For This Reason (Sermon)

“For This Reason”

Matthew 18:21-35

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/24/17

         Peter is always pushing boundaries. He’s always trying to wedge his will into Jesus’ teachings. In this instance, he wants some clarification on this whole business of forgiveness. How often, he asks, should we forgive? Upwards of seven times?

         No, says Jesus, not seven times, but – and here the translation you use matters – you are to forgive seventy-seven times – or – seventy times seven.

Now this tests my fourth-grade aptitude in math, but I’m pretty sure that option two equals 490.

One has to imagine Peter standing there in absolute disbelief. What?! Forgive that lying, cheating, thoughtless good-for-nothing four-hundred-ninety times?!

The idea of forgiving the same person, nearly five hundred times, that’s too much to ask, isn’t it? Besides, when does extending that much grace make you a doormat or even an enabler?

Into that moment of mystified resentment Jesus launches into the parable of the unforgiving servant. And he begins that parable with a three-word preface: “For this reason.” The reason to which Jesus refers seems to be the emotional distress that his teachings cause. And he causes distress intentionally – and repeatedly. He uses hyperbole to jar his listeners into imagining their place in the world differently.

Forgiving someone anywhere between 77 and 490 times, says Jesus, is like a slave who owes his master 10,000 talents. There’s no consensus on how to convert that figure into contemporary terms, but a conservative appraisal suggests that 10,000 talents represent more than a hundred thousand years of laborer’s wages. So, when Jesus tells his story and asks his hearers to imagine a slave asking for a little more time to come up with the money, he’s not simply being playful. He’s being preposterous. It is impossible for a slave to pay off a debt of more than 3 billion dollars. This is Jesus’ way of saying that this story is about far more than money.

Likewise, when it comes to forgiving someone else, it’s foolish, in fact it’s utterly useless for Peter to keep accounts. Keeping track of how many times who forgives whom means that forgiveness has never even been offered. And if it has, it has only been offered as some kind of tool, some kind of leverage for one to hold over another. It’s like me saying to you: Don’t forget, I forgave you when you were unkind to me. I forgave you when you misunderstood something I said. Even when you sat in my pew, I forgave you. So, you owe me!

Apparently, that’s how Peter understands forgiveness. And for that reason, neither seven times, nor seventy-seven times, nor four-hundred-ninety times will ever be enough, because he is keeping score. He will always be like the slave who begs for but refuses to grant mercy.

There’s a cliché we’ve all heard and we’ve probably all used at one time or another: Forgive-and-forget. Forgive-and-forget works for spilled milk. It works for an oversight by your partner in Bridge or Spades. And for the record, forgive-and-forget should never even be considered as an optional response when someone sits in “your” pew, because you don’t own a pew, not in a sanctuary in which the kingdom of God is proclaimed. When you find someone sitting in the pew you normally occupy, then for God’s sake, sit somewhere else. And if that offends you, well, forgive me and forget it.

Having said all that, forgive-and-forget does not apply to matters that cause genuine harm and suffering. True forgiveness does not forget intentional betrayal or injury. Indeed, true forgiveness remembers what caused the suffering. True forgiveness looks the offense and the offender in the eye and says, “What happened caused me, or someone I love great suffering. It should not have happened. And neither you nor I will forget it. Nor should we. Our relationship may be different from now on because of what we’ve been through, but I choose not allow that memory, that moment in time to control my future, to limit my joy, to reduce me to something less than I am and can be in Christ. Will you walk with me through this shadowed valley?”

Forgiveness is not fulfilled in one act of declaring forgiveness any more than a marriage is fulfilled in the act of saying “I do.” To forgive is to ask the other person to join you on a journey toward new relationship, new wholeness. That person may not come along with you. They may not even acknowledge the need to be forgiven. And if they’ve truly done something for which you must forgive them, that makes forgiveness harder on you, but no less important. When we withhold forgiveness until it is earned by the other, or when forgiveness becomes a self-aggrandizing gesture, we’re just keeping score. We’re not settling debts, we’re racking them up.

The same is true when we find ourselves needing to confess to someone else and to ask their forgiveness. In confession, we acknowledge to another that our decisions and our actions have caused suffering. That person may not be ready to forgive just yet. But just as we begin the journey of forgiving others, we may begin the journey of being forgiven. Even if the only one who seems to forgive us is ourselves.

Whether forgiving or being forgiven, when humbly offered, the act of forgiving releases us from the toxic burdens of resentment and vengeance. It banishes the demons of judgment. Forgiveness is nothing short of entering a fresh experience of resurrection.

That makes forgiveness a way of life, a cross to bear, a discipline that requires practice. For this reason, we must learn to forgive ourselves first. We must confess our selfish ways, our weaknesses and fears, and offer ourselves grace. To forgive as we forgive ourselves is synonymous with loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.

I think Jesus refers to self-forgiveness when he speaks of forgiving “from the heart.” Not to forgive ourselves renders us ungrateful for the grace God shows to us and impotent to share it with others. For this reason, I struggle with Matthew’s rendering of this parable. I truly believe that the only way we can experience God as the brutal, score-keeping master in the story is by refusing the Christ within, refusing to receive and to share forgiveness. That all-too-human master in the parable has nothing in common with the God revealed in Jesus.

Having said all that, forgiveness doesn’t mean allowing wrong-doing to continue just because we have found strength to forgive. Yes, Jesus forgives unilaterally and completely, but he doesn’t ignore or excuse actions that require forgiveness. The whole point of the Incarnation is that in Jesus, God enters a violent, resentful, unforgiving world to demonstrate love and to work for justice, because allowing us to continue living and acting destructively is neither loving nor just. God has a greater vision for God’s beloved creation.

For this reason, as disciples of Jesus, our demonstration of love and our work for justice begins right here – in our own hearts where we forgive ourselves, and in our own families and churches where we forgive each other. And from here we move outward – hands and feet, hearts and tongues, eyes and ears – all in grateful witness to God’s redeeming love and justice in and for the world.

To an Uknown God (Sermon)

“To an Unknown God”

Acts 17:16-31

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/17/17

         A fine line separates the conviction that makes a disciple bold, and the certainty that makes a zealot dangerous. Paul often appears to have one foot on either side of that line. So, he is alternately a bull in a china shop stampeding over breakable treasures, and a humble mystic walking alongside fellow believers with patience and love.

         When feeling bullish, Paul loudly declares an imminent, “fixed day” of judgment. He exudes an almost neurotic urgency to change the world as soon as humanly possible.

         That’s the old Paul, though. The fundamentalist Pharisee, the religious zealot who has proven himself not only capable of organizing and committing violence in God’s name, but quite efficient at it. Let’s face it: Before his Damascus Road experience, Paul was a terrorist.

Afterward, he’s still Paul. He still has the capacity for launching into words and deeds fueled by the blinding passion of religious certainty. And he begins to make room for the Christ within. The emerging Paul has the capacity for confession and compassion. He can tolerate ambiguity. Still, he continues to struggle with balancing his desire to love as Christ loves, and his single-minded passion as a zealot.

         Entering Athens, Paul immediately feels his zealot’s blood begin to boil. Everywhere he looks he sees idols. So, he heads straight to the synagogues and marketplaces to argue with whoever “happen[s] to be there.” In ancient Athens, rhetorical debate is a kind of spectator sport, a cross between Sunday morning talk shows and minor-league hockey. Ever the intrepid one, Paul leaps into the fray and rails against idolatry.

         “What does this babbler want to say?” ask the Athenians.

To find out, they drag Paul to the Areopagus, the site of the most consequential debates in Athens. In this place of intellectual and cultural ferment, Paul has the ears of people whose opinions help to shape the mindset of the empire. And Paul steps onto this very public stage with the hoof of a china-shop bull on one foot and the sandal of a holy mystic on the other.

         He begins by blurring the line between compassion and sarcasm. ‘You Athenians really take your religion seriously,’ he says. ‘And that’s good. You even have a statue set aside to honor what you call An Unknown god.’

         Isn’t that fascinating? In the midst of the pantheon of named, storied, and all-too-human Greek gods, someone in Athens has had the spiritual humility and curiosity to acknowledge mystery.

         Then Paul says that he knows who that unknown God is, namely, “God who made the world and everything in it…[the] Lord of heaven and earth…[who] does not live in shrines made by human hands.”

         Having sparred extensively with lesser partners, Paul enters the Areopagus with ever-deepening wisdom, patience, and mindfulness. Steeped in prophetic mystery, he focuses on this Unknown god as common ground. He knows that God us unknowable. He knows that God is not a created being, nor even some perfect version of humanity. He is learning, as the Apostle John will write, “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1John 4:8) As Love, God is the creative energy within all things, the mysterious gravity holding all things together.

         Paul describes the holy paradox. He says that God is real and near enough to be the one in whom “we live and move and have our being,” the way fish live, and move, and have their being in water. At the same time, this mystifying Presence transcends all the rhetoric, all the “art and imagination of mortals.” This eternally present God defies every effort to be completely known. That means God transcends any given religion.

         If this paradox illustrates the truth of God, then building altars and shrines to God becomes one more way to “grope,” as Paul says, for the kind of knowledge that creatures cannot have. Even when well-intended, our altars and shrines are still human creations. Because they must be financed, maintained, and insured, they often do more to keep us distant from God than they do to bring us closer to God. And even when we built them in honor of God, at some level, they tend to encourage a degree of certainty that claims to have solved mystery, to have overcome transcendence. So, they reduce God to something knowable, and if known, then controlled by our theologies, arguments, and traditions.

         It seems to me that as Christians in general, and as a particular congregation who wants and indeed needs to renovate its own physical space, we must keep some uncomfortable questions before us:

To what extent do we turn our churches, our sanctuaries, and our committees into idols?

         What familiar and comforting knowable gods do we tolerate, saying that we need them in order to worship the God revealed in Jesus?

         What non-Christian symbols and powers do we snuggle up to in our places of worship?

         What selfish equivocations do we write into our doctrines and polities that open the door to the kinds of fear, resentment, and greed that Jesus, whom we claim to know so well, specifically condemns?

         I have neither the wisdom nor the authority to declare final answers to those questions. I do think, however, that we’re all very much like Paul. We have the hooves of china-shop bulls on one foot and the sandals of humble mystics on the other. We have the capacity to do terrible violence to each other and to the earth. We can also act in ways of transforming faithfulness and world-healing compassion. We’re both capable of and culpable for worshiping hand-made idols whose strengths only reveal our weaknesses. And while we cannot contain it, we can bear witness to the ineffable mystery of God who lies both beyond our grasp and at the very core of our being.

         In the 14^th century, an anonymous monk wrote a book entitled The Cloud of Unknowing. It’s a guidebook for Christian contemplative prayer, and its basic premise states that there is only one way for human beings to “know” God, and that is to lay aside all of our assumptions, all of our codified beliefs and so-called “knowledge” about God. In an act of willful surrender, we turn our minds and egos over to what he calls “unknowingness,” and there we begin to feel, to taste, and to see God’s true nature. According to the author, God cannot be “thought.” God can only be loved.¹

         The very point of this thing called “religion” is not to know that which cannot be known. It is to love the one who is Love. And I think we do that most faithfully when we boldly, gratefully, and joyfully care for one another and for the earth.

¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloud_of_Unknowing

Charge to Congregation:

Care for each other and the earth

as you do would care for yourself

and for any family member.

And always remember, as Mahatma Gandhi said:

“There are people in the world so hungry,

that God cannot appear to them

except in the form of bread.”

The Grace of Confession (Sermon)

“The Grace of Confession”

Matthew 18:15-20

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/10/17­

         Matthew 18 consists of a collection of Jesus’ teachings. While it’s unlikely that Jesus said these things in rapid succession, a central theme does hold this patchwork together: the reality of sin and the necessity of forgiveness. Of particular concern in this chapter are the sins perpetrated by church members against other church members, and the forgiveness required to heal the strained and broken relationships.

Indeed, to be the Church faithfully and effectively in the world, followers of Jesus must, in deliberate and disciplined ways, practice confession and forgiveness. We cannot survive as a community without daring to speak the truth in humility and in love when we see something compromising the integrity of our witness. Nor can we survive without daring to admit the truth in humility and in love when we are acting in ways that compromise the integrity of our witness.

         Having said that, when we dare to call attention to the sin of others, we must always be prepared to accept the possibility that the offense we name says more about our own ravenous egos than it does about someone else’s transgression. While that can go on ad nauseam, it’s crucial for us to recognize our limited capacity for truly gracious judgment. Without that humble acknowledgment, we create communities defined by a vicious legalism in which we exchange gifts like patience, compassion, and honest self-reflection for the illusion not simply of righteousness, but of being right. And that’s just a power play.

         It seems to me that, throughout the Gospels, Jesus is marginally interested in our naming the sins of others, and deeply concerned about our ability to confess our own sinfulness and our own limited understanding of the heart and mind of God.

Years ago, a pastor told me that he had decided to omit the prayer of confession from worship. He called it a pastoral move. He said that most people came into church after rough weeks. They felt burdened by six days of expectations and criticism that they simply had to endure. So, leaving out the confession on Sunday was his way of trying to help people not to feel so beaten down and defeated. While I understand his point, I think he missed the point.

Our model for confession shouldn’t be that tragic figure from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, the Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale, who flogs himself every night in his closet while remembering his dalliance with Hester Prynne. Confession is not about tearing ourselves down and wallowing in guilt over past or even ongoing mistakes. It’s not about humiliating ourselves for being contemptible failures who don’t deserve God’s grace. In confession, we admit, humbly and completely, that we have all “sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” In confession, we consciously acknowledge before the eternal and unfathomable mystery which is God, that you and I, and all human beings are, ultimately, equals.

Back to Jesus’ teaching: When someone believes that he or she has experienced an injury or insult at the hands of another within the community, go talk to that person. If they listen, beautiful. If not, take two or three folks with you as witnesses. If that doesn’t work, spill the beans in front of the whole congregation. And if even that fails, says Jesus, then treat that person like a Gentile or a tax collector.

The knee-jerk reaction is to hear Jesus telling us to treat as contemptible those who refuse to confess their errors and to correct their ways. But is that really what he is saying?

Jesus is no stranger to the accusations he seems to be authorizing us to make. Back in Matthew 11, when accused by some fellow Jews of the sin of keeping unclean company, Jesus exposes their hypocrisy by saying, “John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” (Matthew 11:18-19) What does that say about the company Jesus keeps?

In chapter 12, Matthew quotes Isaiah who identifies the Son of Man as the one who “will proclaim justice to the Gentiles,” and “in [whose] name the Gentiles will hope.” (Matthew 12:18d, 21) What does that say about Jesus’ opinion of non-Jews?

I hear Jesus saying that when someone contributes to the community’s suffering, and when that person refuses to accept his or her share of the responsibility, the members of the church are to act, yes. But first and foremost, they are to remember who they are. They are followers of Jesus. And Jesus treats Gentiles and tax collectors as human beings worthy of patience, compassion, and love. Indeed, he welcomes them as neighbors for whom grace is all the more important.

 “Those who are well have no need of a physician,” says Jesus in Matthew 9, “but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means,” he says, “‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’” (Matthew 9:12-13)

Jesus is challenging us not to cast each other away during times of struggle, but to embrace, to love, and to forgive all the more fervently, to listen and to speak to each other all the more honestly.

Forgive as you are forgiven. Love as you are loved. These teachings are synonyms. Our experience of and our witness to the Gospel depends on our willingness to set loose our forgiveness-hindering egos, and to bind ourselves together in love.

As for those last two verses: I admit my skepticism that God’s criteria for action is agreement between two people. That sets bar too low. You can find two people to agree on most anything, whether it’s destroying nuclear arsenals or using them. Two-person agreement reduces the question to a matter of which god do any two people believe in – one of violence and vengeful conquest, one of peace and reconciliation, one of distance and indifference, or no god at all? I honestly believe that the God revealed in Jesus is characterized by grace, peace, justice, relationship, and reconciliation. And right now, I can find more than two people who agree on that. So why doesn’t God seem to be making it happen?

Who am I to say that God isn’t doing that? And if I’m blind to God’s gracious activity in the world, in spite of all that is and appears to be broken, that means I have something to confess. I have to confess that, in spite of what I profess to believe about God, if someone puts more power and wealth in my hands than my human heart and mind can handle, I just might follow that god. I am as vulnerable to greed and selfishness as anyone else. How about you?

Thanks be to God, though. The Gospel remains very consistent with its proclamation of grace, a gift which is, at every moment, offered to Jews and Gentiles alike, to the destitute and tax collectors, to sinners and saints, to the just and the unjust.

Like it or not, we’re in this together. And wherever we are, whoever we are, God is always here, always among us.

Sobriety in an Intoxicating World (Sermon)

“Sobriety in an Intoxicating World”

Romans 12:1-8

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/27/17

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

The word balance may be a little misleading. The dynamic to which Paul invites us is not like tip-toeing along a tightrope. It’s more of a one-foot-in/one-foot-out kind of thing. “Do not be conformed to this world,” he says, “but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” This is one of the principal passages from which we extrapolate the adage “be in the world but not of the world.”

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

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

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

Take note: Disciples who feel strong and privileged, and who live in strong and privileged circumstances often dismiss the in but not of the world approach. They choose, instead, to associate their strength and privilege with divine favor. But isn’t that to give up? Isn’t that to choose to be of as well as in the world? Having made that kind of choice, world-serving disciples tend to gloss over things like, “Blessed are the poor…the hungry…the meek…the merciful…[and] the persecuted.” (Matthew 5); things like, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God…is…to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:27); and things like, “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

Paul clearly find the Romans lacking in the crucial trait of humility. “For by the grace given to me,” says the Apostle, “I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.”

Sober judgment.

Joe Sachs taught philosophy at St. John’s College in Annapolis for thirty years. He translated numerous ancient Greek texts. And where the NRSV translators chose “sober,” Sachs would have chosen “temperance.” Either way, the Greek word is sophrosune, and according to Sachs, it refers to “the active condition by which one chooses bodily pleasures in the ways and to the extent that they enhance life, not by an effort of self-control but by a harmony of desire with reason.”¹ A willfully-chosen harmony of desire with reason. Talk about a complicated balance!

Sachs says that the ancient Greco-Roman culture recognized human desires as crucial aspects of human nature. As such, they warrant satisfaction. The caveat is that authentic satisfaction and expression of human desires requires sophrosune. And according to Sachs, this sobriety/temperance is “the stable state of character which, in any mature human being, replaces the overgrown impulses of childhood.”²

Paul’s “sober judgment” has to do with overcoming childishness and living a mature faith. Remember what he says to the Corinthians: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” (1Cor. 13:11)

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

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

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

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

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

²Ibid. p. 211.

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

Political Mystics (Sermon)

“Political Mystics”

Matthew 15:1-20

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/20/17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayers.

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

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

Genesis 32:22-31

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

8/6/17

         “I feel so blessed.”

         “You’re such a blessing.”

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

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

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

         So, what is blessing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

²Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never Again (Sermon)

“Never Again”

Genesis 9:1-3, 8-17

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

7/23/17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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