Sermons and thoughts on faith on Scripture from my time at Old Presbyterian Meeting House and Falls Church Presbyterian Church, plus sermons and postings from "Pastor James," my blog while pastor at Boulevard Presbyterian in Columbus, OH.
In today's gospel reading, Jesus is asked by Pharisees and Sadducees to show some sort of heavenly sign, presumably to prove his identity. Jesus refuses--other than a veiled hint about the sign of Jonah, something that can only be understood in light of the cross and the resurrection. But Jesus clearly thinks that they should have already been able to figure out who he is. But they "cannot interpret the signs of the times."
There was a Bob Dylan song in the 60s about the times. One verse goes: Come mothers and fathers throughout the land And don't criticize what you can't understand Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command Your old road is rapidly agin'. Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand For the times they are a-changin'.
A couple of generations later, people who sang along with Dylan now struggle to lead the church in new times. Especially in mainline denominations like my own, we can struggle to break out of patterns from an older time. As we struggle to connect with those generations born after 1980, we often embody Einstein's definition of insanity, continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results.
But if our faith is in any way true, then surely God is at work in our world. Are our churches decline because that is simply the hallmark of a more secular age? Or are we, like Pharisees and Sadducees of long ago, unable to interpret the signs of the times?
If Christ truly died and rose again; if the Church has received the gift of the Holy Spirit, then God must be up to something, and God must expect us to be a part of it. But if I'm going to glimpse this work of God, I suppose I might need to lift my head up out of the routines of church work to see, and then interpret, the signs of the times.
O LORD, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill? Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right.
How good it is to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting. The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.
These verses from Psalm 15 and 147 seem to me to describe two aspects of God that are often difficult to reconcile. In the first, one can come before God only if she is good and follows the Law. But in the second, a gracious God reaches out to gather in the outcasts. In a sense, here is the dichotomy of Law and Grace. Do we relate to God because we keep on the straight and narrow? Or do we relate to God because God pursues us and rescues us?
I think that a lot of denominations and traditions seek to resolve the conflict between these two views by featuring one component -- Law or Grace -- more prominently than the other. And so in some churches faith is mostly about following the rules, and in other churches faith is mostly about accepting God's freely given love. Problem is, the Bible never resolves the tension between these two poles. The call to purity and God's forgiveness and love are not either/or but both/and.
We humans tend not to like paradoxes, and there is a paradox here. But I think that this paradox serves as a powerful corrective for those of us gathered around either pole. If we emphasize Law and right behavior over all else, we need to be reminded of God's embrace of those who are undeserving. But if we tend to think that God simply loves everyone no matter what, we need to be reminded that God calls us to live holy lives.
You sometimes hear the tension between these two poles explained as the "God of the Old Testament" versus the "God of the New Testament," as though they were different Gods. But instead, what we see in this tension is a God who will not be conformed to our labels, who will not be as we would prefer, but who is more than we can imagine and comprehend. And I know that for me, it is a good thing to be reminded that God embodies more than I can take in at one time.
I've always been fascinated by today's gospel reading, where Jesus at first refuses to help a Canaanite woman who asks Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus refuses because she is a foreigner, a Gentile. He even goes so far as to compare such foreigners to dogs. (Attempts to soften Jesus' words by saying heuses an affectionate term for a family pet don't really help at all.) But after this woman insists that even the dogs are allowed to enjoy the scraps that fall from the table, Jesus commends her for her faith and heals her daughter.
Why does Jesus say he won't help and then change his mind? Is his own, exclusive view of God's grace expanded by the woman's answer? Does he plan all along to heal the child but engages the woman as he does to help expand his followers' view of God's grace? Or does Matthew tell the story in such a way that Jesus becomes an example for the Church which is called to move beyond the limits it knows and embrace those it thinks are outsiders?
However you explain the way Jesus acts, the story clearly insists that the Church and individual Christians call into question the boundaries and limits that they assume are hard and fast. Are our boundaries God's boundaries, or are they simply our conventions, traditions, and assumptions? What conversation do we need to have with those who are not like us so that we can discover that they too are embraced in God's love?
In today's Old Testament reading Nehemiah speaks to an Israel who has struggled and languished after returning from exile in Babylon. And he recalls their history with God for the people, asking them to remember who they are, a people formed by God, a people who exist because God cares for them.
In the gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus speaks to Pharisees who complain about his disciples' not washing their hands before eating, breaking "the tradition of the elders." But Jesus says that it is the Pharisees, and not his disciples, who have lost their way, have forgotten who they are. "You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: 'This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.'"
In much of traditional, Protestant, American Christianity, the term "going to church" has come to describe the dominant form of religious participation. But more and more, people are finding that this falls woefully short. And they are beginning to ask themselves, Who are we? What does it truly mean for us to be the people of God?
Both Jesus and Nehemiah say that answering these questions requires some deep remembering. It is a remembering that reaches beyond how we've been doing things for a generation or two. It reaches back to remember who we are at our core. It finds an identity in God's saving acts, most especially God's saving act in Jesus. It answers questions about who we are by asking who Jesus calls us to be, by considering how we are called to serve God.
Who are we? Who has God called us to be in Christ? Is what we are currently doing about that? Or do we need to do some remembering?
From Mark 12:38-44: Features "the widow's mite," but also tells of widows whose houses are devoured by the scribes. Is the widow's generosity an example for us to follow, or an example of how religious institutions will sacrifice the needy for their own glory?
The LORD is king! Let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! (from Psalm 97)
To say "God is king" sounds like standard religious fare that doesn't provoke a lot of thought. But in my own faith life, I think this may be the hardest thing for me to believe, or at least for me to live like I believe it.
Saying that God is king means that God is ruler, is in charge, is in command of everything. However chaotic the world may appear, God is running the show. Everything, from political events to evolution to the flow of history, is somehow under the rule of God's providence.
One of the other readings today is from Revelation. And while many people think of this as a book of predictions about the future, John writes Revelation primarily to remind struggling 1st Century Christians that God is indeed king. Despite some of them suffering because of their faith, despite the power and might of Rome which insisted that the emperor was divine, God was in fact in charge.
The LORD is king! All of history bends to God's command. And we people of faith are called to live in ways that show others this reality. Like I said, I think this is one of the most difficult parts of my faith life.
Two technical glitches in one week, and so there is no video of Sunday's sermon, just as there was no audio. Hopefully all will be repaired for this coming Sunday.
I love the LORD,because he has heard my voice and my supplications. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
So begins Psalm 116, and those two becauses jump out at me. On the one hand, they bother me a bit. Should I love God only if I get something out of it? But at the same time, how can I love God if I've never had any experience of God loving me?
I don't know that my experience is typical, but my growing up in church led me to think that being Christian was mostly about believing the right things. It was believing that this and that happened centuries ago. It was believing that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was somehow a good thing for me. And it was believing that believing all these things got me in God's clubhouse. But there wasn't a lot in my religious background that spoke about experiencing God. How was I to know whether or not God heard my voice or favorably listened to my requests?
We Presbyterians are sometimes called "the frozen chosen," but I don't think that our well deserved reputation for staid worship has much to do with my experience growing up. Instead, our position in the mainline, the dead-center of the culture made us such an integral part of that culture that God sometimes seemed to get lost. Mainline Christianity was about the ethics and values of the culture, about morality, about a philosophy that nurtured community and good citizenship. None of these things should be dismissed as unimportant, but they don't have a lot to do with God's ear inclined toward me, God rescuing me from the snares of death, or God keeping me from stumbling.
I don't for a moment doubt that many people in the congregations of my childhood had deep and moving encounters with the living God, but something about the way we did things and the habits we emphasized made it difficult for me to do so. And I think this remains a challenge for many congregations that came of age in middle of the 2oth Century.
I think it was Roy Oswald of the Alban Institute who I once heard say of mainline congregations, "People come to us seeking an experience of God, and we give them information about God." How do with share with them a little "because?"
In today's reading from Revelation, we meet "the Lion of the tribe of Judah" who "has conquered." I don't suppose this is all that surprising. John's vision is calling the faithful of his day to remain steadfast in the face of persecution and death because God will soon act. And the Lion of Judah as a stock way of speaking of the Messiah. What is suprising is that this Lion turns out to be a slaughtered Lamb.
Because of the violent imagery depicted in John's visions, some Christians envision a very different Jesus who returns at the end of time. In their view, the Jesus of gospels was meek and mild and went to the cross without protest. But when Jesus comes back, it will be different. He will be "kicking butt and taking names," as the saying goes.
Yet in Revelation we meet a Lamb instead of a Lion. And this Lamb has conquered by being slaughtered. And John calls for the Christians in Asia to conquer in the same manner, by remaining faithful even when it leads to death. It seems to me that seeing an avenging Messiah in Revelation is more the product of some readers' desires than it is what is revealed in John's vision.
The Apostle Paul writes of the cross as God's greatest demonstration of power, but we would still prefer God to act more like us. And just as people of Jesus' day rejected him because he did not exercise power the way they expected a Messiah to do, so many of us still hope for a sword wielding Jesus to show up and act just like the Messiah those 1st Century Jews expected.
Man, this cross business, this power made perfect in weakness thing, is sure hard to embrace. Why can't God be more like me?
The Daily Lectionary readings are currently visiting the Book of Revelation. Coincidentally, I am teaching a course on Revelation at Boulevard Church. I'm probably like a lot of other mainline Christians who don't very often read from this book (more of a letter actually). Like a lot of folks, I've probably let others define Revelation for me as a book of strange predictions about the future. But it really isn't, and our neglect of this work has more or less ceded it to the lunatic fringe.
Now Revelation does take some real effort to appreciate, but when you realize the dire situation of the churches to which it is sent, and when you spend some time with it, there is much there that isn't at all what you might expect. One of the things you notice when you read it all the way through - also the focus of today's reading - is how central worship is. We are repeatedly show scenes of heavenly worship, although that worship may not look exactly like what many of us are familiar with on Sundays. This worship is radically focused on God, offering up glory and praise over and over.
One of the most common complaints I hear about worship as a pastor is, "It just didn't feed me." Such complaints may indeed point to problems in a congregation's worship, but they also seem to envision worship as a place one goes to get something, rather than something one offers to God.
I've wondered this many times over the years. What would help us in congregations to see our worship directed more to God and less to those in the pews? How might we better understand ourselves to be serving God in our worship services?
In today's gospel reading, Jesus is asked by Pharisees and Sadducees to show some sort of heavenly sign, presumably to prove his identity. Jesus refuses--other than a veiled hint about the sign of Jonah, something that can only be understood in light of the cross and the resurrection. But Jesus clearly thinks that they should have already been able to figure out who he is. But they "cannot interpret the signs of the times."
