Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.
Monday, February 28, 2022
Sermon: In the Presence of God
In the Presence of
God
Luke 9:28-43a
James Sledge February 27, 2022 – Transfiguration Sunday
Cara B.
Hochhalter, Transfiguration,
from Art in the Christian Tradition,
aproject of the
Vanderbilt Divinity Library
I hope I haven’t told you this story
before, but when I was in seminary, I was part of a group that spent three
weeks in the Holy Land and Greece. During the trip, we visited the site
traditionally held to be Mt. Sinai, where Moses received the 10 Commandments.
There’s no real proof that it is actually the same place, but pilgrims have
been coming to the site since the time of Emperor Constantine in the fourth
century.
Standard procedure for tourists and pilgrims is to arise very early in the morning, around 4:30 or so, in order to reach the summit while it is still dark. The idea is to witness sunrise from atop Mt. Sinai. Our group gathered at the base of mountain where we climbed on camels, accompanied by the requisite jokes about the Camel-lot. Following a dark ride where you could only barely make out the steep drop-off just beyond the narrow path, we dismounted and walked the remaining 30 minutes or so to the top.
We all found spots where we had an unobstructed view towards the east. As the predawn glow began to light up the horizon, you got a sense of what a stark, severe landscape it was. Other mountains jutted up all around, rocky peaks with little or no vegetation.
Everyone got their cameras ready as the pink horizon grew brighter. Little was said as the sun slowly emerged from behind one of those other peaks. In the desert haze, it was an orange-pink ball that was well up into the sky before becoming bright enough that it bothered your eyes to look directly at it.
Before I took this trip, I had talked with classmates who’d gone in previous years. I’d seen photographs of the sun rising over those same peaks and had heard people talk about what a moving experience it was, and I was ready for an experience of my own. I did get some pretty decent pictures, but I must confess that I was a little disappointed in the moving experience department.
Don’t get me wrong. It was a gorgeous and fantastic vista. I’m very glad I went and would recommend it to anyone, but I was disappointed that I didn’t feel something. I was truly hoping for some sort of religious experience, as, no doubt, were many others who were there with me. Instead I got some nice pictures, a story to tell, and beautiful view of that part of the Sinai Peninsula.
Some of those in my group did experience what I had hoped to. I don’t know why they did and I didn’t. After all they saw the same scene that I saw. Still, they experienced something. There was no explaining it. It’s not as if they could have told me where or how to look at the sunrise in order to sense what they did. It was something beyond explanations, something that must be experienced to really appreciate.
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
Sermon: Embracing Resurrection
1 Corinthians
15:35-57
Embracing
Resurrection
James Sledge February
20, 2022
Portion of the
frescos
When I began thinking about a sermon for
today, I discovered that I have never preached on this passage from 1
Corinthians during my twenty-six plus years as a pastor. I’m sure there are
other passages that share this distinction, but this passage does discuss
something rather critical to Christian faith: resurrection.
in the Visoki Dečani Monastery,
Kosovo, ca. 1335
Come to think of it, I’m not sure if I’ve ever preached a sermon on resurrection at all. Oh, I’ve preached Easter sermons that proclaim, “He is risen!” I’ve preached sermons where resurrection is assumed or is lurking around in the background, but I don’t think I’ve ever preached a sermon where resurrection itself was the focus.
For that matter, I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard a sermon that was about resurrection, that talked about what it is and what it means. It seems that we in the church often operate as though everyone already knows what resurrection means and what it is, yet in my experience that is far from the truth.
The Bible itself may contribute to this problem. All four gospels are quite emphatic about the fact of resurrection, but none of them describe it or tell us how it happened. They don’t explain how the risen Jesus is different from the pre-Easter Jesus, although they do indicate that he is different.
So how do you understand resurrection? What do you mean when you say the words of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in… the resurrection of the body”? If someone who knew nothing about Christianity asked you to explain resurrection to them, what would you say?
Monday, February 7, 2022
Sermon: Joining the Parade
Luke 5:1-11
Joining the Parade
James Sledge February
6, 2022
Draft of Fishes, Peter Koenig,
born 1947, a project of the
Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN
I suspect that many of you have a picture
in your mind of Jesus calling his first disciples. I know that I do. In my
picture Jesus begins to teach, to proclaim God’s coming kingdom right after he
is baptized and then tempted in the wilderness. As he travels along the
shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, he encounters a few fishermen. “Follow me, and
I will make you fish for people,” Jesus says. And they drop everything and go after
him.
from Art in the Christian Tradition,
In this picture there is simply something about Jesus and his invitation that draws these fishermen from their old life to a new one. It is incredibly dramatic. One minute they are making a living by fishing. The next minute, a stranger speaks to them and they are forever changed. And I think this picture has had a significant impact on the idea of evangelism as a dramatic event where one meets Jesus for the first time and is changed forever.
My picture of Jesus calling his first disciples comes straight out of Matthew and Mark’s gospels. But today we heard a very different story from Luke. Over the years Christians have often tried to harmonize these stories, but I think that misses the point. The gospel writers were often less concerned with telling precise history than they were with making a point. Luke writes for a different audience and paints a very different picture than Matthew and Mark, one that may actually have more contact with some of our lives.
To see Luke’s picture, we need to step back a bit and glimpse the entire canvas. As with Mark and Matthew, Jesus has been baptized and tempted in the wilderness. But then he has begun his ministry, taught in his home synagogue at Nazareth, come to the region of Galilee and healed a man with an unclean spirit. Then Jesus has visited Simon Peter’s house, cured his mother-in-law of a high fever, and then cured throngs of sick who were brought to him there.
In Luke’s picture, Simon already knows Jesus, has already met him prior to finishing a long night’s work with nothing to show for it. But then Jesus asks to borrow his boat. Surely Simon is tired and wanted to say, “No.” But after all, Jesus had cured his mother-in-law.
Luke seems uninterested in what Jesus taught the crowds who gather on the shore. He skips over that, moving quickly to where Jesus tells Simon to put out into deep water. Once again, Simon would rather not, but he obeys this remarkable rabbi. In an instant there are more fish than anyone has ever seen before. Suddenly, Simon is frightened of Jesus and wants to be far away from him. Simon has met Jesus before and knows about his ministry, but all of a sudden Simon senses that he is in the terrifying presence of God. Simon, a rough, uneducated, hard living, hard swearing, dirty and sweaty fisherman, finds himself where ritually purified priests fear to tread, and all he wants to do is escape. “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”
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