Called to Both Brokenness and Wholeness (Sermon)

 “Called to Both Brokenness and Wholeness"

Deuteronomy 18:15-18 and Mark 1:21-28

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/28/24

 

Deuteronomy 18:15-18

 15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. 16 This is what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’17 Then the Lord replied to me, ‘They are right in what they have said. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. (NRSV)

 

Mark 1:21-28

21 They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. 22 They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. 23 Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 24 and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” 25 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet and come out of him!” 26 And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27 They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” 28 At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee. (NRSV)

 

         Mark 1 opens with a grand announcement: Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Son.

Mark affirms that claim by declaring that John is Isaiah’s messenger who prepares the way for the Anointed One. So, when Jesus says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near,” the Spirit invites us to join Jesus in his Creation-transforming work—work that often meets resistance because it challenges the world’s greedy power with the spiritual authority of the Christ.

         When we claim to follow Jesus, and yet remain comfortable and complacent in systems that seem advantageous to us, but which cause others to suffer, our own voices quickly become those of protesting demons. To gloss over any dissonance between profession of faith and unfaithful action, many have used rather syrupy falling-in-love-with-Jesus language to talk about union with God. I wonder, though, could entering relationship with God have at least a little in common with the disturbing convulsions of an exorcism?

As he does with the man possessed by an unclean spirit in Capernaum, Jesus liberates us from the selfishness and fear that possess us and make us destructive to ourselves, to others, and to the earth. By grace, he wicks the corrupt and corrupting false selves out of us, and leads us into his realm of mystery, mutuality, and truth.

While that news is as good as it sounds, it’s also true that Jesus’ liberation tends to be costly. Just imagine the internal chaos of the first disciples as they leave their families and their vocations to follow Jesus. Mark makes it sound as simple as dropping their nets, but how can that be? Beginning something new is hard enough; so, wouldn’t it be excruciating to drop everything and follow Jesus? Maybe that’s why Jesus compares discipleship to death. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life, for my sake…will save it.” (Mark 8:35)

Before any of the gospels were written, Paul made the same argument: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?…We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed.” (Romans 6:3, 6a)

While Mark doesn’t suggest that the possessed man in the synagogue was trapped within a “body of sin,” it was common in the first century to blame a person’s illness, poverty, or any other suffering on personal sin. So, many if not most people in the synagogue that day would likely have dismissed the man as a sinner and shunned him as a public nuisance—just as many who now claim to follow Jesus dismiss and shun the homeless on city streets.

The NRSV reads, “Just then” the man was in the synagogue. In the Greek, just then is the same word that appears repeatedly in Mark and usually gets translated immediately. To me, the apparent suddenness of the man’s presence mirrors the suddenness of Jesus’ presence. Both men show up possessed by some powerful spiritual indwelling. And both are capable of causing the kind of dis-ease that any of us are likely to feel when confronted by someone whose presence demands of us more than mere pleasantries.

Because Jesus teaches with an unfamiliar authority, everyone’s senses are already heightened. When the possessed man appears, immediately people gather their children close. They move their wallets to their front pockets. They position themselves for fight or flight. Then, the man says something that sounds absurd: “I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

In Mark, Jesus is cagey with his identity. So, he rebukes and silences the unclean spirit. The man seizes and thrashes like someone dying in terrible pain. The worshipers now have to wonder, Which man is scarier? The man possessed by the unclean spirit and the man possessed by healing authority both seem to be living in alternative realities.

Mark concludes this story saying that the people were “amazed” by Jesus, and that “his fame…spread throughout the surrounding region.” Mark also seems to suggest that mere amazement falls short of faithful discipleship. While amazement and wonder are hardly weaknesses, Jesus wants followers who move beyond any initial, emotional response and who engage people like the possessed man. He wants people who will live inside a holy reality that embraces chaos as well as shalom because chaos is as fertile with wholeness and possibility as it is laden with suffering.¹

Richard Rohr calls this the “cruciform pattern” of reality.² “Jesus,” says Rohr, “was killed in a collision of cross-purposes, conflicting interests, and half-truths…[he was] caught between the demands of an empire and the religious establishment of his day. The cross was the price Jesus paid for living in a ‘mixed’ world, which is both human and divine, simultaneously broken and…whole. [Holding together all the primary opposites, Jesus] hung between a good thief and a bad thief, between heaven and earth, inside of both humanity and divinity, a male body with a feminine soul, utterly whole and yet utterly disfigured.”³

         As not only the archetype of this holy paradox, but as the one who comes to restore that paradox in humankind, Jesus heals the man with the unclean spirit. Mark never says what happens to the man, but just because he was healed doesn’t mean that his suffering ended. It seems to me, then, that hisdisappearance becomes our invitation. The absence he leaves is where we step in to help create a presence of gratitude and witness. His life is now our life. Jesus has freed us to see, hear, think, and act differently. He has freed us to care for each other, and especially for those who suffer. 

We do live in a world where the demons of fear, greed, and violence can torment us and others through us. Andrew Sullivan is a rather controversial figure who nonetheless spoke this demon-exorcising truth: “When you fuse Christianity with power, it isn’t long before Christians start imposing the cross on others rather than taking it up for themselves.”⁴

         Wherever the world attempts to deny or reject the inclusive love and restorative grace of God, Jesus is there to silence our selfish and fear-stunted hearts and minds. And he calls us to take up our crosses and return to the new reality of God’s realm, where all people are welcome, all things are shared, and all Creation is being made new.

 

¹Gary W. Charles, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 1. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. p. 313.

²https://cac.org/coincidence-of-opposites-2019-02-07/

³Ibid.

⁴https://libquotes.com/andrew-sullivan/quote/lbc4q9z

God's Realm as Neighborhood (Sermon)

 “God’s Realm as Neighborhood”

Genesis 1:1-5 and John 1:1-18

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/21/24

 

Genesis 1:1-5

When God began to create[a] the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God[b]swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (NRSV)

John 1:1-18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴ in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

⁶ There was a man sent from God whose name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸ He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹ The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. ¹¹ He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹² But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,¹³ who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵ (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) ¹⁶ From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷ The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.(NRSV)

 

         While the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 differ, they also affirm the same generative force within the universe. Everything, both animate and inanimate, derives from the willful intention of the One whose essence is creativity, relationship, and, therefore, love. The metaphor Genesis 1 uses for the agent of God’s creativity is speech. Even ancient minds recognized that the eternal energy that precedes perception, imagination, and reason hums, vibrates, and eventually explodes into an incarnate reality, a unified voice—a uni-verse. God speaks and water, earth, wind, and fire tumble forth: “Let there be light…let the dry land appear…let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures…let us make humankind in our image…” That’s why, for us, the Christ is synonymous with thepreexistent Word—or the Logos.

As people of faith, we look within and without and make the conscious decision to trust that the Creation, fraught as it is with violence glorified and suffering ignored, is still a magnificent wonder. To affirm God’s presence is to proclaim that the Creation has purpose and connection. And God is the invisible connective energy at work in the Creation. The Image of God, then, is relationship, interdependence, community.

In his paraphrase, The Message, Eugene Peterson rendered John 1:14 this way, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” The term neighborhood refers to far more than streets lined with houses inhabited by people, pets, and possessions. Anywhere that created things exist together in cooperation, contrast, and even conflict are neighborhoods. Our bodies are neighborhoods. Congregations are neighborhoods. Forests and deserts are neighborhoods. Rivers and lakes are neighborhoods. Oceans are the largest neighborhood subdivisions on the earth’s surface. Beneath the atmosphere, the earth itself is a neighborhood; and beyond it, our solar system, every planet and moon circling the same sun, is a neighborhood.

“What has come into being in [Christ],” says John, “was life, and the life was the light of all people.” As Word, Life, and Light, Jesus comes to scatter all the neighborhood-crushing darkness, all the selfishness, resentment, fear, and greed that not only disrupt God’s creative purposes in the world, but that often seem to be gaining the upper hand.

Increasingly, humankind does seem hellbent on denying its interconnectedness. Families, communities, and nations are choosing to close ranks and reject kinship with other families, communities, and nations. We isolate ourselves according to skin color, ethnicity, language, religion, political opinion. We judge those outside our narrow boundaries not simply as other, but as villains against whom we must strive, and whom we must defeat. When that happens, those who claim to believe in God reduce God to a tiny, vindictive, human-imaged idol.

Humankind’s self-inflicted chaos destroys community and threatens us with darkness and death. So, says John, God sends the Incarnate Word to reveal God’s heart, to declare that God’s intent and desire for Creation is life and light, connection and neighborliness.

While John wrote his gospel long before our New Testament canon was established, he also wrote it well after all other canonical gospels and epistles were written. When he begins his version of Jesus’ story, John specifically connects the Jesus narrative to the creation story in Genesis. To me, this says that the scriptures, laden as they are with conflict and contradictions, create another kind of neighborhood. So, the stories and teachings mean the most when we read them in relationship to consistent and foundational utterances such as: Love God. Love neighbor. Do justice. Follow me. Jesus’ own life says and means the most when we understand him as a presence in and for all of Creation, throughout all of time.

As the Logos, Jesus is also the Light which comes to shine into the darkness. For John, the kosmos, or the world, refers to God’s eternally beloved Creation—God’s neighborhood overwhelmed by darkness and in need of redemption and renewed joy. So, God sends the Logos into the kosmos, in the person of Jesus, to reveal the Creator’s love for all things. As the bringer of Light and Life, Jesus’ work is that of restorative justice. He comes to awaken us to paths of awareness, prayer, empathy, and compassionate action for the sake of neighbor and earth.

In talking about John the Baptist, John the Evangelist says, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John…He himself was not the light, but he came to witness to the light.” The shared calling of all who claim to follow Jesus is to live as humble and grateful witnesses to the Light. To commit ourselves to living as signs of the restoring Logos in the midst of a broken kosmos is, according to John, “to become children of God.”

When talking about the importance of being children of God who do justice and demonstrate neighborliness, one person comes immediately to my mind. Few people have more overtly and gently lived and shared the Johannine vision of God’s neighborhood than Presbyterian clergyman Fred Rogers. Mr. Rogers literally broadcast a vision of God’s holy intervention of the Logos into the kosmos, and he did so with Christlike love and kindness.

“I believe that at the center of the universe,” said Mr. Rogers, “there dwells a loving spirit who longs for all that’s best in all of creation, a spirit who knows the great potential of each planet as well as each person, and little by little will love us into being more than we ever dreamed possible. That loving spirit would rather die than give up on any…of us.”¹

To me, that statement of faith beautifully distills John’s theology of the Logos, especially the great affirmation of John 3:17: “God did not send the (Logos) into the (kosmos) to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

The most profound work of the children of God is the work of simply neighboring one another in the name of Christ. Our purpose is to live by the light and love of the Logos in the midst of a kosmos that always needs to be reminded of and restored to its eternal Belovedness.

What are your gifts for bearing witness to the Life and the Light? Our particular gifts reveal God’s purposes for our lives. They teach us that as children of God we are specifically blessed to live as unique blessings for others. Our blessedness leads each of us into our own truest and deepest joy. And that joy helps to lead all of us toward a more grateful, generous, just, and neighborly world.

         

¹https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/32106.Fred_Rogers?page=1

Come and See (Sermon)

 Come and See

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 and John 1:43-51

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/14/24

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
³ You search out my path and my lying down
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue,
    O Lord, you know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is so high that I cannot attain it.

¹³For it was you who formed my inward parts;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
¹⁵     My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed. 
¹⁷ How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
    I come to the end—I am still with you. (NRSV)

 

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.”

⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. ⁴⁵Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”

⁴⁶Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”

⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?”

Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

⁴⁹Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

⁵⁰Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” ⁵¹And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” (NRSV)

 

Tony was a member of my first congregation in Mebane, NC. He was a kind and soft-spoken outdoorsman who especially loved fishing. When the stripers were running in Jordan Lake near Chapel Hill, Tony would go to work with his boat in tow. At quitting time he’d drive down to the lake and catch ten or fifteen big fish before dark.

         The next Sunday, an excited Tony would tell me about it and invite me to come join him. If I were available, I’d meet him at the plant where he worked and throw my stuff in his truck. At the lake, we’d launch his boat, and Tony would set two lines that trolled way behind the boat and two downriggers to run deep beneath it. With the fish-finder sweeping the depths, we’d chug slowly around the lake, watching, waiting, talking, and eating junk food while the afternoon sun shattered into glitter on the surface of the lake.

In all the times I went fishing with Tony, I caught exactly one fish. Every other time a pole bent or a downrigger popped up—which was exactly two times—I hauled in a three-pound chunk of waterlogged wood. To make things worse, when Tony took me along, even he caught nothing. Then, a few days later, he’d go back by himself and catch another mess of fish.

         I don’t know why my fishing luck has been mostly bad luck, but I do know this: When Tony invited me to join him, he went out of his way to share with me the excitement and the peace he found in fishing.

There’s the thing. Fishing was the only guarantee. Catching was never more than a possibility.

Maybe God prefers that I enjoy the Creation on foot with a camera in hand, or on a motorcycle with a full tank of gas. And that’s fine…unless I’m fishing.

         We’re currently in the liturgical season of Epiphany, a word which means revelation. Fred Craddock said that “Revelation is never open and obvious to everyone, regardless of their current state of interest or belief. There is always about [revelation] a kind of radiant obscurity, a concealing that requires faith to grasp the revealing.”*

         “There is always a…radiant obscurity” to the revealing of holiness. Maybe it’s sort of like dropping a hook into the water and knowing that whether or not a fish strikes, there are fish present. The radiance is in the gratitude of being where fish are.

It seems appropriate that the first disciples Jesus calls are fishermen. Who better to have a sense of the holiness of the possibility of encountering holiness than fishermen who have been caught by the excitement of the possibility of the excitement of catching? (How’s that for radiant obscurity?!)

         In today’s story, Philip offers to Nathanael the Johannine invitation: “Come and see.” Jesus spoke those words earlier to John and his disciples. Appearing in several places throughout the fourth Gospel, “Come and see” are words of witness. They’re a kind of Johannine mantra, and a call to the possibility of encountering the radiant obscurity of God’s presence. And while witness is tied intimately to revelation, the two are distinct. Witness is the casting of lines and nets; and that’s our work. Revelation is the opening of the heart; and that is the work of the Holy Spirit. Through our witness of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God, all we can do is create situations and conditions conducive to recognizing God’s ongoing revelatory work.

         There are times, however, when we experience God as something more obscure than radiant. Times when we are consumed by things internal and external—challenges, fears, and the inevitable uncertainties of faith. Or maybe times when it seems that all we’re doing is fishing, and never catching.

         A sophisticated storyteller, John introduces us to individuals that the synoptics do not. And he uses these folks with creative intention. In John, just as the Son is always deflecting attention toward the Father, these characters represent entities beyond themselves. Nathanael is a good example.

         In John’s imaginative hands, Nathanael represents all of Israel, past and present. Crouched beneath that fig tree, Nathanael reminds us of Adam and Eve trying to hide their nakedness after having eaten the forbidden fruit, or King Saul hiding in the luggage, or Peter hiding behind his certainty that his militant messianic expectations and God’s Messiah will match perfectly.

         Beneath that fig tree, Nathanael is no more hidden from Jesus than Adam and Eve are hidden from God. And Jesus not only sees Nathanael, he sees through him to the “Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” Seeing Nathanael through the eyes of love, through the depth-finder of grace, Jesus isn’t dissuaded by Nathanael’s sarcastic question, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Jesus sees straight into the holiness of God’s image within Nathanael. In that moment of revelation, Nathanael, affirmed and loved, immediately dives into the waters of faith. His confession happens much quicker than Peter’s confession. Even Jesus seems surprised.

         You’re on board already? Well, hang on, because you haven’t seen anything yet.

         In verse 51, John switches the pronoun “you” from the singular to the plural. So, he’s addressing not just Nathanael, but all of us, and the image Jesus uses, the image of “angels…ascending and descending [on] the Son of Man,” recalls Jacob’s dream at Bethel.

         In that story in Genesis, Jacob, on the run from Esau, sleeps with a rock for a pillow. During a dream, he sees that, through him, God will continue the covenant of blessing God made with Abraham. Jacob and his family, imperfect as they are, live Come and See lives, lives of witness to God’s revelation and faithfulness.

Jesus calls Nathanael, and us, to the same witness—a witness to God’s vision which sees more than the future. God’s vision sees the transcendent possibilities of today by seeing through the selfishness of the Adams, Eves, Jacobs, and Nathanaels within us. The Christ, however, who is also within us, is the fish beneath the surface of the lake. The Christ within us and within the Creation around us is our glimpse of God’s realm of radiant obscurity.

         We are called, then, to live new lives, lives of witness and vision. Come and See lives shaped by the dynamic and tension-wrought threshold where the Creation and God’s realm of grace meet.

So, we’re like fishermen living on the shore where the heights of the firmament and the depths of the waters meet. This liminal place is a place of joyful witness because it’s a place of relentless possibility, profound risk, and trustworthy hope.

         I make no promises, but does anyone want to go fishing?

 

*While I always footnote quotations, this one was in a previous sermon and did not include a citation. I only know that it is Fred Craddock’s wisdom.

Then He Consented (Sermon)

 “Then He Consented”

Isaiah 42:1-9 and Matthew 3:13-17

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

1/7/24

Baptism of the Lord Sunday

 

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
    he will bring forth justice to the nations.
² He will not cry out or lift up his voice
    or make it heard in the street;
³ a bruised reed he will not break,
    and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
    he will faithfully bring forth justice.
⁴ He will not grow faint or be crushed
    until he has established justice in the earth,
    and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

⁵ Thus says God, the Lord,
    who created the heavens and stretched them out,
    who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
    and spirit to those who walk in it:
⁶ I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness;
    I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
    a light to the nations,
⁷     to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
    from the prison those who sit in darkness.
⁸ I am the Lord; that is my name;
    my glory I give to no other,
    nor my praise to idols.
⁹ See, the former things have come to pass,
    and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth,
    I tell you of them. (NRSV)

 

¹³Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.

¹⁴John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

¹⁵But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

Then he consented.

¹⁶And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. ¹⁷And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (NRSV)

 

         In Matthew’s telling of the story of Jesus’ baptism, verse 15 concludes abruptly: “Then he consented.”

         What sounds like a simple reference to timing, points to the rolling away of a great stone. Getting to Then he consented involves the same movement of the Spirit we see in, “So Abram left, as the Lord had told him;” “Let it be with me according to your word;” and “He is risen.”

         Then he consented invites us into something much deeper and broader than John’s reluctant consent to baptize Jesus. When John says that he should be baptized by Jesus, Jesus says, No. For now, you baptize me. Jesus’ own consent to the same baptism to which so many others consent implies much more than acquiescence. It implies trust of and faithfulness to a transforming spiritual reality. And it signals Jesus’ commitment to his own specific calling.

Immediately after his baptism, Jesus embarks on a forty-day wilderness sojourn. And during that time, he agonizes over the consequences of his baptismal consent. He faces a choice we all make in one way or another: He can use his gifts for personal benefit, or he can offer himself to the Creation as a blessing. As a uniquely gifted man, he can live as either the Christ or just another Herod or Caesar.

For similar reasons, confirmation is crucial in denominations that practice infant baptism. Confirmation gives young people the opportunity to declare that they are beloved children of God, that they have rich, God-given potential, and then to follow Jesus as beloved disciples. And belovedness is most fully realized when we choose to live as blessings.

         Baptism, you see, is about identity as well as grace. It declares that we, and all things, belong to God, who delights in us, and who wants us to recognize the elemental and indelible holiness within all humanity, and within the earth itself.

         Now, I know that there are some folks we struggle with. They push every button and get on our last nerve. We’ve all experienced people like that. I also know from experience that I can be that person for others. And I’m very often that person for my own, conflicted self. No one causes me more grief than me.

         Richard Rohr has said that we often look at the world around us and can’t help seeing more darkness than light. And when we can’t get past that, it’s easy to give up and say, ‘That’s just the way things are.’ But Rohr says that when we fixate on brokenness and hopelessness, we’re not seeing things as they are. We’re seeing things as we are,¹ because broken hearts feel nothing but brokenness, and blind eyes see nothing but darkness.

         Listen, it doesn’t happen suddenly or magically, but the journey of baptismal consent does give us new hearts, new eyes, and new minds. Another metaphor for that transformation is, ironically enough, death. Because re-creation springs from death, it’s not by accident that Paul speaks of baptism as dying and rising with Christ. (Romans 6:1-11) Jesus dies at his baptism. He dies during his temptation. He dies repeatedly as he shepherds fickle disciples. And he dies during his agony in Gethsemane, and then, finally, on Golgotha.

         Baptism challenges us to take seriously our call to die to all the false selves, shallow desires, and paralyzing fears that would have us live as if the sin of war is just the way things are, as if starving and homeless children is just the way things are, as if school shootings—something no healthy-minded person can simply “get over”—is just the way things are, and as if our own secret self-loathings are all just the way things are.

         In one way or another, those realities all point to the ever-present powers of nihilistic greed and fear. And to do nothing about them is to consent to those powers, and to let greed and fear have their violent ways. Jesus does not consent to those powers. Nor does he give us permission to do so. He calls us to consent to his lordship here and now. He calls us to take up our crosses, to die to all that is selfish, fearful, and falsely pious. He calls us to enter the world in all of its heart-wrenching brokenness and suffering and to live as ones being made new in the power of the Holy Spirit. He calls us to declare that God claims all human beings as beloved children. And anything that allows us to avoid or compromise the call to die and rise with Jesus, is not of God.

When making suggestions on how to prepare for reading scripture, Richard Rohr advises—and I hope all new and continuing elders really hear this—to seek “an open heart and mind…[to detach from ego-driven] desires to be correct [and] secure…Then…listen for a deeper voice than your own, which you will know because it will never shame or frighten you, but rather strengthen you, even when it [challenges] you…As you read, if you sense any negative or punitive emotions like…feelings of superiority, self-satisfaction, arrogant…certitude, desire for revenge…or a spirit of…exclusion, you must trust that this is not Jesus…at work, but your own ego still steering the ship.”²

I hear Rohr saying that when we claim our baptisms and still seek power or advantage over others, we’re choosing to see things as we are, not as God sees them—and not as God sees us.

         Baptism invites us and challenges us into the mystical practice of learning to see as Jesus sees.

Baptism invites and empowers us for new sight, new strength, new courage.

Baptism empowers us to see ourselves, our neighbors, and the earth as tangible expressions of God’s gracious presence and creative purposes.

When we see and engage the world with eyes and hearts transformed by baptism, we live as followers of Jesus rather than followers of worldly politics, economics, and religiosity.

May we all consent—each day—to following Jesus in the new life of baptismal faithfulness, so that our lives and our living may always serve as signs of God’s love and grace for one another and for all Creation.

 

¹From Richard Rohr in Falling Upward: Spirituality for the Second Half of Life.

²https://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/43960629A8B44BD52540EF23F30FEDED/CAEF12FB6B3D7B5544D0DD5392A9C75A

The Light of Righteousness and Justice (Christmas Eve Sermon)

 “The Light of Righteousness and Justice”

Isaiah 9:2-7

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

Christmas Eve - 2023

 

²The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
    on them light has shined.
³ You have multiplied exultation;
    you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
    as with joy at the harvest,
    as people exult when dividing plunder.
⁴ For the yoke of their burden
    and the bar across their shoulders,
    the rod of their oppressor,
    you have broken as on the day of Midian.
⁵ For all the boots of the tramping warriors
    and all the garments rolled in blood
    shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
⁶ For a child has been born for us,
    a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders,
    and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
⁷ Great will be his authority,
    and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
    He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
    from this time onward and forevermore. (NRSV)

 

         Tibetan Buddhists like to say that a Dalai Lama is not chosen. He’s discovered. The elders watch, engage, and teach many boys. And when that one, extraordinary youngster begins to shine, begins to demonstrate the raw traits of a spiritual leader, he begins the long process of training and preparation.

         For Tibetans, this child has been born for them. He’s been given to them. And while he is not yet spiritually mature, not yet a fulfillment, he has begun the work of adopting and being adopted by his new name, Dalai Lama, which means “Ocean of Compassion,” or “Ocean of Wisdom.”¹

         The ancient Hebrews, fumbling through the darkness of defeat and exile, are being told that a new light is shining on them. A child has been born for them, a son given to them. He will redeem and renew them. He will live into and will be known by new names: “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

         It seems that the great spiritual traditions of the world often have more in common than they do in the way of differences. And one of those commonalities has to do with the metaphor of childhood as a time of immediate, yet not-quite-fulfilled presence. Even the most gifted children, require attention, love, and patience. And we are called to steward these new lights, who represent God’s promise—not because God is dependent on us for whatever success may look like, but because in ways that are as mystical and mysterious as glorias from the heavens, and earthy as childbirth in a stable, we share in God’s ongoing work in and for the Creation.

         Another common metaphor is light. And you and I, we’re kind of like candles. We don’t create fire or light, and we don’t last forever, but for a time, we do burn. We shine with a light that is given to us. That light is itself The Gift, the gift of God’s Shalom, which is God’s Peace, Wholeness, and Holiness. God’s great light in the world is the brightness of all our individual wicks burning, side-by-side with the virtues of justice and righteousness—that is of compassion and joy.

When burning with justice and righteousness, we work for peace and understanding between peoples, nations, and religions.

When burning with justice and righteousness, we advocate for fellow human beings who are suffering; and we leave to God all judgments regarding a given person’s worthiness.

When burning with justice and righteousness, we care for the earth, which is not a resource to be exploited, but a magnificent, personal re-presentation of the Creator, something given to us to steward gratefully in the present moment and with vision for the future. Indeed, in ancient Celtic Christianity, the Creation is considered the First Incarnation of God.

When burning with justice and righteousness, we become midwives in the Creation’s groaning and labor pains as it moves toward adoption and redemption.

No matter whom we follow, everything we do, every decision we make declares whom we love and whom we trust. When burning with the selfishness of the world’s Herods and Caesars, we’re not candles but the blazing funeral pyre of humankind’s brokenness. Being fed by Isaiah’s tramping boots and blood-soaked garments, that fire will, one day, burn out. For good.

When burning with “the zeal of the Lord of hosts,” however, our little flickers declare that we belong to God. So, our celebration of Christmas includes the re-discovery of our own selves as expressions of the incarnate Christ, whose coming we celebrate.

And this Jesus, the Christ, born of Mary, frees us from serving the Herods and Caesars of the world. He frees us from the absolutes that they seek to impose through invoking fear and igniting violence.

In Christ, we live over against the Herods and Caesars. So, while their power can burn with terrifying heat and fury, and while, at times, those things may even consume some part of us, Christ’s gracious authority burns and grows continually with the compassion, the wisdom, and the grace we call love. And Love heals. Love renews. Or, as Rob Bell says, “Love Wins.”

In his song “Go Light Your World,” Chris Rice sings:

 

There is a candle in every soul

Some brightly burning, some dark and cold.

There is a Spirit who brings a fire,

Ignites a candle and makes his home.

So carry your candle; run to the darkness.

Seek out the helpless, confused and torn.

Hold out your candle for all to see it;

Take your candle, and go light your world.

 

         May your Christmas be more than merry. May it be transforming—for yourself and for others.

May your life be a constant discovery of the living Christ within you and within those around you.

And may you light the world with his justice, righteousness, compassion, and joy

 

¹http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/04/how-the-dalai-lama-is-chosen/

An Apocalypse of Grace (Sermon)

 "An Apocalypse of Grace”

Psalm 25:1-10 and Luke 21:25-36

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

12/3/23

 

¹ To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
² O my God, in you I trust;
    do not let me be put to shame;
    do not let my enemies exult over me.
³ Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame;
    let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

⁴ Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
    teach me your paths.
⁵ Lead me in your truth and teach me,
    for you are the God of my salvation;
    for you I wait all day long.

⁶ Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love,
    for they have been from of old.
⁷ Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
    according to your steadfast love remember me,
    for the sake of your goodness, O Lord!

⁸ Good and upright is the Lord;
    therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
⁹ He leads the humble in what is right
    and teaches the humble his way.
¹⁰ All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,
    for those who keep his covenant and his decrees. (NRSV)

 

Advent begins today. And while we have decked this hall with signs of the season, let’s remind ourselves that Advent is not Christmas. I’m not trying to be a Scrooge. It’s just that to celebrate something like the Incarnation of the eternal God in the person of a first-century, blue-collar rabbi takes some preparation.

Neither Advent nor Christmas were celebrations for the early church. And maybe that’s because they lacked a season of intentional preparation. And maybe that helps explain why, of the four canonical gospels, three show no real interest in Jesus’ nativity.

Matthew does tell us about Joseph’s dream, but afterward jumps straight to the visit of the Magi, who would have visited not an infant in a stable but a toddler in a carpenter’s home. Mark opens his story with an adult John the Baptist calling people to respond to an adult Jesus who’s already at work. John starts out with abstract theological reflection: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…” Then, like Mark, John moves straight to an adult John the Baptist.

Only Luke records a nativity story, and he prepares us very carefully. Before any “good news of great joy,” Luke forecasts the birth of John the Baptist by telling the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Then comes the story of Mary’s Annunciation. When Mary visits Elizabeth, and hears her prophecy, Mary sings her own prophetic song of praise.

When Elizabeth’s child is born, a doubt-muted Zechariah names him John. Then, when his voice is restored, Zechariah utters his own prophecy about God sending a “mighty savior [to] guide our feet into the way of peace.” Zechariah’s and Elizabeth’s son will be an Advent prophet. He will help prepare the way for thelong-expected Jesus.

At this moment in Luke, though, John is an infant, and Jesus is not yet born. There are years of waiting and struggle before these remarkable prophecies begin to take shape and to stir people’s imaginations and their hope.

That is the feeling we’re after in Advent. During this indispensable season, we stop and mull over all the prophecies. We prepare ourselves to receive and declare the news that this flesh is God’s chosen medium for God’s self-revelation. In the organ of Creation—in which we live and of which we’re a part—God incarnates God’s own self in a particular human being, and in a particular place, time, and socio-political environment. The four weeks of Advent call us to examine our own hearts and minds, our own spiritual communities, and our interactions with our own earthly circumstances. That’s why we begin Advent with texts like this one:

²⁵“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. ²⁶People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. ²⁷Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. ²⁸Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

²⁹Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; ³⁰as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. ³¹So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. ³²Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. ³³Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

³⁴“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, ³⁵like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. ³⁶Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”(NRSV)

 

         Let’s back up and look at this passage in the context of Luke’s wider story, which doesn’t end with the Ascension, but continues all the way through the book of Acts. Like Mary’s Magnificat and Zechariah’s prophecy preceding the births of their children, Jesus’ entire prophetic life precedes his passion, resurrection, and return in the person of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Always engaging political, social, and economic realities as well as spiritual realities, Jesus’ words can make us uneasy.¹ He speaks of political distress and confusion. He speaks of chaos in nature. And by calling such things signs of the coming of the Son of Man, Luke presents Jesus as an apocalyptic figure—as someone speaking about the end times. And there are two primary voices at work in this passage: Jesus, the prophetic Word of God, and Luke, the first century narrative theologian.

As the first voice, Jesus—the Son of Man—points toward God’s redemption of the Creation, that is, toward God’s gracious gathering up of all things into God’s Self. And yes, the apocalyptic tradition in Judaism often describes a dramatic, even disruptive grace.

A word of caution, though: Every human attempt to define or identify some culminating, apocalyptic event has proven wrong. And we needn’t think of only within the Judeo-Christian tradition. The ancient Mayan calendar predicted that the world would end on December 21, 2012. Sometimes human effort has proven just plain silly, like Harold Camping and his multiple, failed doomsday predictions based on some absurd numerology. And Camping himself has now been dead for ten years.²

Occasionally, some have tried, with horrifying and deadly futility, to force the issue. Consider the Crusades in Medieval times. Or think of Christian Zionists who, right now, are salivating at the war between Israel and Palestine because they believe that such horrific and ungodly violence is a divinely-ordained prerequisite for Jesus’ physical return. Does that sound Christ-like to you?

While Advent it not an exercise in doomsday preparation, our faith tradition takes seriously the socio-political realities of human existence. That brings us to the second voice.

Luke wrote his gospel in the early-to-mid 80’sCE—that means ten to fifteen years after the fall of Jerusalem in 70CE. The distress, confusion, and chaos of the Jewish rebellion and Rome’s over-powering response lingered like the smell of smoke around the ruins of a burned-down home. Having a long history of enduring conquest and occupation, Luke’s Jewish readers would still feel that fresh wound and remember ancient ones. They would wrestle with God’s goodness and providence as they continued to wait for good news and deliverance.

Maybe Luke was trying to say that he expected some imminent and apocalyptic act. As followers of Jesus, we trust and proclaim that Jesus is that act. In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, born to a Jewish carpenter and his fiancé, in the town of Bethlehem, in the midst of a Roman census, God’s deliverance has come. Embracing news like that means embracing a paradox. We prepare for the fulfillment of God’s promised redemption by intentionally living our lives in the realm of Incarnate love—here and now.

Because Christmas proclaims the gift of God’s eternal presence in, with, and for the Creation, Advent, instead of being a time of busyness and acquisition, is best observed as a time of contemplation and release. It’s a time to create space to receive anew God’s ongoing apocalypse of grace.

The more we clutter our lives, or to use Jesus’ words, the more “weighed down [and trapped] with…the worries of this life” we become, the less “alert [and prayerful]” we will be. And the less able we are to recognize and welcome what God offers in Jesus.

Christmas may be the headliner, but Advent is the way of life. And without it, this time of year is, even for Christians, nothing more than “The Holidays.”

As you come to Christ’s table this morning, may you come with open hearts and unclenched fists so that you may truly receive the signs of grace. And instead of helping you to escape creation’s suffering and struggles, may this sacrament send you out to live as sprouting fig leaves, as incarnate signs of God’s redeeming love at work in a grieving, anguished, and yet beautiful, beloved, and holy Creation.

 

¹Like so much of scripture, especially prophetic and apocalyptic texts, Jesus’ words often get misused. Many people find grace a bit fluffy and fragile, and turn to fear (judgement, shame, etc.) as means of proclamation. The gospel, then, gets lost in human efforts to make grace a merited and measurable commodity rather than that the gift it is, and which it must be to be grace.

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Camping