Jesus Is Lord (Sermon)

"Jesus Is Lord"

Matthew 25:31-46

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/22/20

 

³¹“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, ³³and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. ³⁴Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’

⁴⁰And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

⁴¹Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; ⁴²for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’

⁴⁴Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’

⁴⁵Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ ⁴⁶And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”  (NRSV)

 

         On Reign of Christ Sunday, the last Sunday of the liturgical year, Christians around the world affirm the lordship of Jesus Christ. We conclude each year this way because whether our lord-of-choice is holy or unholy, we all commit our lives and our allegiance to something. And for Christians, if that lord is something other than Jesus, it shows.

         Adolph Hitler’s lord was absolute power—politically, militarily, economically, socially, and personally. And it showed. He cared not what human suffering he caused in his quest for power. Committed to German nationalism and white supremacy, Hitler evangelized with fear and violence. He even convinced many Christians to profess faith in his graceless gospel, and to accept not only the lordship of his own brutality and hate, but also the impossible union of Christian discipleship with nationalism and militarism.

         Those who accepted Christianity on Hitler’s terms did what one must do when unable to accept that faith in Jesus is much more an ethos embodied than a dogma uttered: They chose to understand Jesus as strictly a personal savior. In do so, they reduced faith to a purely private matter. Such individualistic religion fit nicely into Hitler’s scheme. It allowed the significant Christian community to equate patriotic zeal with Christian truth. So, loyalty to the protector state and its murderous focus on racial purity and world domination became the same as faith in God. National symbols then invaded Christian sanctuaries, and allegiance to the nation became a matter of holiness. The Church’s mission was quickly purged of Christlike expressions of justice and righteousness. Those whom Jesus describes in Matthew 25—not to mention Jews, Gypsies, disabled people, people of African, Polish, or Russian decent—all these were considered “inferior” and a threat to the purity of Hitler’s Aryan society. Exterminating these human beings became a purge as mindlessly ordinary as confessing the “sin” of eating too much chocolate.

         In following Hitler, many Christians may have avoided persecution, but they ceased to follow the lordship of Christ. Christians don’t profess Jesus’ lordship of by saying the Lord’s Prayer and reciting the Apostles’ Creed. We profess our faith by following Jesus—our one and only Lord.

         In response to widespread Christian capitulation to Hitler’s demands for lordship, 139 delegates from the German Evangelical Church, convened a confessional synod in the town of Barmen in May of 1934. Their urgent and prayerful discussions gave birth to a theological statement which is as concise in its language as it is courageous in its fidelity to Jesus.

         “The Theological Declaration of Barmen," which is now in our Book of Confessions, unequivocally asserts that, “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and death.”¹

         Therefore, they said, “We reject false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.

         “We reject false doctrine, as though the Church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans.

         “We reject false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords…”²

         Jesus is Lord! they cried. Not Hitler! Not the Third Reich! Nor any government, nor state, nor army! Jesus is Lord! And in the last sentence of the confession, the writers of the declaration urged the church “to return to the unity of faith, hope, and love.”³  

         The Nazis got the message, and all 139 of the delegates were branded traitors, as were all pastors and lay people who openly concurred with the Barmen declaration. Some would hide or emigrate from Hitler’s wrath; many were imprisoned. And some were executed for declaring their faithfulness to Jesus.

         On Reign of Christ Sunday, we do declare that Jesus is Lord by gathering for worship. Much more importantly, though, we enter and participate in his lordship through our day-to-day speech, actions, and attitudes.

In his last public teaching before his arrest, Jesus brings all his previous teachings home with a powerful image of the Son of Man surveying a culminated human history. When all is said and done, he shows much less concern with people being “good” and having stayed out of “trouble” than with them having gotten into “good trouble”⁴ Jesus is much more interested in people having followed him in the ways of God’s hospitality, compassion, and justice than his is in the words they say.

         How did you respond to “the least of these,” he asks? How did you respond to the hungry? The thirsty? The naked? The sick? The imprisoned? How did you respond to those whom the power-drunk lords of this world scorned and persecuted?

         Jesus says that when he is truly our Lord, we’ll know it. Everyone will know it, because we’ll feed the hungry and give water to the thirsty. We’ll clothe the naked, and visit the sick and the imprisoned. We’ll help house the homeless and show compassion to the poor. And we’ll stand in solidarity with those who, because of the color of their skin, are systemically treated more like varmints than human beings and neighbors.

         All of that is challenging enough, but it can befuddle Christians to hear Jesus imply that his lordship extends beyond those who have made verbal professions of faith in him. When Jesus is truly Lord, the name “Jesus” may not even enter the minds of those who care for others. How else would it be that his “sheep” would ask, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we…welcomed you…gave you clothing…visited you?”

But isn’t such unpremeditated faithfulness consistent with Jesus’ teaching earlier in Matthew when he says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven”? (Mt. 7:21)

         Discipleship is premeditated faithfulness to the lordship of Jesus. And when he is Lord, we care for those in need not because we believe that doing so decides ourfate. This is not about works righteousness. When Jesus is Lord, we help our neighbors for their sake. We help them because they are beloved human beings, and we see the image of God in them. We see Jesus in them.

         Many gods compete for lordship in this world. And falling under the spell of some lesser lord is as easy as walking into some big-box store, or pressing a button on a TV remote, or getting overwhelmed into fear by all the changes and challenges around us.

When we follow Jesus, though, when we demonstrate his ways loving justice and fierce righteousness, we inhabit, by grace, the realm of God in which you, and I, and all humankind are welcome, and through which you, and I, and all humankind, and, indeed, all Creation are being transformed and restored.

         What lord do you trust?

In this heartbreakingly beautiful and broken world, whom do you follow?

 

¹The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Part I: Book of Confessions. Office of the General Assembly, 2016. Pp. 280-284. (Also online at: https://www.creeds.net/reformed/barmen.htm)

^2&3Ibid.

⁴Thanks to the late Rep. John Lewis for that term.

An Apocalypse of Grace (Sermon)

“An Apocalypse of Grace”

1Thessalonians 5:1-11

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/15/20

 

         1^st and 2^nd Thessalonians are almost universally considered the earliest New Testament writings. They’re also acknowledged as authentically Pauline. Paul writes them to a very new Christian community in a town that has proven rather inhospitable to the gospel. When his missionary work infuriates some prominent Thessalonians, Paul slips away under the cover of night and begins to preach in Berea in northern Greece. Further angered by Paul’s actions and success, the same Thessalonians hunt Paul down and persecute believers in Berea.

         Throughout his earliest letters to oppressed and nervous communities, Paul tells people to expect Jesus to return at—literally—any moment. And apparently, those Thessalonians who have escaped or survived persecution begin to worry about loved ones who had died while the wait dragged on. Will they have missed on the promises of the gospel?

         In 1Thessalonians, Paul seeks to calm the people’s fears and to renew their faith that God has neither abandoned them nor destined them for wrath. (1Thess. 5:9) In the verses immediately preceding today’s text, Paul assures the people saying that when the Parousia occurs, “the dead in Christ will rise first.” (1Thess. 4:16) I’m not sure how Paul knows that, but I do share his awareness that his words alone won’t bring peace to anxious hearts. The time for experiencing a gospel life is not in some utopian future. It is now—fully and intentionally engaged in the painful struggles and realities of the moment.

 

Listen for God’s Word.

Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. ²For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.³When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! ⁴But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; ⁵for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.

⁶So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; ⁷for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. ⁸But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. ⁹For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁰who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.

¹¹Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing. (NRSV)

 

         Scholars classify Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians as apocalyptic writing. Many people associate the word apocalyptic with images of an end-of-days Armageddon when good and evil finally settle the score in a violent, bloody showdown. Literally, however, apocalypse means a “revealing” of truth. As such, apocalyptic literature is, at its heart, a genre of hopeful proclamation and invitation.

Over the centuries, however, Christian preachers and teachers seem to have found that terrifying people into professions of “faith” is quicker and easier than the long, slow work of cooperating with an often frustratingly patient Holy Spirit who encourages and builds up disciples through more gracious means. Never captured in a conversion date written inside the front cover of a Bible, the Spirit’s work is a lifetime of life-to-death-to-resurrection-to-new life transformations.

         While Paul’s own conversion may have been dramatic and traumatic, he also seems to know that because his experience is the exception, it calls him to an exceptional ministry. To try to force extraordinary experiences on others inevitably results in manipulative, even abusive evangelism—and, therefore, manipulative and abusive religion. Such religion, the religion of demagogues, uses apocalyptic language to scare people into thinking that the end of the world is near and that the only way to avoid destruction is to make an immediate profession of faith and then to equip themselves for preemptive destruction of enemies. Only then will leaders—armed more with desperate rightness than holy righteousness—say to their people,Now “there is peace and security.” And yet that, says Paul, is precisely when everything falls apart.

The calamity is not something God inflicts as punishment. It’s something people bring upon themselves by “falling asleep,” by abandoning the sobriety of a more gracious apocalyptic life—that is, a Jesus way of life, the way of bringing “justice and righteousness” to the poor, the oppressed, and the outcast.

Ironically enough, and sadly enough, worldly demagogues often find more than willing support from religious demagogues who not only participate in the destruction, but do so in God’s name. Recall the cautionary tale of a “Christian” university president who whipped up his entire student body into a rapturous mass of drunken, narcoleptic fury by calling them all to arm themselves so that they could, with God’s blessing, “end those Muslims.”¹

         That’s not peace and security, says Paul. That’s death.

Instead of preparing for fearful violence, “Let us keep awake,” says Paul. “Since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and let us put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.”

This is remarkable. To a persecuted community, Paul says, Yes, there is suffering and pain in this world; but it’s not the result of God’s wrath. Nor does God call us to inflict wrath upon others—especially in God’s name!

Paul knows this all too well. Remember what he did before his conversion: He made a living by persecuting Christians in God’s name.

To Paul, since we’re here to receive, inhabit, and share the redeeming grace of the realm of God, living the faith, hope, and love of Jesus is the wakefulness of the Christian life.

         That’s just a whole lot easier to proclaim than it is to live, isn’t it?

         To understand the dissonance between the path to which God calls us and the paths human beings tend to follow, let’s look again at Paul’s image of sobriety. Self-serving motives and emotions can overwhelm and possess our brains. Waking up, like sobering up, is difficult and often painful work, because it requires the death part of the process of life-to-death-to-resurrection-and-new life. Ask anyone in recovery. Sobering up is a way of life. It’s not the moment one quits the addiction.

         I’m going to sing a song for you. I’ve sung this song in worship before, and it’s the story of an apocalypse of grace, a sleepwalker’s death to himself and the beginnings of his resurrection where he recognizes that encouraging others and building them up is to receive, to inhabit, and to share the redeeming grace of God’s kingdom.

The song leaves the story unfinished. It leaves the new-life story for us, the hearers, to pick up and live for ourselves, and for the sake of others.

 

Comfort of a Creed

w/m Allen Huff

©2020

 

Adam went to church most every Sunday

To thank his lucky stars for God above,

God helps those who help themselves, he heard the preacher say.

Now let’s sing a song of happiness and love.

 

In the parking lot a ragged man approached him.

Can you spare a buck for a piece of bread?

Adam stared right past the man disgusted.

I’ve got no change, so I’ll pray for you instead.

 

Chorus:

Oh, but all of us are hungry until all of us are fed.

Love is more than thoughts and prayers; it’s everything we share.

And compassion is the greatest gift to neighbor and to self.

We’re all in this together; if we share heaven, we share hell.

 

That night within a dream a thin hand beckoned,

Hollow eyes searched only to be seen.

To the sound of his own groaning Adam wakened.

In ceaseless tears he poured out all his grief.

 

He killed the fatted calf for familiar faces,

He gave to those deserving of a gift.

But when came the beggar dirty or the wino wasted,

He closed his heart and mind and clinched his fist.

Chorus:

 

Bridge:

In the morning at the mirror, Adam looked into his face.

He saw hunger in his own eyes and loneliness in his gaze.

He knew he’d starved himself when he denied his neighbor’s need,

And traded true religion for the comfort of a creed.

Final Chorus:

 

¹https://www.relevantmagazine.com/current/nation/trouble-jerry-falwell-jrs-words-violence/

Prophetic Stewardship (Sermon)

 “Prophetic Stewardship”  

Luke 21:1-4

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

11/8/20

 

He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; ²he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins.³He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; ⁴for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.” (NRSV)

 

         For some of us, Covid-19 may have turned stewardship season into something we’ve always wanted it to be—a discreet, minimalist affair. We’ve had to pledge as if following Jesus’ instructions on prayer: Isolate yourself in your room. Give privately, anonymously.

         On the whole, though, that’s not the way of Christian stewardship. What we do today is a prophetic aspect of our communal faith.

         The impoverished widow knew what isolation and anonymity felt like. Being poor and a widow in first century Jerusalem was like wearing Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. Her presence in the temple stirred the air about as much as the flutter of a fish’s eyelash. If we’d been there, we probably wouldn’t have noticed her, either. There would have been too much else to see, hear, and smell—merchants selling sheep and doves, Roman soldiers keeping a grim watch, Pharisees preening in their gilded robes, pilgrims from all over chattering loudly in their various languages and dialects.

Such pulsating carpe diem is a luxury beyond the woman’s imagination. Her life is far more about surviving than anything we might call “living.” Perhaps because of that, she has an angle on giving that the wealthy folk around her don’t. So, she wades into the wild cacophony of Passover preparation and whispers her two-cent blessing.

Giving out of acute need is very different from giving out of wealth and privilege, which often becomes a conspicuous exhibition. Giving out of poverty declares a person’s gratitude for their dependence on the Giver of all good gifts and an intrepid compassion for people in need. Giving out of poverty is a prophetic act. It proclaims, as Paul says, that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed.” (Romans 8:18)

         In practical terms, this woman’s gift is two pennies toward a multimillion-dollar budget. It’s pretty much useless. The sad and shameful irony is that it’s toward folks like her that God calls the temple to direct most of its earthly energies and money. At the deepest heart of it all, loving God means loving and caring for widows, orphans, strangers, and others in need.

         Isn’t that something? The impoverished one, whom the community is supposed to care for, teaches the community’s well-heeled leaders about the nature of true gratitude and generosity.

         While Jesus does make an enduring example of the woman, it’s still a sad commentary that she gives everything to the community that ignores her, that she empties herself for the sake of a broken institution.¹

Institutions can wield that kind of influence. And religious institutions have been notorious for manipulating people in the name of God. That’s one reason that Jesus is such a thorn in the Pharisees’ side. He challenges their understanding of who God is and what it means to be God’s people. Calling attention to the widow only sharpens that critique.

         Look at her, says Jesus. She gives all she has to the temple in spite of its failures. She offers all she has for the sake of the community, not because they have remained faithful to God, but because God has remained faithful to them.

         The Spirit continues to call the community to faithful worship and service. Jesus continues to lead us toward holiness. And God continues to do all this through the prophetic gratitude and generosity of people who, by some uncommon grace, have seen God’s presence in the community, and in humankind as a whole, and who refuse to give up on us.

We must still confess that, over the centuries, the church has traded Jesus’ prophetic life, and his call to go and do likewise for individualistic spiritualties of personal salvation. Such self-centeredness has paved a wide and winding road for superficial religion, for the belief that a person’s wealth and well-being conclusively declare God’s love for them.

People of religious faith who give out of material excess, or, as Jesus says, “out of their abundance,” often hold back because they fear losing material advantage. Theologically—for people like the Pharisees in Luke’s gospel, and for many much closer to home in our own day and time—to have less than more-than-enough means that God has judged or even forsaken them. When we structure our spiritual world that way, we reject any kind of lack or loss; and we can’t abide Jesus’ talk of the last being first, of experiencing blessedness in poverty, and of gaining one’s life by losing it.

         If I, as a member and a leader in a community, make my love of God contingent on personal ease and contentment, I will almost inevitably ignore God’s fundamental call to care for people like the widow who—giving from the fullness of her faith rather than the emptiness of her pocketbook—dropped her last two coins in the temple treasury knowing that the temple and its leaders will fail to be faithful stewards with her gift.

         Another compelling thing about this brief story is that the widow’s gift to the temple anticipates Jesus’ gift to us. Let’s face it: You, I, and the Church itself can all be as selfish, power-hungry, and hurtful to one another as the Pharisees and the temple were 21 centuries ago. And yet it was for them and for us—broken and beloved creatures all—that Jesus drops the two cents of his life into the great treasury of time. Knowing full well that even those closest to him will abandon him, Jesus does not withhold the fullness of his life. In an unforgettable act of prophetic stewardship, he empties himself in praise of God and in love for us, for all that, in God’s eyes, we are and can become.

Together, Jesus and the widow invite us into that same prophetic adventure. And this is more than a Consecration Sunday event; it’s a way of life, a continual emptying of our limited, imperfect selves into God’s loaves-and-fishes grace.

         As we think about what we will pledge, or have already pledged to God, some of us may think about all that we consider right or wrong with Jonesborough Presbyterian Church. I hope, though, that we all hear God’s call to live prophetic lives, lives that proclaim the holy “nevertheless” of faith. For while we’re not always faithful, God is. And what each of us dedicates today, we dedicate not simply to this church or to the people in it. We dedicate our gifts and ourselves to God so that we may be, together, a sign, foretaste, and instrument of God’s kingdom of justice, compassion, and grace.

Here and now, and in the days to come.

 

¹I no longer remember where I read this interpretation of this text, but I do remember that the idea of the widow’s gift to a broken institution came from the Rev. Pete Peery when he was serving as president of Montreat Conference Center. 

The Currency of Grace (Sermon)

"The Currency of Grace"

Matthew 22:15-22

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/18/20

 

¹⁵Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.¹⁶So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. ¹⁷Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

¹⁸But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? ¹⁹Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius.

²⁰Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”

²¹They answered, “The emperor’s.”

Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

²²When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.  (NRSV)

 

         The Pharisees have set a trap for Jesus, and they send underlings to do their dirty work. Maybe they think that Jesus is more likely to fall into the trap that way. Maybe he’ll wag his tongue a little more loosely with servants than he would with the guys wearing long robes decorated with tassels and fringes. So, the hapless minions approach Jesus and ask, Should we, the people of Israel, the chosen ones of God, who is King of the Universe, pay taxes to Caesar?

Dealing with messengers rather than the senders of the message, Jesus turns the encounter into a teachable moment. Speaking sharply yet with love for God and neighbor—even these neighbors—he makes a subtle but crucial distinction between those things which claim to bind us by worldly obligation and those things to which we bind ourselves in gratitude and love.

You frauds, says Jesus, show me a coin that Rome will accept as tax payment.They bring him a denarius, and Jesus says, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” The answer to both questions is the same: Caesar’s.

When citizens of Rome see the face and utter the name of Caesar, they know that they’re expected to regard the emperor as a god. Even the Jewish people are obliged to speak the name of Caesar with the kind of reverence reserved for the name so holy and unique in the universe that to speak it is to diminish it. Thus, did God’s people speak around Yahweh’s name, saying things like Jehovah, Adonai, or simply the LORD.

I imagine Jesus holding up that tiny coin and twisting it so that it catches and reflects the light of the sun. Then he says, in effect, Sure. Give this thing to Caesar. It’s his, and it has a lot in common with his deity. It’s nothing but an idol—a thin piece of metal, in and of itself devoid of value, and a source of more problems than solutions because to want and to own such things inevitably makes people treat each other like objects, like adversaries to overcome rather than neighbors to love.

With that, Jesus clears himself. If he yields to Caesar’s tax laws, he can’t be arrested for treason. Then, raising the stakes, Jesus says, Give Caesar his due, and “give…to God the things that are God’s.”

All those empty praises the messengers heaped on Jesus bear witness to reality. Jesus is truly sincere, truthful, and unmoved by flattery because he doesn’t get his worth from human affirmation or from some other outside source—like money. Money has value only when it’s backed up by something external to itself like gold, silver, or a nation’s economy. Jesus, and all who trust and follow him, know that human worth comes from the indwelling of God’s eternal presence. The image of God shines through them, through you and me, as a light from within. By grace alone, the beauty, creativity, and holiness of God are inherent in all that God has made. And because these gifts both permeate and transcend the whole Creation, we are free to value the earth and all that lives in it as sacred and ablaze with the presence of the Creator.

Whether they agree with Jesus or not, the messengers know that Jesus has spoken the truth. So, they leave him alone.

Caesar does have the political power to make taxation a matter of legal obligation. He can enforce that law with punishment for those who forget to pay or who try to evade the law. However, he has the authority to do so only as long as the coins with his name and face engraved upon them have value within and beyond the empire. Jesus juxtaposes that obligatory relationship with an alternative. Reaching into the realm of gift, gratitude, and response, Jesus’ authority challenges us to trade in the currency of God’s eternal grace. In the economy of Jesus, we exchange the God-faced coins of faith, hope, and love rather than the legal tender of selfishness and greed.

 The Stewardship and Finance Ministry Team has been working to change the way we manage congregational investments. Last Monday the ministry team met with the second of two representatives whom the committee is interviewing as prospective financial advisors. This particular person asked an extremely important question. He asked what kind of ministry goals we have in mind for our investments. I’m embarrassed to say that we had no good answer for that question, and much of that is on me. If a church’s leadership has no clear plan for the financial resources that people have given so freely and generously, then we’re just hoarding them. And to justify that, we call it a “safety net.”

When our Sunday school class worked with this passage last week, someone asked another good question: How big does a congregation’s safety net have to be before it becomes a buried talent? That person was referring to the parable of the talents recorded in Matthew 25 and Luke 19. In that parable, one servant buries his talent rather than using it for some purpose that furthers the interests of the man who entrusted his wealth to servants while he goes on a journey.

As a church, the obligation of taxation doesn’t apply to our income. However, if all we do with our investments is accumulate them—by taking advantage of laws that allow us not “to give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s”—then are we really giving to God “the things that are God’s”? In the coming months, discerning how to unearth and offer our talents will become a principal focus for the session.

The struggles of a community almost always mirror the struggles of the individuals within it, especially those in leadership. And we’re a congregation of primarily retired persons, people who were raised in a very different era and culture than we live in now, people who live on investments, and who recognize that their time is dwindling. And while investments are important, the God-created resource of time holds indescribable value because it is, for everyone, a gift that is both non-renewable and non-transferable.

Giving to God that which is God’s is about living gratefully, joyfully, and generously in the moment but with an eye always trained toward the future on behalf of generations yet to come. Because the present moment is saturated with the fearful and insatiable appetites of all manner of Caesars, it swarms with overwhelming human need, need created by relentless injustice and profound grief. When we as individuals and as a Christian community face that omnipresent need, our charge is to see Jesus’ own need—Jesus own face—manifested in the needs and the faces of “the least of these.” Responding to that need through loving word and servant-hearted deed is giving “to God the things that are God’s.” And while we do give from storehouses of dwindling time, unique talents and interests, and limited financial resources, God receives these God-given gifts, blesses them, and transforms our collective, mustard-seed offerings into a great hedgerow of abundance.

Three weeks from today we will consecrate the pledges we make to God through this congregation. As we think about what we will give—without obligation or entrapment—may each of us remember two things:

First, what we give and what we keep is God’s already.

And second, as followers of Jesus, we are dealing in the currency of grace, which, through the power of Resurrection, is non-taxable because it is inexhaustibly transferable and eternally renewable.

A Common Purpose (Sermon)

"A Common Purpose"

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

10/11/20

 

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. ²I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, ³for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? ⁴For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?

⁵What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. ⁶I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. ⁷So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. ⁸The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. ⁹For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building. (NRSV)

 

      So, for some reason!^*, I’ve had babies on my mind. Because of that, I feel some cognitive dissonance when Paul uses “infants” as an image of derision. Still, I have to understand his deep frustration with the Corinthians who are caught up in a cycle of petty “jealousy and quarreling.”

After planting a church, you see, Paul turns much of a new congregation’s nurture over to someone else while he moves on. During a visit to Ephesus, Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew whom Luke describes as a teacher of great eloquence, keen understanding of scripture, and “burning enthusiasm” had learned about Jesus through Priscilla and Aquilla. (Acts 18:24-28) Paul entrusts this gifted new disciple with leadership of the Corinthian church. And now, divided loyalties are causing a rift in the congregation. Some have so closely identified with Paul and others with Apollos that they no longer identify with God who had created all of them, and whom Jesus had revealed in a unique wholeness.

Calling the Corinthians to the carpet for their childishness, Paul says, You all still need to be nursed and bottle fed. You’re not ready for real food. You’re not ready for a meal you have to chew on carefully, savor gratefully, and share intentionally. You just want your bellies tighter than a tick on a bloodhound!

The Corinthian Christians’ hunger is a desire for power. One side thinks Paul offers the best chance to gain and hold authority, while the other side puts all its eggs in Apollos’ basket. Maybe one reason Paul is so frustrated is that he knows how that will play out. He knows that when the winds of change blow, human loyalties tend to shift, because people motivated by greed and fear will go wherever they think the milk will flow the easiest, and where they will get the most for themselves.

Playing authority figures against each other is a ploy as old as humankind itself. So, when Dad says No, the child pouts and walks away. Then he puts on a smile and says, Mom? Dad said I should ask you if we could get a puppy.

While that’s nothing more than childish manipulation, it’s also calculated espionage! Ben and Mercedes have done a good bit of rafting through the technical waters of the Nolichucky Gorge. Maybe some of the lessons they learned there will equip them for navigating the even trickier waters of Porter’s wily charms as he grows and encounters personal desires that pit his will against that of his parents. And there’s the rub: Their will. A shared will. Paul calls it the “common purpose.”

As Porter’s parents plant the field and water the crops of their offspring, they, like all parents, will need to find ways to commit themselves—lovingly, firmly, and, when necessary, sacrificially—to the “common purpose” of their son’s well-being. In parenting that may be a set of things more than any single thing. For Paul, however, when he writes to the Corinthians, he refers to a very specific common purpose: Faithfulness to “God who gives the growth.” Faithfulness is the purpose of the new faith community.

         Matthew’s gospel is known for drawing parallels between Jesus and Moses. It seems to me, though, that Paul has more in common with Moses than Jesus does. Paul is trying to help establish the new community, and he doesn’t have four gospels to study and to teach. He doesn’t have a narrative record of all that the first apostles said, did, and experienced. He doesn’t have an anthology of pastoral letters that have been accepted as inspired and authoritative, letters reflecting theologically on the life and ministry of Jesus, letters written to guide intentional communities based on faithfulness to God by following Jesus.

What Paul does have is an oral tradition. He has random and subjectively-remembered stories recalling Jesus’ remarkable presence. Paul also has his own transformative experience, including a kind of burning-bush encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. He has the memory of receiving care he didn’t deserve from a stranger named Ananias. Paul’s whole journey from sight-to-blindness-to-new vision has filled him with the conviction that Jesus is alive and present through the power of the Holy Spirit. Those experiences have kindled in Paul a new passion; he wants to live in faithfulness to God by helping to create a new, Christ-centered community, and to help lead that community into its own identity and place in the world. And it’s just inevitable that such a job will often feel like raising fussy, greedy children.

I think Moses could easily relate to Paul’s frustrations of trying to lead people in faithfulness to God while the people’s appetite for comfort and control sends them chasing after whatever seems to offer the best deal and the easiest meal. When a “common purpose” is reduced to everyone seeking their own best interests, “jealousy and quarreling” are only the beginning. Bitterness and chaos will soon follow because the people will be driven by an economics of scarcity rather than faith in God’s abundance. There will also be entire groups who will not simply be left behind in the pursuit of self-interest; they will be forbidden to seek their own well-being. Think of serfs in medieval Europe, African slaves in America’s antebellum south, and women around the world and throughout history.

Faithful commitment to a “common purpose” is always complicated. A common purpose requires the whole community to focus itself on a particular goal, both in the moment and for the future. That purpose also requires that each individual in the community claim and develop his or her or their own particular gifts. It requires that they be given room to process their own journeys of discovery, joy, and pain, and then to offer their unique perspectives to help broaden the community’s identity and deepen its mission. That’s why Paul will, more than once, compare the church to a body with many parts, all of which are integral to the common purpose of faithfulness to God through love of neighbor and earth.

         The common purpose to which Paul refers challenges us to celebrate both individuality and community. And there will always be tension between those two. The trick is to avoid entering that tension as competitors looking to defeat opponents, or selfish children looking to play a zero-sum game. One sign of authentic maturity is the ability, indeed the commitment, to understand tension as integral to any creative process. Tension is a central element of the Christian life, says Richard Rohr who defines “hope…[as] an ability to hold creative tensions.”¹

         So, to live the Christian hope means learning to trust that all our human efforts, as vitally important as they are, are simply acts of planting, watering, and nurturing. “God [gives] the growth,” says Paul. Growth, life, existence itself, these are mysteries God does. And as people of faith, we celebrate them, call attention to them, wonder at them, give thanks for them, and steward them. In things like music, poetry, medicine, engineering, and parenting, we even participate in them as co-creators through Christ; but we are not God. We witness to God and serve God when we speak and act gratefully, lovingly, humbly, and with a commitment toward justice and wholeness for all people and for this one and only one planet on which we all depend.

Indeed, we are merely the field. God is the infinite array of purposeful relationships and mysteries within the earth that make the field fertile.

May your life be as rich as a God-cultivated field. And may your most precious gift to the Creation be your love for the Creator.

 

^*Very early the morning of this sermon, October 11, 2020, my wife and I became grandparents for the first time.

¹Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York. 2011. P. 158. The complete paragraph is worth quoting: “In short, good leaders must have a certain capacity for non-polarity thinking and full-access knowing (prayer), a tolerance for ambiguity (faith), an ability to hold creative tensions (hope), and an ability to care (love) beyond their own personal advantage.”

Water-Logged Rocks (Sermon)

"Water-Logged Rocks"

Exodus 17:1-7

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/27/20

 

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. ²The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.”

Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?”

³But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?”

⁴So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

⁵The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. ⁶I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.”

Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. ⁷He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”  (NRSV)

 

         This summer, like most summers, had a few long dry spells. During each one, my gardener wife would stand over her rows of tomatoes, beans, okra, and squash and say, “We really need some rain.” Then she’d go turn the handle on the spigot, pick up the hose, and start watering her garden.

I suppose that getting water from the faux brick-on-concrete block foundation of a house isn’t any easier than Moses whacking a rock with a stick; it’s just a lot less dramatic. Then again, when you think about the whole process of drawing dirty water from the Nolichucky River, pumping it all the way to Jonesborough, purifying it, and delivering it into our homes day and night at the mere twist of a handle—well, if that’s not exactly a miracle, it’s certainly a wonder. And as long as a person pays her utility bills, she can trust that process to receive a God-given resource that every living thing requires for its existence.

It seems to me that trust is the fundamental issue facing the parched and anxious Israelites as they languish in the wilderness. And as much as we can sympathize with the Hebrews, their accusation that Moses is trying to kill them reveals their faithlessness. And since faithlessness is really nothing more than forgetfulness, let’s remember the context of this story.

The incident at Rephidim occurs right after God has parted the seas, turned bitter water into sweet water, and provided both manna and quail for the people. Though they have experienced God’s faithfulness in multiple situations, they still haven’t reached a place of trust. Because of their limited experience, God remains, primarily, a liturgical utterance—The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The people know of God, but they have yet to know God. They have yet to love and trust God.

          When our Sunday school discussed this passage, one person observed that the Israelites seem to be following Moses rather than God. So, they’re defined by their ongoing dependence on a fellow creature rather than their relationship with the Creator. So, while sweet water, manna, and quail are great, it takes a while for a few strokes of good luck to become a faith-building trend. It takes even longer to recognize the divine presence behind Moses’ leadership. And it takes longer still to trust that, whether Moses is present or not, God is, was, and will always be present in the life of the people.

That’s part of our faith struggle—learning to hear professions of faith not as wishful thinking but as the expressions of hearts at peace, hearts who trust that come what may, great joy or deep anxiety, God is present in the moment redeeming suffering, creating purpose, and calling us to lives of humble service and confident witness. This kind of trust-wrought wisdom is inherent in every authentic spirituality.

In discussing leadership in his book The Naked Now, Richard Rohr says that “wisdom is ‘the art of the possible.’ The key question is no longer ‘How can I problem-solve now, and get this off of my plate?’ It is ‘How can this situation achieve good for the largest number and for the next generations?’”¹

The Exodus is one long problematic situation for the Israelites. And as the leader, Moses often wants simply to get problems off of his plate so he can move on to the promised land God has told him about and about which he has told the Hebrews. And they will eventually find that land—more or less. As with all temporal nations, it will be a territory they never truly own because they take it by force and hold it only until a stronger people take it from them by force. And on it goes. And so, Israel’s faith will wax and wane depending on the number and magnitude of the problems on their plate at any given time.

As God’s Nation-Within-The-Nations, Israel often wearies of and abandons the call to help lead God’s good creation in the ways of justice, righteousness, compassion, and trust. And perhaps TRUST, more than any particular geographical location, is itself the Promised Land.

         Out there in the wilderness, bereft of trust and water, the Israelites lose sight of what has happened and what can happen. They’ve forgotten the Red Sea, the sweet water, the manna, and the quail. They’ve forgotten that God is with them in their thirst, and that God, whose providence can be trusted, is already on the other side of their need.

         For 21^st century Christians, who are accustomed to tap water, relating to this story means placing ourselves in it, and not just as Israelites. There’s room for us inside every element of the story.

         Like Moses, we are leaders charged with the burden of wisdom, with the work of discovering what is possible in our own wilderness and acting in faith to lead others simply by living the radical new vision called the household of God, a vision in which the schisms that pit us against each other become celebrations of our different gifts, and the sand castles of meritocracy give way to communities of grace built on the solid foundation of mutual human respect and love, and on bathing in God’s delight in all that God has made.

         We can see ourselves in Moses’ staff, something that Moses never uses as a magic wand for his own benefit, but which, at God’s command becomes both a symbol of and a conduit for the power of God touching the earth on behalf of people in need. That helps us understand why the staff is an essential image in Psalm 23, doesn’t it?

         As rock and water, we can bear witness to God as both an anchor of identity and the flow of life and liveliness, as both safe harbor and open-ended journey. As water-logged rocks, we encounter and embody a life-giving paradox—the concrete mystery of God’s incarnate presence in and for the world.

         Perhaps most importantly, as thirst itself, we live as ones who trust that our deepest desires are God’s own longings to be in relationship with us. “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in you,” wrote St Augustine. “I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you,” prayed Thomas Merton. 

         When we, as Christ’s body, join our voices in cries for justice and peace, we participate in the world’s thirst. And while we must participate in those thirsty cries, we can’t stop there. When protest becomes an end in itself, we reduce it to quarreling and testing. The faith community has more constructive roles to play. Like Moses, we intercede and advocate. We raise our staff and strike the jagged rocks of resentment, fear, and bigotry. We allow ourselves to be broken open so that through us the living water of Christ becomes a healing flow of humble welcome, truth-telling, and re-orienting relationship. We lead in acts of reconciliation, in demonstrations of confession, repentance, reparation, and resurrection. 

         Ours is a crucial, pivotal time, and as people of thirst-conscious compassion, as leadership staff in Christ’s new community of grace, as rocks saturated with living water, God calls us into a drought-weary world to speak and act with the love that casts out fear, the love that bears…believes…hopes…and endures all things, the love that never ends.

May we trust that love, whose name is Yahweh. And may we help bring water to a parched and anxious world.

 

¹Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. The Crossroad Publishing Company, NY, 2009. P. 158.