Sobriety in an Intoxicating World (Sermon)

“Sobriety in an Intoxicating World”

Romans 12:1-8

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/27/17

         When reading through Paul’s letter to the Romans, one notices that the Apostle is both passionate and compassionate. He is candid with his criticism and vulnerable with his own failures and foibles. He manages to be direct and challenging on the one hand, and gracious and gentle on the other. Paul demonstrates a kind of holy balance, the balance it requires to be truly pastoral and loving, the kind of balance it requires to be Christlike in and for the world.

The word balance may be a little misleading. The dynamic to which Paul invites us is not like tip-toeing along a tightrope. 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.”

In his high priestly prayer, Jesus says it this way: My disciples “do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world…As [God] has sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:16&18)

This “balance,” then, has less in common with a wire-walking Wallenda than it does with an agent on some undercover assignment. So, it’s really more of a paradox that helps us to live deliberately in the world, to recognize and enter all its slippery scheming, all its self-serving duplicity, and the outright epidemic of its greed and fear without forgetting who we are, without forgetting that God’s holiness constitutes the core of our human being. Through Paul, the Spirit is encouraging us to be defined and guided by a gratefully chosen vision of ourselves, our neighbors, and of the entire creation as a kind of petri dish of holiness. The Creation is God’s preferred medium of self-expression.

Now, yes, the world is broken. It’s constantly plagued by selfishness, fear, prejudice, and plain old meanness. Then again, the whole story of Israel, and the very life of Jesus, declare that we experience God most intimately and immediately in the midst of the suffering. Because God is all about redemption and renewal, because God is all about “transformed” and “renewed” minds, God chooses to work through and to be known in all that is “weak” and “despised” in the world. (1Cor. 1:27-28)

Take note: Disciples who feel strong and privileged, and who live in strong and privileged circumstances often dismiss the in but not of the world approach. They choose, instead, to associate their strength and privilege with divine favor. But isn’t that to give up? Isn’t that to choose to be of as well as in the world? Having made that kind of choice, world-serving disciples tend to gloss over things like, “Blessed are the poor…the hungry…the meek…the merciful…[and] the persecuted.” (Matthew 5); things like, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God…is…to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:27); 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 clearly find the Romans lacking in the crucial trait of humility. “For by the grace given to me,” says the Apostle, “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.

Joe Sachs taught philosophy at St. John’s College in Annapolis for thirty years. He translated numerous ancient Greek texts. And where the NRSV translators chose “sober,” Sachs would have chosen “temperance.” Either way, the Greek word is sophrosune, and according to Sachs, it refers to “the active 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 complicated balance!

Sachs says that the ancient Greco-Roman culture recognized human desires as crucial aspects of human nature. As such, they warrant satisfaction. The caveat is that authentic satisfaction and expression of human desires requires 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.”²

Paul’s “sober judgment” has to do with overcoming childishness and living a mature faith. Remember what he says to the Corinthians: “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.” (1Cor. 13:11)

Mature disciples of Jesus Christ inhabit God’s creation with transformed and renewed minds – with sober minds. Childish and untransformed minds, are vulnerable to the intoxicating ways and means of the world. Greed, fear, and self-absorption can overwhelm a mind that has not learned to harness its passions and to offer them up for the well-being of others. A mind intoxicated by worldly concerns will fixate on its own desires for possessions, power, attention, and affirmation.

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis expresses all this from a Christian perspective. “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation,” says Lewis, “is that we were made for another world…Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy [that desire], but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, [we] must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly [desires], and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. [We] must keep alive in [ourselves] the desire for [our] true country, which [we] shall not find till after death...”³

How many times has the story been told of the person who reaches the top of the ladder and finds himself or herself unfulfilled? How many times have each of us wanted wanting this thing or that thing, expecting it to complete us in some way, only to have that thing expose nothing more than a deeper emptiness in our guts? When we strive only to get, only to control and conquer, we may achieve what economists call “satisfaction,” but we inevitably end up wanting more. We end up out of balance. When we choose to work for something so that it will benefit more than some visceral, naked, childish want in ourselves, we have a much better chance of experiencing what Paul calls sophrosune, and what our spiritual tradition calls joy, gratitude, and new life.

Inhabiting this Creation as Christian humans means accepting a magnificent and always-frustrating paradox. We experience that paradox in the fact that while we always have one foot in this world, as followers of Jesus, we also have one foot in the kingdom of God – which is our true hope, our true identity, and our eternal home.

¹Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle. Translation by Joe Sachs. Focus Publishing, R. Pullins Co., 2002. P. 211.

²Ibid. p. 211.

³http://www.mthopechronicles.com/2010/07/made-for-another-world.html

Political Mystics (Sermon)

“Political Mystics”

Matthew 15:1-20

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/20/17

         Some Pharisees and scribes have traveled from Jerusalem to Galilee. That’s between 75 and 100 miles depending on the route they walked. They’ve come to confront Jesus – about his disciples’ hand-washing habits.

         Seriously? A week of travel – each way – to call Jesus on the carpet for digital hygiene? That’s like someone from Seattle driving all the way to Tennessee, Starbucks latte in hand, to complain about someone drinking instant coffee!

         Jesus sees and understands the fundamental issues lying at the core of his cultural context. He sees and understands the personal and the communal dimensions of those issues. He also sees into the frightened and frustrated hearts of the Pharisees and scribes. And out of courageous Love for the Creation, Jesus does not shy away from people or issues.

Jesus is a political mystic, someone whose deep spirituality calls him to speak and act in the public square for the public good. He has inspired other political mystics like St. Francis, Sojourner Truth, John Muir, Martin Luther King, Jr. Jesus even inspired Gandhi, a Hindu.

To Jesus there’s no such thing as a religious, political, economic, or social issue that doesn’t belong in the conversation of the community of faith. If he were with us in the 21^st century in the same flesh he wore in the first century, he would never shy away from issues regarding racism, immigration, environmental stewardship, healthcare, or poverty, because those issues are not merely political issues. At their heart, they are spiritual issues, because our responses to them reveal what’s in our hearts. They reveal how we relate to each other, to the Creation, and, therefore, to God.

That’s exactly why the Pharisees and the scribes travel all the way from Jerusalem to Galilee. The actions of one group of increasingly visible Galilean Jews is affecting the theological, spiritual, and political climate within all Judaism.

         Why, the Pharisees ask, do you allow your disciples to defy the Law?

Citing a rabbinical tradition that justifies breaking the fifth commandment if resources are being given to God, Jesus says, Why do you elevate human tradition over Torah?

A quick history lesson: In the first century, Midrash is coming into its own. Midrash refers to a scholarly pursuit, an art form really, in which rabbis create narratives to explain particular laws in the Torah, or to smooth over inconsistencies in scriptural texts. It’s not hard to understand why all those nit-picking laws need some narrative back-up. Simple adherence to rules and belief in doctrines takes no creativity, no imagination. In fact, it’s satisfied with just the opposite – a kind of mechanical and unconscious submission. But professing, describing, and sharing a dynamic faith in the great mystery of the Creator cries out for some kind of creative underpinning. Faith needs color and texture. It needs images and interactions. It requires plot and tension.

Midrash provides this. It brings to the study of scripture the indispensable gift of story – backstories that help breathe life into the Law. Jesus’ parables are wonderful examples of Midrash. The good Samaritan helps us understand of all those texts that talk about welcoming the stranger. The rich man and Lazarus illuminates texts having to do with greed and poverty. Honoring parents, confession, forgiveness, pride, jealousy – all these issues play out in the parable of the prodigal.

“It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles,” says Jesus, “but what comes out.” And those who get bogged down in rules are like the blind leading the blind.

Frustrated when his disciples fail to understand his Midrash, Jesus gets graphic, Look, whatever goes into a person’s mouth finds its way out through…the digestive system. That’s just biology. But what comes out of the mouth reveals the heart. That is spirit.

I hear Jesus affirming the Torah. The Jews trust that Yahweh gave the law to Moses. That is to say, the Law comes out of the mouth of God. The Law is not the heart of God, but it reflects God’s heart. It reveals God’s desire for human beings to live together in community, as one humanity. And Jesus isn’t about to let the Pharisees forget that the Law declares that family relationships are foundational to human community. Besides, that Law says nothing about washing one’s hands before meals. The texts that mention washing have to do with ritual purity, not pre-meal hygiene!

Having lost sight of the grander purpose and gift of the Law, the Pharisees have made a Faustian bargain: They’ve exchanged Love of God for ownership of orthodoxy. And they’ve exchanged Love of neighbor for domination of adversaries. So, their mouths and their actions reveal hearts being blinded by petty legalism, divisive fear, and violent self-righteousness. These things defile the individual, and they poison the community.

Not every Christian is called to be a political mystic. But as the body of Jesus Christ, created by the Holy Spirit through the power of Resurrection, the Church as a whole is most certainly called to that work.

Every congregation must empower those whose gifts call them to make music, or to maintain church property, or to manage church finances, or to facilitate education, fellowship, or crisis care for members. By the same token, every congregation must nurture its prophetic voice in and for the world. While those ministries share equal importance, there are times when one of those ministries takes on acute significance in and for the congregation or acute significance in and for the wider community.

Now is such a time for the Church to claim its prophetic, political-mystic voice. We must speak and act in ways that don’t simply denounce every form of prejudice, hatred, and racial supremacy. We must proclaim our trust in the God who creates this world and who loves it, in all its beautiful if exasperating diversity. We must live as a kind of Midrash, an organic example of the faithfulness and righteousness it takes to live together in the imperfect peace of human community.

Do you folks realize how well you’re already doing that? Jonesborough Presbyterian isn’t very diverse racially and ethnically, but sitting side-by-side in the pews, and working together on the session and in ministry teams are folks who passionately and vocally support almost the full spectrum of theological, political, economic, and social opinion. And sometimes you talk about those things. Some of you may think I occasionally go too far in comments from the pulpit. Some of you are frustrated that I don’t go far enough. And regardless of what you think of the person next to you or of the preacher in the pulpit, most of you keep coming back! In this fractured, contentious world, how do you do that?

I pray that it’s because you have seen and keep trying to see each other’s hearts.

I pray that it’s because you recognize that we truly depend on each other’s gifts.

I pray that it’s because you’re open to Christ’s vision of becoming one body, here in Jonesborough and throughout God’s creation.

I pray that we all continue to bear with one another as God and world events stretch us with an always-challenging future in which every day we are called to confront dangerous realities like racism and violence.

And I pray that we do all this while proclaiming our Love for one another in Jesus Christ, and while trusting the voice of fearless compassion within our God-imaged hearts.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayers.

True Blessedness: A Gift of Loss, Not Gain (Sermon)

“True Blessedness: A Gift of Loss, Not Gain”

Genesis 32:22-31

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/6/17

         “I feel so blessed.”

         “You’re such a blessing.”

         These affirmations, as well-intended as they may be, are often as hollow as most of what one hears on religious broadcasting. The very idea of blessing has been co-opted by the moralizing and self-serving distortions of the prosperity gospel in which blessing is synonymous with possessions or personal security and happiness. Getting used to that mindset is understandable, but it can all-too-easily become our truth, even when it’s far from true. To white landowners in the south, slavery was once blessing and truth. To the robber barons of the late 1800’s, so was child labor. So are the greedy and violent conquests of nations driven not by national defense, but by the Machiavellian siblings of divine right of kings and Manifest Destiny. Before the dust settles on those battlefields, the victors turn their backs on the desecration and say, in the name of some god or gods, “We’re so blessed.”

         When blessing gets reduced to wealth or power, when it gets reduced to the preservation of one group’s privilege, it inevitably gets twisted into entitlement. It belongs only to those who deserve it, those who earn it, because God helps those who help themselves. That distortion breeds a callous vanity that is antithetical to everything Jesus teaches and lives.

         All this makes me wonder if First World cultures in general, and First World Christians in particular have the spiritual, moral, and ethical courage to recognize and embrace true blessedness.

         So, what is blessing?

         Today’s story has to do with Jacob in his later years. At first glance, he may remind us of Job. He has a large family – two wives and eleven children. All his livestock and other possessions place him among the elite of his day. Looking at Jacob through First World eyes, one might say that he should consider himself “blessed.” He has lots of stuff.

Jacob is on his way to meet his brother, the firstborn twin, Esau. Remember, through premeditated deceit, Jacob stole the family birthright and Isaac’s blessing from Esau. Jacob’s trickery landed him in the lap of luxury, but as he prepares to face his brother, Jacob feels anything but blessed.

         Reaching the Jabbok River, Jacob sends his family and all his possessions across the river, into Esau’s territory. Not only do the women, children, sheep, and goats go first, Jacob stays behind, terrified of Esau. Jacob is alone, vulnerable, and completely divested of everyone and everything for which he has either worked or connived. He has sent his whole life, his very identity across the river. That’s when it begins.

         “Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”

All night long, Jacob and “a man” are locked in a kind of struggle for which words like wrestling match, or fight, or combat seem inadequate. At the Jabbok, Jacob experiences a fierce spiritual and existential crisis. To me, this scene feels descriptive of someone weeping through the night, or someone raging at God, casting questions and curses for hours. At the Jabbok, we all confront our brokenness, and that of the creation. The Jabbok where we face the truth that the stuff we had once considered blessing has been revealed as fleeting and empty, maybe even a burden.

         Jacob makes a curious demand. “I will not let you go,” he says to the man, “until you bless me.” Jacob seems to realize that he hasn’t been struggling to win or protect anything. This long, dark night of the soul is revealing Jacob’s true self. The man blesses him with a new name: Israel. You will be called “Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and you have prevailed.”

         “Prevailed.” That word does not convey a sense of victory over anything, but of having survived. Through this experience, Jacob dies and rises to a new and different way of being alive in the world. Jacob prevails because, at long last, he accepts defeat. He has been humbled into his deepest and truest self. Only when he has lost, only when stripped of his stuff, and of his inflating and inflammatory ego, is Jacob ready to recognize and embrace the fullness of blessing.

Richard Rohr calls this the path of descent.¹ Over the centuries, sages in the Church have called that narrow and lonely path “the way of the cross.”

“The path downward,” says Rohr, “is much more trustworthy than any path upward, which tends to feed the ego…[On some level,] Authentic spirituality is…about letting go…letting go of our small self, letting go of our cultural biases, and letting go of our fear of loss and death. Freedom is letting go of wanting more and better things, and it is letting go of our need to control and manipulate God and others. It is…letting go of…our need to be right.”²

         Referencing the stories of the prodigal son, and of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Rohr writes that, “Those who are proud of how they have done everything right – but also feel superior to others – are not open to God’s blessing…Fortunately, life will lead us to the edge of our own resources through…[pain, mistakes, unjust suffering, tragedy, failure, and the general absurdity of life]. We must be led to an experience or situation that we cannot fix or control or understand. That’s where faith begins. Up to that moment it has just been religion!”³

         Rohr could have used the story of Jacob, as well. Jacob, meaning all of Israel, and by extension all of us, discovers true identity, purpose, and blessing not by gaining, but by losing. Jacob prevails not through victory, but through what Frederick Buechner calls The Magnificent Defeat.⁴

         Recently, a friend emailed me at 4:00 in the morning. She was struggling with the imminent and untimely death of a long-time friend. She’d been up all night crying, yelling at God, questioning, praying. I wrote back trying to say that I understood. I asked her to consider the possibility that her tears, shouts, and questions were the prayers that really mattered. Maybe they were even prayers the Holy Spirit was praying for her, “in sighs too deep for words.” I told her that grief was a process that always changes us.

It seems to me that she was on the banks of her own Jabbok, hanging on for dear life, and crying out for blessing. She was on a path of descent where the blessings of a deepened and deepening faith were possible.

         I don’t know how much I helped. But I do trust that for her, as for all of us, true blessedness is the gift of loss, not of gain. Only there do we really learn to trust, follow, and love the one who “emptied himself…humbled himself…and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)

As we come to his table today, may we come as a community who is willing to lose all for the sake of true blessing, for the sake of receiving and sharing the unearnable welcome of grace, and the eternal belonging that is the household of God.**

¹http://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/63917A424BC93F40/CAEF12FB6B3D7B5544D0DD5392A9C75A

²Ibid.

³http://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/FD47744CCC670B8C/CAEF12FB6B3D7B5544D0DD5392A9C75A

⁴“The Magnificent Defeat” From: The Magnificent Defeat, Harper/San Francisco, 1966. Pp. 10-18.

**While preaching this sermon, I knew that it was not complete. (They seldom are.) So as the charge, I added something similar to the following:

         Guilt is not a good place to start on the path of descent. Guilt sends us on journeys of resentment, not of discovery and transformation.

         Having said that, without thinking critically as well gratefully about our material/physical situation, we may become complacent and self-satisfied. We may associate what we have with our efforts alone and interpret them as God’s particular reward for good behavior. And those who don’t have enough must not be as diligent in their faith and work as we are. At that point (and please pardon the cliché), we don’t own our possessions, they own us.

         The path of descent is most certainly the way of humility, of letting go. And along this path, we discover that all we have and all we are is gift from God. We discover that for us to recognize and embrace such things as true blessings, requires sharing them. Only when gratefully and freely share do they reveal their lasting value. Only then do they transform private enjoyment into interactive discipleship. AH

Never Again (Sermon)

“Never Again”

Genesis 9:1-3, 8-17

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/23/17

         In July of 1984, while working as a summer youth director in N. Augusta, SC, I took a small group of kids on a mission trip to Bennettsville, SC, a rural community that had been devastated by tornadoes that spring. We went to offer such help as we could, and our experience gave us new respect for nature’s power to rearrange people’s surroundings and priorities. In the midst of it all, one image stood out.

         While ripping apart a shopping center, the largest tornado grabbed a quarter-ton I-beam and hurled it through the air for about a mile. It landed in someone’s front yard, about 30 feet from the front steps. It stuck in the ground. Angled back toward the house, it looked like an arrow that had missed its mark. Of that 18-foot beam, about half remained above ground. The family left it there, and by the road they placed a granite marker engraved with the date of the storm and the words In God we Trust.

         After the trip, I was in the church kitchen one afternoon telling the cleaning lady about our trip. Kind-hearted and soft-spoken, the woman listened intently behind a tight-lipped smile that seemed to acknowledge the pain, yet without surprise.

         “You know,” she said putting a finger to her cheek, “You hear about things like that all the time, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and people getting hurt and killed. And I really think that those things are the good Lord trying to tell us something.”

         She was a wonderful lady, and I enjoyed her company. But she may have gotten her theology from TV preachers.

         Many televangelists flog their listeners with dispensationalism, a theology that divides human history into quantifiable eras, or “dispensations” of divine revelation. Believing that global death and destruction must herald the second coming, dispensationalists crave the fall of civilization. Convinced that all suffering, regardless of the cause, is God’s judgment, they grant their toxic blessings to religious and political leaders who have the power to call up fresh floods of violence and to drown the world with division and fear. Only then, they say, will Jesus return.

         Sure, breaking certain laws can cause suffering. Defy the law of gravity and one discovers just how true the old saying is: It’s not the fall that kills you. It’s the sudden stop. Of particular concern to me is the fact that, for years we’ve been reaping the bitter fruits of poor stewardship of the earth, which, according to both creation stories, is the original human vocation. That’s simple cause and effect, and that’s on humankind not God. Until we recognize the natural connection between our sinful lust for excess and convenience on the one hand and environmental degradation on the other, the waters will keep rising. And if we don’t make that turn, how will future generations sustain themselves?

Having said that, attaching a sin, or even a sinner, to every storm and illness is more than self-serving theology. It’s idolatry. It makes judgments for God.

The story of the Great Flood becomes helpful when we remember that it has less to do with our sinfulness than it does with God’s grace.       A little background: The concept for the biblical story was sponged from one chapter in the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh. The book of Genesis reached its current form, more or less, during the time of the Babylonian Exile. It became a staple of preaching and worship for a vanquished people who were being told that their crisis was their own fault. The flood narrative helped to restore Israel’s identity and vision. ‘Exile is not the judgment of an angry God,’ says the story. ‘It’s a symptom of the world’s lust for power and excess, for wealth and convenience. And God, who is faithful, loving, and just, is with us, now and always.’

         Through Isaiah, God makes this explicit: “[To me] this is like the days of Noah,” says God, “just as I swore that the waters of Noah would never again go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you and will not rebuke you. For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed…” (Is. 54:9-10)

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

         While the story of the flood begins with God attempting to blot out evil by blotting out humankind, it also shows God discovering the futility of such efforts. “The inclination of the human heart is evil from youth,” says God. This lament acknowledges that neither floods, nor tornadoes, nor plagues upon our houses will turn us around; and they certainly won’t redeem us. So, God makes a new covenant and promises that never again will God use “grapes of wrath” to bring about transformation.

         Why won’t we learn the same thing? All the wars and rumors of wars on this planet, and all the glorification of them reveal that humankind still trusts violence more than we trust God’s covenants of grace. That misplaced trust makes dispensationalism very lucrative business. Its apostles terrify their way deep into people’s minds and pockets.

By contrast, the flood story proclaims that God initiates a covenant with us and remains faithful to it, even when we don’t. Rather than trying to force our hand through catastrophe, Yahweh, who is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,” (Ex. 36:4) commits to shepherding us patiently toward faithfulness. Isn’t that the God revealed in Jesus?

In a brief article entitled “Reinhold Niebuhr on Moral Motivation,” L.L. Wilmoth says, “the highest moral and spiritual achievements depend not upon a push but…a pull. People must be charmed into righteousness. The language of aspiration rather than that of criticism and command is the proper…language” for proclamation.¹

The story of the flood begins with an anthropomorphic God feeling “sorry” for having created humankind (Gen. 6:6), and seeking to correct the creation through “criticism and command.” After the flood, God realizes that punitive violence never produces constructive change. The story ends with God deciding to pull humanity forward, to charm us into aspiring toward things like righteousness, faithful stewardship, and grateful, generous living. The language becomes gracious and covenantal rather than resentful and coercive.

“Never again,” says God. “Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood.”

This is more than some silver lining. This is God entering the creation’s relentless suffering with healing love and redeeming purpose.

God commits to this new covenant with a sign as simple and as elegant as a wedding band – the rainbow. Think about that: Rainbows require both bright sunlight and significant moisture. The sign of God’s covenant arcs across the heavens only when there’s obvious tension between fair skies and foul.

This same tension makes the last first and the first last.

It makes losing one’s life the very way to discover one’s true life.

It’s makes poverty, grief, hunger, and persecution signs of “blessedness.”

This same tension makes shepherds kings and Friday “Good.”

Because of this tense yet gracious paradox, God’s promise of “never again” floods the earth with hope. And we hear it echoing in Jesus’ “final” words to his disciples: “And remember,” he says, “I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Mt. 28:20b)

¹https://externalword.wordpress.com/2017/03/19/reinhold-niebuhr-on-moral-motivation/

Snake! (Sermon)

“Snake!”

Genesis 3:1-24

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/16/17

         There’s a cliché that I can understand, but can’t stand: “The only good snake is a dead snake.”

I’ve never grieved the death of fire ants or cockroaches. With clear conscience, I’ve ended the lives of houseflies and stink bugs. And with my bare fingers I’ll help my wife squish Japanese beetles by the dozen in her garden. But there’s something about snakes that I can’t shake. I’m fascinated with them. I don’t want to be surprised by them, and I don’t go around catching them and handling them. But when I’m outside, I look for them. I want to see them.

These prehistoric creatures show up frequently in my dreams, too. Having a prominent place in the pantheon of archetypes, snakes possess a mythical hold on the human psyche. Slithering and lurking, hissing and striking, they symbolize danger and fear. But because poisonous species carry the cure to their bites in their own venom, snakes often represent healing, as well. The symbol for the medical community is the caduceus – two snakes winding their way up a winged staff. Living beneath the ground, they frequently represent a deep and earthy wisdom. And because they shed their skin, snakes often represent transformation and new life. Whatever the association, anything that draws out of us such visceral reactions is begging for attention.

         As someone steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition, when I think of the Genesis story snaking its way through the interpretive forests of centuries and cultures, I have trouble limiting my understanding of even that serpent to a symbol for treachery and sin. Most of us have been taught that this story illustrates how evil and suffering entered the world. But such readings ignore the rich revelations below the surface.

         By interacting with this forked-tongued symbol of danger, the man and the woman move from security to vulnerability. And by interacting with this skin-shedding symbol of transformation, they also move from innocence and unawareness to a state of deeper understanding of themselves, of the creation and their place in it, and, most importantly, of the holiness of God. At first, it looks and feels like a painful snake bite, but maybe this story also reveals potential for human health and wholeness.

         Ancestors that predate all of our parents and Sunday school teachers bequeathed to us an image of Eden that describes both a garden that was and a heaven that awaits. And personally, I’m coming to understand the descriptions of this garden/heaven are the honest longings of human hearts and minds overwhelmed by human suffering. Thus, we have images of an existence where there’s no pain, no cancer, or war, or famine, or mosquitoes, and where we don’t even remember snakes.

         I can’t say what my own timeless heart of hearts remembers of Eden. And my continually evolving expectations of the life to come look nothing like what they did years ago. All I have, all any of us has is the here and now. And who can imagine this life without story, without the ebb and flow of weariness and wonder, ecstasy and agony, heartache and healing? So, what would life be like without “snakes”? It’s right here, in what often feels like the snake pit of real life that we experience and cling to God’s grace.

         In Genesis, God declares the consequence of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: “In the day that you eat of it you will die.” But after eating the fruit, Adam and Eve shed their skins of innocence. The misty ignorance clears from their eyes. And instead of dying, they are tended to by God.

Yes, giving in to temptation does mean that human life now includes death. It includes experiences from which human beings need deliverance and recovery, and in which we need strength for endurance. The story also reveals that humankind, having moved beyond its original state, now has the opportunity to truly understand what it means to bear God’s image.

         I’m beginning to see the events of that last day in Eden as much more than a “fall” or a death. I’m beginning to see a birth and an ascent, as well. In this story, humankind begins to make peace with the reality of suffering and evil, and with our part in perpetuating it. But this story is not about fault-finding. It’s not about laying blame. It’s about declaring that regardless of where all the snakish evil comes from, God enters our suffering, choosing to transform and redeem both our accidental and intentional brokenness. Spiritual maturity depends on accepting that reality and following God into suffering – our own and that of others – with faith, hope, and love. That’s what it means to be made in God’s image. I think the storytellers say as much by attributing to God these words: “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.”

The creation has always been wounded by evil, by deliberate sin, and by plain old bad luck. Our world is fraught with disease, poverty, and war, with neglect and abuse of people and the environment. Thorns and thistles can choke our energy and creativity. Our labors, which are meant to sustain us, can tear us down. Destroyed by dishonesty, greed, and arrogance, relationships and communities become petri dishes for violence and cynicism. In the midst of everything that can make this life a living hell, life-restoring examples of beauty, kindness, wonder, and joy also weave their way into our experiences.

         We are both cursed and blessed by the knowledge of good and evil. Out of love for a broken and suffering world, God gives to humankind, to you and me, gifts of vision, compassion, and creativity. And without such gifts, without people willing to claim them, nurture them, and share them, what would happen to our hope? As the Church, we are called to be a reminder of the Love that creates us, and a foretaste of the Love that awaits us. And God not only calls us to that work, God entrusts us with the burden of doing it in the throes of the creation’s brokenness and suffering.

         Ask people who are passionately involved in a particular church what makes their commitment strong. I’m willing to bet that it’s not what the preacher says or what songs we sing on Sundays, but how they serve God and neighbor in and through that faith community. If folks show passion in worship, it’s because they are personally involved in that congregation’s ministries of compassion and justice in and for a hurting creation. What they experience in the sanctuary is connected to experiences of freely-offered discipleship. God is not real and alive because the preacher says so, but because the worshipers have relationships with hungry people at the food pantry, homeless children in Family Promise, sick and dying people in hospitals and nursing homes.

Without entering human suffering, “church” all-too-easily becomes a plastic Eden – a place where we try to hide from God, a place where faith is reduced to moralistic obligation, or to some kind of civic duty.

The Garden of Eden may be a long-ago memory in the hearts of humankind, but the Kingdom of God exists visibly, audibly, and palpably whenever and wherever we forsake the temptation to live fearfully and selfishly, and choose instead to live gratefully and compassionately, in the midst of the world’s grief, loneliness, and despair.

Jesus reveals and embodies that truth for us. When he says, “Follow me,” he invites us into salvation. And the path of salvation leads not around or away from evil and suffering, but straight into the heart of it. And there we proclaim, in all manner of actions, and “when necessary”^* in words: “He is risen! He is risen, indeed!”

^*This quotation is often and probably mistakenly attributed to St. Francis of Asisi. (http://appleseeds.org/St-Fran_Preach-Gospel.htm)

So That None Should Be Alone (Sermon)

“So That None Should Be Alone”

Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-23

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/9/17

         The creation stories in the first two chapters of Genesis create in me a sense of awe and gratitude. Imagining the cosmic scope of the story in Chapter 1 is like sitting on top of Buffalo Mountain and watching the sun set over the plateau to the west, and the stars come out over the Appalachian highlands to the east. Reading the earthy, nitty-gritty detail of the story in Chapter 2 is like watching my wife at work in her garden.

         Both stories offer magnificent and compelling, but thoroughly distinct images. They harmonize well enough, but any attempt to create unison between them yields artificial results. We can no more overlay the two stories and get one authoritative history than we could overlay photographs to the east and west of Buffalo Mountain and get one coherent perspective.

Think about it: Did God take seven days to create the universe, as described in Genesis 1, or a single day as described in Genesis 2? Did God make all the animals first then human beings, as in Genesis 1, or the human male, then all the animals, then the human female as in Genesis 2?

The discrepancies do not overwhelm the sophisticated brilliance in Genesis. Aware of the limits of language, the ancient storytellers used images and symbols to suggest what their hearts felt but their words could not adequately describe. Feel free to disagree, but I have to interpret the creation stories as statements of faith rather than historical documents, as poetry rather than science.

Back “in the day that God made the earth and the heavens,” says Genesis 2, all was dry and barren. But, in this pre-beginning, beneath the surface, a spring flows. Down in the unconscious depths, the possibility of water churns like undreamt dreams and unwritten songs. And all that potential needs a vessel. So, God pulls the waters upward, through the dry and gritty void. Streams and rivers flow. They feed the sky. Clouds gather. Rains fall. Plants take root and grow. But who will tend them? Who will enjoy them?

Scooping up a handful of water-logged dust, God infuses it with ruach – with breath, a holy spirit. Into the enlivening stew, God adds humankind – a unique blend of matter and spirit, consciousness and unconsciousness, instinct and innovation.

         “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,” sings the psalmist, “the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.”

         In some way, all living things share God’s breath; so all living things are holy. And the deep capacity for awareness of self, awareness of the waters above and below, grant to the human a particular holiness, a particular likeness to God. This gift will get all humanity into a bit of a pinch, but first, the man is simply to care for all that God has created. He has more than existence. He has something to do, something to give his life meaning. He has a calling, a vocation.

         Having formed the man of dust and water, having blown animating breath into his nostrils, God sets the man in the garden to till and keep it. He is free to eat and enjoy all of it – with one prohibition: Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Being as much like God as he is, knowing good and evil would be one burden too many on the man’s heart of flesh. He’d have trouble bearing that burden without mistaking himself for God - especially if he’s alone.

         “It is not good that the man should be alone.” What a profoundly revealing thing for God to say. In the first creation story we hear God say, “Let us create humankind in our image.” And later in the second story, after Adam and Eve have been exiled from the garden, God says, “See, the man has become like one of us.”

God doesn’t have some kind of multiple personality disorder. The storied image in which we are made is one of relationship. To be like God in the healthiest sense necessarily involves others. This is the point of Trinitarian language. God is one, but because God is Love, the essence of God is relationship.

         The philosopher Charles Taylor wrote: “One cannot be a self on one’s own.” The man needs an other because loneliness diminishes both our humanity and our holiness.

         So, God experiments with animals. And they’re wonderful, but the man needs more than dogs and dolphins, copperheads and chickadees. He needs a partner who will both counter and complete. So, God closes the man’s eyes and sends him into a deep, self-emptying sleep. During that time of unconsciousness and vulnerability, God removes a rib, one of the bones that protect the man’s heart and other vital organs. From that piece of the man’s foundational structure, God fashions another human being, a woman. At last the man has a companion, someone who may expose his heart a little bit, but one who cures loneliness.

Let’s remember, loneliness and solitude are two very different things. We often choose and enjoy solitude for Sabbath renewal, but loneliness is the curse of exclusion from community. The creation story in Genesis 2 declares that exclusion and loneliness run counter to God’s will – for everyone. No human being should be alone. We need each other the way scripture needs both creation stories.

         Who we are and what we do as human creatures, we do in community. As a place of creativity, the Church is called to share in God’s eternal breathing. By telling the ancient stories and living our new ones, we wade in the waters of all that is seen and unseen, of that which is and that which is becoming.

         As a place of purpose, the Church is called to nurture vocation. We till and keep the God-planted garden on which all human beings depend, and in which we all may experience our strengths and weaknesses, our God-given gifts and those of others.

As a place of worship, the Church encourages prayerful solitude, where we learn to listen for and to relate to God. And as a place of community, we do not tolerate loneliness. We welcome, enjoy, struggle with, and forgive one another.

         Each day, may you look deeply into yourself. May you see both your fragile dust and water held together by God’s holy breath, and your own extraordinary beauty and potential. May you sit in wonder before yourself and others as you would sit on a mountain top, watching the sun set and the moon rise.

         We are indeed “fearfully and wonderfully made” in God’s image. We often know that image within us by acknowledging the selfishness, the violence, and other brokenness within us, as well. Whether we want them or not, both realities, both stories our ours. One participates in God’s creativity and joy. One struggles with it, and often denies it.

The more we love one another as God loves us, the more we experience and share the God within us and within others.

We’re in this life together – all of us, all of our stories. And this must be God’s intent for us, so that none should be alone.

Ambushed by Resurrection (Sermon)

“Ambushed by Resurrection”

Matthew 10:34-39

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/2/17

         The passage we just read appears in Matthew and in Luke. In fact Luke, in some respects the most socially and religiously provocative of the four canonical gospels, includes not one but two versions of this text. To be honest, I have never liked this passage. It always feels like an ambush.

         “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” What happened to the Prince of Peace?

         “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” What happened to Honor your father and mother?

         To be worthy of me, says Jesus, take up your cross. Didn’t Rome use crucifixion to manipulate public behavior through the most horrifying cruelty possible?

         To really live your life, release your death grip on it. With that, Jesus challenges some of the most fundamental tenets that first-world cultures celebrate and enshrine as “inalienable rights.” Things such as: Grab all the gusto you can! Control your own narrative!

Dogmatic maxims like these can lead to trouble. If I claim some divine right to grab all the gusto I can get, I inevitably keep grabbing, even when it means grabbing more than my fair share. And the more I consume, the more insatiable I become. That becomes a way of life. I feel entitled to all I want, so, I lose sight of others and their needs. I lose compassion for them.

Similarly, when I claim divine right to control my own narrative, I will have to control other people’s narratives, because my life cannot be distanced from the lives around me. Controlling my narrative, means forcing my opinions, my desires, and my fears onto the lives around me. And I find that if I don’t do this, my neighbor’s own quest for well-being may hinder my gusto-grabbing happiness, or threaten my power-hungry and image-conscious ego. Only when I get my way, by whatever means, is God in heaven, and all right with the world.

         Into all of my efforts to manipulate and rationalize advantages for myself, Jesus keeps saying emphatically and unequivocally, Stop it! To use your God-given gifts to make some kind of god out of yourself is to misuse them. It’s also, unavoidably, to exploit your neighbors.

So, give it up, Allen. Lose that life. Only then will you truly live.

         Like I said – I’ve never much liked this passage. But bless my heart, it’s challenge to me is what makes it gospel for me.

         Here’s how things unfold: While these six verses do feel rather blunt at first, I stop and remember that Jesus offers them as an expression of Love, not of anger or vengeance. After spending enough time with them, I begin to hear them revealing a purpose that aims to heal and make whole. Instead of blunt, they become incisive.

         When Jesus says that he comes not “to bring peace, but a sword,” I can hear him saying that he comes to sever some of the bonds that human beings hold most tightly and dearly. But, what’s loving about that? Well, I think he does that not to end relationships, but to re-new them.

When a broken bone doesn’t set correctly, an orthopedic surgeon may have to re-break the bone and re-set it. The intentional break and re-set allows the arm, or leg, or rib to be restored to proper alignment and to full strength and function.

         If this is the kind of thing Jesus is talking about, then in order for groups of people, even those as close as family, to discover their true purpose and their deepest joy, they must cut themselves loose from what has become outdated ties. Then, in a consciously-chosen act, they commit themselves to something new, something even deeper than the bonds of family relationships, deeper than the bonds of any sort of tribe, congregation, denomination, party, or nation. Even more appropriate than the image of re-setting a bone, is the image of cutting the umbilical cord between a newborn and mother.

         Marianne gave birth to our children in a birthing center in Rincon, GA. Both times, I watched Marianne, exhausted and awestruck, hold that pink, wrinkled, puffy-eyed baby she had carried within her for nine months. And both times, the midwife took two surgical clamps and pinched them down tightly and close together on that gently twisting, bluish-gray tether still attached to our baby’s belly.

The midwife held out a pair of sterile scissors and said, “Would you like to cut the umbilical cord?”

         It was not a merely symbolic act. By cutting the cord, I severed the most vital physical aspect of the pre-natal bond between Marianne and our children. Forever. The experiences of both pregnancy and childbirth were complete, and an utterly new set of relationships began, for all of us. Relationships of unspeakable joy and heartache. Relationships of relentless discovery and bewilderment. Relationships in which we began a continual process of coming together, ripping apart, and coming together anew. Peace is a rare gift in all of that purposed turmoil.

         All relationships experience turmoil, don’t they? Things as they were end. And after each experience of change and loss, the Spirit lays us at our mother’s breast, freshly re-formed and capable of new depths of trust. Accepting this process as not merely inevitable, but healthy – that’s the key. It’s a necessary step toward making peace with the always surprising ambush of Resurrection. I think that’s how losing one’s life for Jesus’ sake becomes an experience, ultimately, of great joy.

         For us as Christians, the Sabbath day is always a celebration of Easter. No matter what outside distractions may clutter our hearts and minds on a Sunday morning, the reason we gather is to bear witness to the transforming power of Resurrection in the world. All that we say and do and sing should proclaim that truth.

In a few minutes, we will celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. As you pass the bread and cup today, I ask you to say something different. As the first tray comes, say to your neighbor, “Broken bread for your broken heart.” And when the second tray comes, say, “The cup of Resurrection.”

As we remember Jesus’ passion at the hands of a fearful and violent empire, may we all be reminded that through this ritual meal we are being nourished with the resurrecting power of agape Love, that perfect Love that liberates us from all encumbering fears and loyalties, so that we may die to self, and rise to Christ. So that we may live in and share the presence of God’s kingdom here, and now, and always.