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.
When a toddler at the playground falls and skins a knee, there's often a brief moment of stunned silence followed by cries and screams. This normally produces a swift parental response as Mom or Dad swoops in to help the child and makes things all better. Indeed most of would be appalled if a parent failed to act this way. It is simply how things are supposed to be. A parent should care for a child in need or distress. That's a parent's job.
Given how common Father language is when talking about God, it's not surprising that some parental expectations get transferred onto God. I've even heard a few folks go so far as to say, "It's God's job to help me out, to do stuff for me." And I once read where someone said, "God has to forgive me. That's his job."
I have to admit to falling into such feeling myself at times. Some of my biggest faith struggles arise when I don't think God is being attentive enough to me, when God isn't responding to me as I would like. But every once in a while, I remember that God acts the parent is not because God has to, but because God chooses to.
If you read the Noah stories in Genesis, the whole human enterprise seems to be a failure, one that God seriously considers erasing and then starting over with a clean slate. But for some inexplicable reason, God decides to commit to humanity. It's not God's job, and God doesn't have to. But there is something about God's nature - perhaps the God is love part - that compels God to stick with us.
And so the psalmist can cry out, Hear my prayer, O LORD; let my cry come to you. Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I call.
Even though the psalmist knows that his days are "like an evening shadow;" that he will "wither away like grass," while God's "name endures to all generations, still he can say to God, "You will rise up and have compassion on Zion."
In this time of year with all its gifts and presents, we may do well to occasionally recall what a gift it is that God is mindful of us, that God doesn't simply leave us on our own. That God loves us, comes to us, and becomes our Parent when God does not have to, might just be the most amazing gift of all.
Satan shows up in two of today's readings. Many modern Christians, certainly many in denominations like my own, don't know what to do with this character. In fact, many of us are downright embarrassed by the idea of Satan or a devil. Perhaps this is the product of the optimism and belief in progress that so characterized modernity. If some cosmic being is always working against us, even if Satan is simply the personification of a cosmic evil that works against us, that shatters our hopes that if only we work hard enough, we can finally end poverty, end disease, end war, end suffering.
This may be a particularly acute problem for those of us in so-called "mainline" churches. For much of our history we've been closely allied and aligned with the culture. And we came to understand our faith as fully compatible with culture and nation. But if we must reckon with evil, and especially if biblical passages speaking of Satan as "the ruler of this world" are taken at all seriously, then nation, world, and culture end up being complicated places, not simply the arena for progress.
I think that stereotypical images of Satan as some guy with horns and a pitchfork are to be laughed at. Such images trivialize the problem of evil. But the need for God to intervene in history, the need for a Messiah, for Christmas and a cross, all say that we humans cannot finally "save" ourselves. And I use "save" here not as a synonym for going to heaven, but in the biblical sense, meaning to heal, make whole, rescue, restore, and set right.
Perhaps the most basic reason that we don't like to deal with Satan or evil comes down to not wanting to admit the power that evil, that sin has over us. We don't want to think that we could ever have betrayed Jesus. We don't want to think we would have been among those who failed to recognize him as the Messiah. We don't want to consider the possibility that we might have joined the crowd in shouting, "Crucify him." Not us!
But Christmas insists that we need saving - from evil, from sin, from our own self destructive ways, from our arrogance, from our tendency to trust in things other than God, be they money, nation, ideology, church, or progress.
But of course the hope of Christmas also insists that evil, Satan, and sin, are no match for God. Evil is real, but evil's greatest triumph, the cross, only leads to Resurrection, the herald of God's coming new day. And so we will work against poverty, and war, and hunger, and oppression, not because we "believe" in progress, but because we trust that this is the shape of the salvation God is bringing.
I have known a few Christians who seemed to think that as long as you believed in Jesus, nothing else you did mattered. But in truth, rare is the person of faith who does not think her faith demands a certain ethic or morality. Most all of us know that Jesus demands we love God and love neighbor. And more careful readers of the Bible know that Jesus says he fulfills the Old Testament Law, not abrogates it. But at the same time, most Christians know that Jesus talks a fair amount about forgiveness.
Out of all this and more, we Christians have developed a complicated and messy relationship with sin. For starters, we prefer to think of other people as the real sinners rather than us. I see this in my Presbyterian tradition, where corporate prayers of confession are long standing part of worship. This is the element of worship I hear the most complaints about and the most suggestions that we should either drop it or at least tone it down. (If you'd like to see this in action yourself, try getting folks to recite the answer to Question 5 from the "Heidelberg Catechism." In response to the question of whether anyone can keep God's Law it says, "No, for by nature I am prone to hate God and my neighbor.)
But if we are prone to downplay our own sin, we have no such problems with it comes theirs. Of course this requires that we tend to be appalled at their sort of sins while being understanding about our more banal sorts of sin. I am convinced that the current battles over homosexuality in the Church come about because of how safe the majority feels concerning this particular "sin." I think people on both sides of this Church fight can agree that we're not likely to ban those who practice "unrepentant greed" from being members or pastors or anything else in the Church.
In today's gospel reading, Jesus is confronted with how to respond to someone's sin. The religious leaders bring him a women caught committing adultery, and remind him that the Law proscribes death by stoning for the offense. Jesus' response doesn't really uncomplicate things for us. He doesn't speak against the Law, asking only that one without sin himself begin the rock tossing. When no one in the crowd is willing to follow through, Jesus states clearly that he will not condemn the woman. But he also tells her, "Go your way, and from now on do not sin again." Too bad the story doesn't continue on and have Jesus meet her a second time when she's been caught again.
It seems to me that religious people often want to use their sin as markers and boundaries. Their sort of sin puts you on the outside. But in this story Jesus won't draw a boundary, even though he tells the woman to change her behavior. I realize this doesn't neatly solve any debates about what is or isn't actually a sin, but it does seem to speak of a different sort of relationship toward "sinners."
I wonder what it would look like for the Church to be a place that took very seriously the need to live in conformity with God's ways, but where "sinners" still heard, "I do not condemn you."
In his letter to the congregation at Thessalonica, Paul writes, "Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil."
Much has been written over the last few decades, in both secular and religious venues, about the loss of community in our day. Robert Putman's acclaimed bestseller, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community pointed to the fraying of America's social fabric, as well as to some ways to reweave it. And I think that the Church plays a vital role in both the loss of community as well as any hope for recovering it.
On the loss side, Christianity in America has too often wedded itself to our culture's individualism so that salvation often becomes a purely personal thing about me getting right with Jesus. As long as I believe in Jesus or have personal relationship with him, I'm good. At times this faith becomes incredibly self centered with each person responsible for his or her own faith, despite the fact that Jesus says we are to be more focused on God's rule and on the other than on self.
My favorite professor in seminary, Doug Ottati, was fond of saying that God acted in Jesus to create "true communion with God in true community with others." In Acts 4:32-37, Luke paints a picture of what this would look like. And I suspect Paul has something similar in mind when he writes the Thessalonians. No one in such a community is ever "on her own."
In the run up to Christmas, both church and secular groups engage in a spasm of caring and giving. Needy families will receive boxes of food and presents for their children. But if this is an act of community, it rarely lives beyond the Christmas season. And I wonder if one of the most powerful witnesses the Church could offer the world might not be to demonstrate what true community looked like all year long.
As I write this the news media are reporting a possible deal between Democrats and Republicans that would extend the about-to-expire tax cuts for all income levels in exchange for extending unemployment benefits to the millions with none left who still cannot find jobs. I don't usually get "political" in these posts, but I confess that I am befuddled by conservatives' insistence that tax cuts must include all income groups, even those making millions. Considering how many of these conservatives wear their Christian faith on their sleeves, want the 10 Commandments displayed, and the Bible revered, I wonder if they read the same Bible that I do.
The Bible doesn't have a lot good to say about those with wealth. Today's verses from Isaiah are just a small sample of the prophets railing against the rich getting richer while the poor suffer. "Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!" Isaiah is condemning the wealthy who buy up land from people who are in financial difficulty, gradually controlling more and more.
And the laws that came with those 10 Commandments had provision for undoing this. Every 50th year land was supposed to revert to those families who had sold it during times of hardship. It is uncertain how well this Jubilee Year law was obeyed, however. Those with wealth are generally pretty good at hanging on to it.
One of the more disturbing economic statistics of our day is the growing disparity between rich and poor. The gap between what a working person makes and what a CEO makes has increased exponentially in the past 50 years. And despite Jesus saying, "Blessed are you who are poor," and "Woe to you who are rich," most of us want to hang on to as much of our riches as we can.
I saw another pastor post something online the other day suggesting how we should simple allow the tax cuts to expire, even for those of us making pastors' salaries. The nine or ten dollars a week we would lose would be money well spent to keep from burdening our children with a national debt, as well as insuring that crucial services are maintained. But based on the responses I saw to his post, not many of his parishioners agreed with him.
No where in the gospels does Jesus encourage accumulating possession or worrying about money, and he regularly calls people to give away what they have. Yet we in this "Christian nation" pursue money and things like no nation on earth. Our entire economy is based on people becoming "consumers," on them buying more and more.
I'm not suggesting any particular solutions or policies. I'm not at all certain how one would implement an economy that was at all in keeping with Scripture without causing huge economic upheaval. But it does seem to me that we who are Christians should, at the very least, examine the ways in which our basic economic assumptions run counter to the basic witness of Scripture.
I saw this post on Facebook the other day from a pastor colleague.It read: “crowdsourcing a hymn for Sunday: is singing ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing’ sacrilege for Advent even when its themes of peace fit very well into the texts and sermon?”Within minutes it had sparked a number of comments varying from “Don’t do it,” to “Go for it.”Lots of pastors and churchgoers, it seems, have a somewhat difficult relationship with Advent.
Centuries ago, when Christmas was not all that big a deal, Advent was developed as a kind of miniature Lent.But as Christmas has grown into a bigger and bigger cultural event, Advent has been co-opted into a longer and longer Christmas season
And this means that a typical question when pastors and church musicians talk about Advent and Christmas is, “If you don’t want to get your congregation mad, how far into Advent can you go without singing Christmas carols?”And this tension is only aggravated by the Scripture readings assigned for Advent.Until the fourth Sunday, there is no mention at all of Mary or Joseph or a virgin birth, absolutely nothing that looks like Christmas.
If you were not a churchgoer and popped in for today, you would likely be somewhat stunned to hear nothing said about mangers or shepherds or baby Jesus, to hear instead John the Baptist shouting, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
There’s simply no turning John into anything cute or adorable for Christmas.No one puts John on Christmas cards or wrapping paper.No Christmas carols demand that we “Repent.”Yet all four gospel writers feel the need to put John at the beginning of the story they tell.And every single Advent, John pops up once more, a jarring counter-image to sleigh bells, twinkling lights, and a sweet little eight pound, six ounce baby Jesus in the manger.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why the people of John’s day went out to see him.I think I would have avoided someone like John, a crazy looking guy yelling for me to repent.I suppose you have to be disillusioned with life and the world to turn to someone like John.People who are happy and content don’t go out to hear crazy prophets in the desert.And they sure don’t get baptized and change the way they live so that they’ll be ready for the new day that is coming, unless they really, desperately, want and need a new day.You have to be a little desperate to hope that God is going to intervene, that God’s rule is going to come and straighten out a broken and troubled world.
Maybe that’s why John singles out the Pharisees and Sadducees.They were the in-crowd, religious folk, the pastors and elders and bishops of their day.They may have been curious, even intrigued by this prophet everyone was going to see, but they weren’t ready to change, to live differently in expectation of something new.
I’m not sure I’m ready to change, to live differently in expectation of a new day.I’m a lot like those Pharisees and Sadducees.John is mostly a curiosity to me.He’s an Advent oddball, an interruption in the Christmas preparations that are about the only getting ready I’m doing.And John doesn’t call people to get ready for Christmas of for Jesus.He calls them to get ready for God’s new day, a day when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.And Jesus says the very same thing when he shows up.Get ready, turn and change the way you live, for God’s kingdom is drawing near.
But we don’t see it.We can’t really picture a day when “the wolf shall live with the lamb…” when “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”We can’t imagine such a thing and so we’ll celebrate and enjoy another Christmas, then get back to life as usual.
But Isaiah and John and Jesus can imagine such a thing.They can picture a day when God transforms human history, when God’s will becomes the way of everyone on earth.They can see it, and so they shout, “Get ready.Repent, for the kingdom has come near.”
I have come to think that the peculiar curse of modernity and the scientific age is the loss of imagination.We have become so accustomed to thinking in terms of cause and effect that we cannot see possibilities not supported by “the facts.”We look around at the world and we “know” that nothing can bring peace, nothing can end terrorism, nothing can make Israel and Palestine, the US and Iran, North and South Korea, get along and trust one another.It just isn’t possible.We can’t even imagine it.
But prophets can.Contrary to what many think, prophets generally do not predict the future.Rather they are people whose intimate relationship with God grants them vivid imaginations.They see things that others can’t see, and they find hope that others can’t find.
Which makes me wonder if John Lennon was a prophet.Although I know many pastors who abhor it, one of my favorite songs is Lennon’s “Imagine.”I suppose some dislike the song because it begins, “Imagine there’s no heaven.It’s easy if you try.No hell below us; above us only sky.”I can see why that bothers people, but in fact it is fairly easy to imagine no heaven.People have such faith crises all the time.People of deep faith at times find themselves struggling to believe in a good and just God who will redeem the world.
But other things are much harder to imagine.“Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can.No need for greed or hunger.A brotherhood of man.Imagine all the people sharing all the world.”
I make no claims that John Lennon was a believer much less a Christian prophet.But the vision his imagination conjures up is remarkably similar to the day Jesus envisions.It is remarkably like the vision of a new day that compels John to shout, “Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near.”
As we move through Advent, most of us are focused on Christmas, on its joy and its traditions, on its warmth and its nostalgia, on the momentary respite its celebration provides from the harsh realities of the world.But John the Baptist interrupts our Christmas preparations.He shows up at the Christmas party like an unwanted guest who throws cold water on our Christmas fun.
But John is no spoil-sport.He does not come to dampen the celebration, but to help us see something more.John interrupts our Advent of waiting for Christmas to prod our imaginations, to get them working again, to call us to hope in God’s new day, a day that cannot be perceived through facts or evidence of how things are, that can only be glimpsed by faithful imagination.
Come, Lord Jesus!Help us see as you see, dream as you dream, imagine as you imagine, that we may live as you lived.
For the last few days, the readings from Isaiah have spoken of judgment and punishment, of how Israel's determination to live in opposition to God leads inevitably to tragedy. But with the prophets there is almost always a move to restore and set things right. "On that day the branch of the LORD shall be beautiful and glorious."
Many people speak of "the God of the Old Testament" who they view as a vengeful, punishing God. But this seems to miss some of the most remarkable verses of the Bible that speak of God working to overcome human foolishness. God is committed to Israel and to humanity far beyond anything that springs from logic or reason. Living in ways that are contrary to the design of the Creator is bound to cause problems, but God keeps intervening, not allowing human refusal to live as we were created to live to have the final say.
One of the great hopes of Advent is the promise that while humanity's incredible capacity to destroy, hurt, oppress, exploit, wage war, and so on does indeed lead to much suffering, brokenness, and death, these foolish actions will not determine the future. God's love, God's commitment to humanity - a commitment and love that at times seems downright ridiculous - will finally bend history to God's will.
And so while I will enjoy the good cheer and the spirit of the Christmas season, my real hope lies in God's commitment to us, to me, and that unquenchable love that keeps God "for us" in spite of how absurd such a notion sometimes seems.
It's the time of year when Salvation Army kettles start to show up at stores and malls. If I've got some change in my pocket, I'll drop a little in as I leave the store, but if all I have is a $20 bill, probably not. And that reminds me of a story I heard long ago about a preacher from Alabama know as Brother Bryan. Bryan was a fixture in Birmingham in the early 1900s as well as an advocate for the poor and homeless. Though pastor at Third Presbyterian from seminary graduation until retirement, he apparently thought of himself as pastor to the entire town.
On one occasion Bryan engaged a fellow - not a church member - in a discussion about the spiritual discipline of tithing. He explained to the man that tithing meant setting aside the first ten percent of his income to God. At this point the man responded, "Oh, I could never do that. I'm wealthy and make a lot of money. I could never afford to give away ten percent of that."
Brother Bryan said, "I think we need to pray about this." He proceeded to look up to heaven and cry out, "Cut him down, Lord, cut him down! Reduce this man's income so he can afford to tithe."
The object of Brother Bryan's prayer seems to be the flip side of Jesus' comments about the widow who put her two coins in the Temple treasury. The more we have, the more protective we become of what we have, and the more difficult it becomes to part with significant portions of it. And I think this raises questions about what makes for a meaningful and full life. Most of us are fully acculturated to the notion that happiness and contentment comes from having a bit more. But much of what Jesus says indicates the opposite.
I wrestle with this in my own life. I have things that I want, that I would like to have. Are these the "bit more" that I think will make me happy? Where is the line that, once crossed, tends to make me more and more protective of what I have so that I can no longer be truly generous with God and others? At what point does more become a curse rather than a blessing? Is there such a line or is it more a matter of heart and attitude?
I won't suggest that Salvation Army kettles are the best measure of one's generosity. Some very generous people may have good reasons to prefer other charities. But seeing a Salvation Army kettle can still serve as a kind of check, a way to reflect on where I am with regards to what Jesus says about full, abundant, and meaningful life.
I've always been a bit uncomfortable with a line in this morning's psalm (as well as the song based on it). "I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, so I shall be saved from my enemies." To begin with, I don't really have what I consider enemies. Certainly I have people who don't care for me and who don't like me. But this is as likely to be my fault as theirs, so I cringe at the notion of God needing to do something about them. Also, this psalm sometimes conjures up images of enlisting God in our national causes. But I am extremely uncomfortable assuming that the enemies of America are necessarily the enemies of God.
But at a Bible study last night we were talking about the Kingdom that Jesus says is drawing near, and how the ways of this new age are at odds with the ways of the world. The gospels make it abundantly clear that the those who embrace the ways of the Kingdom will find themselves in conflict with the world, just as Jesus did. And Jesus says that if we follow him, we will be hated and despised just as he was. And I have no enemies.
How did we go from Jesus' warning that "If they persecuted me, they will persecute you," to the life of relative ease Christians enjoy in America. No doubt some will suggest that this is because we are a "Christian nation," but does that mean that America somehow embodies the Kingdom or provides a faithful witness to God's new day as Jesus says his followers must?
Even a cursory reading of the gospels will demonstrate how little America looks like the Kingdom. America may be the most wonderful country on earth, but it is not a place where the powerful are brought down and the lowly lifted up, where the hungry are filled with good things and the rich are sent away empty. It is not a place where swords are beaten into plowshares or that believes Jesus when he says, "One's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions," or "None of you can become my disciples if you do not give up all your possessions."
The fact is that the Church has done a pretty good job of domesticating Jesus and his message. That's not an American thing. It began more than 1600 years ago when the emperor Constantine embraced the faith. But of course once the empire became "Christian," Christianity couldn't go around talking about a new kingdom of God what would overthrow the ways of Rome. And so the promises of God's coming Kingdom gradually got relegated to a better life after death. And this domestication continues. It is manifest in the notion that Jesus came primarily to offer personal salvation to individuals and in Glenn Beck's assertion that Christians shouldn't worry about "social justice."
And me, I enjoy a relatively comfortable job as a pastor where my only "enemies" are the occasional folks who get mad because I haven't visited them enough or who didn't like something I said in a sermon.
To be honest, I don't really know where this train of thought is headed, but as we move through Advent and Christmas, when we hear once again about swords beaten into plowshares, the Prince of Peace, and peace on earth, it seems to me that I need to take a hard look at how faithful I am to Jesus' call to be his disciple. Jesus didn't go looking for enemies - he even heals one of those who arrested him - but when he is faithful to God's will, he becomes a threat that earthly powers cannot ignore. So why does the world so easily dismiss me and the Church?
Today's words from Isaiah are justifiably famous. "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." During Advent, we sometimes say that this is what we are waiting for, for the day when God shall put an end to all disputes, and the nations can get rid of their arsenals. Come, Lord Jesus.
But we don't really believe it. When the Soviet Union collapse late in the 20th Century, some people talked about a "peace dividend." If the Soviets were no longer our enemies, if we no longer needed to engage in a never ending arms race, surely our defense costs would plummet. But the peace dividend never materialized. There is always some new threat for those whose security is found in weapons and armies. There is never a point where you have enough weapons or good enough weapons for every possible threat.
But for some reason, the prophet imagines a time when this will not be so. In that time all people will be drawn to God and will learn to walk in God's ways. And God "shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples." The peace dividend will finally materialize when God steps in to settle disputes. But of course that will never happen in our lifetimes. One cannot make plans, set policies, or calculate defense budgets on such fantasies.
Sometimes I think that the curse of our time is our practicalrealism paired with a dearth of imagination. We cannot see beyond the facts, and so we cannot hope beyond the facts. The kindest things we will say about those few who can imagine and dream of an end to war or poverty is that they are "idealistic" or "naive." If we are feeling charitable we may smile at them and nod. But we pay them no attention.
Prophets have vivid imaginations. They see possibilities that the "facts on the ground" do not support. And the biblical prophets are so bold as to claim that their imaginations are rooted in God's hopes and dreams for the world. The world generally dismisses such prophets, but still they call us to latch on to their imaginings, their visions of something new and wonderful.
Perhaps an appropriate Advent prayer would be asking God to restore our imaginations. Then we might be able to hope for, and begin to live toward, the new thing God imagines.
