Divine Things/Human Things (Sermon)

 “Divine Things, Human Things”

Mark 8:27-35

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/12/21

 

²⁷ Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” ²⁸ And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” ²⁹ He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” ³⁰ And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

³¹ Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³² He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³ But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

³⁴ He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. (NRSV)

 

 

         Simon Peter. The Rock. Bold and brash to a fault. And faithful, too—even though when Peter denies Jesus on that dark Thursday night, he denies everything Christ-like in himself.

In Mark 8, Peter steps out in prophetic faith to declare out loud what others have surely begun to hope: Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Messiah. Jesus affirms Peter’s confession, and it seems to embolden the disciple all the more. When Jesus speaks of his suffering, rejection, and death, Peter grants himself authority to scold God’s Anointed One.

         With a blistering rebuke of his own, Jesus refers to Peter as “Satan”—The Adversary—and basically tells him to get lost. Then he says, “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

         My heart goes out to old Saint Pete. His mouth is not getting all that far ahead of his brain. He has seen Jesus do some pretty crazy things, and by and large, they’ve been human things. Peter has watched as Jesus touched, healed, and fed people. He has listened to Jesus teach through those grounded, earthy stories called parables. If Peter sets his mind on human things, who can blame him?

         Maybe the problem is that, at the moment, human things are all Peter sees. And Jesus is saying that it’s time to understand human things differently, because woven into the DNA of those tangible, earthy realities are strands of eternal holiness. And Jesus is holding his disciples accountable for recognizing divine things within human things. When he speaks of his imminent suffering, Jesus wants his followers to hear more than bad news. He wants them to smell the air, taste the water, and feel the sand beneath their feet in that new realm where Resurrection is reuniting and reconciling divine things and human things. If they fail to experience the eternal wrapped up in the temporal, then Friday may never become Good Friday for them.

         Ironically enough, setting our minds on divine things means looking ever more closely at the Creation around us and opening ourselves to those places where heaven and earth intersect. That place of intersection is what Incarnation is all about. And that means that revelation occurs when we realize that material and spiritual realities have transcended the limits we impose upon them. We watch them meld into one another like lovers. Such holiness is everywhere. There’s very little in God’s Creation which cannot, in some way, convey something of the divine things that Jesus invites us to see.

In her poetry, Mary Oliver captured the magnificent coexistence of Creator and Creation. And she found that beauty in the simplest gifts and experiences. Listen for the holiness in her poem entitled, “The Summer Day.”

 

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?¹

 

         When the poet looks at that grasshopper, and when that grasshopper looks back, when it eats from that human hand, the world’s beauty and wonder become more beautiful and wonderful. The concrete fact of that grasshopper’s existence reveals itself as sacred. Mary Oliver helps us to understand that to separate divine things and human things means denying the Incarnation.

What if we looked at each other that way? What if we made a deliberate effort to look at the holiness in each other? Would we be able to look past not just our differences, but past all those things that make us intolerant of differences? And would we be able to seek understanding and to create new community instead of always trying to win some kind of conquest over those with whom we disagree?

         Perhaps now more than ever, such efforts are crucial. And as disheartening as it can be even to imagine human beings coming together, the Gospel declares that healing is not only possible, it is underway.

Still, complications arise when we discover how threatening it can feel to practice Incarnational hope. The Holy Spirit, divine gadfly that she is, always leads us to live over against those institutions and attitudes we associate with security and even righteousness, but which ultimately hide the fresh workings of the divine within the Creation. And because we have so revered some of those institutions and so nurtured some of those attitudes, the journey of discipleship may feel, at first, like unfaithfulness.

Like Peter, Andrew, James, and John dropping their nets and leaving their families to fend for themselves.

Like the rich young man selling all he has, giving it to the poor, and following Jesus.

Like Ananias going to extend grace to that violent, Christian-persecutor named Saul.

Like God-imaged, white Christians who declare today that it is Jesus not politics who motivates us to affirm, in word and deed, that those specific, God-imaged human lives who live inside black and brown skin matter as much as those who live inside white skin, and that until we can live that affirmation, the phrase “all lives matter” is just a loophole against responsibility.

Jesus calls the burden of such journeys our cross, and taking up our cross necessarily includes dying to whatever separates us from the Divine Presence within us and within our neighbors. And as Richard Rohr often says, discipleship is not about “sin management.” As real and problematic as sin is, it is not our true essence. Sin obscures and distorts our awareness of the divine within us and within the world around us. So discipleship is about much more than avoiding sin—so that we can “go to heaven when we die.” It’s about living into the kingdom of heaven here and now with that person who sits next to you—the one whose perfume or cologne you smell, whose stomach you hear rumbling, and who may vote differently than you.

         A true disciple claims the holiness within herself and holds it up like a mirror so that her neighbor may see it in himself.

May we all, then, shoulder our crosses and die whatever deaths we must in order to see the holiness within ourselves.

May we die that more challenging death through which we see the holiness in others.

And through these gracious deaths, may we live as reflections of God’s eternal and here-and-now realm of Resurrection.

 

¹I searched the internet for Mary Oliver poems and found this one on a random poetry site. This piece appeared in New and Selected Poems – Volume 1, by Mary Oliver. Beacon Press, Boston. 1992.

We Are THEY (Sermon)

 “We Are THEY”

Mark 7:31-37

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/5/21

 

³¹ Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³² They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³ He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴ Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” ³⁵ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

³⁶ Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷ They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”(NRSV)

 

         One of the terrible but all-too-familiar stories associated with the pandemic—especially during the early days—is of Covid patients suffering in isolation. Many people stricken with the infection, lying unconscious on ventilators, died while family and friends had only phones and face-time apps to communicate with them. I can’t imagine the heartbreak of having to hold a phone rather than the hand of a loved one when the physical presence of those you know, trust, and love is itself the presence of God.

Those stories reminded me of something I witnessed in Malawi. When a Malawian adult or child falls ill, family and friends become the EMTs, ambulance service, food service, social workers, and HMO. Even when hospitalized, patients had to have their community around them to do everything except deliver medical treatment. While a patient lay in a crowded ward, her family and friends lived on the grounds of the hospital, cooking under the tin roof of a dirt-floored lean-to, washing clothes and sheets in a common wash pot, and sleeping under the trees. Only the most destitute in that destitute country received the meager hospital rations.

Without support, few Malawians survive for long. In a place of such acute poverty, every individual needs an attentive community, a responsive They.

         As Jesus returns to Galilee from the north, a proactive They brings to him a deaf man. Later, in Bethsaida, another They brings to Jesus a blind man. I imagine each They feeling as desperately hopeful as a Malawian family. And the Theys who bring the deaf and blind men to Jesus do not come to test him. They’re driven by a desire for healing. They want wholeness restored to the particular individuals. I also think they also desire wholeness for the community. As long as one of them is deaf or blind, there is a deafness or a blindness to the entire They.

         Shared suffering tends to be a difficult concept for people in individualistic cultures to comprehend, much less to embrace. Folks like us have been taught to attach much if not most of our identity to individual achievement, accumulating personal wealth, and avoiding suffering. I have to think, however, that the cultures represented and encouraged in biblical literature have much more in common with places like Malawi than the contemporary western world. Where resources, time, and suffering are shared more freely and generously, the culture itself, even if physically impoverished, experiences a strength and richness that individualistic cultures cannot understand. Indeed, even now, a kind of militant individualism is proving itself intolerant of those who seek to act for the good of the wider community. And isn’t the whole point of the Incarnation to declare that God is with us in our suffering as well as our joy?

Having said that, we all belong to peer groups. We identify with parties and agendas. We brand ourselves with the logos of schools, sports teams, corporations, denominations, and so forth. And yet, to many “first world” dwellers, the idea of being defined by the joys and sorrows, the strengths and weaknesses of some encompassing They seems as confining and anachronistic as a rotary phone. More dangerously, such associations are often despised as threats to individual freedom. It seems to me that, in general, western cultures, obsessed with I, tend to fear, judge, and condemn any true sense of We.

The Church, as an intentional community, is a clear and definite We. As a re-presentation of Christ to the world, we are the They which brings the deafness, blindness, and brokenness of the world to Jesus. We are the They who gives the voiceless a voice. Individualistic religion scorns all of that brokenness. It will say, in disgust, If you had enough faith, or if you were righteous enough, you wouldn’t be in that mess. At its most devilishly heartless, individualistic religion dismisses the world’s brokenness by saying, “Oh, don’t worry. God never gives you more than you can handle.” Like many of you, I’ve heard that phrase in hospital rooms, funeral homes, and from pulpits. Brothers and Sisters, please think carefully before you stab someone with that platitude. Maybe, sometimes, there are “good intentions” behind those words, but the person to whom it is said usually just hears, That’s your problem. Handle it yourself.

It is by grace that God calls us to recognize when one of us has become burdened with more than he or she can handle. God calls us to regard their suffering as our own. If we are part of the great They of faith, our vocation includes bringing individual and collective deafness and blindness to the Christ, and joining our voices in both pleading for help and offering healing. 

Over the years, I’ve heard many people say that they come to worship to recharge their batteries. And I understand that—to a degree. However, if we’re part of God’s created and creative They, then worship does more than recharge our batteries for our sake. Worship is about equipping the saints for tending to our hurting and over-burdened neighbors and environment. The point of worship—the point of praise, confession, prayer, and meditation—is to draw close to God so that we see God in all people, places, and times. Worship draws us closer together in holy community, closer to God for each other’s sake, and closer to each other forGod’s sake. In this renewing communion, our witness to God in Christ can become a magnificent harmony of distinct voices. And in that, our individuality is recognized, celebrated, and offered to God.

Many of us grew up hearing preachers build a verbal fence around the Lord’s Table. The words were exclusive and individualistic: This table is set for “believers” only. Generations ago, many pastors even examined their parishioners before a communion Sunday, and only those who survived his scrutiny were allowed at the table. More and more of us are using our words to build a bridge rather than a fence. There are just too many reasons for a congregation to serve as a holy Theywhich welcomes everyone to the table.

So, you may come in gratitude to praise God.

You may come in penitence to experience forgiveness.

You may come to reclaim your unique gifts and recommit your individuality to loving God, neighbor, and earth.

You may come to feel the embrace of a community of faith.

You may come to identify yourself with that community, with the body of Christ.

You may come to receive a reminder of God’s faithfulness to you in some season of sorrow, illness, loneliness, or grief.

You may come to make peace with God after some painful experience when it seemed that you were, indeed, given more than you could handle.

You may come out of an unbreakable habit.

You may even come out of simple curiosity.

Whatever your reasons, come. Come and find your place in God’s gracious They in and for the world.

Who Are You? (Sermon)

“Who Are You?”

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/29/21

 

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, ² they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. ³ (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; ⁴ and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.)

⁵ So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

⁶ He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me;
⁷ in vain do they worship me,
    teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

⁸ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

¹⁴ Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵ there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” (NRSV)

 

 

         Jesus has crossed the sea and gone to Gennesaret—again. To hang out with Gentiles—again. Some Pharisees and scribes show up to try to catch Jesus failing to live as a good Jew—again.

         This time the Jewish leaders take offense at Jesus’ disciples eating with “defiled hands.” Now understand, they’re not worried about those hands being “dirty” in any literal sense. The Pharisees and scribes watch as self-affirming, practicing Jews press the flesh with Gentiles, and then sit down to eat with them. This offends the purists.

Eating is more than a mere necessity. As a revelatory, community event, table fellowship is deep-fried in the oil of holiness because in it, human beings profess their grateful and absolute dependence on God’s gracious provision. Remember, we don’t control the mystery that makes the earth grow the beans. All we do is plant the seeds and bake the casserole. In ways more obvious than circumcision, kosher food laws distinguish God’s people and remind them that they are a unique reminder of God in and for the world.

         When we hear the Pharisees and scribes ask Jesus why his disciples so blatantly flout Jewish custom, we can rephrase their question in three words: Who are you?

It’s a matter of identity.

         Did you ever have a parent or grandparent tell you, as you left the house, “Remember who you are!”? Now, that admonition often gets salted with guilt, especially when the one offering it fears embarrassment. When fearfully spoken, it tends to do more harm than good. Indeed, it becomes a kind of defilement. However, when it flows from a place of love and belonging, it reminds us that who we are is not a matter of laws and guilt, but of community, gratitude, and grace.

         In one respect, our state of being at any given time, with all our flaws and foibles, is “who we are.” But the Gospel declares this to be an incomplete truth. It’s incomplete because who we are cannot be separated from who we are becoming. So Paul writes to the church at Corinth: “If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17)

That new creation is always in process. Who we truly are is who we arebecoming in Christ.

         Now, the Pharisees deserve some credit. They serve as recipients and stewards of a tradition that aims to help God’s people maintain a distinctive identity in worldly cultures that can be both terribly threatening and wildly seductive. If that identity fades, Israel cannot fulfill her God-given purpose of serving as a reminder of holiness and a source of blessing.

         The Pharisees’ question comes from a place of deep commitment. Who they are as Jews is tied closely to what they do. Jesus understands this, a he doesn’t disagree. And trying to love them from stuck to unstuck, he turns the question back at them. He seeks to deepen and broaden their already significant commitment.

Well, just who are you? he says. You’re like a bunch of actors who are stuck in a script of your own creation. And your script has lost its story line.

         This is God’s script! And God’s script is a story, an ongoing journey. And neither God’s story nor our participation in it can be bound by any static tradition.

         Jesus challenges the Pharisees to face the ways in which they’ve become hemmed in by Law—hemmed in so tight, in fact, that who they are is little more than the fear they feel at any given moment.

You've given up on Exodus, says Jesus. You're mired at Sinai. You've stopped becoming the dynamic people and storied community that God calls and empowers you to become.

         Then, cutting to the chase, Jesus says, It's not what you fence out that makes you who you are. It's the outpouring of faithfulness or foulness from within that makes the difference.

Jesus is saying that we reveal who we are and who we are becoming through the love we express for family, neighbor, enemy, and earth. What matters, what counts is how we celebrate their joys and weep at their pain.

         As followers of Jesus, you and I are not the rules we keep or the dogma we proclaim. We are the organic faith, hope, and love we enjoy and share.

         “The world” doesn’t care for real Jesus-followers. They’re dangerous, subversive. They don’t just pray; they embody prayer. They don’t just sing songs; they inspire them. They don’t just talk about justice; they do justice.

“The world” seems to be okay with church folk, though. It’s okay with folks who abide by rules and protect hierarchies and impose such things by force of fear. “The world” is okay with folks who give to charity without asking why the inequities and poverty even exist. And “the world” seems to love it when church folk make religion and nationalism synonymous.

         It is to the church folk in each of us that Jesus refers when he quotes Isaiah, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

         When we open to the Christ within and among us, we set out on a path of becoming rather than remaining in the stagnant is-ness of who we think we are. And “the world” may try to discredit or even silence us, because Jesus threatens its comfortable status quo.

         When we open to the Christ within and among us, there arises, from our becoming hearts, the identity-declaring, kingdom-revealing grace of God. And out of that heart there arises courage to live and speak God’s eternal and transforming truth in a world in which truth is mangled into whatever idea supports one’s own prejudices and soothes one’s own fears.

         We know some of the names of people who looked the beast in the eye and spoke enduring truth: St. Francis of Assisi, Frederick Douglass, Elie Wiesel, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Malala Yousafzai.

Rather than recounting one of these familiar stories, this morning I share with you a prayer by Ted Loder, a United Methodist pastor and preacher. As you hear this prayer, examine your own life, and imagine the ways that God is calling you to become more fully who you are as a human being rooted and grounded in the love of Christ.

And remember, God is not through with you.

You are still becoming.

 

“Go with Me in a New Exodus”

O God of fire and freedom,
deliver me from my bondage

to what can be counted
and go with me in a new exodus

toward what counts,

but can only be measured

in bread shared

and swords become plowshares;

in bodies healed

and minds liberated;

in songs sung

and justice done;

in laughter in the night

         and joy in the morning;

in love through all seasons

and great gladness of heart;
in all people coming together

and a kingdom coming in glory;

in your name being praised

and my becoming an alleluia,
through Jesus the Christ.¹

 

¹Ted Loder, Guerillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle, Augsburg Books, Minneapolis, 1981. p. 117.

Realigning Love (Sermon)

 “Realigning Love”

Ephesians 4:1-16

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/8/21

 

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ² with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

⁷ But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. ⁸ Therefore it is said,

“When he ascended on high

he made captivity itself a captive;

he gave gifts to his people.”

⁹ (When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? ¹⁰ He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.)

¹¹ The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ¹⁴ We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. ¹⁵ But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. (NRSV)

 

         Paul seems to have accepted a prison cell as his primary office and prayer closet. He does much of his best work while incarcerated for having affirmed the lordship of Christ in a culture ruled by Caesars who declare themselves—quite literally—divine, and who expect their subjects to treat them accordingly. A god-complex seems to be characteristic of despots and tyrants who demand absolute loyalty and uniformity.

So, Paul’s preaching naturally creates social and political backlash, because, in proclaiming Resurrection, he acknowledges God as the ultimate authority in Creation, and he affirms the holy beauty of God’s diverse humanity—female and male, Gentile and Jew, poor and rich, immigrant and resident. Paul knows that speaking this truth will cause many to charge him with getting political because the grace of God always defies the ideals and arrangements that allow Caesars and Pharaohs to try to bend the world to their desires.

Undeterred, Paul speaks God’s truth in love and urges all followers of Jesus to do the same. In his letter to the Ephesians, he “begs” the congregation not only to speak the truth in love, but to demonstrate God’s truth in their living. “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” he says, and “with all humility…gentleness…patience…[and] love…maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Paul is calling his readers to far more than being nice. He’s calling them to let go of prejudices, fears, and misplaced allegiances, and to receive each other in the name of God’s Incarnate Love. He’s calling them to open themselves to each other the way God opens to us in Christ. And he’s calling the church to grow in witness through a radical transformation that endangers the community even as it grows.

          Paul reminds the Ephesians that even Jesus experienced this endangering grace. “When it says, ‘He ascended,’” writes Paul, “what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth?” In the Apostles’ Creed, when we say, “he descended into hell,” we acknowledge that Jesus bore, in his own body, the full weight of humankind’s brokenness. He bore our selfishness, our meanness, our love of violence. And I do not believe that his death had to happen to appease a god who is just as selfish, mean, and violent as we are. Any god who can become so powerlessly offended as to need to watch a beloved son experience betrayal and crucifixion just to be able to love again, well, such a god is just that, a god, a small-g god—a projection of our own self-serving fears. All such idols, just like all the world’s Caesars and Pharaohs, dismiss as weakness the humility, gentleness, patience, love, and unity that Paul implores the Ephesians to demonstrate as they struggle with disunity.

I hear Paul calling us to trust that through Christ we can overcome the things that divide us by seeing each other as bearers of God’s holy image rather than bearers of issues. We begin by seeking the Christ in each other, and only then can divisive arguments become healing conversation.

Such unity, however, is something for which we must work. Hard. Intentionally. Every day. And we have to learn to fail with grace because, from time to time, we will, inevitably, succumb to all the things that run counter to Paul’s teaching. We’ll succumb to pride, violence, greed, fear, and tribalism.

The paradox of our unity in Christ is that it’s both eternal and tenuous. As permanent as God’s love is for us, and as sure as God’s love will, finally, prevail, humankind just can’t keep from competing with each other, making and destroying enemies, and generally finding more reasons to fear rather than to love each other. And Paul calls such behavior childishness.

While there is great virtue in child-like-ness, that is in living in wonder, trust, and hope, there’s no virtue whatsoever in selfish grasping. That’s why, when Jesus’ disciples argue with each other about who is the greatest, he says that to follow him they must become as children, and welcome each other as they welcome children. (Matthew 18:1-5)

At the core of Paul’s teaching is his own commitment to follow the welcoming ways of Jesus in a world that condemns those ways as naïve and foolish. And in Ephesians, he says unequivocally, “We must no longer be [childish], tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s…deceitful scheming.” 

         Don’t listen to those who sow seeds of hate, cries Paul. Our loyalty is to Jesus alone! And that means acknowledging God in every human being and in all of Creation. (Romans 1:20-21)

         Again, I’m under no illusions about how difficult, or even how dangerous it can be to profess faith in and loyalty to Christ above all else. All around us and among us there rages an escalating contest for control. And it seems that as the Church gets caught up in the deceitful scheming, in this devastating sibling rivalry, Jesus is being kidnapped and co-opted by competing sides. Even followers of Jesus have accepted the assumption that there must be winners and losers. In our public discourse right now, that assumption is making us treat each other like adversaries whom we must conquer rather than brothers and sisters with whom we must live, on whom we must depend, and in whom we are called to see the image of God. And as different as we may be, even more so are we gifted, called, and equipped by God. And only as we develop and share those gifts do we, as Paul says, “come to the unity of the faith…to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”

         Porter Taylor, a former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western NC, wrote that when Paul speaks of God’s gifts equipping the saints, he’s not talking about people “accumulating skills or knowledge.” Taylor points out that the Greek word translated “equip” derives from a word which means things like to set a bone and to reconcile.¹

“To grow in one’s ministry,” says Taylor, “is to align oneself with God’s intentions, both individually and corporately.” That means that the standard against which we measure ourselves is Jesus’ standard of love.

So. Maybe. If we can see ourselves more like broken bones in the same body than distinct bodies in competition with each other, then there is hope for us. We become our truest selves only in loving relationship to each other.² We become the unified body of Christ only when we align our broken selves in mature, compassionate, justice-seeking, Christ-like love for each other, for the earth, and for those who are, as Jesus says, hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, andimprisoned. (Matthew 25:31-46)

Brothers and sisters, we may argue about exactly how to demonstrate the re-aligning love of God in Christ. But we don’t have time to argue about whether or not to do so.

May we go into the rest of this day, and into all the coming days with fresh commitment to claim our gifts, to celebrate those of others, and to discover the unity, the peace, and the hope that God is offering to us in Christ.

 

¹G. Porter Taylor, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. p. 304.

²Ibid.

The Bread of Life (Sermon)

“The Bread of Life”

John 6:24-35

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/1/21

 

²⁴ So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

²⁵ When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”

²⁶ Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. ²⁷ Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.”

²⁸ Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?”

²⁹ Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

³⁰ So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? ³¹ Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

³² Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³ For the bread of God is that which^[a] comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

³⁴ They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

³⁵ Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (NRSV)

 

         John’s gospel begins with its unforgettable prologue: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things came into being through him…What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”

         From the outset, John invites his readers to engage their poetic sensibilities, because he will present Jesus far more as the resurrected Christ than some peasant rabbi from Nazareth.

         While this holds true to some extent for all four gospels, it’s particularly true for John who layers everything in his story with multiple meanings. For instance, when the crowd, whom Jesus had recently fed on a grassy hillside says, “Rabbi, when did you come here,” we can almost feel John begging us to ask, What does “here” mean? Does it mean here on this side of the lake? Here in Galilee? Here in the height of Rome’s power? Here on earth? And it’s intentional when John’s Jesus doesn’t really answer any of those questions.

         You’re not looking for me, says Jesus. You just want more bread. Quit wasting your time! If you’re going to run all over the place looking for bread, be sure it’s bread that lasts.

         When the crowd continues to push Jesus for oven-baked bread, he says, I am the bread! The Bread of Life! Follow me. Trust me. And you’ll never be hungry or thirsty again.

         Never hungry or thirsty? What would that feel like? When people lose the urgency of hunger and thirst, they’re either freshly in love, clinically depressed, or actively dying. Hunger is one of those physiological realities that makes us human. We must eat. Eating reminds us of our mortality. Indeed, one reason we pray before eating is to acknowledge that our lives are dependent upon not just the food we eat, but the deaths we eat. Whether it’s a cow, a fish, a tomato, or tofu, every time we sit down to eat, something has died so that we might continue living.

         Again, though, that’s not the kind of hunger Jesus wants the people to feel. He’s talking about a deeper hunger. I am the bread of life, he says. I am the loaf that has been mixed, kneaded, and risen.

         The crowd seems unable to digest all these metaphors. And here John frustrates me a little. He treats the people of Jesus’ day like metaphorically-challenged oafs. But let’s remember that the community to whom John writes lives a century out from the experience of Jesus. So, the people about whom John writes haven’t heard, much less made sense of the whole “In the beginning was the Word” theology. They don’t get it—not yet. And that’s okay.

         In a few moments, we will celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. We’ll give thanks for the life, death, and new life that gives new life to our own lives and deaths. We’ll talk about Jesus being our host. We’ll use flesh and blood language. If not all of this makes sense, if we don’t get it, that’s okay. In the Church, we try to talk about holy and eternal things by using something as limited and limiting as human language and physical symbols, and our language and symbols point beyond themselves to deeper layers of meaning.

         Years ago, on one of my mission trips to Malawi, I noticed an elderly, Malawian woman sitting on the ground, alone, in the sun, just outside the hospital where we were working. The woman was clothed entirely in black. The skin of her face and hands was a dark, leathery maze of deep lines and creases. She gazed into the distance with a vacant stare that could have been deep sadness or deep prayer–or both.

         She held a single piece of bread that had obviously been part of a larger loaf. It wasn’t even a handful, but she held the little chunk of bread in one hand and pulled pieces off of it with the other. She raised each bite slowly to her mouth and chewed just as slowly. The aching humility of the sight caught my attention and my imagination.

         Now, I may have burdened that memory with a weight that the moment did not have; but, for me, it was like a rose petal, one thin layer of something that was more than it seemed because it was part of a larger and more beautiful whole. On the one hand, that moment reminded me that we’re all more deeply connected than we might seem on the surface. So, in the real-time, concrete details of that moment, I sensed something holy, something sacramental, at work.

         On the other hand, that one small piece of bread may well have represented the woman’s rations for the day. It may have stood between her and a hunger from which she might not recover. And because Malawians are generous, community-oriented people, she may have had such a small piece because she had shared the rest of the loaf with others. You and I often live to eat, so, we can’t really imagine what a small piece of bread represents to people who are so hungry that Jesus calls them “blessed.” (Luke 6:21)

         When we take communion, we’ll eat a wafer so thin we may barely feel it in our mouths; but it is the Bread of Life for us. As the body of Christ, it stands between us and a hunger that no other bread can satisfy. We’ll also take a sip of grape juice from a cup no larger than a thimble; but it is the life-blood of God’s covenant of grace.

         As we saw a few Sundays back, the bread Jesus offers is given not just to satisfy, but also to make us hungry.¹ And when we feel that satisfying, spiritual hunger, a new world opens up—the world of God’s Household. And God’s realm is often a wafer-thin place, but transformation happens there. Even the simplest, most ordinary moments become moments of extraordinary holiness and possibility. And the simplest and most ordinary human life—our lives—can become revelations of the love and grace of God.

         I can’t make you believe or understand any of that. I can’t make you experience the grace of this table. I can only invite you to come to a simple meal where Christians have—at least at times—experienced a taste of God’s holy realm.

         So come. And even if you don’t feel that you had some new experience of grace, keep coming. And I pray that as you continue to visit this table, bringing with you the joys and sorrows of your day-to-day lives, you will taste something more filling than a crumb of bread, something more satisfying than a thimbleful of grape juice, something that calls you to trust and empowers you to follow God’s Christ in his gracious ways of forgiveness, justice, and peace.

 

¹https://jabbokinthefoothills.blog/2021/07/11/the-hungering-of-the-5000-sermon/