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.
Right now I'm following a discussion on Twitter about the future of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and a lot of the conversation is related to scarce resources. Strands in the conversation include how older pastors are being encouraged to retire later by the Board of Pensions, which of course makes it harder for new pastors to find positions. There is also a strand about how we keep funding church camps, often at the expense of New Church Developments (NCDs). Many younger pastors - quite rightly, I think - see NCDs as essential, but often people my age and older have great memories of their days at church camp, and so they vote to fund camps out of these nostalgic feelings.
When resources are scare, the question of how to allocate them is always difficult. Many congregation, many families, and many governments are struggling with what to cut and what to retain. All of which makes today's gospel reading of more than passing interest to me. It's one of the several accounts of Jesus feeding a huge crowd with just a few morsels of food. In today's account from John's gospel, Andrew responds to Jesus' question about how they would feed the crowd with, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?"
What are our meager resources in the face of such great needs?
There are two very different ways of understanding the stories of Jesus feeding the multitudes. One insists it is a full blown miracle. Jesus multiplies the few loaves and fish into an abundance. Another view sees the story as a miracle of sharing. Lots of folks in the crowd had food with them, but kept it hidden until Jesus began to share the boy's small offering. When everyone shared, there was more than enough.
I'm inclined to view the second understanding as a modern, rationalist view of the story. But I also think that the bigger issue is not which interpretation is correct, but whether we can act like either interpretation is true. Can we trust that we have enough between us to do everything Jesus is calling us to do? Or can we trust that Jesus will provide everything we need when we do what he calls us to do? Seems to me that how we act looks very much the same whichever understanding of the story we believe, as long as we act out of trust.
None of this answers the question of whether to give funding priority to NCDs over church camps. I think that is a question of call. Is Jesus calling the Presbyterian Church to maintain its camps, or to start new faith communities that help 21st Century people learn to be Jesus' disciples? (The way I frame this question betrays my answer.) But I am convinced that when we are doing what Jesus calls us to do, there will be enough, and then some.
I mentioned yesterday how the early Christians thought of themselves as Jewish. That means that the stoning of Stephen in yesterday's reading and the "severe persecution" against the church in today's verses are struggles of us versus us, not us versus them. Nearly 2000 years later, Christians are accustomed to thinking of Jews as them, but that simply was not the case for the first generation of Jesus' followers.
I don't suppose battles of us versus us should be all that surprising. If you look at our current political situation, or at the state of the church, the worst fights are often internal ones. Republicans may want to view Democrats as them and Democrats do the same to Republicans, but of course we are all Americans, all the same us. And we Christians can be our own worst enemies. We demonize those who disagree with us in theology or practice. We try to turn them into a them, but the fact is we are all imperfect, flawed followers of Jesus, all the same us.
We humans seem to need enemies. We need an us that we can be against. But Jesus comes breaking down all those us-them barriers. He is scary to the authorities precisely because he upsets this status quo of us and them. Worse, he calls his followers to mimic him, to reach out to them, to love them. Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Surely this is the ultimate undoing of us versus them.
Given this, it seems unimaginable that the Church would engage in hate, that we would want to label this group or that group a them. But of course we do. Sometimes it seems that we are so busy being the Church or being Christians that we forget to be followers of Jesus. We forget that "God so loved the world," which seems to draw a pretty big circle labeled "us."
I'm back in the office after attending the wonderful "Church Unbound" conference in Montreat, NC. The very notion that the Church is bound in some way is an intriguing one. It says that we are chained, confined, or constricted in some way that keeps us from being the people God calls us to be. It says that we need to be set loose from something in order to answer our calling to be followers of Jesus.
Of course most of us are not all that keen on admitting that we are bound. Addicts resist admitting that their addiction controls them in some way. Micro managers often can't see the abilities of others because they can't let anyone else control anything. And all of us get stuck in ruts without realizing it.
The Church has these problems along with another. We often assume that the things we do are somehow divinely ordained. I've heard people say, "It isn't really worship without a pipe organ." Of course pipe organs didn't exist for much of Church history, and most American congregations didn't have such organs until the early 20th century.
We all have our own preferences when it comes to worship style, mission emphases, fellowship events, and so on. But what happens when our preferences get in the way of being the body of Christ? And if we confuse our preferences with "how it is supposed to be," what then?
In today's reading in Acts, Stephen's trial comes to an end, and he is stoned to death. In that trial he accuses his accusers. "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do." Stephen was a leader in the new movement that sprung up after Jesus' death and resurrection. This movement did not consider itself something separate from Judaism, but an integral part of it. But what they were doing looked and felt different and new. And this offended the religious sensibilities of some. This wasn't "how it was supposed to be." Therefore it was wrong and needed to be stopped before it caused too much trouble.
Any time we resist something new that the Spirit is doing, we are bound by our expectations of how things should be. Our "shoulds" become God, in a sense, become idols which bind us and keep us from following where Jesus calls. What is binding you?
In one of the Church Unbound sessions this morning, Brian McLaren quoted or, more likely, paraphrased William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury who died in 1944. "If our concept of God is flawed, the more we worship the worse off we are. We would be better off as atheists." Where do we get our concept of God, and how do we know if it is flawed? Most Protestants would say we check our Bibles, but I'm not so sure that's a simply task.
Today's readings may illustrate my point. In one we hear a portion of the Samson stories about a warrior strongman who doesn't look all that different from Hercules. In Acts we hear a recitation of the Exodus story, of Moses being prepared to help lead Israel from slavery. And then in John we see Jesus healing a royal official's son (from a distance) as a "sign." So we have a strongman who "judges" Israel, a story of rescue from slavery, and a healing. In the first, Samson doles out his share of death and destruction to Israel's enemies, presumably with God's blessings. Then we hear of how God works to rescue Israel from bondage under the royal power of Egypt. Finally we see Jesus who uses no weapons, but threatens the power of Rome by calling people to believe in him, to entrust themselves to a power other than the Emperor.
So the question arises, "Is God a god of violence who visits destruction on our enemies; is God a god who rescues the slave from the oppressor; or is God a god who heals and calls people to abandon traditional loyalties to nation or empire and become citizens of God's reign?"
I won't for a moment pretend that these are the only three choices for a concept of God. Nor will I suggest that all concepts of God are mutually exclusive. But some concepts are.
A different question may be a way of getting at your concept of God. "What is Christianity's primary message and purpose?" The way you answer this question says a lot about your concept of God. To look at one possible answer, if Christianity is supposed to provide a means of escape from this evil world and this messy, bodily existence, what does that say about God's relationship to God's creation? If God is intent on destroying sinners and the earth, what does that say about the nature of God?
What do you think is the Christian faith's primary message and purpose? Where did you learn that? Things to ponder...
I'm in Montreat, NC for the next few days at the Church Unbound conference. Brian McLaren is a presenter so the conference will clearly have an "emergent" flavor. In thinking about emerging Christianity and the Church being unbound, I was struck by a line in today's gospel from John. It's part of the "Samaritan woman at the well" story. The disciples have been away while Jesus has talked with the woman about living water. "Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman."
I'm not sure we appreciate the shock of the disciples. Rabbis did not teach or talk to women, not to mention a Samaritan woman. In a world filled with boundaries, this woman was on the outside, and Jesus' crossing of that boundary was nothing short of scandalous.
All religions create boundaries. Perhaps they can be helpful at times, but Jesus went out of his way to cross them. The religious boundaries that accrue over the years often become so much a part of the landscape that we don't actually see them, and so we are astonished when someone crosses one.
The Church has lots of boundaries, many of them simply presumed to be the way things are, the same way the disciples presumed that Jesus shouldn't talk to a Samaritan woman. And when boundaries become presumed, so taken for granted that they are like the air we breath, we don't even know they are there. At least we don't until someone violates them.
What are the boundaries that are constraining the Church, that we must throw off if we are to be the body of Christ to the world? One thing is certain, we will take offense when some of those boundaries are questioned or crossed, even when those boundaries are the very thing binding Church and Gospel.
In a new N. Graham Standish book I'm reading he talks about conflict in churches over worship. As he discussed why worship and worship styles often leads to conflict, he said something about Baby Boomers tending to be ideological and thus prone to conflict. Some researchers say that we Boomers tend to be narcissistic and have a very strong sense of our values being right, which of course means that others' values are wrong.
I don't know if this helps explain the deepening partisan divide in our country or not, but it may well contribute to it. And the same sort of divisions are apparent in churches and denominations. Of course Boomers are not the only ones who arrogantly conclude that their take on things has to be the correct one. We all have values that we presume to be valid that will cause us to react against things that challenge those values.
The same was true of the Jewish leaders described in today's reading in Acts. There is an unfortunate tendency to view the opponents of Jesus and his followers as cartoon villains rather than a mix of people with varying motives. Some of them were only interested in preserving the status quo, but others were people of deep faith who were doing what they felt certain was the right thing to do.
Acts reports an interesting word of warning spoken by one of these Jewish authorities, a certain Gamaliel. Gamaliel warned the other authorities against executing the leaders of the fledgling Jesus movement saying, "Keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them - in that case you may even be found fighting against God!"
I wonder how often we religious folks, acting out of our religious convictions, end up fighting against God. If only every religious (and political) group had a few Gamaliels around to remind us of this.
In today's reading in Acts, the Church is shown adding new believers right and left despite a general fear of persecution. Today we find ourselves in a very different situation. The Church is losing members right and left. This seems to be the case by most any measure, whether it be the membership statistics of denominations, worship attendance figures from congregations, or polling statistics that show fewer and fewer Americans participating in the life of any congregation.
Interestingly, I occasionally hear people blame this decline on our culture's hostility to the Church, citing things such as "removing prayer from schools." But even the most vocal advocates for America as a full-fledged, Christian nation would never argue that US Christians face the sort of hostility reported in the book of Acts. No one gets arrested for saying, "Jesus is Lord." In fact, state legislatures routinely invite local pastors to offer prayers, and pastors and Bibles are regular attendees at presidential inaugurations. So why is it that the Church in Acts is growing while so many American congregations are declining?
I think a clue may be found in the language used by many Christians to describe the situation. A great deal of angry words from Christians lament our loss of prominence and power in the society. Such language seems to think of power as something that can be bestowed or removed by the culture. But the power the Church displays in Acts is present despite all attempts of cultural authorities to stamp it out. Where is that sort of power in our churches today?
It is an interesting contrast. The Church of the First Century had no official powers, no legitimizing endorsements from the culture, but it was alive with divine power. The Church of our day is accustomed to walking the halls of cultural power, to being propped up and supported by the culture, but often we seem dead when it comes to spiritual power. And I'm pretty sure that no official, cultural, or societal power will be able to resuscitate us.
I recently ordered a book by a Presbyterian pastor about helping people encounter the Holy in worship. The opening chapter began with this little anecdote.
One Sunday morning, a mother went upstairs to her son’s room to wake him for church. Slowly opening the door, as it softly squealed in protest, she said, “Dear, it’s time to get up. It’s time to go to church.” The son grumbled and rolled over. Ten minutes later his mother again went up, opened the door, and said, “Dear, get up. It’s time to go to church.” He moaned and curled up tighter under the blankets, warding off the morning chill. Five minutes later she yelled, “Son! Get up!” His voice muffled by the blankets, he yelled back, “I don’t want to go to church!” “You have to go to church!” she replied. “Why? Why do I have to go to church?” he protested.
The mother stepped back, paused, and said, “Three reasons. First, it’s Sunday morning, and on Sunday mornings we go to church. Second, you’re forty years old, and you’re too old be having this conversation with your mother. Third, you’re the pastor of the church.”[1]
The book’s author tells this story to highlight the ambivalence many pastors feel about worship. A lot of pastors enjoy preaching and enjoy teaching but find worship unsatisfying. When I did my seminary internship, the pastor of that church was getting fairly close to retirement. And he told me one day that when he retired he would likely not attend worship anywhere for a year or so.
I was too surprised by this admission to ask him to explain exactly what he meant. I presume that he still planned to pray, to read the Bible, to serve God in some way. But for some reason he wasn’t going to attend any worship services.
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says Yahweh… Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile… I cannot endure your solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. Seems God can be more than a little ambivalent about worship, too.
Now granted our worship is quite different from that of the ancient Hebrews. No animals are slaughtered; we pay little attention to the cycles of the moon; nothing is burned. Yet I think fundamentally, our worship has much in common with those Israelites. For many of us, worship is something that we do to help maintain our standing with a distant, far-off God, a God who is not much involved in our daily lives.
I know that’s not true for everyone. Some of you experience God as very active and present in your life. But on the whole, I’m not sure Presbyterians act like this is so, and the Church’s worship has not acted like it either.
Perhaps I can clarify by asking a few questions. Who is Jesus? What was his message? Why did he travel about the Judean countryside healing, teaching, and gathering followers?
Very often, people answer such questions in terms of Jesus as Savior, the one whose death somehow rescued us. And more often than not, this rescue is understood in terms of going to heaven. In other words, a far-off God in a far-off heaven rescues us from this messed up earth and our limited bodily existence for something better, somewhere else.
Yet Jesus speaks of God’s kingdom not as something far-off, but present. Both Jesus and Isaiah speak of God as extremely concerned about the earthly plight of human beings, and Jesus speaks of a kingdom that has already begun to emerge in his ministry, and which we are called to be a part of now.
Unfortunately, the Church has too often lost sight of this, has thought in terms of a far-off God and so has confused the Kingdom of God with heaven. When that happens, religious focus becomes other-worldly and more about beliefs and status than about God’s dream for a new earth. It is about whether we believe the right things about this far-off God so we can get into that far-off heaven.
But over and over Jesus tells us to get ready for the coming kingdom here and now. Jesus begins his ministry by calling people to repent, to turn around and change direction because the kingdom of God has come near. Jesus does not come to rescue us from earth but to proclaim the good news that God will not abandon creation. God wants to restore and redeem creation, and Jesus calls us to begin living in new ways, ways that conform to that new day. And so when Jesus speaks of selling possessions to help others and having treasure in heaven, he’s not talking about reserving spots in a far-off heaven. He’s talking about investing ourselves now in God’s dream for the world.
When God is in some far-off heaven and Jesus comes to take us there, his parable about alert slaves ready for the master’s return is usually understood to speak of death. You never know when you might die, so you’d better have things in order. But Jesus is talking about the Kingdom, God’s new day.
Early this year, we began the Appreciative Inquiry process here at Boulevard, which gave birth to our Dream Team which is now giving birth to the groups and activities described in the Dream Team material in your bulletin. When the Dream Team first began to talk with members and to listen for how our strengths helped us hear where God is calling us, I was intrigued by what emerged. There was interest in more small groups and more community involvement, but in concert with these was a desire to grow spiritually and to do mission.
Now spirituality and mission can be pretty vague terms and can mean lots of things to lots of different people. But to my mind, spirituality is all about drawing closer to God. Spirituality presumes that God is not far-off in some distant heaven, but that God is present to us, available to us. And the Dream Team seems to have tapped into a hunger we have to connect better with God, with Jesus. And this cannot help but connect us with what God wants and what God is doing. Deep spirituality gives us eyes to see God’s coming new day.
And when we see it, we long for it, for things to be set right. To use the biblical term, we hunger and thirst for righteousness. And so we begin to work for things to be set right. We begin to invest in God’s future, to give our money and time and energy to mission that reveals that coming new day to others. Yes, poverty, hunger, violence, hatred, and oppression can seem intractable problems, and it is easy to become frustrated, to trade God’s new day for belief in a far-off God who rescues us for some far-off heaven. But when we drawn near to the Master, as we experience his transforming love in our lives, we know he is at work here. We know he is bringing that new day, that the Kingdom will break through when we least expect it.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Jesus is calling us to find our places in that Kingdom, to invest ourselves now in God’s dream for a new day. Where is God calling you to be a part of it?
[1] N. Graham Standish, In God’s Presence: Encountering, Experiencing, and Embracing the Holy in Worship (Herndon, VA: The Alban Institute, 2010), 9.
Many of us are familiar with the phrase "from the wrong side of the tracks." In the South where I grew up, you could see this quite literally in some small towns. A train track often bisected the town, and it was pretty obvious that there was a more desirable side and a side that was less so. Jesus was from that side.
In today's gospel reading, Jesus is gathering followers. He calls Philip who in turn recruits Nathanael. When he tells Nathanael that they have found the promised Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, Nathanael replies, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Fortunately Nathanael went with Philip to see for himself.
It is nearly impossible to go through life without developing ideas about how things are. Such notions are necessary for organizing our lives, but they are also problematic at times. These notions let us make quick judgments and respond quickly. They allow us to look at an array of choices and quickly refine the list down to manageable size. But as necessary as they are, they often mislead us, and when the become fixed and rigid, they form prejudices of all shapes and sizes.
Our notions of how things are lead to expectations. When someone says she's a lawyer, people already have a set of expectations about what kind of person this is. When I tell someone I'm a pastor, I can often see the wheels his head turning and those expectations registering. Often I engage in a preemptive strike of sorts, quickly clarifying that I may not be the sort of pastor they expect. And I when people find out I drive a motorcycle, some of them have great difficulty reconciling that with their expectations.
Most of us have expectations of lawyers or pastors that aren't really accurate for large numbers of either group. And I suspect that most of us have notions and expectations about Jesus that aren't terribly accurate either. Jesus is an extremely well known figure in our society, but people seem to know a lot of different Jesuses. There is meek and mild Jesus, Jewish rabbi Jesus, kindly healing Jesus, sword wielding warrior Jesus, and more. Often these different Jesuses have little in common with any pictures of Jesus we find in the Bible. They are more the result of what different people are hoping for. Very often Jesus becomes the embodiment of our expectations about God. Jesus becomes the embodiment of our religious hopes, dreams, fears, and frustrations.
But if the Bible is clear about anything, it is clear that God is not like us, that God acts in ways that are not our ways. And so it would seem impossible that God would not regularly defy our expectations, act contrary to those expectations, and seek to transform those expectations so that we become more like God.
