatitude living.

May we strive to be that church, that people, that blessing.

¹Marjorie J. Thompson and Stephen D. Bryant, The Way of Blessedness, Upper Room Books, 2003. p. 19. This book is one in the spiritual transformation series, Companions in Christ.

²Ibid. p. 19.

Discipleship: A Call to Fullness (Sermon)

“Discipleship: A Call to Fullness”

Matthew 4:12-22

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/22/17

         “Nature abhors a vacuum.” This famous axiom is attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle could not imagine a naturally-occurring situation in which a space might open up and remain empty. At the very least, it would fill with air. I hear Aristotle saying that it’s impossible for nothingness to constitute the heart of anything.

Contemporary theologians who are being influenced by the deep insights and truths of Celtic spirituality are saying that the theological doctrine of creation ex nihilo, creation out of nothing, has all but destroyed Christianity’s, and especially western Christianity’s respect for the Creation.¹ And by Creation, I mean the entire natural world, humankind included. If nothingness lies at the core of Creation, then we can treat it as a mere resource to be owned and exploited. If, however, we recognize the Creation as something not only made by God, but something saturated with the presence of God, revealing the very heart and mind of God, then we will value it, love it, steward it as a precious gift, a gift bearing God’s own fullness and holiness.

In the Creation, Presence is an eternal given. So, with God, it is impossible for emptiness to exist in any absolute sense.

         Similar principles apply in communities. When one person or group vacates a particular role or responsibility, another person or group almost always fills that void. Sometimes these successions are planned, or at least expected, as with the comings and goings of elders and pastors, mayors and presidents. Other times, a crisis generates an absence. And that absence may get filled by a new presence rising positively to meet a need, or negatively to exploit an opportunity. If that doesn’t happen quickly, a veritable stew of influences may settle in that spot, splintering the community. Think of federal troops, carpetbaggers, scalawags, and the Ku Klux Klan all trying to fill the void in the south after the Civil War.

         My dad is a student of Aristotle, and he has often said that he thinks Jesus studied Aristotle, as well. Dad bases his theory on the teachings of Jesus, but Jesus’ teachings begin when John the Baptist speaks truth to power, and the self-serving, fear-mongering Herod arrests the prophet and throws him into prison. Herod’s effort to silence criticism creates a void in the spiritual life of the community, and Jesus steps in. Stepping in becomes signature for Jesus.

         In John’s gospel, a crisis occurs when the wine empties out at a wedding. And, at Mary’s endearingly manipulative urging, Jesus steps in.

         Bartimaeus’ life is defined by the void of darkness, helpless dependence, and grief. Then Jesus steps in.

         Ten lepers are shunned into the abyss of exile where there is scarcely air to breathe, because they use it all crying, “Unclean! Unclean!” Then Jesus steps in.

         For Martha and Mary, life empties out when the death of their brother leaves a devastating void. Then Jesus steps in.

         Jesus himself steps into the terrifying void of death. And he transforms it. He fills it with new life.

Wherever emptiness opens up, Jesus pours in.

At first, he simply fills John’s space by regurgitating the Baptist’s own words: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Soon enough, however, Jesus finds his own voice. He lays out the Beatitudes. He rewrites much of the Old Testament by saying repeatedly, “You have heard it said…but I say to you…” When Jesus comes into his own, he does more than occupy the space left by John the Baptist. He fills it with his own, unique fullness.

         There’s an ever-expanding reach to Jesus’ presence. There’s a gravity to his fullness. Wherever he goes, he creates new openness, new space, and he pulls others into it. He becomes a magnificent paradox As more people enter his fullness, more room is created. Jesus is a fullness that cannot be filled.

         Peter and Andrew are fishermen. Every day, they look out across the shimmering blue of the Sea of Galilee. Sometimes the surface is placid and calming. Sometimes, it sparkles with sunlight or moonlight, and it’s like watching laughter. Sometimes, it darkens and heaves. Whitecaps flash like the teeth of a hungry lion on the attack. At all times, however, the lake represents a fullness that for countless generations has regenerated itself and provided for the people who live around it. As fishermen, Peter and Andrew trust the lake. Surely, they trust the lake far more than they trust the fish for which they cast their nets. They live in grateful relationship with the lake, loving its fullness, its generosity, respecting its wildness and mystery.

         The same holds true for James and John, who, along with their father, Zebedee, are mending nets. Apparently, they’re successful fishermen. Nets break when the catch is good. And dry-rotted nets aren’t likely to get attention.

Walking by the lake, watching fishermen at work, Jesus seems to realize his desire and need for companions. Fishermen! Fishermen know how to respond to a fullness that is, at first glance, anyway, only suggested by the presence of water. Fishermen can look across the surface of something as beautiful, as overwhelming, and life-giving as the sea and accept its invitation to crawl into a small boat and to do the occasionally dangerous, the often-fruitless, and the always exhausting labor of dropping fragile nets into the deep and gathering in whatever the water might yield.

When calling disciples, Jesus fills us with the vision, perseverance, and faith of fishermen. He strengthens for the risk of leaving emptiness in our own wakes, trusting that what we leave behind, God will fill with others who want and need opportunities of their own. James and John demonstrate this when they walk away from the father who has raised them and who depends on them. I can’t get into Zebedee’s mind, of course, but if I were that father, I would feel utterly forsaken. What will fill the void his sons leave behind?

Matthew leaves Zebedee’s story unfinished. But if the old fisherman blames Jesus for his family’s demise, who can blame him?

We have a choice to make every morning. We can resolve to live in disintegrating fear and vengeance, or to live in transforming gratitude and generosity. Every single day will present us with something that has the potential to destroy faith, to leave us feeling empty and hopeless. And honestly, sometimes emptiness gets the best of us, doesn’t it? Sometimes nothingness seems like ultimate reality.

Discipleship becomes, I think, our response of transforming gratitude and generosity in the face of each new emptiness. Most often, you see, Jesus appears to us not as the answer to every question, but as the most pressing need before us at the moment.

The greatest emptiness, the most lifeless void that faces you today, that is your fishery. It may cost you to respond. Like Peter, Andrew, James, and John, you may have to leave unfinished business behind.

Now, I am not encouraging anyone to wash your hands of commitments. I’m simply saying that wherever your heart is breaking in the face of what appears to be some nihilistic vacuum in this world, look and listen precisely there for Jesus calling you to some bold, radical act of faith. Pour yourself into it, trusting that the fullness of Christ, a fullness that can never be filled, will step into that place through you.

And remember, at the heart of that place, as at the heart of all Creation, lies the ever-beating heart of God.

Charge:

Years ago, Frederick Buechner aptly defined the call to discipleship as that “place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”¹

         Jesus sends you into the world’s deep need and brokenness, but he sends you out as bearers of his compassion, Love, and joy.

         Go in peace, and trust his fullness.

¹I am grateful to J. Philip Newell for this insight which he addresses in several of his books.

²http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/19982.Frederick_Buechner (This quotation comes from Buechner’s book, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC

A New and Tender Middle (Sermon)

“A New and Tender Middle”

Isaiah 42:1-9

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/15/17

         Before reading today’s passage, I invite you to imagine yourself witnessing or participating in something brand new: A potter gingerly handling the still-soft clay of a bowl he has just finished shaping. A farmer or gardener standing over freshly-planted earth. A knitter examining thirty square feet of afghan before tying off that last stitch. A couple reaching out to hold, for the first time, the hands of the scared four-year-old child they have just adopted.

         Like trauma, a creative process almost always delivers us to a threshold of tenderness and vulnerability. Unlike trauma, creativity is usually a choice. We pour ourselves out. And when we offer our work, we take a risk. We expose our deepest heart to critique, misunderstanding, and sometimes mockery and insult. While we are more than what we have created, we are inseparable from it, as well.

         Isaiah would, I think, have us imagine God feeling the same way about the creation in general, and, in particular, feeling that way about those whom God creates to enjoy and steward the creation. Hear and feel God’s own tenderness as God admires a uniquely crafted new servant. Hear and feel God’s vulnerability when introducing and offering God’s own heart to a creation broken, bruised, and bound by exile.

¹Here is my servant, whom I uphold,

my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

I have put my spirit upon him;

he will bring forth justice to the nations.

²He will not cry or lift up his voice,

or make it heard in the street;

³a bruised reed he will not break,

and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;

he will faithfully bring forth justice.

⁴He will not grow faint or be crushed

until he has established justice in the earth;

and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

⁵Thus says God, the Lord,

who created the heavens and stretched them out,

who spread out the earth and what comes from it,

who gives breath to the people upon it

and spirit to those who walk in it:

⁶I am the Lord,

I have called you in righteousness,

I have taken you by the hand and kept you;

I have given you as a covenant to the people,

a light to the nations,

⁷to open the eyes that are blind,

to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,

from the prison those who sit in darkness.

⁸I am the Lord, that is my name;

my glory I give to no other,

nor my praise to idols.

⁹See, the former things have come to pass,

and new things I now declare;

before they spring forth, I tell you of them. (Isaiah 42:1-9 - NRSV)

         Matthew’s synonymous passage is much more succinct. When Jesus comes up from the waters of his baptism, God introduces him to the world very simply, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (Mt. 3:17)

“I am the Lord,” God says to Jesus. “I have called you…I have taken you [and] kept you…I have given you as a covenant to the people.”

At this point, Jesus begins to incarnate Isaiah’s poetic vision. For us, Jesus is the servant who will not get loud, who will be gentle with all that feels broken and beaten down by the world. And come what may, he will persevere.

Embodying God’s justice and righteousness, showing holy compassion for every “bruised reed” and every “dimly burning wick,” Jesus holds the tender new ground of God’s self-revelation. And the world, who often prefers the vengeful and violent certainties of Herod, will critique, misunderstand, insult, and murder Jesus. Eventually, even those who claim to follow Jesus will exploit him for economic gain and political power. None of us here invented the exploitation of Jesus, but like generations before us, we’re not showing signs of ending it, either. It’s difficult to turn loose of something so lucrative and fortifying.

         Then again, perhaps it is happening. A new and very tender middle, a wound, has opened up in our culture. Families, neighbors, and communities are all wrestling with distancing, even exiling differences. Culturally and spiritually we are standing over something that cries out for a response of justice and righteousness. It seems to me that, so far, most of that response has been reactive – angry, callous, accusatory. And while I have my own opinions, some that may trouble those who want to hear something different from their pastor, I hear Isaiah, Matthew, and Jesus calling us to stand compassionately and fearlessly at our own moment in history. I hear them challenging us to acknowledge the woundedness that is alienating us from ourselves, our neighbors, and from the earth itself.

This new and tender middle demands that we look at each other, especially those with whom we disagree, with the eyes and heart of Christ. That is to say, with the eyes and heart of Resurrection, because what was is no more. Expecting to return to some imagined memory of glory is as reckless as deciding that the future has been decided by our disappointments. To all of us, God says, “See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare.”

         The Church and its leaders are called to help communities stand compassionately, hopefully, and consciously over Creation’s wounds, and to lead in a response of purposed Love and forgiveness for the sake of all creation. This, I think, is what Isaiah means by justice and righteousness.

         I recently discovered a new singer/songwriter. For me, her earthy, Taizé-like songs make her something of a Christian mystic. Her name is Alana Levandoski, and in a song entitled “Show Me the Place,” she sings, “Show me the place, help me roll away the stone. Show me the place, I can’t move this thing alone. Show me the place where the Word became a man. Show me the place where the suffering began.”¹

         Even a new and tender middle has a history. Think about skilled and compassionate therapist guiding a patient back into old fears and hurts, back into repressed memories of abuse, or rejection, or terror, or grief. With careful questions and observations, the therapist accompanies the patient to the still-raw edges of some long-ago wound, because forgiveness and healing begin with acknowledgement and understanding.

         In my first semester at Columbia Seminary, I joined all my first-year classmates in a course we just called P112. This class was designed to help students to think both critically and creatively about their calls to ministry. One of the first things we did was to draw up family trees and present them to the class, sharing our own stories within the context of our whole families. I was fortunate to be in the class with an experienced pastoral counseling professor named Jap Keith. Proficient with family systems theory, Jap knew how to listen to and handle all those intimate stories that included betrayals, abuse, and broken relationships. He helped us to recognize our strengths, weaknesses, and wounds.

         I shared with the class the story of my paternal grandfather. Grandpa was a man deeply committed to and involved in his small Mississippi community, and in the wider world. He served as a member of the local board of education and as a legislative aide for the late Sen. John Stennis. Grandpa was known and well-respected in his community. But at home, life was not a democracy. He was an authoritarian who could become angry and somewhat abusive when his children did not toe his line, or when he felt embarrassed by them. In his family, Grandpa’s legacy includes the ripple effects of his volatility.

         One day early in my first semester of seminary, I walked into the kitchen as my two young children were in the middle of an escalating skirmish over a box of crackers. I honestly don’t remember exactly what happened, but when their loud screams over something so silly combined with the anxiety of all the changes and demands of moving and starting school, something in me gave way to angry impulse. I grabbed fiercely at the box of crackers, and the next thing I saw was my four-year-old son in a limp heap on the floor, sobbing his dismay. I set the crackers on the counter and picked him up. I took him into the living room and sat down on the sofa, holding him in my lap. He cried. I cried. And I promised that whatever it was that just happened would never happen again.

         The next day, I went to P112 early and unannounced. I knocked on Jap Keith’s door and asked if he had a few minutes. He didn’t, but he welcomed me. I shut the door behind me, sat down, and before I could even speak, all the emotions of the previous day began to wash over me anew. I told Jap what had happened. He listened. We talked some more. Just before the rest of the class came in, Jap leaned forward in his chair and looked me straight in the eye. He tapped the low, round table in front of him with two fingers of his right hand and said, “Allen, now that you recognize the grandfather in you, you are without excuse.”

         With the gentleness and firmness of genuine grace, Jap led me to a source of brokenness and lingering hurt. He did not let me off the hook, but standing there over the wound, he offered me a chance to understand, forgive, and heal.

         This is the gift of the Incarnation. In Jesus of Nazareth, God steps into our hurts and hurtfulness and leads us back to the place where our brokenness, our “suffering began.” God leads us to every Friday we have created or demanded. And there, God stands with us, and acknowledges with us our willful acquiescence to Herod’s selfish violence, and our fear of true holiness and grace.

It can be extremely tender there, painful even. It leads us to Sunday, though. It leads to that most creative and re-creative place, God’s new thing where healing has already begun.

¹The artist’s website is: https://www.alanalevandoski.com/

The Blessings of Enough

         Across the street from our home, beneath the winter-bare sprawl of a maple tree, there stands a holly tree. It is no taller than fifteen feet, but its branches are lush, thick with prickly, dark green leaves. One winter afternoon a couple of years ago, the branches sagged under the weight not only of thousands of bright red holly berries, but of a day-long snowfall.

         A flock of robins discovered the holly tree decked with its abundance. Because robins usually eat at least half their own weight per day, these birds did not gather around the feast like debutantes in an aristocrat's tea room. They descended on it with all the ravenous delirium of reporters around some disgraced celebrity.

         The little holly tree trembled and swayed as hundreds of panicked wings beat furiously against leaf, and branch, and competing feather. In twenty minutes, not a single red berry remained. And the holly was just another sticker bush.

         Most human economic and political systems are based on the concept of scarcity – the notion that there are too few resources to meet human needs. When establishing institutions on the principle of scarcity, we necessarily create highly competitive cultures in which the available resources become the property and privilege of a very few.

         The church has jumped on that angst-driven train. Even we who claim to follow Jesus help to strip our environment down to the nub, squawking and fluttering like flocks of famished robins, ravaging what appears to be the scarce remnants of a winter-bound landscape. So, we are pleased with God, and right with God only when we get not just enough, but excess. For some reason, we have decided that we need more than our share in order to avoid feeling the cold creep of scarcity in our lives. And in such an economy, even God’s grace is a scarce commodity to be bought and sold.

         It seems to have been the same in Jesus’ day. “Therefore I tell you,” he says, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” (Mt. 6:25-27)

         It’s a leap of faith to trust these words, and I would never suggest that it’s a quick and easy leap. I will say, though, when we make the leap, when we learn to trust the mysterious truth of God’s economy of grace. And there, the world becomes a place of startling abundance, a place where – like the table set before us – we gratefully celebrate the blessings of enough.

The Blessings of Silence (Meditation)

*This entry and the next are old newsletter articles I used on a Sunday, January 8, 2017, a day when I knew snow and bitter cold would reduce attendance. I did this because my planned sermon for this day was tailored for the ordination/installation of new officers, which we postponed for one week. A.H.

         Where I grew up, we had two seasons – summer and January 26^th. So, real winter weather always quickens my heart.

Friday night I went to bed with a light flurry falling. Saturday I awoke to a world transformed, a place where valleys had been lifted up and rough places made plain by thick, blinding-white powder. Yesterday afternoon, Marianne and I went to Persimmon Ridge to walk the slick, snow-covered trails. We bundled up against the frigid air. We stepped high to keep snow from spilling into our boots. Climbing one hill, I looked up. The sky arched above us like a magnificent crystal bowl, so stunningly blue, so clear and cold it seemed that a loud noise would shatter it and send the pieces clattering to earth like coins spilling across a stone floor.

“Let’s stop here for a minute,” I said. “I want to get a picture of this.”

         Early yesterday, before the sky had cleared off to that brilliant blue, I took note of another gift of a snowy day: the silence. Usually when we walk outdoors in Jonesborough, the din of traffic out on 11E reminds us that we live in a world beset by ceaseless busyness. We rush and push, desperate not to miss something, afraid to come in a lowly second or third. But when snow falls thick as grace, and stops us alive in our tracks, our busyness often slows enough to allow us to sit still and to witness anew the beauty of God’s good creation. And to play in it. In the snow, adults often become like children.

Perhaps one of the more devastating effects of our separation from God is the way we tend to fill the voids in our lives with noisy stuff and perpetual motion. But sitting still and quiet in the presence of God can be quite difficult. I often try to force my way into silence, and when I do, I burden it. My mind races with things I ought to be thinking and doing. But silence is like God’s presence. It’s something we enter like a sanctuary. We ease into its arms. It enlivens us with new awareness of and appreciation for the gentle ways that God speaks and moves in the world.

         When winter snows us in and slows us down, grace helps us to hear God inviting us to let go of the clutter, all the urgent distractions that leave our lives rutted with deep valleys and ragged with roughness. And who knows? Maybe we will even find the stillness so life-giving and renewing that we will discover ways to lay aside our frenetic comings and goings each day, at least long enough to feel the presence of God falling around us like snow. 

         Life in the Spirit is not all wintry playfulness and awe, of course, but it is a foretaste of eternity.

         Having learned the blessings of silence and stillness, David wrote these words:

Psalm 23

¹The Lord is my shepherd,

I shall not want.

²He makes me lie down in green pastures;

he leads me beside still waters;

³he restores my soul.

He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

⁴Even though I walk through the darkest valley,

I fear no evil;

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff –

they comfort me.

⁵You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;

you anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

⁶Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord

my whole life long.

Joseph Awoke (Sermon for Advent 4)

“Joseph Awoke”

Matthew 1:18-25

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

12/18/16 – Advent 4

         When thinking of Joseph, many of us imagine him as upright, just, compassionate, and faithful. When our Sunday school class looked at this story, though, one person asked a question that cast some doubt on Joseph – not on his integrity so much, but on whether or not this carpenter was the sharpest chisel in the tool box.

         Obvious things are happening to Mary to whom Joseph is essentially married. In his shoes, any of us would feel betrayed. I think we’d fully understand his desire to divorce Mary, but it’s divorcing her in order to spare her “public disgrace” that gets troublesome.

         How, asked the person in the Sunday school class, could Joseph possibly think that divorcing Mary will save her from shame and humiliation?

         If Joseph divorces Mary, where can she go that will be safer than by his side? A poor, unwed, Jewish mother in first century Palestine has no attractive options. If the community does not execute her, then she may be able to survive – by begging or by, well, remunerative promiscuity. Joseph knows this, so how is even a “quiet” divorce righteousness?

         Still, who can blame Joseph for wanting to disappear into the shadows? Even God seems to understand Joseph’s quandary. So, “an angel of the Lord” visits Joseph in a dream and urges the cuckolded carpenter not to be afraid.

‘Go ahead and get married,’ says the angel. ‘Your wife will have a son, and you name him Jesus. He has important God-work to do.’

         How does Joseph process all of this? Where does he find the spiritual vigor to accept the bizarre counsel of his dream?

         Both Matthew and Luke include genealogies of Jesus. And while they differ significantly, they both affirm Joseph’s thoroughly Jewish ancestry. Among the implications of the genealogies is that Joseph knows the Hebrew scriptures. And among those writings is the relatively short but extraordinary prophecy of Hosea, who, like Joseph, gets married at God’s command.

         Hosea marries Gomer. The couple has a strained relationship at best, because Gomer was and continues to be a professional in the field of remunerative promiscuity. And she won’t allow something as trivial as a husband to threaten her career. But God calls the prophet to incarnate in his marriage to the unfaithful Gomer an example of God’s faithfulness to unfaithful Israel. Through all the frustration, anger, and hurt both God and Hosea remain steadfast.

         If it seems a stretch to bring Hosea into a meditation on Joseph, remember, in another dream, God tells Joseph to take Jesus and Mary to Egypt to escape the homicidal fear and vanity of King Herod. Learning to trust such things, Joseph does as he’s told. And in Matthew 2:15 we read, “This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’”

         In the eleventh chapter of Hosea, God begins to declare forgiveness and restoration on Israel. The first verse of that pivotal chapter reads: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I have called my son.”

         The final chapter of Hosea includes this promise: “I will heal their disloyalty…They shall again live beneath my shadow, they shall flourish as a garden…Those who are wise understand these things; those who are discerning know them. For the ways of the Lord are right, and the upright walk in them.” (Hosea 14, selected verses beginning with v. 4)

         Raised not only with the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but also with the prophesies of Hosea and Isaiah, Joseph finds within himself a deep river of wisdom, discernment, righteousness, and trust.

Dreams can do that for us. They can awaken us to the transforming realities, understandings, and strength flowing deep within us. And that river is always there, always ready for us to be ready for it.

Joseph awakens not simply from sleep, but he awakens to new possibilities in and for his own life, for Mary’s life, for Jesus’ life, and for our lives.

         Awakening. Birth. New birth. These are all metaphors for the same act of grace that awakens us to a dimension of life that exists alongside and within all that appears to be real, all that appears to be decided and final. As Christians, we call that dimension of life the Kingdom of God. And at Christmas, we make the audacious, scandalous claim that God incarnates the Kingdom in the particular person, the particular life of Jesus of Nazareth.

         Now, this is pure gift, pure grace. And “Nothing,” John Wesley said, “is more repugnant to capable, reasonable people than grace.”¹ Grace offends and threatens our increasingly Herodian culture, whose true religion is a merit-based economy, and whose true worship requires consumption and violence.

When unable to process the absolute grace of Christmas, we go physically numb with excess. We eat too much. We spend too much. People who don’t know how to receive such a gift can only exchange presents. You got yours. I got mine. So, we’re even, right? In these exchanges, both generosity and gratitude are all but destroyed.

         An exchange-based Christmas may temporarily satisfy a few wants. True Christmas, however, declares God’s eternal presence in and reviving affirmation of the physical world. It rousts us from selfish nightmares and awakens us to God’s dream for all that God has made. Christmas challenges us to accept a giftedness that conceives a gratitude that gives birth to a generosity that bears witness to the Incarnate Love that heals, enlightens, and resurrects God’s Creation.

When God reminds Joseph of the life-giving river of his own storied faith, the mystified carpenter awakens to the gift of a new giftedness. He receives and begins to unwrap and claim his unchosen and unearned fatherhood.

True Christmas asks things of us that only the grace of God can deliver to us – a fearless trust, a commitment to compassion, and an active justice on behalf of neighbors and an earth under assault by the Herods of the world.

This Christmas, may we all awaken from whatever sugar-plum dreams have anesthetized us to the freeing call of grace. And may we awaken to the Holy Christ who is being born afresh within us even now, for we all have important God-work to do.

¹This quotation appears in the book Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas. The selection is entitled “The God We Hardly Knew” by William Willimon. Plough Publishing, 2001. Pp. 141-149.

Remove the Fuel (Sermon for Advent 2)

“Remove the Fuel”

Matthew 3:1-12

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

12/4/16 – Advent 2

         After weeks of choking on the gray haze of forest fires, and after watching videos of flames consuming Gatlinburg, Lake Lure, and precious woodlands close to home, I almost laid this text aside. John the Baptist ignites the early chapters of the synoptic Gospels with images of fire. And he appears to blister his audience with menacing, even vengeful proclamations.

Over the centuries, the Church seems to have taken its homiletical and evangelical cues from a corruption of John’s prophetic firestorm more than from an embrace of Jesus’ outpouring of Living Water. Jesus calls us to wade courageously into the darkness where the voiceless poor, despised, and forgotten cry for help. He calls the Church to be an eternal flame that reveals God’s creative presence and redeeming activity in and for the world.

Under the influence of wealth and power, though, the Church has built contiguous perimeter fires of self-preservation that shed more in the way of raging heat than guiding light. Inside this self-made hell, we’ve done far too much to point fingers at broods of vipers and to pronounce judgment on useless chaff. Much of the Church’s own fruit, then, has been preaching and practice that aims to terrify people into a scorched and withering conformity rather than to invite one another to gather at the fertile riverbank of shared gratitude, holiness, and wholeness.

         Thanks be to God for Advent, the preparatory season that reminds us that fire does more than destroy. Fire can purify – as you might purify a needle before digging a splinter out of your finger. Fire can refine – as gold is refined to remove baser metals and stone. Fire transforms, too. It takes many years to experience the full effect, of course, but forest fires tend to hit a kind of reset button on an ecosystem. And isn’t that what repentance is all about? Resetting hearts overgrown with deadfall and invasive species?

         Janisse Ray is an environmentalist and writer who inhabits – in body and spirit – the ecology of the longleaf pine forests of the deep south. In her book Wild Card Quilt: The Ecology of Home, she writes that the entire “intricate and intriguing ecosystem [of the longleaf pine] is…bound to fire…Periodic wildfires thwart the encroachment of hardwoods such as oak and sweetgum into the pinelands, so the trees have evolved not only to survive fire but to depend on it.”¹

Beneath the longleaf pines grows a particular kind of grass called wiregrass. “Wiregrass,” says Ray, “has evolved toward flammability to help push fire quickly through the forest, and it needs burning in order to reproduce well. Some of the [flowers] that grow with wiregrass won’t even seed unless they have been scored by fire.”²

         Now, I know that the fires on which longleaf pine forests depend have almost nothing in common with wildfires started by human ignorance and criminal intent. And I do not presume to say that those fires have the same “ancestor.” Nonetheless, from stones and ashes alike, God raises new life and new hope.

         Even in Advent, Sunday worship celebrates first and foremost the promise of Resurrection. And while John does seem to strike steel to flint with inflammatory warnings, I think he is really, whether he knows it or not, shining a light on the conflagration of grace. Speaking of the more powerful one who is on the verge of arrival, John says, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

         Since the Exodus, flame has served as a symbol for the presence of God. Remember the burning bush. At Pentecost, flame becomes the specific symbol for the presence and the refining work of God the Holy Spirit. So, even if John holds the feet of Pharisees and Sadducees to the fire, frightening and shaming them – and others – toward repentance, his announcement of the coming of the Christ declares that God always intends healing and wholeness for the Creation.

For three years, I was a part-time firefighter down in Statesboro, GA. Don’t be impressed. I should have had a big sign on my turnout gear that said, “Hose Roller.” With few exceptions, that was the extent of my contribution. At one of our drills, the director of the local Forestry Commission came and talked to us about wildfire suppression. Things may have changed since then, but at the time, the principal strategy used in fighting wildfires was to remove the fuel. To stop the progression of a burn, firefighters would get ahead of the fire, cut trees, harrow fire breaks, and then start controlled burns that would burn back to the fire line where the two fires would simply extinguish each other for lack of fuel. In the absence of draught and 80 mile-per-hour winds, such tactics usually worked.

John’s baptism of repentance is an act of removing the fuel. In repentance, we deliberately burn away the attitudes and judgments that reduce us to arsonists. We singe off all our pride, greed, fear, vengeance, and despair. Such incendiary rubbish fuels today’s most devastating firestorms.

Having said that, we cannot earn God’s mercy. So, true repentance is always our grateful response to God’s unrelenting grace already at work in our lives.

In the baptism Jesus offers, we begin to agree with God. We agree that we are God’s Beloved. We agree that we are capable of giving and receiving more Love that we ever thought possible. We agree that we are more than we have given ourselves credit for being. We agree that this is true for the rest of God’s good Creation, as well. And we agree to live the new life to which these agreements give birth.

Jesus’ baptism by Spirit and fire refines us and transforms us. Jesus’ baptism resurrects us. It prepares us to receive and share with joy the good news of Christmas by lighting within us our light as prophets of and participants in God’s ever-arriving Christ.

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

²Ibid. p. 37.