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.
As I was reading today's verses from Hebrews, I found myself wondering about what it means to be human. This question has provided fertile ground for philosophers, theologians, and thinkers of all sorts for eons. "I think, therefore I am," said Descartes. The following was scribbled on the bathroom wall of my college dorm. "Todoistobe - Socrates, To be is to do - Kant, Do be do be do - Sinatra"
Sometimes we ask a child, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" And sometimes we ask, "What do you want to be when you grow up? Perhaps these are simply different ways of asking the same thing. But perhaps not.
I've always been somewhat surprised at how seldom I hear Christians make reference to Jesus when answering the question of what it means to be human. Despite the popularity of WWJD bracelets and wristbands, despite the Apostle Paul speaking of Jesus as the "new Adam," that is the new model for humanity, I don't hear many Christians going to Jesus as the perfect, embodied answer to, "What does it mean to be human?"
In the gospel of John, Jesus speaks of coming that we might "have life, and have it abundantly." I can't help but think that this abundant life Jesus offers is about being human in the fullest sense of term. And given the shape of Jesus' life, I have to think that he defines abundant life a bit differently that many of us tend to do.
I've been reading Brian McLaren's new book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith. McLaren may be one of the best spokespersons for "Emergent Christianity," and I find the book both refreshing and thought provoking. McLaren's first question is about the overarching message of the Bible. I won't try to paraphrase him, but his answer speaks of God's love that seeks to "liberate and reconcile."
Thinking about a God who "so loves the world," who still cares for Adam and Eve even after they have disobeyed, has always given me pause when considering issues of "salvation." Where is the tender love of God in statements such as, "If you don't accept Jesus as your savior, you're going to hell."
Such questions come to mind for me when I read today's verses from Ephesians. As Paul greets the Christians at Ephesus, he speaks of God's love that "...chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved." Chose and destined are the sort of words that give way to arguments about predestination and such. But I'm less interested in those questions and more focused on what it means to speak of God's love.
Those chosen at Ephesus were Gentiles, a group that many of the first Christians presumed were outside the bounds of God's love. But God's embrace in Jesus turned out to be much bigger than Jesus' own followers could imagine. In fact, it took quite a while before the Church came to accept these Gentile converts fully. That's ancient history, but I can't help wondering about how common, how human it is to set limits on the reach of God's grace. We want to draw boundaries. These boundaries always include us and exclude those that are different in us. How different you must be to get excluded varies, but the desire for boundaries is nearly universal.
I wonder what God thinks of our boundaries. I wonder if they make Jesus laugh, or cry.
If you love me…That’s pretty provocative phrase, sometimes even a manipulative one.Jesus has said just that to his followers on his last night with them.In our reading he broadens the circle saying, “If anyone loves me…” although our translation hides the “If anyone....“
If we weren’t in a worship service right now, and you heard someone say, “If you love me…” how would you expect that sentence to end?What comes after “If you love me?”
If the father of a teenaged girl hears her boyfriend say, “If you love me…” look out!A little more responsible use of the phrase might come from a wife whose marriage is in trouble.A woman who still loved her husband while he had become more and more distant, she might quite accurately say, “If you love me you will come to the marriage counselor with me.”It seems quite reasonable for her to expect that if he loves her, he will be willing to take certain steps, to do certain things.
Back to the more manipulative side, I suspect most of us have heard a child riding in a shopping cart screaming to her mother, “If you love me you, you’ll get me that Hannah Montana DVD.”
Whether this phrase is used responsibly or manipulatively, that use is rooted in the expectation that love has tangible consequences.If we love someone, we will act is certain ways.We will treat them well, do things for them, and so on.A child realizes this on some level when she screams and pleads for a toy in the store.But her mother has a more grown up, mature understanding of love.And so she doesn’t give her child everything she wants, but she does care and provide for that child.
If you’re anything like me, you have a few regrets related to the childish, immature version of “If you love me…”Many of us can look back on our earlier years and wonder how on earth our parents did keep on loving us.I know a few people who never seemed to outgrow the childish notion of thinking their parents’ job is to provide whenever they ask. But most of us, eventually realize that our parents’ love requires a response from us, and we began to develop a more mature, adult relationship with them.
Young children, and a few adults, don’t understand that love is about relationship, and relationships always involve a back and forth, give and take where each person does things for the other out of love.Women sometimes seems to get this better than men.We males are sometimes stuck in a more childish, “what’s in it for me” view of love and relationships.Perhaps that’s why women and mothers are more associated with loving and caring.Perhaps that’s why Mother’s Day calls for gifts of flowers while Father’s Day rates a tie.
In John’s gospel, God’s love is all about the back and forth of relationship.Because God so loves the world, Jesus comes to us.God’s love takes tangible, concrete form in Jesus.Jesus gathers followers around him and, not unlike a mother, he cares for them, protects them, teaches them, and demonstrates full and abundant life for to them.He loves them in the most profound way possible, and as he prepares to give his life for them, he promises that even his death will not leave them alone.The Holy Spirit will continue to make him present to them, teaching, guiding, and strengthening them.
But then comes the flip side, the response side, the “If you love me” side.“If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” Jesus says to his disciples on his last night with them.And in our reading he also speaks past them to us.“If anyone loves me…”“If anyone loves me he will keep my word.”If anyone loves me she will do all the things I have commanded you.If anyone loves me he will bear much fruit.If anyone loves me she will continue the works I have been doing.
Speaking of works, we Protestants have some issues with how works fit into our faith.Going back to Martin Luther, we have said that our standing before God is not a matter of works but of faith.We don’t earn our way to salvation but receive it as a gift.The theological term is “justification by grace through faith.”
But this focus on God’s grace and on faith sometimes leads to misunderstandings.In one such misunderstanding, we replace keeping the commandments and doing good works with faith.Faith, in essence, becomes the thing we do to get God to love us, which of course only makes it a different sort of work.In a related misunderstanding, we narrowly define faith as believing so that faith comes to mean accepting the correct facts and formulas.Faith becomes almost totally a head thing, not a doing thing.
I saw this in action a few years ago when we tried to get a handle on our membership rolls here at Boulevard.Like many Presbyterian congregations, we have quite a few people on our rolls that we’ve not seen in a while.And so we sent out some very pastoral letters letting folks know that we missed them and hoped we could help them reconnect and find a way to be active here again.But if they had moved away or if they just weren’t comfortable here any longer, perhaps we could assist them in finding a place that better fit their new circumstances.
We apparently succeeded in giving the letters a pastoral tone because no one seemed to get offended by them.But a number of people responded that although they had no plans to become active and we would not be seeing them around the church or its ministries, they would still like to remain on the rolls.I’m not sure, but I think they felt that as long as they “believed,” that meant they were faithful and so could expect to remain members.
Now the fact is that our Presbyterian constitution has a long list of responsibilities and requirements for members.But apparently we’ve done a pretty poor job of helping folks understand this.Because we tend to think of faith as something that lives between our ears, our understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus is pretty minimal.
I wonder what would happen if when people joined the church we changed the questions a bit?Not that there’s anything wrong with the questions we ask now.One of them asks, “Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his Word and showing his love?” And another says, “Will you be a faithful member of this congregation, share in its worship and ministry through your prayers and gifts, your study and service, and so fulfill your calling to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?”
Still, what if we simply borrowed some of Jesus’ words from John’s gospel?What if, speaking on behalf of Jesus, we said to every person joining the church, every member of a confirmation class, every parent bringing a child for baptism, “Do you love me?If you love me, you will keep my commandments.Do you love me?If you love me you will feed my sheep.Do you love me?If you love me, you will continue my ministry.”
God loves us so much that God comes in the person of Jesus saying, “Follow me and I will show you the way to full and abundant life.My way is not all that popular.It is not the way recommended by the culture, and many think it silly and foolish.But it is the way of true life, of eternal life.And I will come and dwell in you.The Spirit will strengthen you and guide you in this way.I will do all this and more because I love you.”
“And if you love me…”
All praise and glory to God, who love comes to us in Jesus, calling us to new life. Thanks be to God.
I was struck by the relationship between what Jesus says in today's Matthew passage and the reading from the law codes of Leviticus. Leviticus almost never appears on anyone's list of favorite books of the Bible, but today's reading contains that much quoted line, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself." It also commands that when fields are harvested, the edges of the fields are to be left alone. Neither is the grain that falls to the ground to be picked up. Neither shall grape vineyards be picked bare, and none of the grapes that fall from the vine may be harvested. These inefficient farming techniques are so that the poor and the alien may harvest some for themselves.
I'm not exactly sure how to update these commands for a non-agricultural economy such as ours, but I assume it would mean that some significant portion of either the product made or the income brought in would be channeled to the poor and the alien.
Jesus' words don't require any non-agricultural update, but that doesn't necessarily makes it any easier for me to embrace them. "You cannot serve God and wealth." I suppose it all hinges on what you mean by "serve," but Jesus clearly understood our relationship to money and wealth to pose one of the biggest problems for a relationship with God. A casual observer might miss this considering how preoccupied Christians can be with things such as family values, sex, and the like. But Jesus talks about the trouble caused by money more than any other issue.
We all need money to live, for basic security. But where does it start to become a problem? Where does my desire for things begin to deny the poor and the alien their share? Where does my desire for wealth start to focus my life on the accumulation of wealth rather than serving God? Sometimes I'd rather avoid such questions. But Jesus says I cannot if I want to follow him.
Even outside the Church, there is a great deal of interest these days in spirituality and in prayer. There are books galore on both topics. I have some of them, and many of them are quite good and helpful. I particularly like Richard Foster's book, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home and Thomas Keating's works on contemplative prayer.
But as helpful as these can be, I suspect we would all do well to occasionally go back to Jesus' instructions on prayer. Many of us know "The Lord's Prayer" as a part of a worship ritual. But we might do well to find it in the Bible and hear it teaching us on prayer. Matthew's version is today's gospel lection, and with it Jesus offers a bit of commentary on his own prayer. He focuses in on the line asking "forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors," adding this. "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
I know that sometimes my prayer life seems quite disconnected from my everyday life. Or worse, it is a laundry list of things I wish God would do for me. But Jesus' prayer instructions remind me that my own prayers ought to help shape me into the sort of person Jesus calls me to be. To that end, there's probably nothing better than praying the prayer Jesus taught as my own prayer, and not simply as an element of worship.
When Paul writes to the congregation at Thessalonica, he addresses a concern that is foreign to most modern Christians. Paul writes a mere 30 years or so after the resurrection, when most believers, including Paul, assumed that Jesus would return in their lifetimes. But what of those who died in the meantime? Had they missed out?
Many Christians assume that notions of an "immortal soul" are central parts of our faith. But the fact is, this is a Greek philosophical idea that later gets attached to Christianity. Paul seems to believe that when you die, you are simply dead. The good news is when Jesus returns, the dead will be raised just as Jesus once was raised.
I actually think there is a piece of good news for modern folks in Paul's way of thinking. Notions of "going home" when we die speak of earthly life as though it were a bad thing, that God's creation is some sort of mistake from which we need to be set free. But this is counter to biblical notions of a "good creation" and Jesus' incarnation, which hallows our physical, created nature. And while I realize that some find great comfort in such lines as "God needed another angel" when a child tragically dies. To me, that seems to deny the real tragedy of the event. I think I'll go with Paul on this one. In 1 Corinthians 15:26, he speaks of death as the last enemy to be destroyed, speaking of what is yet to come.
As a pastor, I see many cases where death can easily be called a blessing, and I have prayed at bedsides for God to end the suffering. I think that heroic medical efforts to extend life are often misguided. Yet while I make no claims to know precisely what happens when people die, I going to stick with Paul and hope that resurrection is something much bigger and grander than souls going to heaven. And if I have to rest in blissful peace for centuries until Jesus finally destroys death, I'm fine with that.
Unless you’ve been on a desert island for the last several months, you can’t have missed the uproar in the Roman Catholic Church over abusive, pedophile priests.I don’t want to join the debate over how well or poorly the pope has handled this, but there is no doubt that, at times, church hierarchy turned a blind eye to abuse, exposing the most vulnerable to horrible crimes, all in order to protect the reputation of the Church and the priesthood.
Of course this didn’t protect the Church’s image.It had the opposite effect.It sullied and tarnished the church.Worse, it sullied the faith and therefore its namesake, Jesus.How could it not?Followers of Jesus allowed children to be abused.What does that say to non-Christians about the nature of our faith?
But sullying the faith is hardly restricted to Roman Catholics.We Presbyterians may be less susceptible to the particular abuses seen in the Catholic Church, but in the past we have moved around male pastors who preyed on vulnerable women in their congregations.Beyond that, when we fight in the church, we often fight dirty.In our recent battles over whether or not gay and lesbian members can be elders, pastors, or deacons, we often engage in the sort of partisan nastiness normally seen only in politics.And if you ask a non-church person what they know about Presbyterians, it’s not uncommon to hear, “Aren’t they the ones always fighting about gays?”
Jesus said… “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Jesus says that one of our most powerful witnesses is when we embody his love, when we love one another as he loved us.This is how people will understand what Jesus and the faith is about.So what sort of witness are they getting?Far too often it is church institutions concerned primarily with self-preservation.It is denominations and congregations that fight about everything from who can be ordained to what music we sing to what color the carpet should be.By this everyone will know that we are Jesus’ disciples?
Of course the Church’s failings and fights are not our only witness.There are countless acts of love and kindness done within this congregation alone.Some members diligently visit those who are sick, in the hospital, or confined to home or care facilities.Many people have told me how much love and care they received from members when they were going through some great difficulty, be it an illness, the loss of a job, or the death of a loved one.
And beyond this congregation, church groups and denominations continue to work rebuilding the devastation from Hurricane Katrina and other such disasters long after the novelty wears off for the general public.As Nicholas Kristof wrote in a NY Times editorial the other day, there is a Church beyond what people see in the headlines of abuse and fights.
But before we get too smug about how good we regular church folks are at loving one another, it might be good to remember just what Jesus means when he says to love one another.“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”Jesus defines our love for one another by his love for us.And the love we see in Jesus totally and completely gives itself for us.It risks ridicule and abuse.The love we see in Jesus is even willing to die for us.
One of the more hopeful signs I see for the mainline Church in our day is the movement away from faith as simply believing the right things and toward the idea of faith as deepening spirituality nurtured through particular practices and behaviors.I think that this move opens the door to a much deeper sort of faith because it is inherently more relational.
Love is not about belief; it is about relationship, and in Jesus we encounter God’s passionate love for us.The idea of God or Jesus as a passionate lover is an ancient one in the Christian faith.But many modern, Protestant churches gave up such notions in favor of theologies rooted in rational understandings of God and Jesus.All we can do with a rational idea is accept it or not.But the love given by a lover is something altogether different.
When someone loves another deeply and passionately, it is amazing what she will do for the one she loves.She will put her desires and needs on hold for the sake of the other.She will sacrifice for the sake of the other.She will forgive terrible pain and hurt caused by the other.But none of this will really matter if that other has not fallen in love with her.
Jesus has loved us deeply and passionately.Jesus put his own desires and needs on hold for our sake.Jesus sacrifices for our sake.Jesus would forgive even the pain of the cross out of love.But none of that really matters if we do not fall deeply and passionately in love with him.And when we do, Jesus says that it will be visible in how we care deeply and passionately for one another.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in the spring of 1968, he was not the universally revered figure he is today.Much of the country was still segregated. I was in elementary school at the time, but I still knew many folks who thought of Dr. King as little more than a rabble rouser and trouble maker.And when he had come out against the Vietnam War in 1967, that only intensified their dislike.
I can recall some of these people rolling their eyes when President Johnson declared a national day of mourning following Dr. King’s murder, as well as when Atlanta schools closed for the day of his funeral.It can be difficult to recall now, but it was a terribly tense time and racial divisions were high, especially in my native South.President Johnson did not even attend the funeral over fears that his presence might spark riots or violence.
As thousands of African Americans, civil rights workers, politicians, and dignitaries streamed into Atlanta for funeral events, lodgings were scarce.And at that moment, Central Presbyterian Church, a mostly white, upper middle class congregation, knew they had to help.Led by Pastor Randy Taylor, they provided meals and lodging for as many as they could.Members brought food.Nine hundred cots were set up, but more people than that came.Folks were sleeping on the floor, and the church stayed open round the clock for days.
Given the times, it would have been easier to have done nothing.But Central Presbyterian had realized years earlier that Jesus’ call to love one another just as Jesus has loved us meant getting involved in the civil rights movement, even if it invited insults and threats, even if it put them in danger.
American Christianity has often had a tendency to become mostly about ideas and beliefs, and about very individual, personal decisions to embrace those beliefs.But Jesus came to love us passionately with a love so fierce he would even die for us.And when that passionate love truly moves within us, we cannot help but respond with love of our own.“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.”
I was glancing at my new Presbyterians Today magazine this morning, and I saw a review of the book Christianish: What If We're Not Really Following Jesus at All? And then I looked at today's reading from Matthew. Jesus has just finished saying that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. He then references the commandment, "You shall not murder," adding, "But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire."
Wow, if this is what Jesus means by fulfilling the law, following him is hardly the free pass some of us seem to think it is. It is certainly hard to read this and say that Jesus doesn't really care what we do as long as we believe in him.
I've not read the book Christianish, but I am intrigued by the title. And I can't help wondering to what degree my own faith might accurately be labeled Christianish or Christiany or something similar. Do I really want to follow Jesus, or would I just like to be associated with him in some way?
Now Jesus says in another place in Matthew that "my yoke is easy, and my burden is light," so it can't be that following Jesus is impossible. But it would seem to require a pretty serious commitment that shapes and transforms every single aspect of our lives.
I have felt very spiritually restless of late, and one thought that has emerged from this restlessness is the idea that the mainline church has gotten far too settled. We sometimes think of faith as a something where all the answers have been given and we simply need to agree with them. But following Jesus can never be settled. It is always going somewhere. It demands that we keep moving, keep growing, keep being remade more and more in Christ's image.
In my spiritual restlessness, I've thought and written a lot lately about how many people, especially younger people, find the Church to be irrelevant. And I wonder if this isn't related to being Christianish rather than following Jesus. But I am increasingly hopeful on this topic because I see more and more signs of restlessness within the Church. Many in the Church are looking for something beyond Christianish. They are looking to go deeper in their relationship with God. They are searching for help to learn practices and habits that can renew and transform them as disciples. And I am convinced that the Spirit is behind this restlessness, and she is seeking to birth new life into an old Church, that we might continue to be the living, vital, and very relevant body of Christ in and for the world.
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I've mentioned before how Christians, especially American Protestants, sometimes confuse "believing in Jesus" for faith. The Protestant notion of salvation by grace and not by works sometimes gets distorted into "It doesn't matter what you do, only what you believe." But Jesus' words in today's gospel would seem to dispel such notions. After insisting he comes not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, he adds, "Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
I saw yet another article the other day about how young people are abandoning the Church, even though they still think of themselves as spiritual people. There are many ways to interpret this, but my take is that young people still hunger for something more than they get from living by the ways of our culture. They work hard, make money, buy lots of stuff, but still feel like they are missing something. But many have concluded that the Church is of little help with this.
They may be correct. If the people they see at Church look no different from the prevailing culture, act no differently from anyone else they meet (other than occasionally attending worship), what help can we be to them? If we don't model a life that is different, more meaningful, more Spirit filled, more life-giving than what they see elsewhere, why should they be part of a congregation? If we say that we "believe in Jesus," but little about us embodies the way Jesus lived and taught, are they not correct to conclude that we are simply the archaic rituals of previous generations?
I'm over generalizing. Almost no congregation offers nothing distinct from the prevailing culture, and many do a wonderful job of embodying Christ. But to continue the generalization, if we in the Church don't take Jesus' commands, God's commands seriously, why should we expect others to?
O God, help me ignore the siren call of culture with its radical individualism, consumerism, and general unwillingness to put anyone other than "me" first, so that I might follow Jesus in my everyday life.
"You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?" So says Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. It was interesting to see this verse today when I was already wrestling with what it means to be faithful people in today's world. I grew up in a world where most people presumed the culture to be Christian. Beyond that, we thought that living in the culture shaped you into something that was more or less Christian.
But that world is long gone. Significant aspects of our culture are downright corrosive to Christian faith. Radical individualism, consumerism, and the need for immediate gratification all work counter to the faith Jesus preached. But am I in any significant way able to provide an alternative to the culture, or am I salt with no saltiness? Is the Church able to proclaim Jesus in any significant way, calling people to be formed as disciples who follow the teachings and commands of our master? Or are we salt with no saltiness?
I'm not very confident that my life provides any sort of compelling alternative to the world around me. I look much the same as my neighbors and friends who never go near a church. I like to think I'm not a bad guy, but there is nothing distinctly Christian about being a decent guy. Jesus didn't say, "Be good and decent." Jesus did say, "Take up the cross and follow me... Love your neighbor as yourself... Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you... Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven... 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 to me that if we want to get back any saltiness, we need to get serious about helping form each other into people who live out the teachings of Jesus and follow the example of his life. How we live says a lot more about our faith that any words we use. Faith must become much more about what we do, the practices and habits we engage in, if we are to be what Jesus expects us to be. After all, what good is salt that isn't salty?
As I was reading today's verses from Hebrews, I found myself wondering about what it means to be human. This question has provided fertile ground for philosophers, theologians, and thinkers of all sorts for eons. "I think, therefore I am," said Descartes. The following was scribbled on the bathroom wall of my college dorm. "To do is to be - Socrates, To be is to do - Kant, Do be do be do - Sinatra"
