Sunday Sermon - Peering into the Darkness; Glimpsing Hope

Peering into the Darkness; Glimpsing Hope - Oct. 17 sermon.mp3

Text of Sunday Sermon - Peering into the Darkness; Glimpsing Hope

Jeremiah 31:27-34; Luke 18:1-8

Peering into the Darkness; Glimpsing Hope

James Sledge                                                           October 17, 2010

I presume that most all of you know about the two young boys from Upper Arlington who were killed by their father before he killed himself.  The father’s depression had apparently become so severe and painful that not only could he not go on living, but he felt he was doing his children a favor by sparing them the sort of pain he felt.  And out of the horrible, twisted logic caused by his sickness, three people are dead, a family is shattered, a community seeks answers, and most all of us shake our heads and wonder how such a thing could happen.

The family lived one street over from me, but I had never met them.  My wife once bumped into them while walking the dog.  The boys ran over to play with the dog.  The father came along behind them.  They all seem like nice, likable, friendly people…

It didn’t happen locally, but in the last month, five gay teenagers have died by suicide, most of them taking their own lives after being tormented and taunted to the point they simply could not take it any longer.  And I don’t care what one thinks about homosexuality, these deaths are horrible, tragic, and the hate that caused them run counter to everything Jesus taught.  Young lives have been cut short, families are torn apart, and communities are left to wonder how this could have happened.

How is it that the world can be such an inhospitable place for so many?  And this isn’t simply an interpersonal thing.  Thousands in Haiti are still living in tent cities all this time after the horrible earthquake there.  Recent tropical storms killed some of these people living out in the open.  And the billions in aid that the US promised are stuck in Congress, held up by a congressman worried that a few million of this aid is going to be used for something he considers wasteful.  Enjoy your tents, folks.

And while we’re on the topic of Congress, our political system seems to have become almost completely dysfunctional.  Democrats and Republicans alike would rather blame the other than grapple with serious issues.  Politics has become a bitter war, and each party is terrified of giving the other any ammunition.  So when it comes to long term issues such as Social Security, Medicare, and how to rebuild a crumbling transportation infrastructure, people on both sides are afraid to work with the other lest that side get credit.  And they are afraid to propose difficult or painful solutions because they know the other sides will simply use them to make political hay, which explains why both major candidates for governor of this state are for improving education, but neither is willing to offer a single, specific proposal about how they will pay for it.

I talk to more and more people who are frustrated, and who are worried.  They’re worried about their own retirement.  They’re worried about what life will be like for their children.  They’re worried that when they graduate they won’t be able to find a job.

It wasn’t so long ago that most Americans had an almost unshakable belief in progress.  My children will be better off than I was.  Technology and medicine will solve more and more of the world’s problems.  Things will get better and better until everything is wonderful.  But I don’t hear as much of that these days.

And yet every week some of us gather and together we pray, “Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”  Every week we ask God to make the world more like how things are where God lives.  In the Bible, that’s what heaven is, by the way.  It isn’t a place people go when they die.  It is God’s home, and there everything is as it should be.  And Jesus taught us to pray, “God make it like that here.”

I grew up saying the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday, but somehow it scarcely occurred to me what the prayer actually asked.  And I wonder how many others had the same experience.  Sometimes I worry that such rote prayers are the religious equivalent of “Have a nice day.”  Nothing wrong with the sentiment, but do we really mean anything by it?

I wonder if we wouldn’t do well to change up the Lord’s Prayer from time to time, to use a different translation or rendition of it.  What would it do if when we prayed the Lord’s Prayer, we actually said what the prayer means?  What if we prayed, “Lord, up in heaven, you see how things are here.  Please make them better.”

And if we prayed this way, would it make our prayer feel more meaningful, or would it only depress us by reminding us of how far from God’s will being done things are?

It is not hard to understand why, over the centuries, the Church gradually shifted the good news Jesus proclaimed from “The kingdom of God has come near,” to “You get to go to heaven.”  It was hard to keep talking about God’s will being done here, on earth, when you looked around at how things were.

And yet…  Jesus says we should “pray always and not lose heart.”  And long before Jesus, the prophet Jeremiah, who has told the people of Jerusalem that they will be destroyed and carried into exile by Babylon, can still proclaim, “The days are surely coming.”

“The days are surely coming,” says the prophet, “when it won’t be like it is now.”  “The days are surely coming, says Yahweh, when…I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts…  No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, ‘Know Yahweh,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”

“The days are surely coming,” says Jesus, “when God’s dream will be born, when the poor will be lifted up and the captives freed, when all will be as it should be, when God’s will is done here, on earth.”  And Jesus insists that God’s dream, the kingdom of God, “has drawn near.”  And he calls people to repent, to begin living differently because they see what is coming.  And he calls us to not lose heart, to pray always.  But he also adds, “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Will he, indeed?  Or will we have looked around at all those ways the world does not conform to God’s will and concluded, “It’s hopeless.”  The best we can hope for is something better when we die.”

I hope this doesn’t offend anyone, but I think it is a lot easier to believe you will go to heaven when you die than it is to do as Jesus tells us, to pray for God’s will on earth, for a new day, and not to lose heart.  It’s even harder to live the way Jesus did, as though that new day was just around the corner.  Believing in heaven is easy.  There isn’t really anything to dispute that belief, no convincing evidence against such a belief.  As a result, all kinds of people believe in a heaven of some sort, even folks that aren’t in the least religious.  But believing God’s kingdom is near when there is so much pain in the world… That’s something else altogether.

There was a time when I dismissed much of the current interest in spirituality, in walking labyrinths, going on spiritual retreats, and having a Spiritual Director as some sort of touchy-feely fad.  It was for “emotional” types who weren’t satisfied with sound biblical knowledge and well reasoned theology.  Worse, I thought that such types detracted from the Church’s mission by focusing too much on their internal, personal, spiritual issues and feelings.  But I have discovered that the people with the deepest spiritual lives are very often the same folks most committed to Jesus’ work of lifting up the poor and oppressed, of proclaiming release to the captive, and the coming of God’s new day.  And I think that’s because their spiritual connection to Jesus lets them see things more like Jesus does. 

It takes a lot of faith to peer into the darkness of our world and say, “See that glimmer over there?  That’s God’s new day dawning.”  I’m not sure it’s even possible if our hearts don’t get folded into Jesus’ heart, if our lives don’t become lost in his. 

Draw us in, Jesus.  Draw us in.

Spiritual Hiccups - Greatness

A few years ago I attended a denominational meeting at a large church in my city.  As I walked in from the parking lot, I noticed a number of vans and buses owned by this congregation.  As one might expect, the church name was painted on the side of these vehicles.  But curiously, the (now retired) pastor's name was also on the side of the vehicles in letters considerably larger than the church's name.

Now I know nothing about whose idea this was or how it came about, but that image came to mind when I read today's gospel.  Jesus has just told the disciples that he will be betrayed, but they seem not to understand.  Instead they begin to argue amongst themselves about who is the greatest.  "But Jesus, aware of their inner thoughts, took a little child and put it by his side, and said to them, 'Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes  the one who sent me; for the least among all of you is the greatest.'"


Sometimes it seems that we in the Church have never totally learned the lesson Jesus tries to teach us.  We pastors generally get paid more if we serve bigger churches, and the big church pastors tend to be more influential in their denominations. I once heard Frank Harrington, former pastor at Peachtree Presbyterian in Atlanta, say that he had to drive a car that was comparable to the cars driven by the well to do members of his church.  There may be some practical wisdom in that, but it seems counter to what Jesus teaches.

Congregations also tend to measure themselves with numbers.  Membership size and financial contributions are easy things to measure and we are happy when they're up and worried when they're down.  In fact we probably pay much more attention to such things than we do to the spiritual health of our members.  I wonder if this is what Eugene Peterson was talking about in a quote from him I saw on Twitter this week.  "Why is there still so much adolescent measuring of religious biceps and breasts in American churches?"

The current struggles of traditional churches can be very disconcerting for those of us who are longtime members of those churches.  But one advantage of this time may be the opportunity to rethink what we mean by a vital and successful congregation.  Perhaps we have the opportunity to break away from measures of success and vitality handed to us from the prevailing culture, and seek the sort of greatness modeled and taught by Jesus.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Listen to Him!

I saw a report on one of the cable news outlets today about a Texas church that paid for a billboard that admitted they were a "bunch of jerks."  This mea culpa was this congregation's way of saying that yes, we've often been hypocrites and often failed to live the faith we claim to hold. 

I imagine this billboard will create some interesting conversation.  Whether it will be effective in reconnecting with people who have written off the church is another issue.  But certainly this sign does take on the issue of what it means to be a Christian.  Are we Christian because we believe the right things, or does it require more?

In today's reading of the Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John are witnesses to a fantastic vision of Jesus chatting with Moses and Elijah.  Peter feels the need to do something "religious," and suggests erecting some booths or shrines for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.  But the narrator weighs in on Peter's suggestion with the tag, "not knowing what he said."

Then God shows up and makes clear that shrines are not what is needed.  The only instructions offered to Jesus' followers are, "Listen to him!"  Not "Believe in him," not "Worship him," but "Listen to him!"  And presumably this includes doing what he says.

Because churches are such well established institutions, and because there are also well established norms about what it means to be a Christian, it is relatively easy to claim Christian faith and somehow missing this explicit command from God to listen to Jesus.  (No doubt the fact that Jesus says some pretty uncomfortable things about money, peacemaking, pacifism, and so on contribute to this.)

So what would you say lies at the core of your notion of being a Christian, a follower of Jesus?

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Spiritual Hiccups - Self Denial

Self denial is not very popular in our culture.  If you want proof, just look at the obesity epidemic in this country.  Or look at how over-scheduled our children are.  We're terrified they'll miss out on something if we don't have them do every possible activity, don't take advantage of every enrichment opportunity. Why would we deny them anything?



So what are we to do with Jesus' words from today's gospel?  "Then he said to them all, 'If any want to become my followers,  let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who  lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit  them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?' "




I'm not terribly good at self denial.  I measure most things by whether or not they please me, satisfy me, make me feel better, and so on.  I want the same things a lot of people want: to be successful, to make a little more money, to have nice things, maybe get a bigger TV, and the latest smart-phone  Why would I deny myself any of those things?

I've been asking myself lately, "What would I give up in order to live more faithfully with God?  What would I voluntarily let go of?"  And I'm not talking about any self-improvement project such as giving up sweets so I can lose a few pounds.  I'm talking about what I would give up for no personal gain other than to use that time or money or energy for the work of the Kingdom.

I should add that asking myself these questions makes me squirm a bit.  But sometimes it opens my eyes to possibilities I've never seen before.

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Spiritual Hiccups - Too Big for Us To Handle

The world is filled with problems that seem too big to be addressed.  In today's political climate, politicians from both parties are afraid to tackle long term issues such as Social Security, other entitlement programs, or an energy policy.  Everyone agrees something needs to be done, but the task is too daunting for anyone to risk the effort.

Education is another major problem in our country.  Increasingly, students in large urban areas receive an education that pales in comparison to that received by students in wealthier suburbs.  There's more action here than on Social Security, but often the efforts bear little fruit as vicious cycles of poverty, gangs, drug abuse, and more seem to thwart many of the best laid plans.

It is easy to see the scale of some of the problems facing us and throw up our hands saying, "What can we do about problems so big?"

I suspect that the disciples must have felt much the same when Jesus looks out at a crowd of thousands and says to his little band of followers, "You give them something to eat."  Luke tells us there were 5000 men, which presumably means thousands more women and children.  And the disciples have five loves and two fish. 

When we celebrate the Lord's Supper in worship, we tear pieces of bread off a loaf for each worshiper.  A good size loaf will give one bite of bread to about 150 people.  You do the math.  The disciples are going to be cutting bread into incredibly tiny pieces.

I wonder what the disciples thought and felt as they headed out into that crowd of perhaps 10,000 with less than a single grocery bag of food.  This is one of the New Testament "miracle stories," but I think the first miracle is that the disciples even tried.  Surely they thought about responding, "You have got to be kidding, Jesus.  That'll never work."  But for some reason, they took a few handfuls of food and waded out into a sea of people.

But we're a long way removed from Jesus, and we don't much believe in miracles.  Very often I've heard church discussions that sound a bit like, "We've only got a small bit of food.  It's not enough to do much with.  We'll just eat it ourselves."

I wonder what it would take to enable me to head out into a hungry crowd with a single loaf of bread and yell,  "Come and get it?" 

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Spiritual Hiccups - What's It Say?

Lots of Christians speak of "believing" the Bible.  I suppose that most Christians believe something about the Bible, but believing the Bible requires first figuring out just what it is saying, no easy task.  We struggle in the United States to agree on what our US Constitution says, and it's only a few pages.  The Bible is a huge document written by lots of different people over hundreds and hundreds of years.  It has passages that seem to contradict one another, and it has many sorts of writing: laws, songs, prayers, letters, stories, history, etc.  How does one believe a song?

Today's gospel reading is a miracle story.  Jarius, a synagogue leader, asks Jesus to come and heal his young daughter, but on the way, Jesus is delayed when a woman comes up to touch him, hoping this will heal her from a long ailment.  Jesus stops to find out who has touched him, and by the time he's finished, word comes that Jarius' daughter has died.

What is this story about?  Is it about Jesus' healing power?  That is certainly there.  Is it about how Jesus, no matter how busy he is with important work, always has time to stop and restore someone to wholeness? (This woman's condition would have made her religiously unclean.)  Is it about Jesus' power over death? 

I suspect that if you asked Jarius and the woman with the hemorrhage what had happened in the story, you might get very different accounts.  They probably saw very different things happen.  Even the gospel writers themselves often tell the same story a bit differently, each thinking the meaning of the story lies in a slightly different place.

Do you, in some way, believe the Bible? We Christians might all get along a bit better if we agreed that different folks can believe in the Bible fervently without agreeing on exactly what it says.

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Sunday Sermon video - Rediscovering Passion

Spiritual Hiccups - Collateral Damage from the Kingdom

When Jesus heals a Gerasene demoniac, there is some significant collateral damage.  As he prepares to cast out the demons, Jesus honors their request to be sent into a herd of pigs rather than "into the abyss."  But the pigs immediately charge headlong down the bank into the lake and are drowned.  And while Jews might not have much use for pigs, I'm sure the pigs owners were none too happy about this.  When the swineherds run and tell everyone what happened, all the folks come out to see.  Finding the former demoniac in his right mind, they are afraid and ask Jesus to leave.  Presumably the power of Jesus causes fear, but I wonder if economics figure in at all.  Who else's pigs or livelihood are in danger because of Jesus?

This isn't the only time this sort of thing happens in the Bible.  The book of Acts reports two different times where Paul is charged with causing economic harm.  One time he casts out a "spirit of divination" from a slave girl, costing her owners the money they made from her fortune-telling.  Another time the silversmiths at Ephesus riot, fearing a shrinking income from "shrines of Artemis" because of Paul's converting people to the Way.  I suppose in these two cases, the damage is done to folks who are, in some way, working at cross purposes to God.  But the pigs, their owners, and the folks employed as swineherds truly seem to be collateral damage.

Apparently the Kingdom is threatening to the status quo, even when the status quo looks fairly benign. The people of the Gerasene region seem to realize this and ask Jesus to leave.  But the Church seems to have forgotten this. Despite those other passages in Luke that say God "has brought down the powerful..." and "sent the rich away empty..."  Despite Jesus saying "Woe to you who are rich... who are full now... who are laughing now..." and "when all speak well of you..." we generally view the Kingdom as no threat at all.  And if there is any danger, it is only on a personal, salvation level.

Not so for Gerasene pig farmers.  And I can't help but wonder what parts of our world, that seem perfectly acceptable to us, are likely candidates for collateral damage from God's Kingdom.

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Sunday Sermon - Rediscovering Passion

Rediscovering Passion - October 10 sermon.mp3

Text of Sunday Sermon - Rediscovering Passion

Luke 17:11-19

Rediscovering Passion

James Sledge                                               October 10, 2010

When I do pre-marriage counseling, I try to prepare couples for the nearly inevitable progression that happens with most serious, long-term relationships.  There is a beginning that is filled with wonder, with joyous discovery and a deepening passion that causes everything else to recede.  It’s the sort of passion that produces such lines as “I only have eyes for you.”  And that is true to some extent.  Nothing else is so wonderful.  Nothing else is so important.  And so nothing else is in clear focus.  Nothing else quite gets full attention.

When people are experiencing the full throes of “in love,” logic and reasonableness sometimes take a holiday.  People will spend hours on the phone even when they have things they need to do.  They will engage in all sorts of extravagant behaviors, from acting in ways they would have previously thought silly and foolish to lavishing their beloved with expensive gifts that require cutting expenses in other places. 

But almost without fail, the throes of “in love” begin to wane.  Over time, as couples settle in for the long haul, as they set up a home together, as they marry and have a family, the passion diminishes.  It’s natural.  That initial intensity is hard to maintain, and lots of other things, sometimes other passions, compete for attention.  Children, careers, hobbies, causes, and so on all vie for their share. 

Sometimes couples realize they’ve come to take each other for granted, that their life together is mostly about routines.  There may not be any big conflicts and the relationship may be comfortable enough.  There is care and concern for the other, but all the passion is gone.  Some relationships begin to falter at this point.  Small things can grow into big conflicts and couples may find themselves wondering, “Can this relationship be saved?”

I think that relationship with God can go through a similar sort of progression.  People can move from a passionate relationship to one that is comfortable to something where the relationship gets taken for granted and is mostly habit and obligation.  Blessings from God are merely what God is supposed do, and troubles in life feel like God failing us.

I wonder if nine of the lepers in our gospel reading today hadn’t fallen into this sort of relationship with God.  I’m assuming that they grew up in the faith and tried to live good lives.  They went to synagogue, kept the law, made standard Temple offerings, and attended the big religious festivals.  But after all this, they found themselves suffering with leprosy.

We need to realize that leprosy in the Bible is not the horrible disease of leper colonies, not the illness portrayed by Hollywood biblical movies such as Ben Hur.  Leprosy in the Bible is a catch-all term for any skin disorder, some serious and some less so.  Things we would call a fungal infection, psoriasis, or eczema would all be termed leprosy.  But regardless of the severity, all of them got you labeled “unclean.”  And when you were unclean, you couldn’t have contact with others without rendering them unclean.  And so leprosy would make life difficult.  Besides physical discomfort, you weren’t going to be invited over for Passover dinner, or any other dinner for that matter.  You wouldn’t be welcome at the synagogue or Temple and so on. 

Given all this it is hardly surprising that when these ten lepers hear about Jesus and his reputation for healing, they go to see him.  They keep their distance from Jesus as the Law mandated for “unclean” folks, and they plead for help.  Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priests.  Priests had to certify that formerly unclean people were now clean, and so Jesus’ command implies the promise of a healing, and the lepers head out immediately.  All ten believe Jesus can heal them, and all ten are in fact healed.  But one returns to Jesus, praising God and throwing himself at Jesus’ feet in a grand show of thanksgiving.  And he was a Samaritan.

Samaritans believed in God and the Law of Moses, but they were regarded as heretics by Jews, as well as being a despised ethnic group.  They were outsiders in every sense of the word, and I suspect that explains why this Samaritan is praising God and running back to thank Jesus.  This Jewish rabbi, Jesus, had healed him, a Samaritan.  The other nine, presumable all Jews, seem to take God’s blessing more for granted, and they simply return to their daily lives.

I suppose the Samaritan returns to his old life as well, but before he does, he receives something the others don’t.  All are healed, but Jesus tells the Samaritan that his faith has “saved him.”  Our translation says it has “made him well,” but I pretty sure that’s a bad translation.  Luke has used two other words to say the lepers were “made clean” and “healed.”  But Jesus singles out this Samaritan and tells him his faith has saved him.  This may not be a get-to-go-to-heaven saved the way some of us hear that word, but it is a restoration, a renewal much bigger than simply being made well.

This Samaritan has a passionate experience of God while the other nine do not.  As an outsider, he seems to have an advantage.  He finds it easier to get excited about what God has done for him.  And I fear that we church folks are often more like the nine than this Samaritan.  Sometimes our faith has lots of routine, and not much passion.

How do we become more like the Samaritan and less like the nine?  I think the answer depends on who you are.  If you are more like the Samaritan to begin with – and by that I mean that you’re not a longtime church person, that you’re new to this in some way – then you may actually have an advantage.  Like a young person falling in love for the first time, it may be easier for you.  But as with falling in love, you will need to do certain things.  You will need to spend time with God, with Jesus.  That means prayer and reading the Bible.  It means doing things with God, which is another way of saying finding spiritual practices and activities that suit you, things you and God enjoy doing together.

But what about the rest of us, those who’ve been around God for a long time and have gotten in some pretty deep ruts?  Well, what would you tell couples who had lost their passion in a marriage?  I would suggest that first they need to create some space for passion.  They need to push some other relationships and activities off to the side, to get rid of some of the busy, stretched-too-thin lives many of us lead so that there some room for passion.

And then you have to fall in love all over again.  Like young lovers, you spend time together and find new things you enjoy doing together.  You begin lavishing the other with attention, gifts, and little extravagances.  You want to do things that you know the other enjoys, and you happily cut back on things for yourself in order to do so.

Of course falling in love is a two way street.  The other must move toward you as well.  And in Jesus, God does that with remarkable passion, even to the point of risking death.  Too often the Church has depicted this in the language of contracts and formulas.  But dying for another is the language of love.  “I would die for you” is a line for a love song. 

 A Samaritan, surprised to discover how much Jesus loved him, found himself in the throes of passion that left him yelling, singing, and throwing himself at Jesus’ feet.  And Jesus says this passion is a sure sign of something more than a healing, a sign of renewal and restoration, of being fully alive.

Jesus, let me know this passion.  Let me be fully alive in you.

Spiritual Hiccups - This Little Light of Mine

The other day, Diana Butler Bass posted a picture of a church sign on Facebook  It was one of those signs that had the church's name with a space below where messages could be written with black, plastic letters.  In this space it read:

TRADITIONAL WORSHIP

THE WAY

YOU REMEMBER IT

I'm not sure the sign itself requires much comment.  But it does make me ponder what we mean when we talk of letting our light shine, when we use terms such as "evangelism" and "witness." 

A church I served once held and "Bring a Friend" Sunday.  We had a big lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the worship service, and, in terms of numbers, the day was a big success.  But as we looked at the pew pads where people write in their names and, if they are so inclined, contact information, we made an interesting discovery.  Every single guest that Sunday left contact information was a member of another church.  People had indeed invited their friends, but it had not involved reaching out to anyone who was different from them.  If some of those guests were not happy at their current church, it might had been recruitment, but it surely wasn't evangelism.

We tried to rectify this when we later held another "Bring a Friend" event.  We made it clear that this was a chance to reach out to people who were not part of a church.  Our members heard us and complied.  They did not invite friends from other churches.  Unfortunately, this meant that, for the most part, they did not invite anyone.  From an attendance standpoint, our second "Bring a Friend" Sunday looked like any other.

I don't mean to be hard on the members of this church.  I suspect that many of them did not have many friends who were not Christian.  But they were also folks who had grown up in a very "churched," Southern culture.  They tended to view the community around them as Christian.  And so evangelism for them was mostly a matter of competition with other churches.  If you think that most everyone is Christian, then churches are like grocery stores, and the only real question is which one they will go to.

And so we seek to serve our niche market.  We hold "traditional worship the way you remember it" or some other version of church for folks with similar tastes to us.  But in a culture that is no longer Christian in almost any sense of the word, catering to folks with similar tastes looks more and more like hiding our light from any but those who know just where to look for it.

"This little light of mine; I'm gonna let it shine..."  for people who look like me, act like me, and like the same things I like.

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