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.
Have you ever wondered what Jesus would think if he visited your congregation? I'm not talking about his presence being there but about the Jesus we meet in the gospels walking in off the street and dropping in on a worship service, a fellowship dinner, a committee meeting, and so on. I was prompted to wonder about such things after reading today's gospel and being reminded once again how it took religious people to get Jesus really honked off.
For many of us who grew up in the church, this fact is sometimes missed. Pharisees, scribes, and such have become such stock, bad guys that we don't necessarily see much beyond cartoon, cardboard cutouts. (I grew up in the South where sometimes Catholics got the same sort of treatment. If the Catholics did it, surely it was a bad idea, which explains why Ash Wednesday, Lent, and so on are somewhat new to me.) But what if we replace the term "Pharisee" with something not having the same negative stereotypes?
Today's gospel features Pharisees and lawyers, and I don't think it is all that much of stretch to rename them pastors and theologians. (Maybe Protestant pastors; we'll let the priests and Sadducees be Catholic.) It isn't very hard for me to imagine Jesus lashing out at some of us pastors and theologians for being overly concerned about keeping our churches going, about getting the doctrines straight, about worshiping in the proper manner, without worrying much about issues such as justice. If Jesus visited our committee and board meetings, I can visualize him getting enraged over how little "good news for the poor" gets emphasized and how the poor are often viewed as little more than opportunities for mission projects, who should show gratitude to us for our noble efforts.
It isn't that pastors or theologians are such bad folks, but then neither were those Pharisees and lawyers Jesus addresses. But all of us can get terribly preoccupied with running our little religious enterprises and mistake all that work and energy for loving God and serving others.
It took religious people to really get Jesus angry. Perhaps that is because he thinks we should know better. Perhaps that means we religious types would do well to spend more of our time getting closer to Jesus, letting him invade every little corner of our lives, and letting him rattle our cages now and then so that we get back on the path he shows us.
I've long loved the story of Jonah. It is a remarkable story that contains a great deal more meaning when one listens for its message rather than worrying about historical events. Like the book of Job, the book wrestles with the ways of God. But unlike Job, who becomes enraged over God's unfair punishment of him, Jonah is angry over God's graciousness and mercy.
The story depicts a reluctant prophet who heads off in the wrong direction when God calls him. Finally forced by God to go to Nineveh, Jonah unenthusiastically fulfills his mission, then is angry that God reverses course (literally "repents") on plans to destroy the city. Jonah complains that this is why he ran from God's call. He feared God would show mercy all along.
The story concludes with a curious little aside that is both poignant and humorous. Jonah goes out and sits, perhaps hoping God will yet destroy Nineveh. As he waits, God has a plant spring up to provide Jonah shade. But then God sends a worm that bores into the plant which withers, taking its shade in the process. And Jonah is so upset he asks to die himself. This allows God to respond, "You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?"
The story ends there with that "and also many animals?" Jonah is angry that God has not meted out justice to those Gentile Ninevites. Then he becomes so enraged over the loss of a bush that provides shade, he loses all composure. In a mixture of religious self-righteousness and egocentricism, Jonah cannot even see the thousands of men, women, and children he hopes God will kill, not to mention all those animals.
"And also many animals?" Interesting that their fate would weigh on God so. I know many Christians who seem to picture God as remarkably cavalier over the fates of those who don't get their religious beliefs correct. And who even counts animals?
My wife and I decided to get away for a couple of days, a possibility that comes with no children any longer living at home. We went to Ohio Amish country for a relaxing weekend. We stayed in Berlin, OH, visited the many shops on its main street, and watched the Amish families in their buggies. On a nice Fall weekend, we were hardly alone. Traffic in Berlin was bumper to bumper. But we were walking so it didn't much matter.
I had never been to Berlin before so I was not prepared for the contrast between Saturday and Sunday. We left our little cottage in late morning to discover the streets of Berlin nearly deserted. None of the shops we visited the day before were open, and there was scarcely a car to be seen. Berlin, it seems, is closed on Sunday. It reminded me of my native South when I was very young and Sunday was a "day of rest."
I would imagine that Berlin, OH is quite dependent on tourism dollars, and weekends would seem to be prime time for tourists. But, perhaps because many of the shops are Amish, the only shopping going on was window shopping.
For God alone my soul waits in silence; from God comes my salvation. God alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.
I don't think I would want to be Amish, but I do wonder if we haven't become so busy and anxious as a people that we have difficulty finding any time for God. Despite all those things Jesus says about wealth and possessions being a hindrance to relationship with God, we want more. More things, more information, more entertainment, more and more, and we want it now.
The Amish are an exotic novelty to us because they are so foreign, so different from us. They have not bought into our culture's norms. I do not necessarily agree with their reasons for this, nor do I idealize their lives. But still, they do stand as a kind of reminder that happiness and contentment do not always require more.
I often find that when I am swamped with things that need doing in the office, when I am feeling the most stressed, those are the times when I lose touch with God. At the very times when God's presence would seem to be most needed, I am too busy to stop. I am too busy for silence. I am too busy for God?
It is a deservedly famous line from the prophet Micah. "And what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" What God requires is a basic religious question. In the case of Micah, the answer rejects much of the traditional religious ritual of that day, burnt offerings and sacrifices. That's not what God wants," says Micah. You know what God wants, justice, kindness, a humble faith life.
The gospel reading for today also touches on this issue of what really matters. This passage is often noted for the way it explodes conventional gender roles. But beyond that, it raises more general questions about priorities. Someone had to get dinner ready if Jesus and the other house guests were to eat. I don't think Jesus or Luke is saying that domestic tasks are bad things. This issue is one of priorities.
All our lives are filled with choices. We have finite energy and resources. If we work 65 hour weeks, something else suffers. Living in Columbus, OH, I've learned of people who live 500 miles away and yet spend every weekend of a home Buckeye football game here in Columbus. Clearly those weekends are not available for other things.
It strikes me that when the passages from Micah and Luke are considered together, they ask people of faith to consider two different sorts of priorities. Luke addresses a more general issue of priority. Where does our faith fit into the other priorities of our lives? Micah, however, asks about the priorities of our faith lives. Where does our religious energy go? It isn't that worship is a bad thing, far from it. But if religious rituals encompass the majority of of faith lives, what happens to those things God requires of you, "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"
Today's gospel contains the famous parable of the "Good Samaritan." The parable is intriguing enough in own right, with its use of a despised Samaritan to demonstrate acting neighborly. But I was struck by the lawyer's original question to Jesus, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Now I presume that if the lawyer were to ask this question today to a group of Christians, a significant number of them would say something to the effect that "You must believe in Jesus and profess him as your Savior." But the curious thing is that Jesus' own answer says nothing of the sort. Jesus simply queries the lawyer (a religious scholar and not what we mean by "lawyer" today) about what the law says. The lawyer responds by quoting Scripture, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
Upon hearing his answer, Jesus responds, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." There is no "You need something more," no "You lack but one thing." Jesus simply says that if he loves God and neighbor, that is sufficient.
Now I am acutely aware of the hazards inherent in creating grand theologies from small snippets of Scripture. But if Jesus thinks that loving God and neighbor is enough, who I am to insist otherwise?
Luke's gospel speaks of the poor and lowly being lifted up while the rich and powerful are pulled down. In keeping with this theme of reversal, in today's lection Jesus speaks of God having "hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants." He goes on to tell his followers how blessed they are to have been a part of his movement. "For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it."
I've never been quite sure how to reconcile Jesus' words about God's revelation "to infants," with a church where wisdom about the faith seems to be lodged with experts. All that is required to show this is to ask church members to teach a class. "Oh, I could never do that," is the common refrain. Sometimes this is false modesty. Sometimes it is an excuse. But underlying it is the notion that real information about the faith is held by experts. Just as I would never have tried to teach my daughters calculus, so a great many church members assume that faith, biblical knowledge, and so on are best handled by specially trained experts.
But Jesus seems to think otherwise. His disciples are hardly made up of the religious elite. The first few are fishermen, one of the very last places one would expect to find any candidates to lead the Church. And in today's reading, Jesus makes a special point about how God chooses to work this way.
My own Presbyterian/Reformed tradition has long valued having "educated clergy." To be ordained pastors must have a bachelor's degree and a master's degree from an accredited seminary. We must have had courses in Greek and Hebrew to facilitate handling biblical texts in their original language. And it is certainly true that things get lost in translation. There are things one can see in the Greek that you can't find in English, and there is real value in congregations having someone that can see these things. But when a congregation comes to see faith as primarily the purview of experts, the value of an educated clergy seems to have done more harm than good.
Jesus tells his first followers to "make disciples of all peoples," so presumably he wants to let all of us in on these wonders revealed to infants, these things prophets longed to see and hear. Presumably Jesus expects all of us to be filled with the Spirit and thus "know" what no expert can know because of learning or study. And it seems to me that we sell our faith woefully short, that we sell Jesus woefully short if we do not draw near to him expecting him to reveal to us what prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah could only long for.
I read Richard Rohr's Daily meditation in conjunction with today's lectionary passages. Rohr spoke of how we need mentors to help us stay on track because religious people often think their job is to help other people change. We forget that faith is about God transforming us, a process that is never quite finished. And when we focus on getting others to be like us or agree with us, we often forget about the work of transformation in our own lives.
I thought about Rohr's comments in light of the reading from Micah. Micah, like many other prophets, blasts the rulers of Israel. In a sense, these prophets seek to mentor the rulers. King in ancient Israel is a religious position. Kings were messiahs, God's anointed ones. Their rule was to be guided by God, but privilege, power, and rich friends made it easy to go astray, and the prophets sought to call them back. Of course kings often found false prophets who would tell them what they wanted to hear.
All this makes me wonder about who serves as my or your mentor, who reminds us of our own need to change. Who is our prophet, counselor, mentor, or spiritual director? Who reminds us to let the Spirit continue her transforming work in our lives? This is especially problematic for pastors, at least for me. I often think that if only I could get those people to be more.... things would be better. But who says to me, "First remove the log from your own eye..."
The tradition in which I grew up didn't have spiritual directors, and it didn't really encourage mentoring relationships. Faith was mostly about agreeing with what my tradition said was true. As an avid reader, I was fortunate to find mentors on the printed page, but books are easier to ignore than someone who has a relationship with you.
I just came out of a finance meeting where the topic turned from money to the changing landscape in which the church lives. Our conversation would have been familiar to many. We talked about the fact that the culture doesn't encourage church attendance any longer, about how congregations are often engaged in a competition for a shrinking number of church folks, about how many mainline congregations have trouble connecting with people who aren't predisposed to attend church, and more.
Such conversations sometimes have a paralyzing effect. Longtime, dedicated church members can see the situation as overwhelming. After many years of being quite good at doing worship, caring for one another, and doing a little mission work to boot, they fear they must now become marketing experts, that they must relearn how to worship, that they must outshine mega-churches with mega-budgets.
Such thoughts were bouncing around in my head when I read today's gospel. In it a Samaritan village does not welcome Jesus "because his face was set toward Jerusalem" (and by implication, the cross). The disciples want to punish the Samaritans, but Jesus rebukes them. Next Jesus speaks with would be followers about what it means to be his disciples. And the interplay of these events struck me with regards to the situation facing many mainline congregations.
For example, how to we perceive those who do not join us, who have little use for the church? I know a lot of church folk who not only do a fair amount of hand wringing over "Where have all the people gone," but they harbor a certain anger and resentment towards a culture that has abandoned them. I've never heard anyone suggest calling "fire to come down from heaven," but the culture is often viewed as a big part of the problem.
But the gospel reading quickly shifts the focus from what to do about those who don't embrace us to what it means to follow Jesus. Jesus seems unwilling to worry about "them" and instead hones in on what we, who say we do want to follow him, are supposed to do. And the two specific things Jesus mentions are a single-mindedness about the work of disciples, and "proclaiming the kingdom of God." And I think that some of the best advice available for worried, mainline congregations may be found right here.
Put simply, our endless worrying about "them," the people who aren't here, tends toward one of two opposites. Either we blame "them" and focus on being the righteous remnant. Or we try to figure out how to lure "them" with the latest and greatest offerings. But Jesus calls us to a different path, taking our own call to discipleship so seriously that proclaiming the Kingdom becomes our central purpose.
Interestingly, I have seen a number of surveys done with people who have little use for the church that say one of the biggest factors in their attitudes is seeing little of depth and substance in the congregations they've encountered. They've not met people who seem to be focused on following Jesus and proclaiming the Kingdom, who are willing to live, act, work, and spend their money differently because they follow Jesus.
This says to me that if mainline congregations become communities where the people who were there spend more time deepening their own spiritual lives, in following Jesus' commandments and embodying the kingdom he says has "drawn near," we might just find ourselves in a much better position to speak to those around us. Then we could say with real integrity, "See what a difference following Jesus has made in our lives and for the community in which we live? Wouldn't you like to be a part of something like that?"
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.
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.
