Sermon: Christmas Loyalties

Luke 2:41-52

Christmas Loyalties

James Sledge                                                                                       December 30, 2018

Some of you may have heard this story before, but with today’s gospel reading, I couldn’t resist telling it again. I once lost one of my daughters in a drug store. She was four or five years old and standing right there next to me as I looked for some item. But when I looked away from the store shelf to where she had been seconds before, she was gone. I called her name and quickly looked on the adjoining aisles. My panic growing, I traversed the store multiple times, looking down every aisle over and over without finding her. As the minutes wore on, I experienced a feeling of sheer terror.

In desperation, I finally left the store and ran down the grocery store where we had planned to go next. Hoping against hope I ran to the bakery section of the Harris Teeter, where they handed out free cookies to children. And sure enough, there she was, getting her free cookie. She had simply decided that she would go there on her own. Never mind that it was not next to the drug store but at the other end of a strip mall.

If any of you have a had a similar experience, you know how frightening it feels. My terror last but a few minutes, though it seemed much longer. I can scarcely imaging how Mary and Joseph must have felt. According to Luke, they searched for Jesus for three days, retracing their steps to Jerusalem and hunting all over the city before finally finding him.

It sometimes surprises people to learn that this is the only story in the Bible about Jesus as a child. Jesus does come from a humble background, and so makes some sense that little would be know about his early days. Still, stories about great heroes typically include some from childhood, episodes that point to their greatness to come.

I don’t know that it’s taught in school any longer – we live in a more cynical time – but when I was in elementary school I learned the story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree. Asked if he was the culprit he proclaimed, “I cannot tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.” In all likelihood the event never happened, but that is beside the point. The story’s main purpose is to illuminate something about the character of the man, to demonstrate that his greatness was rooted in a deep, personal virtuousness.

Abraham Lincoln has his own childhood stories that give clues as to the man he will become. For that matter, there are stories about the young emperor Augustus, who ruled when Jesus was born, that point to the great leader he would become. Augustus achieved great learning at a very young age, and, in a story that was likely known by the first readers of Luke’s gospel, Augustus gave the funeral oration for his grandmother Julia Caesaris, sister of Julius Caesar, at the age of twelve.[1]

Luke, writing his gospel for Gentile Christians, seems eager to present Jesus as greater than Augustus, filled with remarkable learning despite not having any of the instruction and education that the emperor-to-be had received. Jesus wasn’t simply groomed to be a great ruler. He was born for the role, part of God’s unfolding saga of salvation.

But that is only part of our gospel this morning. Luke could easily have told the story of a miraculously precocious Jesus without the part about Jesus disappearing on his parents. Jesus could have wowed them at the Temple while the family was there for Passover. This part of the story is about something else altogether.

Christmas Eve Candlelight Reflection

Christmas Eve Candle Lighting Reflection

I read a Christmas editorial in the Washington Post that talked about churches that are struggling with declining attendance and resources and yet still typically find their sanctuaries filled to overflowing on Christmas Eve. The column discussed the many reasons that people aren’t going to church like they once did. It mentioned that the fastest growing religion in America isn’t really a religion at all. It’s something called the “Nones,” those who are religiously disaffiliated and check “none of the above” on surveys about religion.

Yet despite this growing religious disaffiliation, despite the lack of cultural encouragement to be part of some faith community, despite the rapidly growing numbers in our society who view church as unnecessary, people show up in droves on Christmas Eve.

Many attribute this to nostalgia or the desire to maintain some family traditions around Christmas, but the columnist suggested that it could be something else. While the lure of church may be nonexistent for many, there still remains a longing, a hunger for the transcendent, for something more than “a society defined solely by self-interest and calculation, by the visible, the measurable and the tangible.”[1]

I can certainly see why Christmas would be especially alluring for those longing for the transcendent. Christmas insists that the God whose speech called forth the wonders of Creation is a God of life and light. Christmas speaks of a light, a goodness that cannot be overcome by the darkness, the pain, the selfishness, the hatred, the greed, the evil of the world. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.  

Christmas also insists that the transcendent, the light, the creative force of God, is not simply something far away out there. It moves toward us, seeking us. A child is born. The Word became flesh and lived among us. Emmanuel, God with us.

But God’s move toward us demands a response. God’s move is an invitation for us to move toward God. God has taken the first step in a divine dance we are invited to join, a dance of goodness, love, and self-giving; a dance of generosity, caring, and hope.

The God who comes toward us, who comes as a child born for us, invites us to become bearers of light and hope in a world too often filled with darkness and hopelessness. And the empty cross of the risen Christ reminds us that the deepest and most malevolent darkness cannot triumph over God’s love.

(Lower candles and shield the light.)

And so, in the midst of the world’s darkness, stand and hold your light high. Let it shine. Carry the light with you as you go. Bear the light of Christ into the world. Let it shine against all that is dark and frightening and hate-filled. Go to be light bearers in a world that is longing for light.

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[1] E.J. Dionne, Jr. “Churchgoers, cut the ‘Chreasters’ some slack” The Washington Post, December 23, 2018

Sermon video: Mixing Up Our Verb Tenses

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Mixing Up Our Verb Tenses

Luke 1:39-55

Mixing Up Our Verb Tenses

James Sledge                                                                                       December 23, 2018

Here we are on the Sunday before Christmas, and finally the scripture readings appointed for the day feel a little Christmassy. Three weeks ago we heard Jesus talk about his second coming, and the last two weeks we heard about John the Baptist. But today, finally, here is Mary, and she is pregnant with Jesus.

Of course the lectionary that lists the scripture readings for each Sunday isn’t trying to be a Grinch. In part it is letting Advent be Advent and not an extension of the Christmas season. But also, the Bible does not really share our fascination with Christmas. Of the four gospels, only Luke actually narrates Jesus’ birth. And Luke seems more focused on the events surrounding the birth, things like the prophetic speech we just heard, than on the birth itself.

It might help for me to go back and recall what has happened to get us to Mary’s prophetic song today. Luke is not only the sole narrator of Jesus’ birth, but he alone tells of John the Baptist’s birth, and he weaves the two stories together. John’s father, Zechariah, and Jesus’ mother, Mary, both receive visits from the angel Gabriel who tells them of miraculous births to come. And both Zechariah and Mary speak prophetically about these births.

Luke loves to use patterns and rhythms from the Old Testament as he tells the story of Jesus. Mary’s song is very much like the song offered by Hannah after she has given birth to Samuel. But more than that, the angel’s visits to Zechariah and Mary follow a formula for divine appearances that repeats throughout the Old Testament.

Sermon video: Repentance and Fruit for Christmas

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Repentance and Fruit for Christmas

Luke 3:7-18

Repentance and Fruit for Christmas

James Sledge                                                                                       December 16, 2018

John the Baptist shows up two weeks in a row in the Advent gospel readings, and so at the end of a recent staff meeting, I checked with Diane about her sermon on John’s first appearance. I did not want my sermon to duplicate hers. Could I preach on the “brood of vipers” or might she have already touched on that?

Diane said I could have the vipers, though she might touch a bit on John’s ministry during the children’s time. Then the conversation lapsed into silliness. I joked that she could greet children at the chancel steps with, “You brood of vipers! Who told you to come up here?” Then we imagined parents yanking their children out of the worship service, And come to think of it, maybe I shouldn’t share what goes on in staff meetings.

But that bit of silliness got me thinking about why those who came out to see John didn’t head for home the moment he started yelling. All they do is show up, and he calls them a family of snakes, a colorful way of implying that they are children of the devil. Yet these people do not run off. They ask for instructions. "What then should we do?" Clearly they think that something is about to happen, and they want to be ready.

As I thought about the crowds that gather around John despite how unpalatable he is, I found myself thinking about the gathering in the missional mandate the Session has discerned as our call from God. “Gathering those who fear they are not enough so we may experience grace, wholeness, and renewal as God’s beloved.” I thought about the strategies of Gather, Deepen, and Share that we think critical to this missional mandate, and I took a look at this story of John the Baptist using the lens of Gather, Deepen, and Share.

Sermon: Truth-Telling, Grief, and Hope

Luke 21:25-36

Truth-Telling, Grief, and Hope

James Sledge                                                                                       December 2, 2018

There is a social media meme that makes the rounds every so often. It has a picture of Walter Brueggemann at some speaking engagement. Brueggemann is professor emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, and one of the more respected and influential Old Testament scholars of our time.

On this picture of Dr. Brueggemann is a quote from him, the same one that is on the front of the bulletin. It reads, “The prophetic tasks of the church are to tell the truth in a society that lives in illusions, grieve in a society that practices denial, and express hope in a society that lives in despair.” Perhaps those are good words to keep in mind on the Sunday when we enter Advent, listening to the prophetic words of Jesus.

Truth-telling, grieving, and hope initially strike me as odd companions, perhaps even more so in this time of year. Advent has more and more been absorbed into the celebration of Christmas, and at Christmas many people do not want anything to distract them from the joy and spirit of the season. People who are grieving often find Christmas a very difficult time and church a difficult place to be.

A few years back I preached a sermon I called “Keeping Herod in Christmas.” I borrowed the title from a chapter in Brian McLaren’s book, We Make the Road by Walking. McLaren talks about how Matthew’s gospel tells of the slaughter of innocent children in reaction to Jesus’ birth, and he says that our celebration of Christmas gets off track when it forgets that Jesus comes into a broken world that resists the newness he brings.

My sermon shared the upset I unintentionally created in the Columbus church I served. I leaned a cross against the manger that sat in our sanctuary chancel during Advent and Christmas and learned that many did not want the cross to intrude on their Christmas cheer. Perhaps that’s what Brueggemann is talking about when he speaks of our society’s denial.

Of perhaps he’s talking about the 85,000 children in Yemen who have starved to death because of Saudi Arabia’s intervention there, a campaign supported by the US. You would think that such appalling, and totally preventable, killing of children would be front page news day after day. Surely is deserves to be told and should wrack us with grief, yet it scarcely gets noticed. And with the coming of Christmas, our society has even less interest in truth-telling or grief about such things.

But the gospel reading for the first Sunday in Advent won’t help us maintain a façade of Christmas cheer. It features no angel choirs or heavenly visitors to Mary or Joseph. Instead it finds Jesus in Jerusalem just days before his arrest and execution, and he clearly understands the sort of prophetic voice Dr. Brueggemann wishes for the church. Jesus speaks of hope, of redemption drawing near, but it does not come in the midst of Christmas cheer. It comes amidst warnings of Jerusalem’s eminent destruction, of wars and insurrections, persecution of Jesus’ followers, and frightening signs in the heavens.

Sermon video: Belonging to the Truth

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Belonging to the Truth

John 18:33-37

Belonging to the Truth

James Sledge                                                                                       November 25, 2018

“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." That is how Jesus responds to Pilate’s question about whether or not he is a king. But Pilate is not much interested in truth. In the verse that follows our reading, Pilate responds, “What is truth?”

I think perhaps Pilate would fit right into our world of “alternative facts,” of “truth isn’t truth,” as Rudy Giuliani famously claimed. Pilate is a politician, and truth is often a problem for politicians. It has a nasty habit of getting in the way of plans and agendas, and so it often becomes casualty in election campaigns or political debates.

The gospel of John, more so than any other, portrays Pilate as a tragic figure, invited by Jesus into the truth but unable to enter. Pilate must scurry back and forth between the Jewish leaders outside and Jesus inside. He thinks he has power and control, but it is an illusion.

In our reading, Pilate comes inside after speaking with those leaders. He attempts to question Jesus, asking if he is King of the Jews. But rather than answer, Jesus questions him. “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate does not answer, but the question seems to have stung him. “I am not a Jew, am I?” he objects.

Now I need to pause here to clarify something about this word, “Jew.” The writer of John’s gospel is a Jew who follows Jesus. He writes to a congregation of Jews who follow Jesus and worship at the synagogue. Most of the time in John’s gospel, the term Jew refers, not to people who are Jewish, but to the Jewish leadership that opposed Jesus and is threatening to kick this congregation of Jewish, Jesus followers out of the synagogue. One of the great tragedies of history was the failure of later Christians to recognize this, and then to use the gospel of John as a weapon against their Jewish neighbors.

And so when Pilate insists that he is not a Jew – in the Greek, his question is not really a question – he is insisting that he is not like those Jewish leaders who stand in the way of what God is doing, or as Jesus describes it, those who do not belong to the truth.

It’s not that Pilate doesn’t know the truth. He knows that Jesus is innocent, but there are other things that matter more to Pilate than the truth. Jerusalem was hardly a prime posting for a Roman official, and no doubt Pilate wanted things to go smoothly there. No riots during the Passover festival on his watch. If an innocent man needed to die in order for things to stay calm, so be it. Never mind the truth.

Sermon video: Faithful Lament

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Faithful Lament

1 Samuel 1:4-20; 2:1-10

Faithful Lament

James Sledge                                                                                       November 18, 2018

In the wake of the horrific murders at a Pittsburgh synagogue, there have been many articles written about the rise in anti-Semitism and racism. Not so many years ago, people talked about moving into a post racial society. That seems naïve foolishness now. Recently I read an article in the Post that talked about how young Jews find themselves confronted with a reality they thought belonged to a distant past.

For many young Jews across the nation, last month’s mass shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was a jarring lesson. Many millennials who grew up hearing about anti-Semitism from their parents and grandparents think of the Holocaust, Eastern European pogroms and the Spanish Inquisition when they think about violence against Jews — stories they read in history books about events that happened well over half a century ago, and all in the old country, not the United States.

The Pittsburgh rampage, committed by a gunman who reportedly shouted “All Jews must die” as he fired, shattered what remained of that illusion.[1]

I rather doubt that black, millennial Americans ever shared such an illusion. Hate and violence against African Americans never was an old country problem relegated to history books. Still, the mainstreaming of racism in recent years, including its blatant use as political strategy, feels like a huge step backwards. And those who had hoped in some sort of inexorable progress toward a day when racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and so on were confined to history may now find such hope in short supply.

I confess that the last few years have at times left me struggling. When I talk with other clergy types about how they and their folks and managing, I hear of two very different responses. One sounds like the joke Stephen Colbert tells regarding Donald Trump’s claim to have done more for religion than any other president. “It’s true,” says Colbert. I’ve prayed more in the last two years than I ever have.” But others have respond differently, struggling to pray at all because of anger or despair. Me, I’ve gone back and forth between these two.

Sermon video: Big Rocks First

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Big Rocks First

Mark 12:28-34

Big Rocks First

James Sledge                                                                                       November 4, 2018

As seminary student, I did my summer internship at a small town church in eastern North Carolina. They provided housing for me in a mother-in-law suite attached to the home of a widowed, Jewish grandmother named Reba. As far as I know, Reba, her son, and his family constituted the entire Jewish population of that town.

Reba’s house and my suite shared an enclosed porch, and she and I would sometimes sit out there and chat. On one occasion she offered that differences between faiths didn’t really matter. As long as people believed in God and tried to be good, that was enough.

Now I don’t know that Reba actually thought there were no significant differences between Jews, Christians, Muslims, and so on. Her statement may have been a mixture of her being very hospitable to me combined with a tactic she had long used to blend in as a religious minority. I don’t really know. But there are many people who see the “All faiths are basically the same” idea as a good way to bridge religious differences.

Given the problems some religious folks cause, it’s tempting to think that blurring the distinctions between groups might help. But a vague, blurry, Christian identity turns out to be difficult to pass on new generations of believers. It doesn’t require liturgies, worship services, or institutions. And I wonder if the widely held notion of Christianity as intolerant, anti-gay, pro-Republican, and so on, isn’t partly the result of more liberal Christians having blurred our identity to the point that the Christian part isn’t really visible to others.

If someone who had not grown up in a church walked up to you and asked, “What does it mean to be a Christian? What’s non-negotiable?” how would you respond? What would you tell them beyond, “Believe in God and try to be good”?

When Jesus is asked about what is non-negotiable, he answers by quoting from Scripture, our Old Testament. He starts with the Shema from Deuteronomy. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and will all your soul (or life), and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” 

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He was asked for the commandment that is “first of all,” but he adds as second, from Leviticus, “You shall love our neighbor as yourself.”

Sermon video: What Do We Want from Jesus?

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: What Do We Want from Jesus?

Mark 10:46-52

What Do We Want from Jesus?

James Sledge                                                                                       October 28, 2018

Along with The Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Westminster Confession of Faith, and others, our denomination’s Book of Confessions includes something called A Brief Statement of Faith. Written in the 1980s, it has three, distinct sections, one for each person of the Trinity. The section on the Holy Spirit contains these words. “In a broken and fearful world the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.”

The Spirit gives us courage to live as disciples. If we are the Church, if we are followers of Jesus, the Spirit will help us to do these things. And today’s gospel has me thinking specifically about courage “to hear the voices of peoples long silenced.”

In recent years, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Me Too movement have tried to lift up voices long ignored, silenced, and disregarded. Some folks have listened, have become more aware of the systemic ways that black voices, female voices, and other voices from the margins have been ignored and discounted.

Others, however, resent this demand for marginalized voices to be heard. For a variety of reasons, ranging from benign to malicious, some do not want the disruption these new voices cause. They’re happy with how things are, privileged by how things are, or just accepting of how things are, and would just as soon leave it alone.

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In our gospel reading, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus demands to be heard, but “many” among the crowd and disciples insist that he be quiet. His voice is an intrusion that they do not want to hear, although the gospel story isn’t clear on why. Jesus has made a name for himself by healing people. It’s a big part of the show that crowds come to see, so why shut down Bartimaeus?

Sermon video: Beloved and Invited to New Life

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Beloved and Invited to New Life

Mark 10:35-45

Beloved and Invited to New Life

James Sledge                                                                                       October 21, 2018

I read an column in The Washington Post the other day entitled, “As Jesus said, nice guys finish last.” It quoted a tweet from Jerry Falwell, Jr., president at Liberty University. “Conservatives & Christians need to stop electing ‘nice guys’. They might make great Christian leaders but the US needs street fighters like @realDonaldTrump at every level of government b/c the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps & many Repub leaders are a bunch of wimps!”[1]

The column went on to note that it is hardly a new thing for religious folks to want powerful politicians to support their agenda. For much of European and American history, faith and power have had something of a symbiotic relationship. Rulers made sure that the population participated in the faith, and the faith gave spiritual blessing to the ruler.

This sort of deal almost always ends up compromising and cheapening the faith. In our American experience, Christianity ended up being used to buttress slavery, sanction the genocide of Native Americans, and support imperialism in Africa and Asia. More recently, evangelical leaders were singing the president’s praises on the very day that thousands of migrant children were moved, under the cover of darkness, to a detention facility in Texas.

This last event prompted The Washington Post columnist to write, “This is disturbing and discrediting. How can anyone supposedly steeped in the teachings of Jesus be so unaffected by them? The question immediately turns against the questioner. In a hundred less visible ways, how can I be so unaffected by them?”[2]

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Sermon video: Fake Questions and Kingdom Ways

Audios of sermons and worship available on FCPC website.

Sermon: Fake Questions and Kingdom Ways

Mark 10:2-16

Fake Questions and Kingdom Ways

James Sledge                                                                                       October 7, 2018

I don’t think we’ve done it here during my time as pastor, but both of my previous congregations did a stewardship program called the “Grow One Challenge.” This challenge was based on the fact that very few church members tithe. Never mind how often a pastor calls for the offering with “Let us bring our tithes and offerings…” statistics show that tithers are as rare as liberal Republicans.

And so the “Grow One Challenge” is a plan both to help church members move toward the biblical notion of the tithe, giving the first ten percent, the first fruits, to God. Recognizing that the typical Presbyterian gives something closer to two percent, this challenge knew that asking people to jump from one or two percent to ten was an impossible task. And so people were encouraged to grow one, one percentage point that is, toward the tithe. The pledge cards accompanying the program even had little charts on the back that would help you do the math.

The program seemed to work pretty well. We had some pretty big jumps in giving when we first used it. But I also had a rather experience. It happened in both churches and it happened repeatedly.  People asked me, “Am I supposed give ten percent of my income before or after taxes?” They almost always grinned as they asked.

I don’t think there was ever I time where this was a real question. They weren’t filling out their pledge card and wanting to know if it was this amount or that. More often it was just a joke, but sometimes it was a way of muddying the waters, of charting loopholes.

The Pharisees in our scripture aren’t making a joke, but they may well be grinning. Their question is not a real one. They already know what the law says. They’re merely hoping Jesus’ answer will make some folks angry. There were disagreements in Jesus’ day, not about whether divorce was legal, but about valid reasons for it. The Pharisees hope Jesus will come down on one side and upset those on the other.

Sermon video: Getting Our Mojo Back

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Answering (and Living) the Jesus Question

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Getting Our Mojo Back

Mark 9:30-37

Getting Our Mojo Back

September 23, 2018                                                                                        James Sledge

I spent much of my childhood and youth in Charlotte, NC, back in the days when TV had a total of six or seven channels. Of these, the CBS affiliate dominated the local market and also owned the largest radio station. It had a number of high profile, charity events each year, but the one I recall the most vividly was an annual on air blood drive.

They advertised it heavily. Corporate sponsors provided food, refreshments, and gifts. Radio and TV personalities worked the event. CBS sent in stars from various shows, and all during the day they would have live broadcasts interviewing donors, talking about how easy is was, how almost painless it was.

The event was always a huge success with more than a thousand people donating blood. The Red Cross blood bank would be as full as it ever got, but this blood drive never seemed to convert many into regular donors. Year after year, most of those interviewed were first time donors, and year after year, it wasn’t long before the Red Cross was making pleas to the public about critically short blood supplies. The gifts, glitz, celebrities, and chance to be on TV drew in lots of people, but when it was all over, they went back to old patterns, ones that didn’t include giving blood.

A similar pattern showed up in the early Jesus movement. The gospels report huge crowds coming out to see this miracle working, charismatic, teacher-prophet-messiah. But by and large, the crowds saw the show, perhaps got a healing, and then went home to their old lives.

The early reflected this. It was a small movement, and you see that in the New Testament. In his letters, the Apostle Paul deals with questions about what parts of normal, civic participation are out of bounds for followers of Jesus, questions that arise because the Christians are a tiny minority. So too some of the gospels address communities struggling to remain faithful when doing so may get them ostracized from polite society.

We tend to think of the Bible as a public book, but the individual components of the New Testament – which didn’t really exist as we know it for a few hundred years after Jesus – were not understood that way. They were not used to spread the Christian message but to help existing Christian communities deal with issues that they faced. The books that would become the New Testament weren’t for the masses, but for the dedicated few.

It’s easy to see why the early Jesus movement tended to be small. While Jesus might have made a big splash and attracted a lot of gawkers, people hoping for a healing, or a political messiah to take on the Romans, many of Jesus’ teachings were not real crowd pleasers. The teachings we heard this morning are no exception.

Sermon video: Tribalism Meets God's Love and Grace

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Answering (and Living) the Jesus Question

Mark 8:27-38

Answering (and Living) the Jesus Question

James Sledge                                                                           September 16, 2018

The other day I stopped into the grocery store to grab a couple of items. As I looked for them, I happened down an aisle that was filled with Halloween candy and paraphernalia. I shouldn’t have  been surprised – it’s September after all, but I was. It was one of those sultry, ninety degree days, and it didn’t feel anything like fall.

But fall is almost here, which means the election is just around the corner. I’ve been something of a political junkie for much of my life, but I confess that I’ve grown tired of it. I don’t want to see all the political ads. I don’t want to see candidates who wrap themselves in a Christian mantle while spouting hatred and intolerance and outright racist ideas. I especially don’t want to watch another round of church leaders doing irreparable damage to the image of the faith by insisting that candidates who show not the tiniest inclination to follow the teachings of Jesus are somehow God’s candidate. Wake me when it’s over.

Of course then the Christmas shopping season will be almost upon us, complete with culture war skirmishes. Some of the same folks who touted God’s candidates will insist that we “put Christ back in Christmas,” and they’ll get angry if someone says “Happy Holidays.” Sigh… Wake me when it’s over.

It’s amazing all the ways that Jesus or Christ or God or Christian faith gets invoked to support all manner of things. There are churches that celebrate the Second Amendment in worship and encourage members to bring their guns. There are churches that loudly proclaim, “God Hates Fags.” There are churches that say Donald Trump is God’s man in the White House, and there are churches that stage protests against Donald Trump. There are churches that see same sex relationships as an abomination and sin, and there are churches that marry same sex couples. And all these churches, at least all that call themselves Christian, claim Christ in some way.

When people insist that we put Christ back in Christmas, which one do they mean? Is it the one who blesses same sex marriages? Is it the one who says to love your enemy and not to resist the one who strikes you? Or is it a different Christ? How many of them are there? Sometimes it seems that we Christians have been given the answer to the question, but we’re not at all sure what that answer means.

Sermon: Tribalism Meets God's Love and Grace

Mark 7:24-37

Tribalism Meets God’s Love and Grace

James Sledge                                                                                       September 9, 2018

A great deal has been written and discussed of late on how tribal we’ve become in America. I read something the other day following the death of John McCain that said although Senator McCain was widely admired, he had become something of a political pariah in his home state of Arizona. All three Republican candidates in the recent Arizona senate primary either distanced themselves from McCain or outright disparaged him.

McCain’s hostility to President Trump is certainly one reason for this, but tribalism is involved as well. Tribalism draws very clear us and them boundaries and tends to view “them” as the enemy. Someone like McCain, who would work with members of the other party and even work against his own party when his principles required it, looks very suspicious to those who view the world from a tribal perspective.

We humans seem to have an innate tendency towards tribalism. We may not be born racists or homophobes or sexists or elitists or any other sort of ists, but we seek comfort and security and purpose by coalescing into groups with others who are like us in some way. It starts at a very young age. School children often form cliques that can be hostile and cruel to those who don’t fit into their group.

This is not a recent phenomenon. In Jesus’ day there were numerous divisions and groups. The Pharisees were a reform movement centered on synagogue and following scripture, opposed to what they saw as the corrupt, priestly Judaism of the Jerusalem Temple. The Essenes withdraw entirely into their own, separatist community in reaction to perceived Temple corruption and a world too accommodating to Greco-Roman culture. Then there was the Jewish – Gentile divide, the biggest tribal division of Jesus’ day.

These divisions are different than those of our day, and some may strike us as odd. But they functioned much the same as the divisions we hardly notice. We gather here for worship each week and frequently hear Paul’s words that say, There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus. But we hardly represent the diversity and inclusiveness these words suggest. We’re not a representative sampling of America or even our immediate community. We’re whiter, wealthier, more liberal, more likely to be cultural elitists, and so on.

Sermon video: Stained by the World

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Stained by the World

James 1:17-27

Stained by the World

James Sledge                                                                                                   September 2, 2018

There was an article in The Washington Post recently entitled, “Are rich people more likely to lie, cheat, steal? Science explains the world of Manafort and Gates.”[1] If you followed Paul Manafort’s recent trial, you know about the $15,000 ostrich and python jackets, the exorbitant lifestyle and the lengths he was willing to go to maintain that lifestyle.

And of course Manafort is but one example in a litany of cases involving insider trading, misuse of campaign contributions, and so on. According to the Post article, a growing body of scientific evidence finds that wealth, power, and privilege “makes you feel like you’re above the law… allows you to treat others like they don’t exist.”

Among the scientific studies was one where researchers watched four-way stop intersections. Expensive cars were significantly less likely to wait their turn than older and cheaper cars. The same researchers sent pedestrians into crosswalks and observed which cars obeyed the law and stopped when someone was in the crosswalk. Every single one of the older, cheaper cars stopped, but only half of the expensive cars did.

Drawing on many different research studies the Post article said, “That research has shown the rich cheat more on their taxes. They cheat more on their romantic partners. The wealthy and better-educated are more likely to shoplift. They are more likely to cheat at games of chance. They are often less empathetic. In studies of charitable giving, it is often the lower-income households that donate higher proportions of their income than middle-class and many upper-income folk.”

This sort of research is relatively new, and so there is a lot it cannot say about why or how this all works. But the evidence is pretty compelling that being wealthy and/or powerful has a tendency to make you an awful person. And perhaps that’s exactly the sort of thing our scripture is worried about when it to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Sermon video: More Than What We Know

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon video: Fauxpologies and Acknowledging the Truth

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: More Than What We Know

John 6:35, 41-51

More Than What We Know

August 12, 2018                                                                                                         James Sledge

The bread of life; the bread that came down from heaven; the living bread that came down from heaven. If you’ve been around the church for much of your life, these sayings may not register as particularly problematic. But think about what odd statements they are. Jesus says he is bread, living bread at that, and bread that came down from heaven. It’s hardly surprising that “the Jews” complain about this.

(Jews, by the way, is a term used in John’s gospel to designate Jesus’ opponents and not all those who follow the traditions of Moses. Jesus and his disciples are Jews after all.)

I would think that many Jews who heard Jesus talk about bread that came down from heaven – and I include Jesus’ own followers here – would immediately have thought about the manna that the Israelites ate in the wilderness when Moses led them out of Egypt. That was truly bread that came down from heaven. And Jesus clearly wasn’t manna.

Then there is the whole “came down from heaven” thing. Unlike manna, Jesus wasn’t found out of the ground early in the morning. He showed up just like any of us did, born as a helpless little baby. Some listening to Jesus knew his family. They knew without a doubt that he had not come down from heaven.

Many of Jesus’ opponents were religious leaders, and they “knew” lots of things about scripture and God and how to be a good member of God’s chosen people. And along with obvious things such as knowing Jesus’ mom and dad, there were religious problems with what Jesus said. For Jews, and for early Christians, heaven was God’s home. People, living or dead, didn’t go there. To be from heaven was to be divine, and scripture clearly said that God was one. Jesus couldn’t be from heaven.