Trust and Love (Sermon)

“Trust and Love”

1John 3:16-24

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

4/26/15

         New Testament scholar David Bartlett says that the first epistle of John and the Gospel of John were written by different people. Bartlett also says that the letter was almost certainly written as an early commentary on the gospel. In an effort to invigorate a new generation of disciples, First John continually addresses the two great Johannine themes of believing in Jesus as the Logos, the Incarnate Word of God, and loving one another as we are loved by Jesus.¹ In the third chapter of First John, the writer joins the themes of Belief and Love at the hip.

“And this is [God’s] commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another…And by this we will know that we are from the truth.”

Belief and Love precede, accompany, and derive from each other. And the continual practice of each leads to the ever-deepening of both.

         Before going further, let’s substitute the word Trust for Belief. It conveys the intent of both the gospel and the epistle far more accurately, because Trust demands more than “belief,” more than mere intellectual assent. Trust implies a relationship, and a history of vulnerability with the person or thing trusted.

If my only concern is whether you “believe” certain things in certain ways, I will prescribe formulas for you to regurgitate. I will create categories to determine whether you are in or out. Instead of loving you, instead of listening to you and honoring our kinship, I keep my sword of judgment ready to cut you off as wrong or to demean you as unintelligent. If I am consumed by the differences between what you and I believe, then whether conservative or liberal, all I trust is my ability to condemn those who disagree with me. In that case, I love noting more than my hopelessly idealized projections of things like my religion, my denomination, my country, my political party, my GM vs. your Ford, the bold red and black of my GA Bulldogs vs. the white and orange crème of your TN Volunteers.

The writer of First John lives in a world that is just as uncertain and dangerous as our own, and yet his concern is that followers of Jesus not lose sight of those whom Jesus sees. He knows that when we live by superficial divisions, we go blind and bankrupt. When we define all that is true and good in the world through fear and prejudice rather than through God’s indwelling Spirit, we lose sight of the humanity in one another, and we lose sight of the human beings around us, particularly those who are in need.

When we define all that is true and good in the world through fear and prejudice rather than Trust and Love, our wealth is purely material and self-serving. Aware of this, the writer asks: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?”

         Trust grows when we learn to recognize God’s abiding Love within us, and when we learn to give ourselves away in Love. And Love grows the more we Trust the sure and certain, yet unprovable God.

         In the luxuriant dance of Trust and Love, we experience God, and the experience is subjective and interpretive. It becomes a matter of memory and hope. The immediate things: health, wealth, and happiness are wonderful. In a perfect world we would all enjoy these things all the time. That world does not exist. Neither Jesus nor his disciples experience it. And he certainly never promises anything even approaching perfection – not for this life.

“If the world hates you,” says the Johannine Jesus, “be aware that it hated me before it hated you.” (John 15:18)

The beatitudes of Luke are stark and sobering: “Blessed are the poor…Blessed are you who are hungry now…Blessed are you who weep now…Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on [my] account.” (Luke 6:20-22)

It seems to me that the only way to live as faithful witnesses to the kingdom of God in a broken world kowtowing to idols of wealth and power is to try to live in community with the whole creation according to the ways of Trust and Love. And since it really can be a scary and unjust world, there is only one way to do that. As the writer of First John says, we “lay down our lives for one another.”

The phrase “laying down our lives” conjures up particular images in many minds. For us, as followers of Jesus, those images are not the images preferred by Caesar. When laying down his life, Jesus never causes another to lay down his or her life in any violent fashion. And Jesus does not “lay down his life” for us on Good Friday alone. He lays down his whole life. He lives and breathes, eats and sleeps, works and plays as God’s fullest expression of self-emptying, unsentimental Trust and Love.

Some years ago, a friend of mine named Don went on a mission trip to Uganda. He went because his daughter was going. It was a well-organized, group trip, but he still felt uneasy about her making the trip “all alone” to a place which is surrounded by volatile countries like Sudan, Congo, Kenya, and Rwanda. During the visit, Don spent some time talking with a group of Ugandan pastors whose ministry took them back and forth across the boundaries with some of the countries I just mentioned. These were high-risk journeys, and the pastors traveled in the safety of prayer, not armor.

“Don’t you worry?” Don asked. “Isn’t that extremely dangerous?”

One pastor looked at Don and said, “You must understand, my American friend, we are laid down lovers of Jesus Christ. We go wherever he calls us.”

I would paraphrase the pastor’s response this way: We Trust Jesus because we Love him. And we Love him all the more for Trusting him to lead us, even in the face of death.

Trust and Love. These are the seeds and the fruits of far more than belief. They are both the parents and the offspring of “truth and action.” Through the gift of the indwelling Spirit of Christ, we are capable of this holy and holistic Trust and Love. We are capable of seeing those in need and sharing with them the spiritual blessings of welcome, and the material blessings of enough.

Learning to live according to the demands of Trust and Love takes years of trial and error. It ages us. But with faithful effort comes a wisdom we cannot generate by ourselves. On this Senior Adult Sunday, I call our attention to the book of Proverbs: “The glory of youths is their strength, but the beauty of the aged is their gray hair.” (Proverbs 20:29) “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.” (Proverbs16:31)

God alone is righteous. And because it is God’s Spirit who animates us, we all have the capacity to Love one another as God Loves us. God calls us to Trust this promise. It is resurrection’s daily miracle for us and through us.

What do Trust and Love demand of you today?

Where will Trust and Love lead you tomorrow?

¹Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 2, Lent through Eastertide, David Bartlett, Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. Westminster/John Knox Press, 2008. “Exegetical Perspective,” David Bartlett, p. 443.

Intelligibility Cloak (Sermon)

“Intelligibility Cloak”

1 John 1:1-2:1

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

4/19/15

         In the Harry Potter stories, the young wizard and his hired wands are always trying to solve some mystery at Hogwarts. In one of the episodes, Harry does some of his sleuthing by creeping around under the cover of an “invisibility cloak.” As soon as Harry wraps himself in this cloak, both he and the cloak disappear. Unless he sneezes or bumps into something, he can move around unnoticed. It is a wonderful and dangerous prospect, isn’t it?

I am coming to view the scriptures of our faith tradition as one of Heaven’s and Earth’s signature attempts to throw an intelligibility cloak over the eternal mystery we call God. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, scripture is our daring adventure of taking something as beautiful and artful, but also as limited and culturally nuanced as language and casting it like a great shroud over the invisible realities that give human experience meaning. As people of faith, we presume to do this because we believe that we have encountered more than meets the eye, and more than makes sense to the mind. We believe that underneath all of our laws, poetry, stories, and human reasonings we are beginning to discern the presence, and maybe even the very shape of God.

This is why I find the opening lines of First John so compelling. John does not open this letter with the grand formality we see in Paul. John begins this letter with a kind of awestruck giddiness. I imagine him sitting down to write this epistle immediately after some transforming epiphany – an experience in which he has peeked beneath the intelligibility cloak. He has caught a glimpse of the form and substance of eternity in all its tangible and earthy holiness.

The older I get, and the longer I live in this astonishingly beautiful part of God’s creation, the more Celtic I become in my own faith. For over 1500 years, Celtic Christianity has celebrated and taught the presence of God in and through the natural world. The created order is the ultimate intelligibility cloak, and scripture aims to help us see and love God in self, neighbor, and earth. The Celtic heart delves deep beneath the two stories of creation in Genesis, into the wonder of the psalms and poetic prophecies, and even of the Apostle Paul who says that “Ever since the creation of the world [God’s] eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things [God] has made.” (Rom. 1:20)

Of course, nothing is more important to Celtic spirituality than the dizzying holiness of God’s willful incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth. You and I are made of the very same good stuff through which the Creator chooses to be immediately and intimately present with the creation.

Phillip Newell, a contemporary spokesperson for Celtic Christianity, quotes the 14^th century mystic Julian of Norwich who said that “We come from the Womb of the Eternal. We are not simply made by God; we are made ‘of God.’”¹

         This becomes real for me every time Marianne and I go to the woods. Last Friday we hiked in the Cherokee National Forest near Clark’s Creek, and as we walked, both of us felt, again, the tangible, the audible, the blatant holiness of the earth. The woods were at the peak of their spring renaissance. Trillium, foam flower, dwarf iris, purple, yellow, and white violets – these are just a few of the wildflowers radiating joy and hope. Recent rains had those cold creeks running high and fast. We heard their song with every step.

And oh, the green! To my eyes, no other color compares to the bright, shimmering, liquid green of new growth. And it is not just about the newness of spring. To walk among all that vertical magnificence of mature, even ancient trees is to walk among creatures whose roots run deep and wide. If we could remove the soil and look at the intertwining roots of the trees, shrubs, flowering plants, and grasses, we would lose our breath at the exquisite perfection of the communities beneath our feet. Some day, humankind may create “artificial intelligence,” but we will never engineer root systems to match the accomplishments of God.

The physical realities of the earth feed us, and clothe us, and heal us. They give us not only work to do and games to play, but reason to work and to recreate – to re-create. The earth unites us in our dependence and our interdependence. As earthly creatures, each of us is utterly unique and valuable, and yet like oaks, hickories, firs, rhododendron and sassafras all make one forest, as profoundly diverse individuals, we make one humanity. God is the Soil, Sun, and Rain, the Life and the Death that holds us together. We come from and return to God. To channel Julian of Norwich, at a very deep level of truth, a level not obvious to the literal eye or ear, we who cannot be finally divorced from God exist as a tangible, audible, and blatant expression of God.

When truly operating as spiritual community, we recognize that our lives are intertwined like the roots beneath us. Like the forest, we are a place rich in playful and flowering new growth, in majesty and maturity, in flowing streams, and even in the spongy, fragrant fertility of rot. The presence of God teems around us and within us. This is what has John so excited.

Listen again to the opening words of his letter. I read this time from the J.B. Phillips translation: “We are writing to you about something which has always existed yet which we ourselves actually saw and heard: something which we had an opportunity to observe closely and even to hold in our hands, and yet, as we know now, was something of the very Word of life himself! For it was life which appeared before us: we saw it, we are eye-witnesses of it, and are now writing to you about it. It was the very life of all ages, the life that has always existed with the Father, which actually became visible in person to us [mortals]. We repeat, we really saw and heard what we are now writing to you about. We want you to be with us in this—in this fellowship with the Father, and Jesus Christ his Son. We must write and tell you about it, because the more that fellowship extends the greater the joy it brings to us who are already in it.”

That could almost make a Presbyterian shout “Amen!”

Now, John’s experience with Jesus may have taken him beneath the intelligibility cloak, but John is not in a state of schmaltzy denial. He sees how sin dehumanizes the poor, how it oppresses the weak, how it exploits the earth. He sees how power rationalizes its rampant abuses, because the Jesus he loves endures crucifixion. But Jesus suffers the wrath of corrupt worldly power to prove its impotence. His life, death, and resurrection reveal that all of our violent, fearful, retributive brokenness is just that. It is ours. God does not demand blood as a penalty for offense, nor as a prerequisite to or a restoration of holy Love. Any god who needs brutal “satisfaction” in order to restore its capacity to love is an idol. Jesus saves us by delivering us from cruel religion as well as brutal powers. Richard Rohr states the redeeming work of Jesus this way: “Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity, but to change the mind of humanity about God.”²

The truth of resurrection has given John the strength to stand in the midst of all that is broken and say, ‘Yes, sin is a reality in this world. To deny it is to delude ourselves. But sin is not our fundamental nature. Brokenness is not the land of our birth. It is not our DNA. God is!’

First John is a letter from home. Like a walk in the wilderness, it is a breathtaking reminder that we live as a kind of intelligibility cloak in, with, and for the creation. We are an expression of the Love of God. And when we as a church intentionally live together in that promise, differences and all, warts and all, for better or worse, we are a welcoming forest. We are an ecosystem of life, death, and resurrection.

We are an intelligibility cloak in and for the world. Our calling is to help reveal the eternal and ever-present kingdom of God. Here. Now.

¹J. Phillip Newell, Christ of the Celts, Jossey-Bass, 2008, p. 68

²Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, Jossey-Bass, 2013, p. 150.

To Galilee (Easter Sermon for 11:00am Service)

“To Galilee”

Mark 16:1-8

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Easter Sunday 2015 (11am)

         The ending to a story can determine whether that story is meant merely to entertain, or if it has the power to transform. If a story aims only to entertain, it often ends by tying things up in some tidy little bow – usually some version of “happily ever after.” If a story is told because it holds transforming power, the ending is never neat and tidy. It leaves loose ends hanging, or it leaves the readers and hearers with some evocative and unforgettable image. A story that aims to transform takes us to a door, opens it for us, and invites us to step forward in trust. The story offers a continuing journey. Whether we go or stay is up to us.

         If we accept the conclusion of the vast majority of scholars, the authentic ending of Mark is chapter 16, verse 8. That ending makes it clear that the earliest gospel is a story that aims to transform. “So [the women] went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

         Mark ushers us to the threshold of an open door with all kinds of loose ends dangling and all kinds of possibilities available. But he does not abandon us. Just before this abrupt ending, he tells the women to go and tell the disciples that Jesus will meet them in Galilee.

         Galilee is the place where the end becomes a new beginning. The opening of the tomb is not just in a cemetery. On Easter morning the whole creation yawns before us with newborn brilliance.

         We can find Galilee on a map, of course. It’s north of Jerusalem. It’s on the Sea of Galilee. Much of Jesus’ life and ministry happens in this territory, whose modern configuration is a little larger than Washington County, and a little smaller than Greene County. But as we have said, Galilee is bigger than its geography. According to Matthew and Luke, Jesus is not born in Galilee, but Nazareth in Galilee is his home. Galilee is where we meet and get to know Jesus. It is where he preaches his first sermon, and where he preaches the Sermon on the Mount. Galilee is where it all begins, and where it all begins again. Maybe we can compare Galilee to what Native Americans have referred to as a “thin place,” a place where time and eternity meet, a place where the holy and the mundane breathe the same air, a place where terror and amazement drive us crazy and fill us with awe.

         Galilee is where stories don’t end in “happily ever after” nearly so much as they end with unexpected twists of plot, with lumps in the throat, and bewildering decisions to make. Galilee, then, becomes more than a place. It is an approach to life, an approach that requires creativity, perseverance; and as Paul will say, this life is marked by faith, and hope, and, most of all, Love.

         I have found myself in Galilee in hospital rooms as friends and family gathered to tend the death of one they have known and loved for years. I have found myself in Galilee in hospital rooms where they gather to celebrate the birth of one whom they will learn to know in years to come. I have found myself in Galilee on mission trips into the poverty of Appalachia, Africa, and Central America. In such places, terror and amazement are like sparrows constantly chattering in the same tree. They are everywhere. I have even found myself in Galilee during session meetings when we have found the grace to discuss difficult issues with more Love for our brothers and sisters sitting around the table than for our own opinions, which we still hold to, and which we share with humility and without fear of judgment.

         Mark suggests that Easter happens most compellingly in Galilee, a two-day journey from the cemetery. That tells me that Easter is not about an empty tomb. It is about a full life. And a full life is not nearly so much a “happily ever after” life as it is a life burgeoning with terror, amazement, new possibilities, and new responsibilities. Whenever we find ourselves in Galilee, we find ourselves living in the midst of Resurrection.

         T. S. Eliot opens Part II of his work “Four Quartets” with the line, “In my beginning is my end.” He closes that same Part II by turning those words around and saying, “In my end is my beginning.” In between the beginning and the end, Eliot pens what today I want to call a celebration of Galilee. Here is a very selective sampling of that celebration:

In my beginning is my end. In succession

Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,

Are removed, destroyed, restored…

Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth…

Houses live and die: there is a time for building

And a time for living and for generation

And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane…

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

Of dead and living. Not the intense moment

Isolated, with no before and after,

But a lifetime burning in every moment…

Love is most nearly itself

When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.¹

         Hear the terror and amazement in those words. Feel yourself standing at a newly opened door, invited into an unimagined journey.

         Truly, Galilee is the home from which we start. Truly, we live into another intensity of union and communion. Truly, in the end is our beginning. Truly, the story continues.

Truly, he is risen! Alleluia! Amen!

¹http://www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets/2-coker.htm

Rolling Stones (Easter Sunrise 2015)

 “Rolling Stones”

Mark 16:1-8

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Easter Sunrise 2015

         Triumph! Victory! Sin and death have been defeated! David’s eternal throne has been occupied! Isaiah’s “new thing” has begun! Love wins! Alleluia!

         Easter proclamation is thick with heroic utterances like these. And in spite of all these happy pronouncements, the women still cannot purchase spices until sundown, until the Sabbath has officially come to a close. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Law may have been superseded by grace, but it remains in full effect for those who have chosen to honor it, for those for whom it has become a kind of righteousness drug, and for those who have been so beaten into submission by it that they remain entombed behind this apparently immovable stone.

         Rome holds a similar power. Jesus will not be the last criminal crucified on Golgotha. Caesar still demands taxes, worship, and the willing conviction of his subjects to take up the tools of violence and don the uniforms of expendability on behalf of the state. It seems that plowshares may always be nothing more than swords in waiting, even in the hands of those who follow the Prince of Peace who speaks words of blessing on the meek, the peacemakers, and those who endure persecution for his sake.

         The Prince of Peace whose most direct references to the Law include the revisionist words, “You have heard it said…but I say to you…”

The Prince of Peace who is now risen, but who still has his work cut out for him as he continues to raise us from the catacombs of legalistic and competitive religion, and from religion that buries us in mortal conflict with a vengeful, all-too-human god who tries us with temptations and tempts us with trials, a “god” who is, finally, powerless to save us until we empower that god with our consent.

         “Who will roll away the stone for us?” ask the women. Oh, Sweet Jesus, who indeed? From that first Easter morning to this one, mountains of stones stand firmly in place.

We could recite a litany of stones, but many of them would end up being big things like poverty, hunger, climate change, and endless wars. We can and must do our part on the big things, but none of us alone will change the course of global events. Jesus was the original practitioner of the contemporary proverb, Think globally; act locally. And his efforts did change and continue to change the world. Not being Jesus, though, we can only chip away at one stone at a time.

The women are concerned with a particular stone. And that stone prevents them from a particular task – embalming Jesus’ body. I find it very interesting that these women head off to the tomb on Sunday morning without a plan. As they trudge toward the tomb, they have no idea how they will enter it. It makes me wonder: Had they not gotten to know Jesus, had they not followed him, and listened to him teach, and watched him roll away one stone after another, would they even be heading for the tomb? Might they not have just rolled over in bed saying, “Ah, let somebody else pour Old Spice on him. It was too good to be true, anyway”?

To everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, Jesus demonstrates the art of rolling stones away. He shows us how to live – boldly and graciously – beyond the political, social, religious and even physical boundaries that seem to hold the same kind of permanent authority as death itself. And while all of his followers have witnessed these things, Jesus’ courage and hope seem to have taken deeper root in these three women than in his twelve male disciples. That wretched crew of traitors is cowering behind locked doors, hiding from soldiers and shadows.

The lesson comes into focus: Stones don’t get rolled away by circling the wagons, digging in our heels, and playing it safe. Stones get rolled away by living in the throes of death-defying faith.

I recently flipped through a collection of inspirational sayings, scripture verses, and personal reflections that someone gave to my wife. In that diverse assortment was a quotation borrowed from a greeting card. The quotation reads: “Each one of us who travels further than the obstacles will know a different kind of life from that time on.” (J. Stone)

That little proverb contains Easter truth. To travel beyond an obstacle is to roll away some stone that seals some tomb. Now remember, the givens for us are obstacles and travel. They can be overwhelming obstacles and wearisome travel. Even if the women don’t have to cover a lot of ground, their Sunday morning walk becomes a terrifying trek that takes them into and beyond Jesus’ death. This journey transforms and transports them. After this walk, the women still occupy the same time and space, but they live in the realm of resurrection.

How each of us experiences that depends on who we are, and how we connect with pain and possibility in the world. For Thomas to have that experience, he must touch Jesus’ physical wounds, and thus the deep wounds of the creation. On the lakeshore, Peter is forced to see that his self-preserving denials are spiritual rigor mortis. When Jesus asks Peter three times, “Simon, do you love me,” it is the same as Jesus calling Lazarus out of the grave. Paul must get knocked from his horse and blinded before being shown his new path. Each of these followers of Jesus dies with Jesus and must have some stone rolled away before they can fully appreciate how far beyond the obstacles they have come. Each of them learns, by gracious necessity, to live in a world in which their ultimate destination is the same as their ultimate origin: the Love of God.

Years ago I went on a personal retreat at a place called the Well of Mercy down near Statesville, NC. It is run by a couple of nuns who belong to an order called the Sisters of Mercy. I went there with a pastor friend. We spent time talking about personal issues big and small. We spent time in solitude, as well. And the moment I remember most vividly was from a vesper service led by one of the nuns.

The sister invited all who were interested to join her in a small room for a time of meditation and prayer. My friend and I went. Everyone sat on pillows on the floor. The sister read some scripture. She allowed for long, rich silences. Then she told us of a kind of vision she had, a vision of God. In her vision, God was a woman carrying a basket full of gifts. The gifts she gave were whatever the receiver most needed. The sister invited us to ponder what we thought we needed, and what we might ask God for.

I imagined God as a woman with a basket. And while this may sound contrived, I have to say, she was stunningly beautiful, but with the most unpretentious beauty. As she drew close, I felt myself go tense with anger. “Answers!” I demanded. “I want answers!” I don’t remember exactly, but I’m sure that I wanted answers to the kind of unanswerable questions that humankind has been asking for eons.

When I screamed my rage at God, she turned to me and smiled the most disarming smile you can imagine. Then she leaned in and she kissed me ever so gently on the cheek. But in that kiss there lay a depth of passion that completely stilled and silenced me.

After living with that experience, I have realized that my questions about a suffering world’s agony, that all my stony doubts and righteous indignation are answered with a kiss – a kiss that says, I Love You. A kiss that says, Now, go and share my Love, because to Love as you are Loved is to make resurrection real for those who suffer.

Resurrection is not about ending suffering. It’s about entering it in Christ’s name. Even if it kills us.

May you find in your Easter baskets a kiss from God. And may you discover that God is already rolling away whatever stones keep you from living in and inviting others into the realm of Resurrection, the realm we call the eternal kingdom of God.

Brothers and sisters, he is risen. He is risen indeed!

Dead Man Walking (Maundy Thursday - 2015)

“Dead Man Walking”

John 12:12-16

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Maundy Thursday

4/2/15

         A man straddles a borrowed, green-broke donkey. His dusty toes dangle inches from the cloaks and leafy branches that a crowd has laid out before him on the manure-choked road as a kind of pauper’s carpet. An ecstatic throng sings the man’s praises in shouts and chants laden with messianic language.

       They are particularly excited because the man on the donkey has recently raised a man named Lazarus from death. Lazarus had rested in the bosom of Abraham for several days. Then this Nazarene, named Jesus, spoke new life into the dead man. Lazarus, they say, has barely spoken or smiled since that day. They speculate that he feels like someone’s toy, a pawn sacrificed in someone else’s war. He was not asked if he wanted to return to the world with all its painful messiness. He was not asked if he wanted to face death all over again. He was told that he must. And so he does.

         Dead man walking.

         Now the heat is on Jesus. Ever since the Lazarus incident, the Sanhedrin, the tightest and most powerful knot of Jewish leadership, has bristled. They have never embraced this radical rabbi who teaches the Law and the Prophets so differently from the ways that they had been taught for generations. Jesus’ words and ways among the people challenge Jewish tradition and identity to the core.

      As people begin to believe that Yahweh is speaking in some powerful new way, the rules are changing. Jesus is singlehandedly opening doors to people whom the Law specifically calls outsiders and unclean. He prays to Yahweh in the most scandalously personal ways. If Jesus continues to lead good Jews down this path, all the safe and well-defended arrangements will dissolve into chaos. To do nothing is to forfeit control. The Sanhedrin refuses to surrender their lives and their power to the likes of Jesus. And they know only one sure way to stop him.

         Dead man walking.

         The irony of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry is that virtually everyone in Jerusalem, by his or her own ignorance, or hardness of heart, or even misguided hope, is walking around dead. Even those who celebrate are unaware of the glorious new day breaking into their midst, because this Messiah offers something much more difficult to arrange and accept than freedom from Rome. He offers fullness of life, here and now.

God’s creation needs the new life revealed in the Christ, because in one way or another, at one time or another, all of us have had the experience of walking around dead.

         A man walks alone through the forest. Bright, butter-colored rays of early May sunshine angle down through the trees as if pouring from a great pitcher of light. The woods are alive. They pulse with birdsong, with the flutter of wings, and the chatter of squirrels. The new growth of spring spreads out in the canopy above him. Boughs of hickory, sycamore, and oak ripple in the breeze like a bright green river.

         But this man, as he walks, completely misses the glorious celebration at work and at play around him. A well-nursed darkness blinds him and numbs him. The forest is simply the route he must travel between one obligation and the next. So he keeps his head bent forward and his eyes glued to the narrow trail, lest one of the malicious roots arching up out of the earth like the gnarled fingers of subterranean trolls grab his toe and send him crashing to the ground.

       It is not entirely his fault, but where the earth offers beauty and grace, the man sees the sinister conspiracy of all things against him.

         Dead man walking. I bet you have seen him.

         Sometimes the death in which we live is most evident in our celebrations of the holiest days and seasons of the year. I’d bet the farm that everyone in this room has uttered at least one lament about how, in our greedy materialism, we have reduced Christmas from a season of thanksgiving and praise to a high-stress, economic event. But when we groan the loudest, we are often in some store going broke on things without which we can’t “have Christmas.”

         One Holy Week I went shopping for supplies for an upcoming mission trip. As I walked into the store, I had to walk around a display of some 150-200 Easter baskets. Now, these Easter baskets stood three feet high. They were wrapped in brightly-colored cellophane, and they came pre-stuffed with everything from gum drops, and chocolate Easter eggs, to tennis racquets and baseball bats.

         “Praise the Lord! Christ is risen!”

Time to play ball, rot our teeth, and loosen our belts!

         Maybe I make too much of all this. Materialism is an all-too-easy target. Maybe we’re doing the best we can. Maybe our traditions of exchanging gifts, of Christmas parties and Easter egg hunts are an understandable attempt to keep our religious celebrations alive. I mean, we have been proclaiming the same urgent message for two thousand years, haven’t we? After two millennia, how do we maintain excitement and expectation? How do we recapture the terror and wonder of the first Easter morning? How do we celebrate this good news in such a way that the celebration remains interesting and compelling? How are we transformed from dead men and women walking into living and lively human beings who celebrate, serve, and give thanks?

         The message of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday is that our Palm Sunday expectations must die. For them to die, though, something within us must die, and it is not a welcome death. To experience this death may look and feel like the triumph of evil, not good. But Friday is about the wrath of green-eyed Caesar’s and of fearful religions who meet threat with force. It is not about the wrath of some angry god getting revenge on sinners and their sins. Friday reveals the perpetual impotence of violence, and the ultimate eternity of Love.

         Still, the path of resurrection passes through – and it necessarily passes through – the confusion of Thursday, the agony of Friday, and the speechless grief of Saturday. If we try to circumvent the death of our happy Palm Sunday expectations, our celebrations will be empty. We will have to put them on life-support. We will intubate them with eggnog and credit card debt, with plastic grass and marshmallow bunnies.

       Our call is not to be dead humans walking and waiting to find heaven after being embalmed or cremated and tucked away in memories and graves. Our call is to be a lively, God-bearing humanity at work and at play in the rich and eternal grace of the kingdom of Heaven, which is as much a gift of this creation as it is of whatever may lie beyond our knowing.

         We all have our have our traditions for Easter Day. I hope you enjoy yours. I mean that. And between this evening and that morning, may you truly die to all that would reduce those celebrations to fancy grave clothes. And may we as a church die to whatever selfish fears keep us from being a place in and through which all whom God loves may see, hear, and follow the Risen Christ.

The Hour Has Come (Sermon - Following the passage of Amendment 14-F)

“The Hour Has Come”

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

John 12:20-33

3/22/15

         Last Friday was the first day of spring. One could know that by looking at a calendar, of course, but a calendar only confirms what we already knew. Scorekeeping may begin with the vernal equinox, but spring has already begun. There is no denying that the days have been lengthening and brightening with sunshine and birdsong. Daffodils and crocuses bloom in gardens and ditches. Ducks and geese have paired off on pondshore and creek bank. And as their buds appear, maple trees have been blushing a deep, shameless red. The “telltale signs of spring” we call them.

Spring is more than a calendar event. Spring is an unfolding. It progresses, develops, and in time gives way to yet another unfolding – the hot, earth-swell of summer.

         As Jesus’ third Passover approaches, signs of change have begun to break through. The Jews reject Jesus. He weeps publicly at Lazarus’ grave. In a surreal moment fraught with the tension of things to come, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with a pound of expensive perfume, and wipes them clean with her hair. Jesus enters the great City of David to choruses of “Hosanna!” And now, among the pilgrims who have made their way to Jerusalem, a contingent of Greeks makes a bold appearance. Finding the disciple Philip, they say, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

John calls them Greeks, but his point is that Gentiles have come looking for Jesus by name. They want to see and talk with this Jewish anomaly for whom neither age, nor gender, nor race, nor class, nor any other life condition prevents inclusion in God’s household of grace.

This has been a stumbling block for the Pharisees, of course. In chapter 7 of John, talk of Jesus of Nazareth being the long-awaited Messiah heats up. Unable to accept that a man like Jesus could fulfill God’s promise, the leaders of the temple send their police to arrest and silence the rabbi. When they find him, Jesus says to them, You may know where I come from, but you don’t know where I’m going. And you’re not going to be able to follow me there, either.

Stunned, the temple leaders reveal both their outrage and their deep prejudice: Where does this guy think he’s going that WE can’t find him? Is he going to go among the Greeks?

Imagine everyone’s surprise when Greeks show up at Passover, in Jerusalem, asking for help to find Jesus. When Andrew and Philip tell Jesus that Greeks are at the door, he says, “The hour has come.”

Whether we observe signs of the coming spring or signs of the coming kingdom of God, some moment will arrive that says to us, ‘the hour has come.’ It will be a moment of great and glorious promise, as Jesus says. And, as he also says, it will be a moment when something must die – a grain of wheat, the dark obsession with power and self-concern that John calls worldliness, or even the death of our own living and breathing selves. Death does not come easy, not even for Jesus.

“My soul is troubled,” he moans.

In this moment, John’s version of the agony in Gethsemane, God Incarnate wonders if he should pray his way out of his calling when things turn challenging and threatening. Should he pull away from the community when it seems to have turned against him – and against God? Who would blame him if he did?

Then Jesus seems to ask himself, But if I leave, what blessing will come for those I love? What would I reveal of God that way?

“No,” he says again, this is my hour.

We glorify God in the midst of arrival, and presence, and change. And change always involves some sort of death. Even when we use the phrase “change for the better,” something dies. Something that was is no more – some condition, or relationship, or arrangement. And not all changes happen for the better, of course. But when we find reason and strength to say, The hour has come, we are seeking Jesus. We are seeking God’s presence and purpose in that trying moment itself, and in the signs that led us there, and in the future toward which we travel.

         In his spiritual memoir, The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner looks back on his life. He remembers the influences that led him in particular directions so that he could make this observation: “Nothing,” writes Buechner, “was more remote from my thought…than theological speculation…but certain patterns were set, certain rooms were made ready, so that when, years later, I came upon Saint Paul for the first time and heard him say, ‘God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,’ I had the feeling that I knew something of what he was talking about… Something of grace.”¹

         Frederick Buechner’s hour had been coming for a long time, and when it arrived, he claimed it. His hour changed him. It changed his voice, and his new voice began to glorify God in fresh ways, ways that have continued for decades to enlighten and invite others into the realm of faith, hope, and Love that is God’s kingdom.

The prophecy in all this is that God choses “things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.” (1Cor. 1:28) Buechner and Paul both know that the new life toward which the coming hour leads us, is a life animated by the power of resurrection. That means, of course, we enter new life through some kind of death.

         Have you ever had a dream in which you or someone else dies, or is dying? If you have such a dream, pay attention to what is happening in your waking life. Karl Jung and others tell us that death in dreams almost always represents some kind of change. Death dreams are often scary, because change can be scary. Change often seems to threaten everything that has felt stable, trustworthy, and true in the world.

         And what isn’t changing? If you’re sitting at your computer, a friend in Australia can know as quickly as the friend sitting next to you what’s on your mind. And how many lives have been changed forever by thoughtless venting, bullying, or bragging on social media?

In the 19 years that I have been a pastor, technology has shortened the length of hospital stays, and diminished the discomfort of many treatments. For all that change, healthcare seems to have gotten far more expensive, complicated, and impersonal.

         Our denomination, like the Church Universal, looks different now than it did a generation ago. Last week’s passage of the amendment allowing PC(USA) churches and pastors to decide for themselves, within the bounds of state law, how to handle the issue of same-sex marriage has once again laid the reality of change squarely on our chancels. Some of us are singing praises to God about that, and some of us are crying prayers of passionate lament. And as we bow shoulder to shoulder, glorifying God, many of us are saying, “The hour has come.” While we mean quite different things, we are all dealing with the realities of death.

         Millions of us feel that the church has traded death for life. She has sold her Christ once again, and such a change bodes only the crucifying pain of Friday. Then again, millions of us have died death upon death, having been told by family, neighbor, church, and culture that we, or ones we love are abhorrent to God for who we are or for what we think. The present changes, then, cry out the scarred but speechless joy of Sunday.

We occupy the same place. We see and hear the same things. But we are not of one mind as we interpret the signs.

I think this invites us as a congregational family to step out of our Friday or Sunday mindsets and to sit together in the quiet stillness of Saturday. On Saturday we look backward and forward. We pay attention to all that has led us to this moment. For our sake, God speaks, and for our sake, the Christ is lifted up – again – to draw all people to himself. That is the “kind of death” he dies – a death that heals, reveals, and reconciles. For us, as followers of Jesus Christ, this is our sure and certain hope.

As I have said before, Jesus comes not to prepare us to be dead, but to be alive. It may be difficult to feel this, but regardless of which side of some death we are on, no death can be the end for us. When we seek Jesus together, all signs bode for us the promise and the aliveness of God’s kingdom.

So yes, the hour has come. And come what may, there is, finally, one destination for the troubled, Saturday soul of humankind. For Jew and Greek alike, for us and them alike, God thunders the message of springtime itself: Welcome to the life Resurrection!

¹http://www.frederickbuechner.com/content/patterns-were-set

Charge:

Resurrection: What it looks like for us right now, and when we will recognize it, I don’t know.

But I do think that it will be most real and timely, and it will glorify God most fully when we seek and find the will to share our differences in honest Love for those with whom we disagree.

In this hour, and it all hours, let us be guided by those bold Greeks. Let us say to one another, Brothers and Sisters, “we wish to see Jesus.”

And let us also say, whether we are in the midst of a dying or a rising, Brothers and Sisters, I see Jesus in you, and I wish to be one through whom you see Jesus, as well.

May the risen Jesus be with us all.

Astounded Beyond Measure (Sermon)

“Astounded Beyond Measure”

Mark 7:24-37

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

3/15/15

         Jesus has left the familiar surroundings of home and made his way to the city of Tyre. What may sound like a rather ho-hum detail represents a scandalous break from protocol. Tyre is Gentile territory, and any Jews who live there are as reviled as the Gentiles themselves. For Jesus to go looking for them is more than bold; it is prodigal. But Jesus is no ordinary, line-toeing Jew. He stretches almost every boundary. In today’s text he even says something that none of us polite southern folk would dare to say – at least not to anyone’s face.

A Gentile woman comes to him begging that he heal her daughter, and Jesus says, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

For many of us, Jesus’ response to the woman is nothing short of racist. Hard-shell, Bible-believing Pharisees may applaud Jesus for this, but I can’t quote any less Christ-like words attributed to Jesus.

         Apparently embarrassed by this passage, many Christian scholars have run to Jesus’ rescue, saying things like, ‘Jesus isn’t being mean. It’s just his way of testing the woman’s faith.’ William Barclay goes so far as to say that “the woman saw at once that Jesus was speaking with a smile.”¹ How does Barclay know that? He then says that the woman demonstrates a “sunny faith that would not take no for an answer.”²

Seriously? Does this desperate mother of a tormented child really brighten the page with “sunny faith?”

What kind of Savior needs saving? Why rush to cover up the possibility that Jesus is not manipulating the situation?

This may be uncomfortable for many of us, but what if Jesus speaks this way because he really believes that Gentiles lie, if not beyond the hope of salvation, at least beyond the limits of full participation in the family? You are free to reject this idea, but I’m going to challenge us to entertain for the moment the possibility that in this story we witness a moment when the boundaries of the kingdom are clarified even to the boundary-defying Jesus himself.

         Now, preacher, are you questioning the divinity of Christ?

No. I am trying to avoid missing – out of my own, all-too-human desire to protect Jesus – an invitation to see Jesus struggling with his full humanity. Remember, in the wilderness he faces three temptations to reduce the organic process of faith to dead-ended certainty by working Machiavellian spectacles that would erase all doubt and wonder. So a human Jesus, strengthened by divine vision, resists these temptations because he wants faithful disciples who participate in spiritual transformation rather than fearful zealots who manage religious information.

Jesus enters the struggle between the human and the divine for our sake. As fully God-imaged creatures, we engage that same struggle every day.

         When God Incarnate at first refuses to throw “the children's food…to the dogs,” the woman replies, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.” Two things about her answer demand attention.

All I ask for is a crumb, she says, because that’s all my daughter needs.  Humbly, and most likely deeply humiliated, this nameless, Gentile mother who is passionately in love with her daughter, risks the scorn of a celebrated healer and his entire tribe because she trusts the Giver of the gift. Treated as something less than human, the woman claims the fullness of her own humanity, which includes her divine belovedness. She knows that she deserves the same compassion as any Hebrew, and her boldness becomes a tenacious prayer.

Jesus tells the woman to go home. Her daughter is well. This story jars us with both the full humanity and the full divinity of Jesus.

         “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Jesus has a thing for those who live under the table. In Tyre, he is under the table with the forgotten people of his own faith as well as those whom his people treat like common house pets. But down there, under the table, even those whom scripture has labeled sub-human live with all the faith, hope, love, and divine humanity of any Jew in Jerusalem or Christian in Jonesborough, TN.

         It gets better. From Tyre Jesus goes to the Decapolis, more Gentile territory. There, some people bring to him a man who is deaf and mute. Jesus takes the man away from the crowd and performs a rather bizarre healing ritual. When Jesus says, “Be opened!” the splendid symphony of everyday sound fills the man’s ears. Intelligible speech flows from his mouth. And the witnesses, says Mark, are “astounded beyond measure.”

         When was the last time you experienced the joy of the presence and the grace of God so deeply and gratefully that you were beside yourself with wonder? What I often wonder is whether we, who live for the most part at the table, we who tend to have everything we need and most of what we want, do we really remember what it’s like to feel “astounded beyond measure?” If this doesn’t apply to you personally, it certainly applies to us culturally. Abundance blesses us with enough, and therefore with gratitude. Excess curses us with entitlement, and thus with the loss of the ability to feel truly astonished by grace, and then mobilized to share with those who languish under the table.

         The Gospel calls us to claim the miracle of abundance, not to wallow in the sin of excess. Think about it: When healed of her demon, the girl doesn’t get rich and sail across the Mediterranean to holiday on the French Riviera. She is able, once again, to help gather firewood, cook, sew and in time get married and have children – maybe. The deaf man doesn’t suddenly go on a speaking tour making money hand-over-fist. He is simply able to work, to bargain in the marketplace, and if he has children to tell them who they are by telling them his story. The likelihood of either of these first-century Gentiles ever living anywhere but under the table is remote.

         The most astounding things happen under the table, though. Under the table is wherever we are brought to our knees in open-handed need, where we cannot provide for ourselves something basic to our humanity, something that separates us from dogs and cats, gerbils, and goldfish. Revelations of God, awakenings of spirit, calls to ministry happen under the table.

         When out-of-balance, we tend to belly up at the table and ignore Jesus’ invitation to dive beneath it into the Holy Land of immeasurable astonishment. How do you get there? Well, where is the great need to which you are drawn? What hurt in the world hurts you? You do not have to have big ideas, deep pockets, or eloquent speech. Crumbs will do. Offer your crumbs to the food pantry, to Family Promise, to the neighbor who lives alone, to the friend in the hospital, to an abused creation.

         Now, will I promise that you will be astounded beyond measure if you show up one Thursday morning at the food pantry? Of course not. Jesus calls us to an entirely new way of life, not to the quick thrill of some amusement park ride. The astounding thing is that venturing under the table to share the crumbs of holy abundance with those who need the most offers the richest and most liberating life.

         May we all make ready to cross whatever boundaries and to die whatever deaths we must. And on the other side, may we experience, in this life, the astounding new life to which Jesus calls and leads all of us.

¹Willam Barclay, The Gospel of Mark: The Daily Bible Study, The St. Andrew Press, Edinburgh, 1964. p. 182.

²Ibid.