Sermon: The Secret of Life

 Matthew 22:34-40
The Secret of Life
James Sledge                                                                            October 29, 2023 

Imagine for a moment that you knew absolutely nothing about tennis, had never once seen a match played on television or at a local court. But for some reason you decide that you want to take up this sport. You mention this to a friend who does play tennis and so she gives you and old racket and a can of tennis balls, points you toward a court, and says, “Go play.”

You walk over to the completely empty court and stair at the net and the lines painted on the ground and wonder to yourself, “Now what am I supposed to do?” You go back to your friend and complain, “You need to give me a bit more help. How do you play this game and what are all those lines on the court for?”

It turns out that you can’t learn to play tennis, or play tennis at all, if you don’t know something about the rules. I suppose you and a friend could go to the court and hit the ball around, but you couldn’t play a game if you didn’t know how to score points, how many you needed to win, and so on. In other words, without the rules there is no game.

Many of us tend to view rules in a negative light, constraints that make life more difficult. That’s why politicians sometimes run for office with a promise to reduce regulations and red tape as one element of their campaign.

We live in a litigious society, and both individuals and corporations are forever creating new ways to pull a fast one so most of us view rules as a necessary evil. But when Jesus is asked which commandment is the greatest, I don’t think he has that sort of view at all.

Psalm 19 says, The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes. Hardly sounds like a necessary evil.

I think Jesus views the commandments more is this light than many of us view the rules. That might explain why, when a rich man once came to Jesus asking what he must do for eternal life, Jesus answered, “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” That’s the big secret to life, says Jesus.

Many of us here have likely had the opportunity to attend a graduation and hear a commencement speaker. As a part of this ritual the speaker is expected to offer some profound pearls of wisdom for those about to go out to make their way in the world. Graduates will be told to follow their dreams, to listen to their hearts, create a better world, and so on.

But suppose the speaker instead something along the lines of, “If you want to live fully, follow the rules,” then sat down. I’m pretty sure that would never make the commencement speaker highlight reels that are sometimes shown on the TV news, and if it went viral it would be for its oddity rather for how impressive it was.

But that is essentially what Jesus says to the rich man who comes to him for the secret of life. Follow the rules. Of course the rules Jesus has in mind are the law of Moses. That starts with the Ten Commandments telling you to have no other God than Yahweh, to keep sabbath, to honor mother and father, don’t murder, steal, or lie, and such.

The Jewish law is a lot more than the Ten Commandments, however. Read the book of Leviticus, along with parts of Exodus and Deuteronomy. There are a lot of rules. When Jesus says, “Follow the rules,” that’s a pretty tall order.

That naturally leads to questions about whether some commandments are more important than others. Does “Follow the rules” mean every one, or are there some that take precedence? That’s the sort of question Jesus gets asked in our reading for this morning, although the questioners have ill intent. They seem to hope that Jesus might paint himself into some sort of corner by choosing this one and not that one. If he says “Don’t murder” is the top commandment, then they will ask he didn’t say to have no other gods besides Yahweh? Isn’t that one important?

Jesus manages to avoid this trap however, although he doesn’t employ any sort of trickery or verbal sleight of hand as he so often does. He answers their question directly, or at least he does if you’re willing to let him take liberties with grammar and say there are two greatest commandments.

But Jesus doesn’t go to the Ten Commandments at all. He grabs one commandment from Deuteronomy 6:5. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And he grabs a second commandment from Leviticus 19:18. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Then Jesus ties it all up in a bow by adding, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Keep these two and you will cover all the rest, says Jesus. If you want to know what it means to follow the rules, here you go.

If you want to live a life that is true, that has meaning, that is about something more than having the latest iPhone or car or some other grownup toy, love God and love neighbor. And by that Jesus doesn’t mean have warm feelings for God and neighbor, although that would be fine. Jesus is talking about living our lives in ways that serve God and neighbor, and that sort of living makes a visceral claim on our schedules and our bank accounts.

Jesus’ two greatest commandments depict a life that goes out from self, that is focused on God and others. Jesus says that the secret of life is to live toward God and toward neighbor, to go from an inwardly focused mindset that clutches onto all it can to an expansive pose that flows out from oneself, and that means I can’t hoard my time or my money just for me and mine.

That is why throughout my career as a pastor, I have tried to decouple stewardship from fundraising that seeks to keep the doors open and the place running and instead make it about faith. There is no clearer marker of a person’s spiritual health than how they utilize their time and their money, and stewardship is about precisely that.

Jesus, what is the secret to life? “Follow the rules,” he says. And what does that look like Jesus? “Love God with all your being, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Do that, he says, and pretty much everything else will fall into place.

Love God. Love neighbor. What does that look like for you?

Sermon: Whose Image Is This?

 Matthew 22:15-22
Whose Image Is This?
James Sledge                                                                            October 22, 2023 

I saw an online post the other day that said the gospels report people asking Jesus 183 questions but that he only answered three of them directly. I haven’t done any research to see if this is in fact the case, but it certainly is true that Jesus often answers questions with a parable or a question of his own or, as in our case today, with a little verbal sleight of hand.

It’s easy for us to miss some of this because we aren’t familiar with the nuances of the tax in question. This particular tax paid to Rome was generally detested by people in Israel. To make matters worse the tax had to be paid in Roman coin which typically had an image of the emperor and included an inscription that said, “Emperor Tiberius Augustus, son of divine Augustus.” The coin was regarded as blasphemous by many devout Jews because it could be considered to be breaking the first two commandments, one against having other gods and the other against idols.

Because of this, the coins and the tax could be political hot potatoes. Some, who advocated resisting Roman rule urged people not to pay the tax. Such a stance was considered treasonous by the Romans of course, and those who question Jesus are using this to get him in a no-win situation. By asking if it’s lawful to pay the tax – lawful referring to the Jewish law – they hope Jesus will either make a treasonous declaration by saying it’s not lawful, or to take a stand that would be unpopular with his audience.

But Jesus puts his questioners in a bad light right at the start. He asks them to produce this blasphemous coin, and they have one on them. They’ve already revealed their hypocrisy before Jesus ever gives an answer.

Jesus then gives his answer that really isn’t an answer. “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” I’ve seen this taken to mean that Jesus is saying it’s okay to pay the tax, but I’m not at all sure that’s what he does.

Way back when I was middle school age, in a time when we didn’t think much about crime, our home was broken into twice in quick succession. My father suddenly took home security seriously, and he upgraded the locks, created a homemade alarm system, and he borrowed an engraving tool and engraved our name into anything valuable that had a place to do so. These inscriptions were obvious claims of ownership. Should a television set turn up at the pawn shop, we could prove it was ours.

In similar fashion, parents write names inside children’s jackets and libraries stamp their name onto books. Jesus refers to this sort of thing when he asks his questioners, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” Both things would seem to attest to their being the emperor’s, and so Jesus’ answer could seem to support the tax.

But this is one of far too many places where Bible translators don’t do us any favors. When Jesus says, “Whose head is this,” the word translated head has a more literal meaning of image. And in the Greek Old Testament that was the Bible for the first Christians and the gospel writer, it is the same word found in the creation story in Genesis where God says “Let us create humankind in our image.

So if having an image on something is a claim of ownership, what indeed are the things that belong to God? In addition, Jesus’ opponents and his audience know well the psalm that says, The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it… If the earth and all that is in it belong to God, what actually belongs to the emperor?

We Presbyterians have what is called the Book of Confessions. Confessions here refers to professions of faith, and the book contains ten such professions beginning with the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds and ending with “A Brief Statemen of Faith,” which was written to celebrate the 1983 reunion of two Presbyterian denominations who had split in 1859 as the Civil War loomed.

Amond the faith statements in this book is something called the “Heidelburg Catechism.” It dates back to the 1560s and is laid out in question-and-answer format. The very first question reads, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” The accompanying answer begins, “That I am not my own, but belong – body and soul, in life and in death – to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”

This sentiment is echoed in the opening of “A Brief Statement of Faith,” formally approved by our denomination in 1991. “In life and in death we belong to God.”

We belong to God. So say our theological documents as well as scripture and Jesus, but I’m not sure many of us believe it. Modern people are more likely to think of themselves as autonomous individuals. We are independent actors who in large part create our own destinies, something that has become a big part of the American mythology about the self-made man or woman.

Notions of being self-made are of course patently absurd. No one creates their own talents, their own country of birth, their own family, their own access to resources. Life and much that goes with it is a gift, and Christian faith says that life is a gift from God to be used well for the ends of God. We are not our own to do whatever we will. We belong to God, and we have callings, purposes that we must live into if we are to make faithful use of the gifts God has given us.

What are you doing with your life that gives glory to God and advances Jesus’ agenda here on earth? We Presbyterians have long spoken of all people having vocations, callings that we are suited to and that in some way benefit the common good. You still hear such language occasionally with respect to things such as being a teacher or nurse or firefighter, but I’m not sure the average person thinks much about what they are called to do.

Vocation is one facet of stewardship, of life that is lived toward God and neighbor. So is how we use our money. Is money simply something to get me the things I want, or is it a way to express love of God and neighbor? And so I can ask the same question that I asked you about your life. What are you doing with your money that gives glory to God and advances Jesus’ agenda here on earth?

Jesus looked at the denarius and asked, “Whose image is this?” So too Jesus looks at us and asks whose image is on us. You have been wonderfully made by a loving God and fitted to be a blessing to those around you. What are you going to do with your life and your money to love God back and to continue Jesus’ work in the world?

Sermon: Like Falling in Love

 Philippians 3:4b-14
Like Falling in Love
James Sledge                                                                            October 8, 2023 

It isn’t the case with all denominations, but Presbyterian seminaries require classes in Greek and Hebrew, along with Old and New Testament courses where translating texts from their original language is part of the class. For reasons that will soon become obvious, I vividly remember translating our Philippians reading at seminary.

When Paul writes, For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish… the Greek word translated rubbish is skubala. (I love the sound of that.) But when we went to our Greek dictionaries to look up skubala, we also saw definitions like dung, filth, and excrement. And so naturally when students were asked to read their translations in class, more than one had rendered the term with a word I won’t repeat today, to requisite snickers and laughs. The professor smiled as well and said something about our translations being more accurate than our Bible’s.

But sophomoric translation jokes aside, what on earth would cause Paul to view his former life in such a thoroughly negative light? One possible answer was that his faith had helped Paul escape some horrible past, and indeed that is how Protestant interpreters read Paul for nearly 500 years, following the template laid out be Martin Luther.

When Luther was a Catholic priest, he was tormented by guilt. He used to drive his confessor crazy with endless confessions, often returning repeatedly when he’d thought of something he’d forgotten. Luther was also terrified that he hadn’t remembered all his sins and feared that they wouldn’t be forgiven. Luther lived with an overwhelming sense of dread.

Then the Apostle Paul came to Luther’s rescue. Reading Paul’s letters with their emphasis on being saved not by works but by grace through faith, Luther felt as though thousands of pounds had been lifted off him. He no longer worried about whether he had confessed every sin because he had been set right with God by grace.

That would be nothing but Luther’s interesting, personal story except that he assumed that Paul had had a similar experience. Paul must have despaired of not being able to keep every tiny bit of Torah perfectly and so lived in terror of God’s inevitable judgment. Thankfully, he had discovered grace in Jesus.

Protestant interpreters largely repeated Luther’s views until late in the 20^th century. Then scholarship on 1^st century Judaism began to question such thinking. A growing scholarly consensus now suggests that Jews in Paul’s day did not despair at all about being able to keep Torah. Rather they thought of themselves as being right with God if they tried to obey the Law and renewed their efforts when they realized they had failed.

Such a view seems to fit much better with Paul’s own words in our scripture. When Paul describes his life as a Hebrew from the tribe of Benjamin and so on, he says that he was as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Blameless. That doesn’t sound at all like Paul despaired of keeping Torah. He seemed to think he had been doing just fine.

So if Paul didn’t view his former life as something that had brought him to despair, as something that was a failure, why did he now speak of that former life as rubbish, dung, excrement? I think the answer is obvious. He had found something so wonderful that it made his old life pale by comparison. Throw in the typical Middle Easter penchant for hyperbole, and we have Paul saying that life with Jesus is so incredible that nothing else even compares.

Most of us come from very different circumstances than Paul did. If we grew up Christian, it’s hard for us to compare a pre-Jesus life to a new one in Christ. But that does not mean that we can’t experience something of what Paul felt. In fact, I suspect that many of us have had an experience that feels quite similar.

I think there’s a very good chance that many of you here have had the experience of falling in love. For some of you that may be a recent event, and some of you may have to think back a bit, but try to recall how life changed when you first fell in love.

When people fall in love it typically reorients their lives. Priorities shift dramatically. Time once reserved for other things is now consumed by time with the beloved. Often people who fall in love become extravagant in spending money on the object of their affection, willingly going without things that were once important.

Paul has had a similar experience. In Jesus he has encountered a love so wonderful that he is caught up in it, longing to love back in return. This experience of divine love had shifted his priorities. Time once reserved for other things is now consumed with Jesus. Paul has completely altered his life because of this love, and this is not a burden or an obligation. It is now his greatest joy.

While many of us have had the experience of falling in love, I wonder how many have had the experience Paul did, the experience of a divine love so wonderful that it reorients one’s life. Presbyterians and others like us have been especially suspicious of faith that is passionate and enthusiastic, preferring to keep things in the head rather than the heart. Yet John Calvin, the founder of our tradition who is often depicted as dour and scholarly, said, “The Word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart…”[1]

When we are rooted in God’s love, it wells up in us and overflows in love toward God and neighbor. It takes shape as a grateful generosity driven by love. People who are rooted in God’s love are generous with their time, talents, and money in much the same way people who’ve fallen in love are. And as we enter into the stewardship season, a time that is too often more about fundraising and deciding how much we’ll contribute to keep the place running, I’d like you to think about God’s love for you and your love for God and neighbor.

In fact, stewardship season can be a time to take stock of your spiritual health. At its core Christian faith is about love, and if you’ve experienced God’s love so that you long to love God with heart, soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself, it will get lived out and become concrete. It will show up in a generosity to God and neighbor, and the biblical measure of this is the tithe, or the first ten percent.

If you’re like most Presbyterians, you are nowhere near this, and I would never want to claim that if you upped your pledge or giving to organizations that do God’s work you would suddenly be spiritually mature and fulfilled. But I will suggest that moving toward a tithe would not be unlike what happens when a marriage counselor urges a couple to spend more time together, take vacations together, and do date nights, spending money on each other.

If you do move toward a tithe, I doubt that you will regard your prior life as skubala, but you may well see it in a different light. You may even discover that your priorities have shifted, becoming a little more like those of Jesus.

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[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, John T. McNeill, editor, translated by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960) III, II, 36, page 583.

Daring to Follow Jesus

 Matthew 21:23-32
Daring to Follow Jesus
James Sledge                                                                                     October 1, 2023 

By now almost anyone associated with the church world has heard the troubling trends in church attendance and affiliation. According to one poll, the number of religiously unaffiliated has increased with every recent generation. In the Silent Generation, 9% are unaffiliated. With Baby Boomers, it’s 18%; with Generation X it’s 25%; with Millennials it’s 29%; and with Generation Z, those born between mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2010s, it’s 34%.[1] You don’t need to be a statistician to recognize that this trend spells real trouble.

The reasons for this ever-growing group of religiously unaffiliated are many, and some are outside the church’s control. But the church shares a significant responsibility. Too often we have embodied the quote, sometimes erroneously attributed to Gandhi, that says, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." 

Christian activist and author Shane Claiborne has offered his thoughts on the demographic decline facing the church, saying, “If we lose a generation in the church, that loss won’t be because we failed to entertain them, but because we failed to dare them — to take the words of Jesus seriously and to do something about the things that are wrong in the world.”[2]

If you know Claiborne at all, you likely know that he is quite disenchanted with the sort of Christianity trafficked by the typical church. Very often this Christianity is focused mostly on what people believe, and what few demands it puts on members are largely internal, focused on keeping the institution going. Only rarely does it reflect the radical teachings Jesus.

People like Claiborne can be a thorn in the side of the traditional church, questioning whether this Christianity actually follows Jesus. But if Claiborne is a pain in the you know what, he’s in good company. Jesus has similar questions about the church of his day.

When modern people look at Jesus’ ministry, his conflicts with religious authorities are often seen as a fight with cartoon bad guys. They were so corrupt that Jesus needed to start a whole new religion to take their place.

Except cartoon bad guys are a rarity. Much more common are people of faith who have gotten off track. Indeed the image of Jesus cleansing the Temple the day before our reading takes place is often depicted as Jesus attacking a gross commercialization of the Temple with money changers and animal sellers setting up shop there.

In reality, the money changers and animal sellers were an honest attempt to assist the pilgrims who had made the long journey to Jerusalem. Money changers allowed people to exchange coins with blasphemous images on them for imageless Jewish coins appropriate for an offering at the Temple. Similarly, animal sellers allowed pilgrims who couldn’t bring animals with them on the trip to Jerusalem to make a sacrifice. On top of that, neither money changers nor animal sellers were actually in the Temple. They were in the courtyard outside.

To be honest, I’ve never been exactly sure what got Jesus so worked up that he turned over tables and chased vendors away, but it seems likely that it was judgment on a theology that imagined Temple worship somehow guaranteed God’s presence in Israel’s midst. In that sense Jesus may well be as upset by the worshippers as by the vendors.

Regardless, Jesus’ actions are more than a little upsetting to worshippers and authorities alike. Jesus had also brought the blind in the lame into the Temple, people who were ritually unclean and not supposed to be there. So it’s no surprise that when Jesus reenters the Temple the next day, the leaders demand to know what gives him the authority to do such things.

Jesus evades their question by asking whether they recognized divine authority in John the Baptizer. John was a difficult subject for them because he had been a thorn in the side of religion that was mostly about belief and rituals. He had called people to repent, which is less about feeling bad for what one has done and more about changing one’s behavior. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” cried John, and he said this was about bearing fruit.

Interestingly, when Jesus began his ministry, he picked up John’s cry, repeating it word for word. And throughout his ministry Jesus laid out what sort of changes this entailed, the fruits he expected people to bear, things like mercy, longing for a rightly ordered society, loving all, even enemies, caring for the least of these, and having a life not focused on wealth.

After deflecting the religious leaders’ question about where his authority came from, Jesus engages them with an easily understood parable. Two sons are asked to work in the vineyard, the first says “No” but then goes while the second says “Yes” but then does not go.

The parable has a clear allusion to an earlier teaching of Jesus that gets lost in English translations. When the second son says, “I go, sir,” and then doesn’t go, the word translated sir is the same word translated lord in other places, notable when Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” It seems that Jesus expects people to bear fruit just like John did.

I think people like Shane Claiborne are modern day prophets calling us to repent, to change what we are doing, to bear fruit. “If we lose a generation in the church, that loss won’t be because we failed to entertain them, but because we failed to dare them — to take the words of Jesus seriously and to do something about the things that are wrong in the world.”

But before we can dare others to take the words of Jesus seriously, perhaps we need to dare ourselves. Dare we trust that the way of Jesus is the way to life in all its fullness? Dare we long for and work for a world set right, a world where there is good news to the poor and release to the captive? Dare we let Jesus’ dream for a new sort of world become our own?

I think God is longing for that sort of Christian and that sort of church, and I think the world is longing for that sort of Christian and that sort of church. Dare we be the Christians and the church that God and the world are longing for?

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[1] https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/generation-z-future-of-faith/

[2] Foreword to nuChristian: Finding Faith in a New Generation by Russell E. D. Rathbun (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2009), vi.