Our Proclamation

Luke 6:17-31; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20

by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones

House of Hope Presbyterian Church

16 February 2024

            When I was a college student, back in December of 1993, I took a tour of Israel and Palestine and, of course, one of our stops was the Mount of the Beatitudes, the small hill that sits above the Sea of Galilee, and commemorates Jesus’ great sermon.  On the spot sits a lovely church, paid for by Benito Mussolini, which is embarrassing.

Despite being there in winter, it was a mild and beautiful day when we visited.  The sun shining in a clear blue sky.  The landscape still green.  It was easy to imagine the multitudes of people surrounding Jesus to hear his teaching.

As with many of the sites in the Holy Land, the exact location of an event is not always known with historical accuracy, but from this small hill you can see the entire surrounding countryside and know that it was in the area, spread before you, that Jesus carried out much of his teaching and his ministry.

Of course, Matthew places the sermon on a mountain, and Luke says it occurred on a plain.  I don’t think either evangelist was trying to pinpoint a precise location.  Matthew wants a mountain for its significance, that the Sermon can be compared to the deliverance of the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  Both the Torah and the Sermon of Jesus being words from God that are used to form the people of God.

Luke narrates that Jesus has been on the mountain with his newly appointed apostles and now they come down to a level place to talk to the multitudes.  The location seems to emphasize that this teaching is for the masses, for everyone.  Nor is this some “mountaintop experience”—a moment of ecstasy that cannot be sustained over time.  No, this is a teaching for everyday and for all times.  And placing everyone on a level plain seems to upend any attempt to create a hierarchy—all are welcome into this new people that God is forming through Jesus Christ.

The commentator Brendan Byrne draws our attention to the crowd, when he writes, “It is before this array of burdened and afflicted humanity, longing to access his healing and liberating power, that Jesus” gives his instructions.

Don’t we live in interesting times?

I’m drawn to those thinkers who describe this era as an age of polycrisis.  We don’t get to respond to just one crisis at a time, but a whole series of overlapping and intersecting crises.  I’m amused by the accuracy of those who call this decade “The Terrible Twenties.”

We are living through one of those eras of deep change, brought on by radical advances in technology, similar to previous periods in human history that witnessed swift and dramatic breakthroughs.  Many of the changes we are living through are on a global scale, with much of it beyond our control. 

Which, of course, is not comforting.  Our human brains are not well-equipped for uncertainty; so we get anxious, stressed, afraid, and sometimes begin to act out.

In the midst of this era of change, we’ve now been experiencing all these crises.  The pandemic and all of its effects.  The cultural reckonings with racial injustice and the #MeToo movement and now the overwhelming backlash.  The wars in Ukraine, Palestine, Congo, Sudan, and Myanmar.  America’s epidemic of gun violence.  The epidemic of mental illness.  The opioid epidemic.  The rise of deaths of despair.  The return of political violence.  The rise of authoritarians.  The loss of reproductive rights.  The attacks on the LGBT community, particularly our trans and non-binary siblings.  Mass migrations of humanity and the backlash to that.  And what exactly is happening and is going to happen with artificial intelligence?

Looming over everything–global climate change and the many ways that impact is being felt now almost every day.

Some religious thinkers are predicting that worse is yet to come, that humanity might enter some sort of dark age. I’m hopeful that’s not the case, but I’m paying attention to those voices of warning.

Among the challenges these crises pose is avoiding cynicism, despair, hopelessness, and, simply, exhaustion. 

So when we look around us we see an “array of burdened and afflicted humanity, longing to access . . . healing and [liberation].”  Just like those crowds that Jesus preached to.

I believe this period of crisis presents opportunities for the church.  Precisely because we have values, qualities, and skills that can help humanity in this moment.  Our rich traditions, our spiritual practices, our commitments to care and community, our service to others, our work for justice and peace, even the beauty of our artistry, these are among Christianity’s great strengths.  Our churches are places where people can discover what they need—to belong, to be part of something bigger, to make sense of their lives and the world.

I also believe that the Christian church is needed now more than it has been at any point in my lifetime.  

What the world needs is a group of people formed by the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth who boldly proclaim good news.

But there’s one challenge I haven’t mentioned yet, and that is that the very understanding of what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus, is being contested in the public square in dramatic, new ways.

Most of us have grown up in the time when the basic divide in American Protestant Christianity was between the Liberal Mainline and Evangelicals.  And there were different parts of the American Catholic Church in alliance with those two groups.  We also watched the rise of the Religious Right. And these groups have disagreed about the inerrancy of scripture, the ordination of women, and the place of queer people in the life of the church.

In the last quarter century, the Religious Left regained its voice—opposing the War in Iraq, organizing to respond to anti-Black violence in places like Ferguson, Charleston, Charlottesville, and Minneapolis, providing help and sanctuary to immigrants and refugees, and defending the rights of the Water Protectors at Standing Rock. 

But at the same time, the Religious Right has been changing.  Now we face a new Christian Nationalism that in its most radical forms imagines some sort of conservative Christian theocracy. 

And the traditional voices of American faith are being challenged and threatened.  Bishop Marian Budde’s call for mercy and compassion generates a whirlwind.  Luteran Family Services is being defunded.  The Catholic Bishops of America are having to defend the refugee work of their churches against attacks from the Catholic Vice President.  And this week the Pope intervened to clearly state the teaching of the Christian church and rebuke these attacks.

Francis opened his letter by declaring that this is “a decisive moment in history to reaffirm not only our faith in a God who is always close, incarnate, migrant and refugee, but also the infinite and transcendent dignity of every human person.”  And near the end of the letter, Francis offers this exhortation:

I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters. With charity and clarity we are all called to live in solidarity and fraternity, to build bridges that bring us ever closer together, to avoid walls of ignominy and to learn to give our lives as Jesus Christ gave his for the salvation of all.

So, part of our challenge is to proclaim to the wider world who Jesus is, why we believe what we believe, and why we do what we do, particularly our acts of service and kindness for the most vulnerable and the needy.

Didn’t Jesus tell us in this very sermon—“Blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are hated and excluded?”  And didn’t he tell us, “woe to the rich, the full, the mocking”?

On Wednesday, the New York Times ran an article on a religious revival of sorts that is occurring in Silicon Valley.  Long one of the least religious and most unchurched locales in the country.  But apparently as the techno elite have been shifting to the political right, many of them are also finding religion.

The story focuses in on Trae and Michelle Stephens.  He is one of Peter Thiel’s venture capital partners, and she has formed a group called ACTS 17 which is an acronym for “Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society.”  She hosts gatherings in her home, where attendees pay $50, and it is advertised to young tech workers as a chance to network with leaders in the industry.  The events are discussions of faith and theology, with the main speakers often being executives and leaders of the tech companies. 

One of the most telling paragraphs was this one, a quote from Michelle Stephens, explaining this ministry:

“We were always taught as Christians to serve the meek, the lowly, the marginalized,” . . .  “I think we’ve realized that, if anything, the rich, the wealthy, the powerful need Jesus just as much.”

            Yes, the rich, wealthy, and powerful do need Jesus.  Obviously.  But you know who taught us that Christians were to serve “the meek, the lowly, the marginalized?”  It was Jesus himself.  Right here in this sermon and again and again.

            I do not recognize a “Christianity” that focuses on making the rich and powerful feel more comfortable.

            Or leaves them with the idea that their lives shouldn’t be in service to the poor and the vulnerable.

            Because Jesus teaches the exact opposite of that.

            And these words of Jesus don’t make us feel comfortable.  I’m neither rich nor powerful, but I am a rather privileged, well-educated, white American male whose belly is full, and these words of Jesus’ sermon convict me.  They challenge me.  They don’t let me become complacent. 

            In fact, when we truly read and meditate upon these words of the Gospel, they teach us not just that we are supposed to live our lives in service to the poor and the vulnerable, but that that the poor and the vulnerable have insights to teach us.  They have a closeness to God and God’s vision for the world.  So we need to be hospitable and generous in order to learn from them and to receive their gifts, so that we might be changed, we might be saved.

            Here’s New Testament scholar Brendan Byrne again, Jesus “is seeking to inculcate a fundamental attitude according to which one would be prepared to be vulnerable to a degree foolish by the standards of the world, because such vulnerability and generosity is what one both discerns in God and experiences from God.”  And elsewhere he writes, “It is the vulnerable who make the world safe for humanity” and become “instrument[s] of the hospitality of God.”

            Yet we live in an age where it seems to have suddenly become okay to be a bully.  Where what it means to be great is to exert our power and make demands upon others.  Mercy and compassion are signs of weakness.

            But, again, Jesus teaches us otherwise.  Jesus models the generosity, hospitality, and vulnerability of God.  And invites us to become part of a people who embodies those same values.  If we do, we shall be blessed.  And woe to those who do not.

            So, again, what the world needs, in order to meet and respond to all these challenges and opportunities, are groups of people, formed by the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who boldly proclaim the good news.

            Which is what I’m looking forward to doing together with you, if I am called to be your pastor. 

            From the moment I first read your job posting last year, and throughout my conversations since, I’ve been impressed with your sense of identity, your vision, and your commitment to being instruments for God’s mission in this city and the world. 

            House of Hope, I believe, has the people, the resources, the opportunities to meet the challenges of this critical moment.  God is calling us to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ.  Together, let us proclaim the good news.

We Proclaim

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones

First Central Congregational Church

9 February 2024

            Now I would remind you, my siblings and friends, of the good news that I and my predecessors have proclaimed to you, which you have received, in which you also stand, through which you are also being saved, if you hold firmly to the message, for you have not believed in vain.

            This is a season for proclamation.  For the apostolic work of the church.  For us to be reminded of the good news of the gospel and for us to share that good news with the world around us.

            We live in a time when people hunger and seek after meaning.  They want to be part of something bigger, that helps them to make sense of their lives.  Something in which they can stand.

            The Anglican bishop and Bible scholar N. T. Wright has declared that the current mission of the church is to pioneer a way into a new world, in which we model a new way of being human, rooted in the love of God.  Which includes a reconstruction of how we know, not through abstract propositions, but centered, also, in love.  The church helps us to see our lives as part of a great love story, from which we draw our model of human flourishing, and the courage required for living in these days.

            One of my UCC colleagues told a story a few weeks ago at our annual conference about a young woman who, when she joined the church, asked to address the congregation.  And what she said was “Thank you for this space where my life can be bigger and more beautiful.”

            This is the good news that we proclaim.

            And the message we proclaim is a message of salvation.  We are being saved by this good news.

            The good news that God has invaded the world in order to complete the creation by defeating the forces of sin and evil and setting us free to become a new, flourishing humanity.

            That is the essence of the story of Jesus that Paul tells us here in 1 Corinthians.

            The story begins with acknowledging that we stand in need of deliverance from this world, this age.  Here’s how feminist scholar Beverly Roberts Gaventa describes the situation:

Our deep attachment to corrupt systems of measurement, our distorted quest for identity, to say nothing of the malformed relationships between men and women—all of these are more than attitudes in need of adjustment.  They are symptoms of the persistence of the “present evil age” with which the gospel collides.  No social agenda will correct the situation, and no pedagogical strategy will suffice, because the power of evil is such that it can corrupt even the purest motives and the sternest resolve.

            As Paul scholar Anthony Thiselton states, “the gospel is not a human social construction.”  So it is not wedded to any ideology or party or nationality.  It is God’s power of love at work in the world to bring about a new creation.

            Which is the essence of Paul’s proclamation, that he had received and handed on to the churches—"Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was raised on the third day . . . and appeared” to so many people, including Paul himself.

            This story is about power, it is about love, it is about vindication and liberation, it is about newness and opportunity and hope, it is about sharing in glory.  And this story is the place in which we stand, which gives us courage to keep on proclaiming.

            Gaventa writes:

First, Paul’s apocalyptic theology has to do with the conviction that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has invaded the world as it is, thereby revealing the world’s utter distortion and foolishness, reclaiming the world, and inaugurating a battle that will doubtless culminate in the triumph of God over all God’s enemies (including the captors Sin and Death).  This means that the gospel is first, last, and always about God’s powerful and gracious initiative.

            God has acted  to bring about a renewal of the cosmos.  An act of compassion, grace, and love.

            And God’s “invasion” of the world, as she describes it, is not your normal human invasion.  God came to earth as a baby born to a peasant family on the far reaches of the empire.  And the man that child became led no armies and engaged in no violence.  Instead Jesus awakened the Spirit within everyone he encountered, setting them free to flourish and become who God dreamed that they could become.  He showed a new mode of human existence, and when others saw it they were amazed and desired the same thing.

            And Jesus not only didn’t use violence; he became the victim of state violence, a lynching, an innocent lamb taken to slaughter.  And in that way absorbed the violence, modeling a sacrificial and peaceful way of being.  A way to end the violence, end the war, end the oppression.

            But that death was not the end of Jesus, for God raised him from the dead, vindicating Jesus and his way of being and making clear for all time that this is the way we should live, this is what God wants, Jesus’s way  should be our way, so that all might live and all might flourish and all might share in divine glory.

            And through that Sin and Death are and will be and are being defeated.  Because we followers of Jesus have become God’s agents of new creation, being used by the Holy Spirit to bring about the common good for all humanity and all creation.

            God is reclaiming and renewing the creation for our liberation and our flourishing and our participation in glory.  Within us lies the germinative energy, as the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov calls it.  The seed from which the new creation is constantly growing.

            And this is not merely a spiritual reality we proclaim.  We proclaim a bodily resurrection.  As Michael Gorman writes, “The body is the means by which we encounter others and serve God.”  And that resurrection change is already occurring in our physical bodies as we turn them away from Sin and death and toward God and what God expects of us.

            Our bodies then bear witness to a new humanity and a renewed creation through the acts of support and service we provide one another, all humanity, and the whole creation.  We become vessels and agents of God’s love, that we talked about last week.  And I really enjoy this description of that love, appropriate for the week of St. Valentine’s Day, by Beverly Roberts Gaventa—“When Paul speaks of the ‘love of God in Christ Jesus,’ it is no sentimental valentine but a fierce love that rescues creation itself.”

            Paul proclaims this story and what it means for us as a source of power and courage and hope because it is Paul’s own story.  He has witnessed it.  He has experienced it.  And as an apostle he invites his hearers and readers to make it their story too.

            Paul himself is an example of the new creation.  He once persecuted the church, involved in the deaths of some of Jesus’ earliest followers.  A man who believed that religious zeal meant purity and dogma and even using violence to achieve your religious aims.  But all of that changed forever for Paul when, he encountered the Risen Christ.  He became a man of peace, going about the world trying his hardest to create radical egalitarian communities of mutual love.

            And so he becomes our apostle, our model of the work to which God continues to call us as a church.

            Work that we can only accomplish because of the grace of God that is with us.

            This is what Paul wants his readers to remember.  And what I too proclaim so that you too might remember and believe.  Believe the great story of which you are apart.  Believe in the power, the courage, the hope that are yours.  Because God is at work in you and through you.  God has saved you, is saving you.  Setting you free from all that enchains you, including Sin, Death, and the evils of this age.  Creating you anew, a new human being, in a renewed body, that shines in holy glory.

            This, my friends and siblings, is what we, with authority and humility and courage, proclaim.

Trust by Hernan Diaz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Despite it being a Pulitzer Prize Winner, this novel just didn't resonate with me.

View all my reviews

Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times by Elizabeth Oldfield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you are struggling with all the shit of the world right now, then this is a book I recommend to you.

View all my reviews

The Highest Gift

1 Corinthians 13

by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones

First Central Congregational Church

2 February 2024

            One of the most astonishing things about newborns is that they are able to imitate the facial expressions of their caregivers.  One reason this is astonishing is that newborns have never seen their own face.  Which is evidence that newborn human babies arrive with the capacity for empathy.  They almost immediately understand that they can imitate the looks and the feelings of their adult caregivers.  And almost immediately they learn that they can use their own facial expressions and feelings to compel those caregivers to attend to their needs. 

            We are so used to these behaviors in babies that we probably haven’t taken the time to realize how astonishing it is that the newborn brain functions in this way, has these incredible skills from the beginning.

            And, of course, we now understand how important that early care-giving is.  A child who receives care, attention, touch, affection will development attachment, leading to empathy, and ultimately love.

            By one a child assumes that their mind operates similarly to the other minds they encounter.  By two or three they have developed a basic understanding of empathy, understanding that others feel similarly to them.

            And that’s when children are ready for the next stage of moral development—understanding rules—taking the way you want to be treated and extending that to everyone.  If morality only operated from empathy, then we would have a rather small sphere of ethical action.  We also have to learn how to treat people well even when we don’t feel it.  As Allison Gopnik, who had studied and taught this child development, points out, “Simply relying on immediate emotion isn’t going to work. Somehow we need to extend that emotion to people we aren’t close enough to see and touch.  We need to care about people we don’t know.”

It is so much easier to mature and grow in love if we have the grounding early in our lives of being well cared for.  From that stable base of care and affection, we can expand our moral consciousness, ever-widening the circle of concern, to the point that we can extend the ethics of love to all people.

This is the goal of the human life.

James Fowler, in his classic work Stages of Faith, writes about the levels of development we pass through as we grow and mature.  In the higher stages, we become more open to other people and other ideas and do not see them as a threat to ourselves and our beliefs.  The highest stage of human development, stage 6, he calls “universalizing faith” and claims it is quite rare, found in heroes like Gandhi, King, Mother Theresa.  These are the people who express a universal love for all humanity and are willing to sacrifice themselves for that love.  They have an openness to all people and, quite simply, appear to be, as Fowler writes, “more fully human than the rest of us.”  He believes such people embody the future which we long for.

I believe this is the sort of love Paul is praising here in First Corinthians.

He ended chapter 12 by writing that he was going to tell them about the highest gift.  This directed to the people in that congregation who felt they should be developing the “higher” gifts, out of some bent desire to feel superior to other people. 

Paul has been at pains in this letter to knock some sense into those folks.  The church is a radically egalitarian community.  No one is superior to anyone else.  In fact, the folks that seem, by normal human standards, to be less important, are in the church, MORE essential.  So no Christian should lord themselves over another or mistreat anyone who is vulnerable.  Those are affronts to the Body of Christ.

And, if you actually want to be more spiritual, to pursue the highest gifts, then you need to be pursuing this universal, unconditional love.  Because not only is that the most important gift for building up the common good of the church, it is also the goal of what the best human life is.  It’s the kind of life Jesus modeled for us and invites us to follow.

Of course, reading 1 Corinthians 13 today, one can’t help but compare and contrast with the current administration and the actions they’ve taken over the last two weeks, so many of which have been devoid of mercy and compassion.  And you’ve already felt these decisions beginning to harm your friends, your family, your own lives.

It is important for us to gather in church and hear that we have not mistaken the Christian faith, we have not misunderstood morality, we have not been fools—unconditional, universal love and its expressions in grace, mercy, and compassion are what God expects of us, are what the best human life should aim for.

But this moment also means that we have to double-down on love.  We have to continue our own spiritual and emotional growth and maturation. 

So, what is God calling us to?

First, we should remember that this love talked about here isn’t a feeling.  Or isn’t just a feeling.  It is, as New Testament scholar Anthony Thiselton describes, “an attitude and habitual practice for everyday life.”

Yes, love arises for us foremost and most powerfully in feeling.  The feelings we have for our children, our spouses, our closest friends.  But mature love must expand beyond immediate feeling and begin to encompass everyone we encounter and ultimately those we never meet.

And the only way to do that is to make loving actions a part of our daily habit and routine.  Which is something you have the power to do, regardless of what’s happening on the news.  Every day you can be kind.  You can be empathetic.  You can reach out in care and concern and support to someone who is vulnerable and hurting.  You can be generous with your time or money.  You can offer to help.

Make these sorts of actions our daily habits, and we will continue to grow and develop into more loving people.

We also can’t be consumed by rage.  This week I read the book Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times by Elizabeth Oldfield.  My UCC colleague John Allen, who is a pastor in Maine, highly recommended the book, and now I’m passing that recommendation on to you.  It would be great book for you to read, right now.

In one early chapter she explores how appealing wrath is, but how we must learn to confront our rage with the skills of peacemaking.  I liked how she described this emotion—“wrath, in the form of self-righteous rage and contempt, is a compelling, borderline pleasurable emotion.”  Admit it, you’ve felt that.

She says wrath often helps us to avoid the fear, guilt, or overwhelm that we are actually feeling.  Wrath helps to distract us from those other negative thoughts, partly because it feels more powerful.  She also points out that wrath is addictive, like a sugar-high.  And that we can also use it to bond with other people in “our shared contempt.”

Any of that sound familiar?  Yeah.  She’s on-the-nose that that is one of the sins holding us back from experiencing the fully aliveness that God dreams for each of us. 

She is quick and careful to separate anger from wrath.  Anger can be healthy, effective, and required.  But wrath is that feeling that ultimately disconnects us from other people and from who God intends us to be.

So Oldfield invites us to engage in spiritual practices to confront our wrath so that we might grow in peacemaking, which is clearly one aspect of the love we are talking about today.

One practice she recommends is to make two lists.  One of the types of people you are most comfortable with and the other of the types of people you are least comfortable with.  And then to get really specific in writing down why.  Why one type of people makes you comfortable and another uncomfortable.  And she gives the instruction that you can’t write down an attribute of theirs, you have to make it about you.  What has happened in your experience that makes you feel that way?  What is it that you feel?  What is it that you fear?

And she points out that “if your list isn’t slightly painful, you’re probably not being honest.”

What’s the purpose of this exercise?  To better understand our feelings, particularly our fears.  And with a better understanding, then maybe we are less likely to get caught up in fight-or-flight mode.  Because when we are in fight-or-flight mode, we can’t summon empathy.  We can’t calmly stand-our-ground and speak truth in helpful ways.

Our turbulent times require more love.  We can’t just criticize the lack of it in other people.  We also have to focus on our own spiritual and emotional growth and maturation.

Which we can do, because we are powerful people, filled with the Holy Spirit.

In the passage we read last week, Paul contrasted weakness with the normal ways in which humans think of and use power.  And he’s rather critical of the ways humans normally use power.  Paul writes about how God works differently, using what humans consider weakness in order to achieve God’s purposes.  And love is the most important way that God works.

Which really means that love is powerful.  Not powerful in the way humans might ordinarily think of it.  But truly powerful because that’s the way the God who created the world works.  And that’s the way God designed the world to work best.  So when humans operate from love, they tap into the deepest source of real power.

I think many of you, right now, are feeling powerless.  But you are not powerless. 

Listen to these words from the feminist theologian Meggan Watterson:

The good news . . . is that true power rests within us. . . . no one outside of us can keep us from finding this power.  Because it’s not a power over us or outside us.  It’s a power that rests within us, and we can rest in it, be led by it, and be carried by it.

            And what is this power?  You’ve guessed it already.  She answers, “It’s a power that’s the opposite of power.  It’s love.”

            Later she adds, “the love that’s hidden within each of us is the only power that can save all of us.”

            You are a beloved child of God.  You are created in love.  And you are redeemed by-and-in the love that Jesus Christ demonstrated.  A love so powerful that it defeated death and through it we have the power of resurrection.  And that you-are-risen love fills every cell of your body because you are a vessel of the Holy Spirit.  Which comforts you, advocates for you, and gives you the skills and talents you need to live well and fully.  And you’ve been called into the beloved community of the church, where you are not alone, but where your gift is shared with my gift and everyone else here’s gifts, and together those gifts are multiplied to become part of God’s mission to heal humanity.

            No one can take any of that from you.

            So here is what you are capable of:

You can be patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  You don’t insist on your own way; you aren’t irritable or resentful; you don’t rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoice in the truth.  You can bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things.  Because the love that empowers you never ends.