Sermon: What Kind of Witness

 1 Corinthians 8:1-13
What Kind of Witness
James Sledge                                                                            January 28, 2024 

Some years ago, I was attending a meeting of a presbytery committee that I served on. At some point in the meeting people shared prayer concerns, and one woman, noticeably upset, shared a concern about her daughter and family.

They lived in Houston and were trying to evacuate ahead of a hurricane, but now they were stuck on an interstate that had come to a standstill, running low on gas so that they had to turn the vehicle off in 100 degree heat. The traffic showed no signs of moving, and they were beginning to worry about what they would do with their pets and children if they did run out of gas.

As my fellow committee member shared more information about the situation, I learned that this family had taken two vehicles in order to load up as many possessions as possible. I wondered how many other families had done the same, helping to create the traffic nightmare in which they now found themselves.

I wondered what sort of thought process had gone into the decision to take both their SUVs. Surely they must have realized that this would contribute to traffic congestion. Did they simply dismiss such concerns in the face of their desire to save both of their cars along with as much as they could stash in them?

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that this couple acted as they did. In a way, they were simply living into our American culture of individualism and materialism. Back when Hummers had a moment of popularity as vehicles, I once heard a driver dismiss concerns about the amount of fuel they used by saying he could afford it, it was his money, and no one had any business saying otherwise.

I don’t know anything about that Houston couple’s faith life, but I was a little surprised that the mother on the presbytery committee shared the fact of the two vehicles as though it was a perfectly normal thing to do. Doesn’t Christian faith require one to consider their behavior’s impact on their neighbor? And here the impact was extremely detrimental.

Now perhaps all this seems little connected to a scripture passage about whether it’s permissible to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols. For that matter, how can we relate to that subject at all? It’s a concern from another time, from a completely different world. It will never come up in any of our lives.

That is certainly true, but the issues that arise from the question of eating meat sacrificed to idols may well be issues that we must deal with, so perhaps we should take the time to understand what Paul is talking about.

A little background will probably help. Paul had founded the church in Corinth, and he kept in touch with them. He got first hand reports from others who visited there, and the members at Corinth would write him with concerns.

 The congregation seems to have been made up mostly of Gentiles and not Jewish converts, and there was a broad mix of wealthy and poor, educated and uneducated. From the earlier parts of the letter, it is clear that divisions have developed within the Corinthian church, sometimes along socio-economic lines.

Clearly some of the wealthier and more sophisticated members looked down on the members they saw as simpler and with less understanding. These well to do members had embraced their new faith with great enthusiasm, and they applied themselves to understanding the nuances of their newfound, monotheistic theology. And the question of food sacrificed to idols was simply one of the flash points around this.

Corinth was home to some prominent pagan temples, and these were central part of community life. There were regular festivals and gatherings there, attended by anyone who was anyone, and a great place to hobnob with other important people. These gatherings typically served meat that started out as animal sacrifices. For that matter, most of the meat at the local butcher shop had started out the same way.

The wealthy, learned members of the church had studied their faith carefully, and it seemed to them that if there was really only one God, then meat sacrificed to idols didn’t really have any association with other gods since there were no such things. And so they reasoned that they could continue to eat at the festivals and participate fully in Corinthian society.

But other members, those the wealthy regarded as less sophisticated, worried that eating meat sacrificed to idols brought them back into the pagan world they had left when they started following Jesus. If they simply participated in pagan life as though nothing had changed, had anything changed?

At issue here is something as pertinent to our day as it was to Paul’s. What boundaries and limits does Christian faith put on participation in a world that is not governed by the ways of Christ? The Corinthians have asked Paul to settle this dispute amongst the church members. Can they participate fully and completely in their non-Christian world, or are there boundaries they should not cross?

I suspect that the wealthy Corinthians expected Paul to agree with them. Paul was, after all, an incredibly sophisticated religious thinker. Surely he would appreciate the rightness of their position.

In the verses we heard, Paul seems to accept their rationale for going to the temple festivals, although he has more to say on that beyond the verses that we heard today. But even though, perhaps just for the sake of argument, Paul concedes their point about there really being no other gods and food is not what brings them close to God, he does not take their position. Paul consistently sides with the poor and the weak.

Paul tips his hand right from the start when he says, Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. For Paul, even the most sophisticated theology must be in service to the ethic of love. Knowledge not centered on love, that merely helps get the most good for the individual, is contrary to life in Christ. For Paul, whatever freedom he has must be tempered by any negative impact it may have on a neighbor.

For Paul, it is crucial that no church member, no matter how sophisticated and well thought out their theology, ever do anything that might injure the faith of a fellow member. The needs of the fellow believer take precedence over his own, and Paul would just as soon never eat meat if he thought it might compromise another’s faith.

I should add that Paul later warns the Corinthians to have nothing to do with idols. It seems he has used this dispute to emphasize his ethic of love, but later he argues that association with idol worship is incompatible with the faith.

But what does Paul have to say to our situation? I mentioned earlier that Paul is addressing the issue of boundaries for Christians living in a non-Christian society, and I would argue that we are living in precisely the same situation. Our culture still has a bit of Christian veneer about it, but the way it worships wealth, power, individual freedom, efficiency, and busyness are all at odds with Christian faith.

I wonder if those Christians, and I probably include myself in this group, who have made easy accommodations with living in a wealth centered, individualistic, consumerist society haven’t damaged the faith of others. We have made faith so indistinct from the culture that almost no one who observes us sees anything compelling about the faith. And if faith is about nothing more than believing in Jesus to get your ticket punched for heaven, we’ve tossed out the lion’s share of Jesus’ teachings.

In our day, a lot of people are, understandably, concerned about the future of the faith and the church. Church participation continues to decline in the US at an accelerating rate, and we’ve seen the impact of that here at the Meeting House. But I wonder if the issues Paul grapples with in his letter to the Corinthian Christians might not offer us some guidance and even hope.

What if we lived our faith with a careful eye as to how it is perceived by others, as well as carefully examining how it needs to be distinct from the culture? Might we not have a unique opportunity to bear witness to the way of Jesus, to show others a different way, an alternative way, one more in accord with Jesus’ vision of a transformed world?

Sermon: Repenting and Following Jesus

 Mark 1:14-20
Repenting and Following Jesus
James Sledge                                                                            January 21, 2024 

I once saw a cartoon that featured a white dog with black spots that was wearing a robe and standing in a pulpit, speaking to a congregation of similar looking dogs. This dog is a pointing finger into the air while waving a Bible like book, and yelling, “… and he said unto them: ‘Bad dogs! No, no!’” Below the cartoon the caption read, “Hellfire and Dalmatians.”

This cartoon came to mind as I read the opening of our gospel reading for this morning with its call to repent. I could easily imagine that preacher dog saying, “Bad dogs! No, no! Repent!”

Repent sounds like something a revival preacher would shout or that a street preacher would yell at passersby. It sounds like a call to turn from your evil ways and walk the straight and narrow, and it can mean just that. But that’s not the only meaning of the word our Bible translates, “Repent.”

The word translated repent means to change one’s mind or to have a change of heart, to turn from what one was doing. Often this is used in a negative sense as in repenting of one’s sins, but in the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures that was the Bible for the first Christians, including the gospel writers, God is said to repent about something God had planned to do. God had a change of heart about punishing and instead decided to show mercy. The issue wasn’t God’s initial plans being bad or sinful. The issue was God’s mercy eclipsing any desire to punish.

And so I wonder if perhaps we shouldn’t be thinking about repentance when we hear the story of Jesus calling the first disciples. After all, the calling of Simon and Andrew, James and John, are introduced with Jesus opening his ministry saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

It’s easy to imagine that Jesus’ words are not addressed to us. After all, we’re already believers, but I wonder if those first disciples may be instructive for us here. Following Jesus required them to change their plans, to turn from what they had been doing. In a very real sense, the had to repent of fishing. I’m pretty sure that is no indictment of fishing, but following Jesus was not possible for them without this change, this turn away from something else.

Every call invites us into something new, but that requires leaving something else behind.  Discovering something new, something better, something more meaningful, means moving away from something else. It does not mean that previous thing was bad. But the new, the better, the more meaningful cannot happen without this move, without repenting.

You cannot discover the joys of adulthood without leaving behind childhood. You cannot give yourself to another in marriage without, as the old wedding vow says, “forsaking all others.” Ties to parents and old flames must recede. Every new thing requires taking a chance, a leap of faith that this new thing is worth repenting and leaving behind the old.

Jesus says the coming kingdom, God’s new day, requires repenting, letting go of old ways. God’s new day doesn’t look like the societies or governments we humans devise, and Jesus says that becoming part of this new thing requires turning away from old things to embrace the wonderful newness of God.

Some years ago, I read a story about a boy riding a Miami city bus back in the days of segregation. He and his brother took the bus to their downtown church for children’s choir. The return trip home coincided with the workday’s end, and the bus would fill with domestic workers and day laborers returning home from a hard day’s work. The boy, William, noticed that many of these workers had to ride standing the entire way. This was the days when people of color had to ride in the back and give up their seats to whites.

Bothered by this, William felt called to do something. He was white, but he took a seat in the back of the bus and remained in it until all the seats in that section were occupied. Then, when a Black woman got on, he would get up and give her his seat.^[1]

William engaged in the sort of repenting that I think Jesus calls us all to do. The segregated bus system was not his doing. In a very real sense, this young boy could have simply ridden up front without doing anything wrong. But the call to move the world toward God’s new day requires turning away from the old and the comfortable. It requires a certain risk or leap of faith. William moved out of his comfort zone and toward something new, one small step toward a world a bit more like God’s coming new day.

Repenting, turning and moving toward God’s newness must have come naturally to William. Years later he would be instrumental in helping his downtown Miami church merge with another, becoming a multi-racial congregation known for its ministry to the downtown homeless at a time when many other congregations fled to the safety of the suburbs.

But what of us? How are we called to repent, as individuals and as a congregation? What are the things we must leave behind in order to move toward the newness of God? They needn’t be bad things but simply things that must be left behind in order to follow Jesus.

Jesus says that the kingdom of God has drawn near, but the world still looks very little like that new day Jesus proclaims. Most of us are deeply embedded in that world that isn’t as God intends, and I wonder what things each of us might turn away from in order to live more in accord with the ways of Jesus.

And what about this congregation? Presumably the day is not too far off when a new pastor will arrive, and I feel confident in saying that she or he will call the Meeting House to repent in the same way that those fishermen did.

Invariably, every congregation settles into patterns and rhythms and activities that have become comfortable and second nature. They feel good and right, but that does not mean that they assist the church in being the body of Christ, in calling individuals and the world to become something new, something more like what Jesus envisions.

When that new pastor arrives, she or he will bring a new perspective that may well recognize the need to turn away from some old, established ways in order to faithfully follow Jesus. That does not mean those old ways were evil or wrong any more than fishing was evil or wrong for Simon and Andrew, but it may be that following Jesus requires letting them go, requires leaving old comfort zones and beginning something new.

This sermon began with a cartoon, so I think I’ll share another one. This cartoon features a group of people seated around a table with a blackboard on the wall with the words “Pastoral Search Committee” written on it. The people have sheets of paper in their hands, perhaps résumés of prospective pastors.

One of the committee members is speaking and says, “Basically we’re looking for an innovative pastor with a fresh vision who will inspire our church to remain exactly the same.”

This cartoon bounces around online because of the kernel of truth found in it. Very often, the last thing a church wants to do is change, to repent. Churches do not change easily and not without a great deal of deliberation and hand wringing over all the possible ramifications of the change.

But our scripture says of those fishermen Jesus calls, And immediately they left their nets and followed him. If you ever sit down and read Mark’s gospel from start to finish, you might notice that one of his favorite words is “immediately.” He uses it so much that translators sometimes decide to leave it out. Lots of things happen immediately in Mark’s gospel, but almost nothing happens “immediately” in church congregations. Most of us church folks tend to be careful, cautious sorts. We do things deliberately, after much consideration and debate. We don’t like to be hurried or to do things immediately.

This sort of caution has a great deal to recommend. It keeps us from doing things impulsively or chasing after every new fad. But I wonder if it doesn’t make it very difficult for us to repent, to turn away from the familiar and move toward the newness Jesus calls us to be part of and to show to the world. I worry sometimes that if Jesus passed by and said, “Follow me,” I’d say, “Could you leave some material with me, and perhaps a link to your website. Let me look it over, consider the financial implications, and I’ll get back to you.” And Jesus would go on his way without me.

The world is not what God longs for it to be, what God dreams it will become. You and I are not what God longs for us to be, and the Meeting House is not what God dreams it will become. There is something better, more wonderful in God’s future, in our future. And Jesus calls us into that future saying, “Follow me.”  And immediately they left their nets (their past, their comfort zones, their carefully crafted budgets, the way they’d always done it, their tried and true) and followed him.

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[1] Cynthia Weems in “Reflections on the lectionary,” The Christian Century Vol. 129, No. 1 (January 11, 2012) p. 21

Sermon: Searching for God

 John 1:43-51
Searching for God
James Sledge                                                                            January 14, 2024 

When I first began to think about going to seminary, I contacted a career counseling service that was connected to the Charlotte Presbytery. The idea of seminary seemed pretty far fetched for a 35 year old with a wife and two kids, so I wanted to do what I could to confirm the idea. Among the battery of surveys and instruments they gave me was something known as the “Myers-Briggs Type Indicator,” a personality inventory used by lots of companies, counselors, colleges, and church governing boards to help people understand their own and other people’s style of doing things. I’ve saw an article a few years ago questioning the validity of this indicator, but I think it is still popular.

The Myers-Briggs information was interesting and helpful, but I didn’t need that test to tell me that I was an introvert. Myers-Briggs doesn’t use the terms introvert and extrovert in quite the same way most of us do in regular conversation, but to a significant degree, I fit what most people mean when they use the term introvert. I was shy growing up, and I would go broke if I had to make a living as a door to door salesperson.

And so it will likely not surprise you to learn that while I enjoy going to social events with friends and family, my idea of torture is to find myself at a large social function where I do not know a soul. I don’t think there is anything that can make me feel more alone than to be wandering about amongst people who are talking to one other, hoping that I will spot a familiar face.

Some of you know what I’m talking about. Even some extroverts don’t like to find themselves in such a situation. They will probably manage to make a connection with someone faster than I might, but I don’t know that many people like to find themselves in a situation where they know absolutely no one. Very few people can tolerate being alone all the time, and I think being by yourself amongst lots of people I don’t know is one of the worst kinds of alone, where there are others all around, but I am connected to none of them.

But all it takes to completely change my experience is for someone to spot me, pull me in, speak with me and introduce me to some people that she knows. Suddenly I am not alone. I am with people. I can relax. I can enjoy myself.

Being truly alone for extended periods is an intolerable experience for most people. There’s a reason that solitary confinement is considered a particularly cruel sort of punishment. We are social creatures. We need human contact. Even more, we need people who know us, who we feel comfortable enough around that we don’t have to try to impress them. We need people we can trust, who we can talk to, who we can relate to.

But this doesn’t seem to function just on a human, interpersonal level. Many people find it just as unnerving to contemplate being all alone in a larger sense. Many people seem intuitively to sense that there must be a divine presence of some sort in the vastness of the cosmos. And to some degree, all religions are an attempt to forge a connection with that presence, to know God and to be known by God.

But there are some inherent difficulties in this attempt. Unlike the person we see at a party but do not yet know, God is very often not nearly so obviously present. The search for God can often seem like a struggle. The Apostle Paul speaks of humans searching and groping for God despite God being near to us. 

Theologians say that one problem which comes between us and God is sin. Now by sin they don’t mean things the bad things we do. They are speaking of a more fundamental problem, sin as a condition. Think of sin along the lines of alcoholism. It is an orientation toward certain behavior, a tendency. The wrong things we do, the ways we live that are contrary to God’s ways are the result of this tendency in the same way abusing alcohol tends naturally to flow from being an alcoholic. 

In the case of sin, our natural tendency is to substitute things other than God for God. Sometimes our substitutes, our idols if you will, are obvious, things such as money or success valued above all else. Sometimes our idols are more subtle, especially when they are good things taken too far, family, nation, church, and so on. 

This tendency to create substitutes for God makes it difficult to recognize and know the true God. God usually turns out to be quite different than we envisioned, and so it is easy for us to miss God. God defies our assumptions about how God should act, what God should be like, and so we often embrace a god of our own creating rather than the God of all creation. It’s easy to reject the true God and the call to be God’s people when that call doesn’t fit with our assumptions, doesn’t cohere with the god we’ve created for ourselves.

The difficulty of knowing God is present to a degree in both of our scripture readings this morning. In the story about the boy Samuel, God seeks to be known. God already knows Samuel, and calls him by name. But Samuel does not know God, and he is unable to correctly perceive that it is God calling him. Only when someone who does know God helps Samuel understand the voice he hears, can he respond to the God who beckons him.

In our gospel reading, Jesus seeks out people and calls them to follow him. From its beginning, the Christian faith has spoken of Jesus as the way in which God seeks to deal with this problem of knowing God. Jesus becomes a way that God can be encountered, can be known. Through Jesus’ humanity, God reaches across the gulf that sin puts between us and God.

But the mere fact of Jesus’ coming does not completely undo all the difficulties of knowing God. Nathanael ends up recognizing Jesus only with Philip’s help, and only with the realization that he is already known by Jesus. Jesus’ humanity makes God more approachable, more knowable, but many who meet him still reject him. Nathanael nearly did.

For those of us who grew up in the church, for whom the life of faith has always surrounded us like air that we breathe, we may not always appreciate the difficulty of knowing God. Sometimes this is because a deep relationship with God has been so much a part of our lives that we scarcely remember life without it. Sometimes this is because we have grown so comfortable with an image of god that we have created for ourselves. 

Regardless, our comfort level with church often makes us oblivious to the struggle of others to connect, to know God. In a world where church is no longer an integral part of the culture, the norm is more and more the person who was not raised in church, who is unfamiliar with its rituals and patterns. For more and more people in our community, congregations are a social function they’re not likely to attend because they’re pretty sure that they will know no one, that they will be totally alone in the midst of a crowd of people. 

And the tragic thing is that often these people have heard God call. They’ve gotten some inkling that God desires a relationship. Sometimes that tug gets strong enough that they even consider trying church, assuming that the people there know something about God.  But if they come where they’ve heard that God is to be found, and no one makes a connection with them, no one draws them in, if their aloneness only seems heightened, they may well conclude that God is not to be found here.

God is here. The risen Christ is here. But people may need others’ help to recognize him, to introduce them or help them see. God knows everyone of us by name, and in Christ calls everyone saying, “Follow me.” When we answer, Christ dwells in us and together we are the living body of Christ in the world. We become the embodiment of God’s love, of God’s welcome, of God’s desire to reach out and be known by all. Our lives, our worship, our caring, our hospitality bear witness to the one who knows each of us fully, and who calls each of us to full and abundant life as disciples of Jesus.

You are not alone here. You are fully known by the one who would die for you. There is no need to impress or worry about hiding your flaws. You are known. You are embraced. You are loved. And that love dwells in us most fully when, like Eli who helped Samuel hear God, or Philip who brought Nathanael to Jesus, we share God’s welcome and love with those who might otherwise miss them.