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.
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.
These words from Psalm 146 are echoed in many other places in the Bible. Those who put their hope and trust in human agents and institutions will ultimately be disappointed, but those who trust and hope in God will be vindicated.
But I have observed that most of us are quite selective in how and where we trust God. And there are some interesting fault lines dividing "liberal" and "conservative" Christians. Conservatives will argue against large scale government social programs and health insurance but support massive military budgets. And liberals will often argue for reductions in military budgets and actions, but support expansion of government spending for social programs and regulation. It seems that both sides at times puts its "trust in princes." We just disagree about where and when.
One of the very real problems for Christians of all stripes is our tendency to domesticate the faith to suit our purposes. We all selectively read our Bibles and we all create God in our image. And liberals and conservatives alike simply ignore Jesus when he tells us that wealth is one of the biggest hindrances to us being a part of God's Kingdom.
I wonder what the faith might look like, what our congregations might look like, if we spent less time trying to convince ourselves that we were truer to the faith than those other folks, and spent more time getting serious about what Jesus calls us to do, both the parts we like and the parts we don't.
In his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul says, "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law... Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law." Jesus also speaks of loving one another, and he says that the two greatest commandments are to love God with all our being and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus also refuses to limit the scope of our neighbor to people who are like us, as his parable of the "Good Samaritan" shows.
Given all the talk of love in the New Testament, you would think this would be the defining mark of Christians. Even people who weren't Christian would say, "Well I don't agree with their beliefs, but they sure are the lovingnest folks I've ever seen." So why is it that we so often come off to others as narrow-minded, judgmental, and shrill? Why are there so many Christians who seem angry much of the time?
In the US, I sometimes get the sense that many Christians are angry at what they perceive as a loss of power, prestige, and influence in our society. They're mad about rising pluralism and secularism, and they want to "take their country back." But Jesus refused to be the political Messiah that many of his followers wanted him to be. Jesus never said anything about aspiring to earthly power and influence. Rather he talked about being willing to suffer and give up everything for the sake of the Kingdom. He said to resist evil with love and to pray for those who persecute us.
You likely heard that Gandhi at one point in his life seriously considered becoming a Christian, and he frequently drew on Jesus and the New Testament. But because of some very negative experiences with Christians, he rejected the faith. Once when asked why he rejected Christ considering how much he seemed to emulate him, Gandhi responded, “Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ."
I have to think that if we focused more on love, Gandhi, and lots of others, might not have thought this way.
When I come into the office each morning, like a lot of folks I turn on the computer and check my email.Often I find something there that I need to deal with, but if not, there are usually other tasks.There’s a sermon to write, a bulletin or newsletter to work on, a meeting to prepare for or attend, a visit to the hospital, and so on.I actually like the fact that my days can be quite varied, with different things popping up from time to time.Sometimes it’s a little busy or hectic, yet it’s often rewarding work, so I’m not complaining.But sometimes I get to the end of a long day, and it dawns on me that the one thing that there was no time for in the day was God.Oh I might have worked on a sermon that had something to do with God, but I’ve not actually talked to God, been aware or God, or tried to find God.
If this happens to me as a pastor more often than I care to admit, I can only imagine how much more of a struggle it is for others.A business woman gets up early in the morning and gets ready for the day, all while dragging sleepy children from bed and out to school or day care.In this tough economy, her company seems to expect more and more work out of her with less and less staff to help her.Many days she eats lunch in her office as she catches up on some correspondence.And then she must still pick up children, do something about supper, attend a child’s softball game, and so on.She has a lot more reasons than I do not to have found an hour, or even a few minutes, to engage in some sort of significant spiritual discipline.
In some of the research done exploring why fewer and fewer Americans participate in the worship life of a congregation, a significant number of people cite the fact that Sunday morning is often the one time that they can really relax, can sleep late and catch up on their rest, can spend time with family.
I know that some of you live busy, harried lives.And it’s probably not because you want to be a captain of finance or get your name in Forbes magazine.You’re just trying to get by, to do what you have to do to pay bills, raise a family, cover the mortgage, put gas in the car.
I may have already been thinking about the busyness that gets in the way of my own spiritual life when I first looked at today’s Luke passage.Perhaps that explains why I saw it in a light that I hadn’t considered before.I’ve often viewed Jesus praising Mary for ignoring her domestic duties, for taking the “masculine” pose of a disciple, as something meant to empower women, to say that Jesus calls women just as surely as he does men.
I still think that is a significant piece to take away from this passage, but what to do with Martha.It’s been pointed out to me many times, often by a woman, that Jesus would have gotten nothing to eat that night and not had a clean bed to sleep in without Martha.Martha is the one who engages in biblical hospitality.This is much more than being kind and friendly.It is a hospitality that cares for the stranger, in this case welcoming a traveler named Jesus into her home.Of course once you welcome a guest into your home you have to find something for him to eat.And it’s not like Martha has a refrigerator or a microwave or any prepackaged meals.Welcoming Jesus into her home meant a lot of work.No wonder she needs a little help from Mary.
But because Jesus doesn’t back Martha up when she asks him to make Mary help, I think there is a tendency to label Martha as bad in some way.We’re a little uncomfortable with it, but Jesus does say, “Mary has chosen the better part.”And so Martha isn’t just hospitable and busy, she is worried and distracted.It says so right there in our Bibles.But the truth is, you don’t have to translate it that way.In fact, when I looked at the passage in the original Greek, I saw that our Bible uses “distracted” to translate two completely different words.And so I took a stab at a translation that didn’t want to label Martha as bad.
Here it is: But Martha was burdened by her many tasks, and so she came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?Tell her to help me.”But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are concerned and troubled by many things; but one thing is necessary.”
To my ear this translation sounds less like Jesus fussing at her because she’s prone to burn the candle at both ends, and more like Jesus inviting her to let go of a few cultural expectations and responsibilities.Jesus knows that she is doing precisely what her society says she should.And he is inviting her to find a new freedom, to let go of everything she had been taught about what was necessary and discover what truly is.Who knows, maybe Jesus even said, “You come and sit beside me, too.Later, we’ll all get dinner ready together.”
The last couple of years, I struggled a bit with my own spiritual life.And to be totally honest, at times I’ve gotten a little miffed at God, more precisely, at God’s silence.But lately I feel like I’ve been making some progress, and I think maybe today’s Scripture is some help to me, and perhaps to you as well.
It seems to me that both our readings have something to say about God’s silence, about why it is sometimes hard to find God.The reading from Amos rails against the rich who build and maintain their wealth at great cost to the poor.Amos threatens a great silence, a famine of hearing the word of God to those who come to church each week and drop their offerings in the plate, but who fail to care for the poor or order their daily lives as God desires.
But then Luke’s gospel introduces us to Martha, who also misses God’s word, not because she is doing something evil, but because she is trying to do what she thinks is good.
I suppose that both Amos and Luke have something to say to me, and perhaps you as well.Oh I would never actually cheat a poor person out of any money or take advantage them intentionally, but then again I don’t get too worked up about having a cheap, abundant supply of fresh food at Giant Eagle or Kroger thanks in large part to the hard work of often abused and always underpaid migrant workers.But if I’m not nearly as bad as those condemned by Amos, I am very much like Martha.And if Jesus, in his great compassion, is trying to invite her to discover what is truly necessary, what does that say to me, or to you?
Jesus clearly tells Martha, and me, that there are choices that must be made.Lots of things, even good things, can push God away.We all have to have money to live, we all need food, people have to work, but Jesus says that nothing is as essential, as necessary as sitting at his feet, which is a way of talking about being his disciple.
One of the core callings of all Christian disciples is to help those around us catch a glimpse of God’s coming Kingdom, God’s reign, God’s new day, whatever you want to call it.In this Kingdom, God’s will is fully done, the poor and the oppressed are lifted up, the peacemaker is exalted over the warrior, and people trust that God will provide enough for the day without worrying about tomorrow.I know almost no one who thinks this describes the world we live in.So how is it that I and so many other Christians seem so at home in this world?
We live in a consumer culture that preaches a full life if you accomplish enough and acquire enough.It demands endless striving and busyness from us.It produces endless anxiety about getting more and about hanging on to what we already have. Yet for the most part we Christians have embraced this culture as if it were fully compatible with our faith.Worse, we often view faith or spirituality as one more consumer item, another piece to be acquired in order for life to be full and good.But Jesus tells Martha, and me as well, that we won’t find much of God in such a faith.If we’re really looking for God, if we really want to hear God, if we really want to discover true life, we will have to realize what is truly necessary, what really matters.And then, oh then we will really have something to share with the world.
We live in a world that values production and efficiency, that honors those who can "get things done." We size people up by what they do. It's the first thing we ask when we meet someone, "So, what do you do?" My religious traditions speaks of all people having a calling, something they are gifted for and meant to do, so clearly we think doing is important. But does our society's focus on doing have a downside?
I arrived at this question after reading Matthew's account of Jesus being anointed with costly ointment by an unnamed woman. The disciples object to this waste, thinking it could have been sold and the money used to help the poor. But Jesus cuts them off and praises the woman.
For some reason, I immediately remembered Marva Dawn's book on worship, A Royal "Waste" of Time, which contains the subtitle The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World. Being Church, a waste of time; Dawn doesn't seem to worry too much about getting anything of "value" done in worship. She makes light of something my denomination has in droves, special Sundays that deal with some issue. We have Theological Education Sunday, Higher Education Sunday, Domestic Violence Awareness Sunday, Race Relations Sunday, Health Awareness Sunday, and many more. There's not a thing wrong with the motivation for any of these Sundays any more than it was wrong for the disciples to be concerned about the plight of the poor. But - I agree with Dawn here - worship is us being with and praising God. It doesn't need to accomplish something.
I we can speak in similar fashion about our spiritual lives. There's a great deal of interest in spirituality in our culture, both in and out of churches. And sometimes I think this hunger is brought on, in large part, because we are so defined by our doing that we don't know who we are. We don't value being enough to connect with our true selves.
Jesus did incredible things, so he was a doer. But all his doing grew out of his being. Jesus spent countless hours in meditation, in prayer, in fasting, and in time alone with God. It was there that he honed his identity. And it was there that he was nourished and equipped for what he was called to do.
Who are you? Not "What do you do?" but "Who are you?"
Today's reading from Matthew is "The Judgment of the Nations" (or Gentiles, depending on how you translate). I've never been clear on whether to read this like a parable or as a prediction of things to come, but one point seems clear, God's judgment ends up surprising a lot of folks.
Jesus was speaking to Jews when he said this, and they likely heard it differently than you or I. To Jews, "the nations" (or Gentiles) referred to those other folks, the non-Jews, the people not a part of our faith. Perhaps that means that as Christians we should read this as "The Judgment of the non-Christians" or of "the Pagans."
Regardless, this judgment raises questions about what matters most to God, getting our belief structure ironed out just so, or aligning our lives with God's priorities. These Gentiles are judged as righteous when they unwittingly care for "the least of these."
If this judgment is about those folks, the people who aren't members of our churches, what are we in congregations to take away from this? A very tentative thought I have relates to the occasional Christian obsession with formulas. Believe in Jesus and get saved. But Jesus' words on the judgment of the pagans makes me wonder if we in the Church don't sometimes miss the point. Granted, it requires believing Jesus' word is authoritative to even have this discussion, but does the Church exist primarily to convince folks of the formula or to demonstrate and teach the way of life Jesus modeled?
John Calvin, the Reformation leader who began the tradition that birthed Presbyterians, often accused the Roman Catholics of lapsing into superstition, believing that certain rites magically guaranteed your standing before God. I wonder if the modern day Protestant Church hasn't sometimes lapsed into a new form of superstition, where a few correctly worded phrases magically guarantee our standing before God (even if we don't actually do very much Jesus told us to do).
And pagans who never had a clue scratch their heads and enter into the Kingdom.
I've written before about experiencing God's absence, seeking God's presence but not finding it. Such times can be very frustrating for those who desire God in their lives. At times such unfulfilled longing can seem like torment.
However, such longing may be God's way of inviting us into a deeper relationship. This longing may be a gift of the Spirit that beckons us. Psalm 42 seems to come out of a time of both longing and despair, a time when the psalmist's soul is cast down and enemies taunt him saying, "Where is your God?" Yet out of this dark night of the soul comes a deep awareness of the psalmist's intense need for God. "As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God."
It is easy to fall into a cursory relationship with God, a business-like, contractual relationship where we believe and do certain things in hope of some payout. But God knows we need something more. We were created out of God's love for love - love shared with God and with others. And sometimes the experience of unfulfilled longing may be just what we need to draw us out of our comfort zones into pure love.
We Americans are a very individualistic sort. Our individualism has generally served us well, although it has its dark side. But however favorably you may view this individualism, one thing is certain. The people who wrote the Bible did not live in an individualistic world. They tended to focus more on the group than on the individual.
You can see this in today's section of Paul's letter to the Roman Christians. Paul is wrestling with the fact that so many of his fellow Jews have rejected Jesus as Messiah. We Americans tend to view this along the lines of individual choice and individual consequences, but Paul seems to view it otherwise.
Paul speaks of their hearts being hardened by God, an event that opens salvation to non-Jews. But Paul also speaks of a still to come "full inclusion" of the Jews. I don't know that Paul is speaking of individuals. More likely he means Jews as a people, but clearly his frame of reference is God's plan to bring all peoples into a redeemed and renewed creation. This is not a contest with winners and losers, not a competition where some make it and some don't. It is simply God's love at work.
In our own families, at least in healthy ones, parents see their children as individuals, but their status as family members, as those who receive care and love, is never about their individual accomplishments. So why is it that so many Christians view the God most often called "Father" more like the coach of an elite team who easily cuts those who don't act just as they should?
On more than one occasion I have heard people insist that had they been alive in Jesus' day, they would not have joined the crowd in yelling, "Crucify him." They're sure they would have recognized and followed Jesus. I'd like to think the same about myself, but I'm not all that certain.
I thought of this when I read today's verses from Matthew. Jesus speaks of the Pharisees honoring the graves of the prophets and quotes them as saying, "If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets."
The Pharisees were the uber-religious of their day. They were unimpressed by the ritual and pomp of priestly, Temple Judaism, and insisted that being God's people meant taking the commandments seriously and living lives of deep faith and conviction. They were religious reformers, and you could draw some real parallels between their attempts to reform Judaism and the early Protestants' desire to reform Roman Catholic Christianity.
Yet Jesus insists that their certainty about not joining their ancestors in killing the prophets is a hollow boast, which makes me wonder about our own religious certainties.
What was it about dedicated, often sincere, serious people of faith that put them at odds with Jesus? Why is it that Jesus' opponents were mostly religious authorities? What is it about religious life that seems to have the capacity to obscure rather than reveal God's presence? Jesus says over and over that the tax collectors and prostitutes enter into the Kingdom ahead of the religious folks.
One of the problems with all religious institutions is the tendency to substitute beliefs, practices, and doctrines for God. It is all too easy for our ultimate loyalty to be given to how we do things, how we like things, a particular conception of God, or simply to our particular congregation. But anytime we give ultimate loyalty to something other than God, that something becomes our idol. And when we worship an idol, even it if it is the best of congregations, we may see anyone who threatens our idol as evil, even Jesus.
To live lives of faith that matter, we have to make decisions about what we should and shouldn't do, about what God wants and doesn't want. We must discern what God calls us to do and precede to do just that. But we also must always remember that our decisions and our discernments are not God. And we must always be open for God to break through our certainties and show us something new and wonderful.
In today's Psalm it says, " 'Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up,' says the LORD." And the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the congregation in Rome says that despite suffering and hardship, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." Both Paul and the psalmist look at situations that seem desperate and say, "We see God at work, and we know that God's will finally wins out.
But while the Bible speaks of the certainty that God will set all things right, that God will indeed redeem and restore creation, many Christians seem to thing that the world is hanging by a thread and if we aren't careful, evil will triumph. A great number of Christians seem to think evil is much more powerful than it actually is. It makes me wonder if they know the line from Martin Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" which says, "The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure, one little word shall fell him."
And the cross itself speaks of the impotence of evil in the face of God's love. If the cross is the greatest attempt to thwart God that evil could muster, and the cross is somehow the instrument of our reconciliation with God, then evil's worst deed only furthers God's plans. It would seem that evil has no chance against God.
I talk to a lot of church folks who seem very worried about the future. They worry that the church's best days are in the past, and they are afraid for the church they love. The Church certainly faces plenty of challenges in a culture that is rapidly changing. But I wonder if these challenges don't push us to reexamine the source of our hope. Is our hope in the religious structures and institutions that we have constructed? Or is our hope in the promises of God who brings light out of darkness and life out of death?
What is it that motivates our lives of faith? It seems to me that Christians who trust that God owns the future, and that God will indeed redeem all creation, discover a hope that allows them to embody and enact that coming Kingdom, a hope that can only be known through faith.
I’ve always loved July 4th. As a kid we would go to the lake for the day, swimming and water skiing, and then taking a 30 minute boat ride to watch a big fireworks display. When I got older, I remember going to uptown Charlotte for the big fireworks show they shot off one of the tall buildings and coordinated with one of the local radio stations so you could watch and listen to a sound track.
The grand finale was always the 1812 Overture. But no Forth of July medley would have been complete without Kate Smith singing “God Bless America.” Smith introduced the song just prior to World War II, and it quickly became a patriotic favorite, so much so that some lobbied for it to replace the Star Spangled Banner as our national anthem.
Kate Smith has been dead for decades, but many people still associate her with the song. The song itself enjoyed a resurgence of sorts after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Members of the US Senate sang it from the steps of the capital after the attack. It even replaced “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch at some baseball parks.
After the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the phrase “God bless America” began showing up on yard signs, often written in red, white, and blue, or displayed on a background of the US flag. Variations on this theme also showed up such as “God bless our Troops.”
If you know the lyrics to “God Bless America,” you know it is a simple prayer. It isn’t militaristic. It doesn’t call down God’s ire on any others. It simply asks for God’s guidance and blessing. But in those yard signs, and perhaps even in the military-style, march music of the song, it is easy to move beyond a simple request for blessing to a call for God to bless us and curse our enemies. Now surely God is on the side of good and against evil, but does that means God is our God and not theirs? Are we always in the right? Does God wear red, white, and blue?
Does God belong to one nation and not another? People of the ancient world thought so. Indeed the world in which Israel lived thought of gods as local divinities. Every group had its own god and all wars were holy wars because they were contests between the adherents of different gods. And whoever won the battle or war must have had the mightier god.
Israel comes to know the God they call Yahweh in this setting. And at first they think of Yahweh just like other folks think about their tribal gods. God is for Israel and against their enemies. There are plenty of stories in the Bible where God is described just so. But as Israel comes to know this Yahweh better, images of a tribal god begin to break down. Yahweh isn’t just their god, but is God of all creation. And Yahweh doesn’t care just about Israel. Indeed, God’s special relationship with Israel is for the sake of those others. When Abraham first meets God, Yahweh says, “I will bless you and make your name great… And in you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”
The prophet Isaiah describes Israel as God’s servant, words the New Testament writers later apply to Jesus. “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant… I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” And Jesus himself embodies this, sending his followers to carry the good news to “all nations.”
Yet despite all this, images of a tribal God persist. Many Americans have a great deal of difficulty separating “God and country,” assuming that the two simply go together. America is a great and wonderful country. And some of our most appealing attributes are drawn from Christianity. But if loving God and loving country are two sides of the same coin, does that mean the God of the Bible, the God seen most fully in Jesus, is our tribal god?
So perhaps providence has placed today’s Old Testament reading in the lectionary. Every three years it shows up near July 4th, this year on the day itself. And what a curious little story it is. In the midst of many stories about the prophet Elisha, we meet a fellow called Naaman, a general in the armies of Aram. He is a powerful and important man, but he has some sort of skin disease which will not go away. But after we’ve been introduced to this Naaman, nothing else in the story happens quite the way you might expect.
The story plays havoc with expectations about how God works and where real power lies. A captured Israelite slave points Naaman toward possible healing. Naaman assumes that such power must go through channels, and any prophet able to heal must be in service to the king. And so he goes to Israel’s king with a great deal of wealth to buy a healing. But the king of Israel presumes it is a ruse meant to manufacture an insult that will justify an attack. The Israelite king doesn’t think to summon Elisha. Perhaps he is so focused on issues of us versus them that it never occurs to him that God might want to heal Naaman.
Nonetheless Elisha summons Naaman, who then takes offense when proper pomp, pageantry, and ritual aren’t followed. And for a second time, it takes unnamed servants to point the powerful Naaman toward God’s healing.
And so finally God does heal this foreigner, and an enemy at that. No doubt there were those in Israel who had prayed that God would strike down the Arameans, including their commander Naaman. But instead, God heals Naaman.
In much the same way, people of Jesus’ day expected God to send a Messiah who would strike down the Romans and the commanders of their armies. But instead Jesus heals a Roman centurion’s slave and praises the centurion’s faith. He tells a parable featuring a hated Samaritan as the hero, and tells his followers to proclaim forgiveness to all nations.
But despite the witness of Elisha, despite the God we meet in Jesus, we are still drawn to the image of a tribal God. Not that we all belong to the same tribe. Some want a red, white, blue God. Some fashion a Republican or a Democratic God. Some picture Jesus with blue eyes and blond hair, a member of their white tribe. Some people hate gays and so their god does, too. Some people hate liberals or conservatives, and so their gods do, too. But whatever tribal god we embrace, such a god seems far different from the God we say we have seen in Jesus who is, according to the Bible, the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.
I don’t know about you, but I have realized over the years that I have a great deal of difficulty being in close relationship with people who have very different views and values than I do. Similar behavior likely accounts for why most people marry people who are a lot like them, why social groups are often made up of similar folks, and why churches can often be categorized as liberal or conservative, black or white, high society or working class. Such congregations seem to refute the Bible’s insistence that we are all one in Christ, but they fit well with my own tendency to think of God as a bigger and better version of me, sharing my difficulty being in relationship and loving people who are different from me. I know better logically and theologically, but still I presume that if God really loves me, then surely God must hate the folks I hate. Presto, my own tribal God.
We live in one of the greatest countries the world has every known. I pray that God will bless and guide us, and I have no doubt that God loves us. But the moment we decide that this means God loves others less, or worse, that God hates others, we’ve created a tribal God, an idol. But in Jesus we meet a very different God. And this Jesus calls me and you to proclaim God’s love to all the world, to bear witness to and demonstrate the coming dominion of God, that promised day when people from east and west, north and south, from every part of God’s creation shall join together in the great feast of the kingdom, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, American nor Irish, Jordanian nor Chinese, Iraqi nor Russian, Ethiopian nor Thai, where all are one, where all are welcome, and all are called children of God.
Do not put your trust in princes, 
